Do you think the desktop computer is obsolete?

No. Desktops last significantly longer and cost significantly cheaper. They aren’t going anywhere.

No, not soon. They still function like a piece of furniture and chairs aren’t becoming obsolete. But yeah, you know this, people are buying more laptops, I did, I got a sweet one. But it has to many options, program functions to alter that I don’t have a clue what they really do. How do you learn about what all these options mean? Stupid question.

@truecomedian What options (PM me so the thread doesn’t derail) and I can help you (probably)?

My WPM on a US-101 keyboard is much higher than on a laptop.
Desktops, as noted above, get much better performance-per-dollar. $1200 in desktop parts will buy me a computer that can outperform any laptop in that price range that I’ve ever heard of.

Hardly.

Hardcore gamers, artists, photographers, businesspeople, and the damn government still use desktops. At the moment, the computing power of high-end desktops still trumps the power of just about all laptops, and thus they still have a huge niche in the market.

@papayalily “They aren’t going anywhere.”

Well, you can take them with you, but they are considerably heavier and bulkier XD

@bob_ Lulz
@Nullo What’s a US-101 keyboard, and what’s the laptop keyboard called?

Hell no!

Among people that only use their computers as a web browser, chat client, and a way to check their Facebook and Twitter accounts, computers in general became obsolete the second Smartphones came out. For people that actually use computers (especially gamers and artists), desktops will trump laptops for a long time to come.

My low-end $500 desktop can beat just about any laptop that costs under $1500, especially in graphics, and if anything breaks on it, I can replace the broken part myself, and that part will be far cheaper than the laptop equivalent. So for people that actually use a computer as intended rather than just an on-ramp to the internet, desktops are here to stay.

I can see laptops supplanting desktops when the following things happen:

- Battery life surpasses 12 hours in real-world use. None of this “up to…” stuff, but a solid half-day with full sound, display brightness, wifi, and all. Right now, the best laptops get around half that; anybody who claims otherwise turned at least one thing off.

- Performance is comparable Right now, mobile CPUs are ⅓–½ the power of their desktop equivalents, partly due to power consumption and the resulting effects on battery life. And the GPU performance of most laptops is abysmal. Not important for those who don’t need any computer more powerful than those made a decade ago (about the power level of a netbook or iPad) but very important to a lot of other people.

- Superconductors Another part of the reason for the performance disparity between desktops and mobile systems is heat. My desktop CPU is about the size of my fist. Now, would you want a laptop with a grapefruit-sized bulge in it? Oh, and the heatsink on my GPU is about the size of a thick paperback book. And let us not forget the fans.
Even with all that cooling, there are parts of my desktop that get hot enough to blister flesh under full computing load. You do not want that in a laptop, so you need a chip that can have electricity pass through it without generating waste heat; in other words, superconductors.

- Lightweight Folding big-screens Sometimes I just have to have my big screen, but I don’t want to deal with the bulk or weight of it. Try hauling a 20” LCD monitor around and you’ll start to see what I mean. Now haul two of them.

- Virtual Reality The lower limit on the size of any computer is based on the input and output. Many have trouble typing on a laptop and an even worse time typing on a smartphone, so you can’t have a laptop smaller than a full-sized desktop keyboard; something I find too large and unwieldy to carry comfortably, so I sacrifice a little for my 13” laptop.
Many also squint on a netbook’s 10.1” screen and go batty with a smartphone, so you can’t get a laptop any smaller than teh smallest screen you can reasonably see.
Both of those considerations go away with VR, especially one based on a direct neural connection. Imagine the computer’s display sent right into the visual cortex of your brain. Don’t bother typing; just think it and the computer will read the neural impulses and translate them into text. Even a more primitive interface like a pair of gloves and a display bult into a pair of glasses would work, as would Sixth Sense

Until at least half of those things happen, desktops will be here to stay.

Not until laptops are substantially cheaper than desktops, and also when laptops are more easily upgradeable, and have the battery power to last all day without recharging. It’s going to be a long, long time.

Actually, add everything that @jerv said too.

In the words of @jerv, hell no!

With my laptop, if I have a certain game up and facebook/pandora/some other sites up as well, my laptop will crash.

I’ve never had this problem with my desktop computer, unfortunately I’m about 2,500 miles away from my desktop.

I love my laptop, it is like my portable filing cabinet, it contains my entire life in documents, photos, movies etc. but…..

I can’t live without my lovely big monitor on the desktop at home.

So nope I vote with the “both” are here to stay crowd.

Desktops aren’t going anywhere because of two big reasons and abunch of little ones. For one just like papayalily said is that they last longer and are cheaper. And the other reason is that they usually tend to have a lot more ram and hard drive space for the amount of money you pay for one. Plus you can do a lot more modifications as far as inside the tower. You have a lot more space in a tower than you do in a laptop. And one more is that laptops overheat really easy. Destops are designed so teir fans can actually keep the cpu cool so they don’t overheat.

As long as there are enough people like me to create a market they should be around.

At the moment there are motherboards for desktops that can take 4 CPU’s, and there are CPU’s that have 6 cores, and there are big GPU’s and big 3TB hard drives. You could put all of that in a desktop and make a PC worth $20,000.00 But there is no way it will all fit in a laptop. So there are limitations on laptops, so for now at least, if you want high end machinery, a desktop is the only way to go.

btw, could we all please track down the asshole that invented those little touch panels for laptops, you know, the things that act like a mouse, i’d very much like to beat him/her to death with a brick if that can be aranged. thx

I have three desktops at work, all vital for what I do. They aren’t going anywhere

nope

Desktops are generally easier to upgrade. When I bought my laptop about a year and a half ago, 4GB RAM was great… Now I’d love to stick some more RAM in there, but no dice :(

If it is, then I am Fluthering obsoletely right now.

My desktop computer is here to stay.

Information transmitted on laptop computers is easily intercepted by hackers. i do not trust laptop computers.

I have both lap top & desk top, I prefer my desk top! :-/

if anything I’ll sell you my lap top :-/

Little late to the party:

Only once computing is made a secondary function. Once you run all your apps through an internet browser the desktop will no longer be needed. At this time any query can just as easily be answered by a specialized computer.

@john65pennington – I don’t understand, if you are using a wireless modem in your home, why is desktop more secure than laptop, or is you are using an ethernet cable, it can be used on your laptop just as it can on your desktop? Why is a laptop less secure???

@rooeytoo a laptop is mobile, which, though can be advantageous, means it relies heavily on wireless connections which are easily accessible to everyone else in the vicinity, and with many laptops also having a bluetooth function as well that also increases the chances of your laptop catching a virus, worm, etc.

Sure, you can have a wireless modem inside your house, my family does, but what makes it safer is that, at least with my family, you can limit the wireless function to only a few computers and have to give permission to any new incoming wireless devices to use its wireless or you can contain the range of the wireless connection to your property. and it still plugs into the wall somewhere allowing it to retain most of the safety provided by a solely wired connection.

@Winters – That all makes sense, but if you use a laptop within your home, using your own home wifi connection (and with bluetooth turned off), the lappy is no more inherently dangerous than the desktop, right??? It is when you go onto public wifi such as at a MacDonalds, or leave your bluetooth on that it becomes more of a risk. I think I am correct in that thinking???

@rooeytoo —that’s what I thought as well.

@rooeytoo more or less, you are right, but The whole point of the laptop is to be mobile for use outside of the house, so I really doubt there is a significant amount of people who use their laptop only within the confines of home.

@rooeytoo You are correct, as most public wifi hotspots do not use WPA2, and those that do often have a key known to people that are not known to you. I generally trust my laptop at home when I am logged into my own router, but when I am out and about, I refrain from doing anything sensitive online.

@Winters You might be surprised. That is especially true of people who own larger, less portable laptops. Why anybody would call an unwieldy, leg-crushingly heavy beast with a 17” screen a “laptop” is beyond me, but that is another issue. I know quite a few people who never take their laptop out of the house; they just like the convenience of being able to move from the porch to the living room to the bathroom without going offline.

No way dude. Plenty of people use desktops, and if you look beyond the fad of handheld net stuff, the laptop owes most of its pillars to students.
And even so, companies and businesses will always be using desktops. They probbaly support a great chunk of what makes the desktop profitable. Plus, don’t forget nerdy gamers who spend their entire existences on those.

@Symbeline I have yet to see a gaming laptop with three big-screen monitors, enough GPU to handle them at triple-digit framerates, and 7.1 surround with a chest-crushing subwoofer.

@jerv I have no idea what the hell you just said. XD Something about desktops owning ass? I know a million PC gamers, and most of them prefer desktops for gaming because of how you can upgrade them way easier than laptops, and that they’re much better suited for online gaming.

Nope. TVs and desktops are merging now, though, with the advent of LCD HD monitors.

what a great question

@Symbeline—That’s what I meant when I said that desktops are easier to upgrade. I play WoW and would love to be able to upgrade my system to take full advantage of the graphics changes they’ve made, but I can’t open this thing up :(

I have to disagree with one of your statements, though: they’re much better suited for online gaming.
Except for the thing about upgrading, I think laptops are much more convenient for gaming if you’re the kind of person who likes to LAN. I love that when my friends are getting together to play, I get my stuff together super fast and easy.
I guess if you’ve got a 24-inch monitor on your desktop, that’d be better for gaming, but I do just fine with my 15” lappy :)

@Seelix You’ll never get the full experience until you man your battle station.

@Zyx —Believe me, I’d love to! However, I live in a small apartment and can’t afford to outfit myself with a fancy battle station :(
I have to content myself with using my friend’s 30” LCD monitor when I go over there :)

@Seelix No worries, we’re all missing some equipment. My TV still generates static electricity.

My wife won’t let me get a decent subwoofer :(
How can you have a decent-sounding in-game explosion without a good subwoofer?—By “good”, I mean “wall-shaking”.

@Seelix What sort of resolutions can your laptop push when hooked to an external monitor, and what sort of framerates do you get when you turn the detail to High? I know of very few mobile GPUs that can match even my cheap GeForce GT240, so I guess it all depends on how serious you are about your gaming.
My $700 desktop system isn’t even all that fancy, but it’s more than ten times the gaming rig my laptop is. You could get a better system than mine for less now if you wanted to. And many LAN party people go for something like a Micro-ATX case; I’ve seen desktop PCs the size of a lunchbox and about the same weight as a 15” laptop, but with full-on desktop CPUs and normal desktop graphics cards.

@jerv—Wow, you’re getting into all kinds of stuff I’m not all that knowledgeable about :)

To be honest, I’ve never used an external monitor with my lappy; when I mentioned using a friend’s monitor earlier I meant using his machine to play as well. My framerate hovers around 60 most of the time; lower now that the Elemental Invasion is going on (in WoW).
I’m a serious player in that I play for at least a couple of hours every day, but I’m not hardcore into computers per se. My lappy was a gift from my parents for graduating university, so I was able to put together what was a pretty good system about 1½ years ago. I know I’m not getting the optimal experience, but I can see everything I need to see, and don’t lag out unless it’s a server issue… Even $500 or so is way beyond my means these days, but eventually I’ll be able to get the compy of my dreams… Maybe once grad school and its responsibilities are out of the way :)

No, but laptops will keep increasing in sales and use. Especially for people that don’t have a homebase. Just about to sell my desktop. I haven’t even turned it on in a week – it’s a very powerful box. But most of the time I don’t really need that extra power. Computer performance is already overkill for day to day uses of most users. Scientists have access to supercomputers. Creative folk have capable enough laptops, or a desktop for heavier video production.

I have always been a desktop user. But I’m more nomadic these days, and given the laptop can cover my needs with less hassle – not taking as much space. And not locking me at home, or at an office chair. I’m much happier with a laptop than without. I got my first laptop back in 1993. It was a highscreen – German make, with 500mb hdd and 40 mhz cpu 486—woohoo. Way to replace my 386 box.

@jerv I agree with most on your post – and personally I can’t wait for the implanted interface to let you use the most powerful computer we carry – or augment it. But, to be fair, my Asus (UL series) with its 10 hour battery life makes me more than happy. I DONT need the extra brightness even when it’s plugged in. In fact it gives me headaches in the highest brightness. I do use wifi all the time and still lasts 10 hours – granted when I’m not watching a million movies but when I’m reading/surfing/writing which is what I do 80% of the time anyway. We’re already almost there in terms of battery power. Sadly most laptop designs are still pretty horrible with power efficiency and battery power. But they’ll catch up, or Asus will become dominant right next to the macs.

@jerv another thing I think might make this happen sooner is distributed computing (or cloud to use the overused buzzword). As soon as we solve the laser-based router so that there are no slow electronics to slow networks down and add latency – you could hold just a light input/output device like the iPad but much lighter and maybe expandable screens. Do all your calculations in a more efficient server farm, and just get the results. This will kill both traditional laptops and desktops – because you just can’t carry that much power around you. Though, for average use it’ll do nothing unless one would like to use new applications.

@jerv What hardware are you using in the desktop? I priced parts for a high-end gaming PC and came away with a total of about $1200.

@phoebusg I keep my backlight at level 4 (of 8) unless I am in direct sunlight for the same reason. I find that my laptop (or most laptops for that matter) can’t compare with a desktop when it comes to transcoding, so I do my video and music editing on my desktop. And as for running some of my favorite games, forget it. Postal 2 is a stretch, and Mercenaries 2:World in Flames is right out.
I tend to flog my laptop quite a bit, and keeping both cores of my CPU cranked does bad things to my battery life. I could probably drain your Asus in under 8 hours without trying too hard.
Since you are calling desktop systems and many laptops, “overkill for day to day uses of most users”, many people can get by quite nicely on something slower, less powerful, and less power-hungry. Myself? I consider my lesser battery life to be a small price to pay for a laptop that isn’t slow enough to make me want to frisbee-toss the thing into a busy street. True, the Asus is comparable in speed and better in battery life than my older T135, but for $500 I am not complaining much.

“Cloud computing”... umm, no. If that becomes the norm, I will stop using computers. I like Beowulf clusters as much as the next geek, but I want my data under my control, and in my possession. If you are the type to hand random strangers your pR0n collection and banking information, you should be of the same opinion I am. Then again, many people nowadays put all sorts of thing on their FB page thinking that only their friends will see it… often after overlooking the fact that they approved every friend request ever sent to them, including their boss, or the entire school.
If I wanted a dumb terminal, I would still be using an 8088, or RDP-ing a supercomputer from my HP48G. As for laser-based routers, I won’t even get into how that would go wrong, except to say that it’s radio waves all the way.

@Nullo What makes a good high-end PC changes almost weekly and cutting-edge always costs. Between that and the economy, I didn’t even try to get fancy or go high-end. In fact, I got lazy and just plopped down $550-ish (damn 9.5% sales tax!) for a Gateway with an i3–530, 6GB DDR3, and a 1TB hard drive, and my birthday gift was a Zotac GT240 Zone edition ; not the fastest card, but it is quiet (because it’s fanless) and it sells for about $100 on average. I already had the 20” LCD and speakers left over from my last PC, so I don’t count those in. The monitor was ~$110 and the speakers… are too old to remember the price on.

@jerv if you are using the cluster with data you’re not wanting to hide – which is most of the time anyway. Then it makes sense. In fact, you could use https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/ to do very intensive tasks in minutes that’d take you hours (or seconds even). As far as gaming, so long you have a decent connection you can play anything using http://www.onlive.com/ – and these are services available now. You can imagine the applications given latency was reduced and bandwidth quadrupled. I watch my pr0nz online, and really don’t have any information that’s sensitive. But if you do, you could always use some insane encryption – it’ll keep hands off for a while.

@phoebusg As part of my geekery in both math and computers, I also happen to know a fair bit about crypto, and am quite a fan of Bruce Schneier. By “for a while”, you mean, “a few minutes”. Okay, maybe hours, but honestly not nearly long enough for me. Unlike Randy and Avi from Cryptonomicon, I do not believe that a 4096-bit encryption key will allow a secret to be kept, ”...for as long as men are capable of evil.” That is a quote from Cryptonomicon.

I trust security through inaccessibility FAR more than I trust security through obfuscation. Alcatraz was escape-proof not by having tricky locks on the doors, but by being on a fucking island in the middle of a bay with deadly currents.

Unlike most people in 21st-century America, I am not willing to give up my privacy cheaply. Post-9/11, most people are used to submitting to strip-searches upon boarding a metro bus, but I am not. Some people think, “only the guilty have anything to hide”. Unless/until I get full and unrestricted access to their bank accounts and see nude pics of them on the Internet, I call those people “Fucking Hypocrites”.

That service is missing so many games that I won’t even consider thinking about the possibility of even taking it the least bit seriously, let alone trying it. I see a bigger library on my own C: drive :P

As past discussions with others have illustrated, my computing needs and personal preferences are considerably different from most people’s. I prefer the freedom of Android over the locked-down simplicity of the iPhone. I prefer high performance/dollar ratios over “cool factor”. I barely Facebook and don’t do Twitter at all; that alone makes me a freak by today’s standards.

Oh yeah, I don’t know if you remember the problems T-mobile had a while back, but the cloud isn’t exactly reliable either ;)

You bring up some good points, but I remain unconvinced. Accordingly, I still maintain that the desktop is here to stay. Even if most people decide to say that they don’t need computers since all thy want to do is tweet anyways, there will still be enough people like me in the market for desktops to remain profitable for quite a while.

@jerv I have no illusions about the weakness of encryption. Best thing to do is do something unconventional that will take manual effort for someone to detect, and crack. I don’t consider the privacy a big deal – especially as the size of data in such environments increases exponentially. After a point, it’s not worth looking unless there’s a reason to waste the process power. I trust you have no wireless up either – and your computer room behind lead covers? :) There’s some neat wireless tapping technologies in effect. Giving a different meaning to physical access. Though you are onine too – what are you doing online! Back to the bunker :) (Just kidding)

Onlive is very new, so they’re just starting out. Though it’s a pretty cool idea to be able to play intensive games anywhere from nearly anything. Also solves the – what hardware-have-you problem. Though I’d like their prices to drop.

Desktops will be around for a while, agreed. Albeit less bulky! I’m in favor of minimalism. I like PCs, but Macs really have the minimalism down. (For most setups… asus has some nice mini desktops)

@phoebusg Lets just say that there are things that I don’t do without turning off my network connection ;)

Onlive seems like a good idea, but it’s early-beta in my mind. Maybe next year. Of course, there is no getting around having a shitty GPU, too little RAM (system or video) or a small screen.

Macs are so minimalist that they don’t have case screws or many hardware options. And last I checked they mostly use laptop GPUs and last-gen CPUs, so they are minimalist in performance too :P If I went Apple, I would have to go Mac Pro ; the only Mac that can easily be upgraded, and the only one that isn’t a rip-off from the performance-per-dollar standpoint.

I go for specs over form factor, and have no issues with a mid-tower case. In fact, I prefer them for the same reason you won’t find many multi-kid families using a Miata as a family car. If your little toy is fast enough for you and it makes you happy then I am happy for you, but I am not going to buy the same way you do since I have different needs and wants.

I used to be where you are. Now I like simple, quiet and fast. And minimal effort. Unless I’m paid to set up a server. I refuse to waste time maintaining my own systems in ways that can’t be automated :)

And that is why I prefer Linux. I find it simple (though others may not), and it’s definitely fast; there is a reason that most of the fastest computers in the world and many clusters use some form of Linux.

Still, I find zero-maintenance systems are often not running at 100%, so I am willing to trade a little amount of effort (little enough that I can do it “on autopilot” due to decades of practice) for that little extra oomph. Then again, I typically adjust my CNC lathes at work when they are running off by 0.001” even though the blueprint says that the tolerance is +/-0.005”, so I guess it all boils down to how much of a perfectionist you are.

I used to be where you are, but I got anal-retentive. As for quiet, well, I was willing to sacrifice some performance to go with a fanless video card than can still eat most Mac’s lunch and rarely overclock by much since I don’t want the hassles and maintenance of water-cooling my rig. I have enough fluids leaking from my car and the machines at work without wanting yet another reservoir to monitor :P

This is actually a pretty good question, let’s show him some lurve.

Nah…....the printer and scanner works better and easier with the desktop, you don’t need to keep recharging it, and so long as I can put it together myself from parts I ordered off the Internet I can upgrade almost forever.

Nope
I’m using a desktop right now. I have a laptop too.

A “desktop” computer is nothing but a form factor. My desktop, for my purposes, replaces a rack of servers (it doesn’t have the power a real rack would have, but it doesn’t need that for development) but racks are not obsolete. It can do everything some minicomputers or mainframes could do (old ones anyway) but both minis and mainframes still have their uses and are still sold.
Desktop computers will last as long as people do computer work at their desks. If I replaced mine with a laptop it would be useless as a laptop, because it would have two twenty-inch screens, a big, comfortable keyboard, a large trackball that fits my mitt, and a mouse. It would be too bulky to carry around.
Of course, I do own a laptop. It’s old and feeble, but if I’m near my house I can just ssh -X into the desktop and use the power it has. If I’m not near my house, I’m probably not doing anything more intense than surfing the web; I don’t do anything personal or project-related with it other than using it as an OLSR router or smart terminal (as already mentioned.)
Regarding encryption, I’m not too worried about anyone sniffing my ssh packets over IPv6 / IPSec over TKIP. Sure, you can crack one 256-bit key in reasonable time with enough resources, but adding layers of encryption and not announcing your network or its parameters (which is why I lied outrageously about my actual setup) makes it a lot harder. Yes, I’m paranoid; I know who my neighbors are.

@koanhead And if you have the right motherboard you can have duel monitors, something hard to do with a laptop.

@Hypocrisy_Central I do in fact have two monitors- even though my motherboard has no VGA outputs at all. My graphics card (nVidia GeForce 8800GTX) is bigger than a paperback book, weighs more than a hard disk, and is an incredible power hog, but it does have two DVI outputs so I forgive its sins!

@Hypocrisy_Central I also have a graphics card (an nVidia GeForce GT 240 to be exact) that can push dual displays; one DVI and one VGA. The motherboard has nothing to do with it really, except for the fact that the motherboard has a PCI-Express slot to mount a graphics card. And unlike @koanhead,‘s it can’t do double-duty as a space heater.

My laptop and my old netbook are also capable of running dual displays, though they do so at the price of portability. The external monitor may be able to display a different picture from the built-in display, but a 20” widescreen LCD isn’t exactly portable, and the 20” CRT I had before that was barely even movable.

Maybe for some, but not me. The biggest advantage to my desk top is being able to share internet stuff with my family, with people pulling up chairs. It beats showing one person at a time with a lap top or a tablet.

In fact, I told my husband that I want to get a 42 or 50” screen to put on one of the walls in my computer room so I can display things there.