Laptops Rock! Desktop PCs Are Soon History

[iholla]

I am all for laptops. I know, I know...some of you still believe that Desktop pcs are here to stay...I have news for you, nah-uh! Name one thing I get from Desktop PC that I cannot get from laptops and Ill name you 3 I get on laptops that you wish you had on Desktops.

I just feel that Desktops are too big for the teeny weeny functionality they give. Remember the size of the first pcs? Yeah well, thats my line of thought about the same now...amongst other things.

Which are you standing by?

 

[Christopher]

Desktops are not going to go away. You can get much more power out of a desktop then you can out of a laptop. And I doubt that will ever change.

 

[Calipe]

I have a laptop and I love it, although for gaming desktops take the prize by a loooong shot.
Love my laptop though.

 

[HomerJ]

Desktops have less limitations on size. Thus components need not be worried about size restraints as much, making them cheaper or more powerful.

Desktops are more customizable. Most laptops have surface-mounted processors and integrated components. This makes upgrading more difficult, essentially requiring a new machine.

Desktops don't have to worry nearly as much about power consumption. It is nice to cut down on electrical bills, but they don't have to attempt to extend their battery life for a long time. This once again results in cheaper or more powerful components. Furthermore, there is no need for software to manage power usage and thus waste more system resources.

Laptops are more non-standard, containing rare or even unique hardware. This is most likely due to the size, heat, and power constraints. This means that it is nearly impossible for users of any OS other than Windows (and even if you try to install Windows instead of keeping the factory default) to have drivers for their hardware.

So, desktops have better and cheaper components, more flexibility in upgrading individual components, and hardware with better, more supported drivers. Laptops have portability and that's it. Of course, that could be a deal-breaker for many people, but not me. I don't need portability, so a desktop is the only way to go.

 

[Loneua Technologies]

Desktops are here to stay for a very long time.

They offer so much more customization and power.

Not one gamer will agree to get rid of desktops.

 

[iholla]

-need not be worried about size restraints as much,
-Most laptops...makes upgrading more difficult..
-Desktops don't have to worry nearly as much about power consumption.
-software to manage power usage...waste system resources.
-Laptops are more non-standard,impossible for users of any OS other than Windows to have drivers for their hardware.

I appreciate your well thought out contribution and a lot of what you say is so true but...

I'd worry about size restraints if I were living in a small apartment or shared a college room with someone else....the thingy comes with tons of cables too(for those not yet on wireless accessories). Once the pc comes in, you have to think of new additional furniture on which to place your dinosaur and your bummes as you try to tame it! Hence, New dinosaur => New table + New Chair + New Corner == Too much space

Laptops are now easily upgradable. They come with a lot more components being 'plug n play'. Need new hard disk, slide out the old one, insert the new, need more ram or better video ram, just buy the right pcb and slide into the all powerful PCI slot...blah blah.

Desktop guys re-e-eeee-ally have to worry about power consumption. The laptop consumes the same power while charging the battery as when plugged-in without the battery plus, whenever you are on the road, you are saving $ at home. I also know that most of us leave our desktops on 24/7...now who's burning more power?

Wastage of system resources due to power management software???? That so wont stand up in this debate coz if you have 2048MB ram and a GForce 8400M of say 512MB vram and are running NFS Pro Street and have media player showing a movie at the same time, it will play perfectly well without any glitches. You know why, coz power management software requires only 3k of ram and power management can also be set in BIOS.

Yep, they are non standard, but the manufacturers usually have a habit of bundling all drivers and software with the laptop you buy and in case you miss your bundle of software, you can always download it freely from their ftp sites. If you are running *Nix based OS, then you should know that all latest *nix releases come with most drivers.

When it comes to how powerful a laptop can get, you dont want to get me started on that...

 

[Livewire]

You might not wanna get started on the supposed size-restraints on a pc either.

Look up Mini-ITX. 6.5" square. Small enough to fit in a Nintendo Entertainment System.


See, I'm not going to argue that laptops can get pretty damn powerful pretty damn fast. I AM going to argue that you can do it for the same price as a desktop - the equivilant laptop of what's in my pc, at the time of building it, was around $750. PC and case cost me less than $400 to do it myself.


The college room-mate argument doesn't really fly either; it's not exactly difficult to buy something other than a stock ATX motherboard (grab a Mini-ATX which is different than a mini-itx, but still smaller than a normal motherboard), grab a power supply that isn't as big physically as others, and buy the smaller case to put it in. I just don't see the problem here.



Fairly sure I know what HomerJ meant by power consumption as well - Desktops don't have batteries that can run out. Laptops do.

 

[iholla]

Desktops are here to stay for a very long time.They offer so much more customization and power.Not one gamer will agree to get rid of desktops.

I love games too. It is infact one of the reasons I am for laptops now. With my trusty lappy, I can walk into any 'gameZone' and have myself hooked up onto their network. I have enough duo core processor power, ram and video ram on it to play the latest releases. If its the screen size, then you can always hook it up to an external screen(like a tv set). It will do at home what a gamer's desktop will do...but I get to carry my fun to the next spot too
Edit:

You might not wanna get started on the supposed size-restraints on a pc either.

Fairly sure I know what HomerJ meant by power consumption as well - Desktops don't have batteries that can run out. Laptops do.

-the smaller the motherboard, the fewer the slots hence lesser components can be stuck in there.

-desktops dont run out of power...since you use them at home. well, laptops kinda dont run out of power either when you are at home...usually the manufactures tend to make it possible to plug them directly into a power source too...he he. Laptops use batteries when you are not at home...desktops run out of power soon as you walk out the door with them...he he...all I am saying is, better to have 5 hrs of laptop time on the road than 0 of desktop time.

ps: I liked the info on the teeny tiny tower.

 

[noerrorsfound]

At what settings can you run Crysis on your laptop/notebook? Be sure not to leave out the resolution and whether you've got AA on or off.

 

[Smith6612]

Desktops pwn laptops in power any day. For example, the Mac Pro can get 8 CPU cores. Many desktops these days also come with Quad Core processors, while laptops are still stuck with dual cores.

Also, Desktops can hold more RAM than laptops. There are PCs out there with 16GB of RAM, and desktops can also have the latest graphics card, not some last model card that's been stripped for mobility.

 

[Livewire]

In the laptops defense it _is_ more portable than even the best gaming rig designed for a LAN, but I just can't see it being any use at all for any hardcore gaming - by the time you put the battery and a cooling pad on it, you're not looking at a small machine any more, and theres just not enough room to put in a good size heatsink to help mitigate the effects of overheating.

I just can't see a laptop being any better than a good Mini-ATX or Mini-ITX box with handles, 300gb hd, AGP or PCI video card (pci in the case of the mini-itx, it's only got 1 expansion because it's got onboard video/audio/lan - its not really meant for gaming, but it IS meant to be tiny as hell), etc.


I just can't see how a laptop can stand up to the desktop, even if they're the same in terms of physical stats - the desktop isn't constrained by having to spend extra $$$ to cram everything into a smaller box, so the parts aren't as expensive to get the same power ones you've got in a laptop. Cost to Power ratio is better for a desktop than a pc.

 

[HomerJ]

Fairly sure I know what HomerJ meant by power consumption as well - Desktops don't have batteries that can run out. Laptops do.

That is what I meant. For desktops, low power consumption is a luxury to help on electrical bills. For laptops it is a must to increase battery life. All this means higher cost or lower power. Check out the prices:

Laptop:
Core™2 Duo processor T5450 @ 1.66GHz
2GB DDR2 667
160GB SATA
DVD±R/RW super multi double layer drive
15.4in. WXGA TFT active matrix
Mobile Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator X3100
Realtek ALC861 Software Sound
802.11a/b/g/n WLAN, 10/100 LAN
Microsoft Windows Vista Business
$1054.99

Desktop: Asus P5GC-MX/1333 $64.99Intel Core™2 Duo E4500, 2.20-GHz $129.99
2GB DDR2 667 $59.99
160GB Western Digital SATA $54.99
LG DL DVD±RW $29.99
Acer 17" TFT Active matrix $199.99
Asus Extreme GeForce N7300 GT $59.99
Realtek ALC883 High Definition 5.1 (integrated) $0
PCIe 10/100M LAN controller (integrated) $0
Economy mid-tower ATX case $24.99
Nspire ISO-500D 450W ATX Ver 2.0 Power Supply $39.99
$664.91
+Vista Business ($144.99) $809.90

These are just 2 random systems that I picked out. I picked the laptop and then configured a desktop to be very similar. Both from the same site. The desktop is about 20% cheaper and slightly more powerful.

And about UNIX drivers: they really suck on rare or unique laptop hardware. I use Gentoo Linux and configure the kernel and all drivers myself, so I am aware of how this works. If I were to purchase a laptop, I would keep well-supported hardware in mind, but that isn't always the best deal. All of the hardware in my laptop is supported, but it is over a decade old.:frown:

 

[sunils]

Ya laptops rocks because its portable and can be used every where.

But desktop are not going to history.

You have lot of advantage in desktop

Laptops needs to be improved in lot of aspects like

battery life,
heat transfer,
environment aspects,
upgradation

Once this is done then i will vote as laptops rocks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[N4rk0]

The cost of a laptop compared to a destop with same powere is very very higher.....and also if something srew up in ur lapto it's difficult to fix coz many parts are built in ... not good.

 

[Silverspoon]

Laptops were great when I didn't have to return them for breaking (never).

• Power consumption issues -batteries just can't handle an extended hardcore graphics session yet
• Keyboard/mouse too awkward -the pitch on keyboard and spacing just hurt, and who plays a FPS with a touchpad (and no one sells trackballs with the features of a gaming mouse)? And where's my number pad?!
• Heat dissipation- Laptops that can pack the punch are too hot to sit on your lap (now another thing to buy... cooling pad)
• Shared memory- Ouch, that's never a good thing to have your GPU and CPU fight over memory. And it's becoming the norm now on most laptops.
• Sound- either you are using headphones or the baby speakers on it (granted Harmon-kardon and boston A are getting there, still nothing to my 8.1 setup)
• Wifi- the wifi antennas never pull up full speed unless you are right there.
• Parts- can't replace/upgrade most of the parts (just mem/HD) easily.
• Software- proprietary drivers restrict OS usage.

A small micro desktop is the size of a video console and can pack the punch of a "gaming laptop" for less $$$ out of pocket. The case will last for a decade when they change form factors. Everything else is easily Remove and Replace (have you even tried servicing a laptop?!? what a pain!!!).

And having 2 DVD drives makes burns/copies go faster, and access to multple HDs really helps (i have a second small 10000rpm drive for graphics caching for Adobe and Windows caching)

Desktops will always be a step in front of laptops with the newest hardware, before it attempts to spend the manhours and money to shrink it down to fit the laptops.

 

[disturbedart]

Overall Conclusion is that you can get a hell of alot more power out of a desktop for alot cheaper.

Yes you can get dual gfx cards in a laptop but for how much? Alot more than a Desktop, its about £2,384 for a 2x Nvidia Geforce Go 7800 GTX laptop from RockDirect. Them GFX cards come nowhere near a the new 8800 ultra series. I can get 2x ultras for £822 and get the rest of the computer for £1000 and still leave that laptop standing overall. The laptops are way to expensive to make them the best.

Desktop Computers will always lead the market. And like you said yes they may be bigger but the bigger the better, With new cases coming out, the big ones are starting to look more stylish and more attractive. but if you don't want that much power but still good i can buy a smaller shuttle pc that will be still classified as a gamers machine and still be cheaper than the laptop equivalent buy at least £200.

What i'm trying to say overall is that Laptops are to expensive to make, to compete with the likes of computers. Computers will never be washed away, Computers allow to much customizing abilities as where laptops are limited and also have heat problems. Also laptops are increasing in size slowing to accommodate the new hardware out there.

Hardware increases in size outer shells get larger. No matter what.


Regards,
Disturbedart

 

[DarkenProject]

I almost want to say this is an Apples VS Oranges argument. The goals and marketing of laptops is very off from that of desktops.

I own both, and will probably continue to do the flip-flop upgrading I do: I upgrade the desktop; I buy a new laptop; upgrade the desktop; buy a new laptop (and so on). And, I can easily say that I enjoy the particular platform above the other until I upgrade its counterpart. So, I get a new laptop: love it! Take it with me everywhere I go. It makes me relize that hey, maybe the desktop needs a new processor so it can have similar performance to my laptop. Then I'm rocking out on the desktop! Awesome! But wait, now my laptop is being neglecting... maybe I need a new one... (and so on).

So I think I'll take a moderate approach and say "I love them both!" and will continue to buy each

 

[curt15]

More or less. Laptops offer a powerful portable functionality, where as Desktops can offer a helluva lot more power, but at no portability for the most part. I got a new PC, 2.4Ghz Quad Core, 3gb Ram and lots of other stuff, for £440. I wouldnt dream the amount which it would cost me to buy that in a laptop. Realistically too, governments and other companies arent going to completely move away from desktops, they are harder to leave behind and forget where they are compared to laptops, making them less of a security liability

 

[Dan]

I currently have a laptop - an rubbish Dell Inspiron 1501. I like having a laptop because of it's portability and some can be pretty powerful, otherwise I would much rather get a desktop PC. You can't really upgrade components in a laptop very easily which you can in a desktop and you can't go and make your own laptop which you can with a Desktop.

 

[Mindbleed]

PC's will be around for a long time.

If you think about it, people still make HUGE computer's so that they can run something more powerful. So the more they make things smaller, people will still have the big PCs, they will just run WAY better than a small laptop. A PC is used when you know you are not moving around and you just want a power-station. Also, places like Libraries and schools probably won't switch over to laptops completely for the simple reason they are easier to steal.

Also, you should have made this a poll. It is nice to see visually how many people disagree with you.