Saturday Soapbox: The Desktop Is Dead, Long Live The Desktop!
Saturday 4 July 2009 @ 3:43 pm | By Ivan 'Nahu' Lozano 6 Comments
Recently some very influential voices in the tech world have been denouncing the death of the desktop PC and, by association, PC gaming. Their claims are not unfounded, Desktop sales went down 23% last year and while a decline is no surprise in the current economic climate; a fall of nearly a quarter of sales is an astounding blow to the market.
I believe rumors of the desktop PCs death have been greatly exaggerated. While laptops are every more popular, cheaper and powerful, most of their innovation still comes from that happening in the Desktop field. On the contrary I propose that the Desktop is not dying but evolving. I’d even venture to say that the only part of the Desktop that’s changing is the Desk part.
Our PC’s are taking the role of hubs and media centers, the best storage, fastest processors and better graphics are all on the PC. With the impending rise of virtualization our PCs will become even more important as they will become the backbone to your local computer. Your very own cloud, if you will.
Will laptops and netbooks continue their rise? Without a doubt, but in the very near future you are going to see many of the capabilities of those devices relying on those of your hub PC. So if you were thinking of shelling out for a high end laptop think again. Laptops depreciate twice as fast as desktops and are many times harder to upgrade. I’ll go out on a limb here and say that we’ll be seeing the resurgence of desktops within 5 years. And PC gaming dead? Don’t even get me started! But we’ll save that for another day. Over and out.
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Abraham 'Velcor' Duarte
David 'KidKobun' Bruno
Ivan 'Nahu' Lozano
Random J
Sol
i personally love my desktop even if its a bit outdated it still does the job… i favor it over laptops ’cause of the battery dependency, the heating and the upgrading issues…
my PC has replaced my TV and DVD player… i barely touch them anymore…
I have a very very very veeery big complaint against laptops: very poor/low-end video cards. And rellying on them on video-rendering is rather inconvenient for me, not to mention to capture video from tape-formats. Anyone who says that desktops are disappearing early tomorrow must be looking for some atention.
Actually I think what’s going to happen is laptops are going to disappear, in favor of netbooks and high-capacity “media center”-type desktops.
Lets face it… Netbooks do most things people buy laptops for superbly and for a very lo price. And desktops will always be more powerful, efficient and less of a hassle than high-powered laptops.
So while I’ve heard this “the desktop is dying” arguments a lot lately (even my dad has mentioned it), I’m holding fast to my prediction. Eventually all there’ll be are netbooks and desktops; with laptops becoming more of a “luxury” for people who are always on the move and NEED, are willing to carry and care after, a big screen, high-power, high-capacity, portable desktop.
Really well put, I completely agree with your prediction. Most people dont need a computer nearly as powerful as the current laptops, especially for their on-the-go needs.
Still, we both come to the conclusion that the desktop will transform to a media center/server.
Some say consoles are the ones to take that place, I think they are both going in the same direction. It’s gonna be really interesting when this convergence comes to its critical phase.
I think desktops will always be around, especially in academics and tech centric areas, but I love my laptops. I have a MacBook Pro and an HP media center laptop. They do every I want them too. I edit video, encode, rip dvds, web design.
Yes it may be expensive on the initial purchase, but I can take it everywhere. If really wanted a bigger screen I could hook it up to my TV.
As for expansion, you have a multitude of PCMIA slots, new sata cards, and firewire.
Like desktop, you will have a laptop for every type of person, but at the end of the day. I think the average user will have netbooks. They are affordable and most uses surf the internet/watch some video/word processing and email.
I love my desktop and for me a laptop will never be the same as a desktop