Death come to desktops
I am making predictions for 2008 now, I’m sure people have heard it before but I believe that the desktop will be dying soon. There will still be niche markets for it, like gaming and high performance machines. But I think business’s will replace desktop workstations with laptops, and I believe that laptops will become so affordable they will take over the budget market. Recently laptop sales have been higher than desktop sales but this year I believe they will trump desktop sales.
For business’s the portability is really important. As of present time most workstations are desktop machines but if business’s decided to go mobile they would see huge benefits. Not only would employees be able to bring there work with them they would also be able to bring their work to company events such as meetings.
In the home there are obvious advantages, the main one is portability. I’m a high school student and I’m always out doing something and a lot of the time I’m not even in my home state, so being connected and being able to stay on top of things requires me to have a laptop. The price has come down significantly to the point that its an obvious choice in the home.
Hopefully the new year will bring many new tech toys but I’m hoping for some huge improvements in laptops. I would like to see better battery life, lower prices, and more power.
January 1st, 2008 at 6:35 pm
I agree. Laptops are very close to laptops in performance, although they still cost a bit more. I’ve been using a laptop as my primary system for almost 4 years now. Laptops are especially useful when you need to take your work home with you or travel a lot. The majority of people don’t need anything more powerful than a high end laptop such as a MacBook Pro.
January 2nd, 2008 at 9:22 am
You’re crazy, it’ll never happen:
1. Laptops are too prone to theft. Portability is a *bad* thing for computing equipment in most businesses.
2. Laptops are more likely to experience hardware failures than desktop PCs.
3. Dealing with batteries is a pain in the ass and expensive over time.
4. Most businesses don’t want their employees working at home or anywhere other than the office; that was a ’90s trend that is dying off now.
5. Laptops will always be more expensive and less durable than equivalent desktop PCs.
6. Laptops are more limited in how they can be upgraded.
You’re thinking from your perspective, not the perspective of a IT manager with hundreds or thousands of computing users to support. Desktop PCs may get smaller and cheaper, but they’ll still be less expensive to install and operate over time than laptops ever will be. There will always be some employees, some businesses, some industries for which laptops make sense, but not for the workforce in general.