Open Thread: Laptop or Desktop? Or a Whole Wardrobe of Computers?
April 11th, 2007 (9:00am) Anne Zelenka 22 CommentsTweet This
We love our laptops. The largest contract notebook computer manufacturer in the world has reported the highest ever single month sales for laptops: 2.4 million in March. In the fourth quarter of last year, laptop sales were up over 20% compared to the year earlier.
Laptops make good sense for most of us, whether we work in offices or from home. You could use a desktop system, but that not only keeps you from going Bedouin at the nearest café, it also means you can’t move to another room in your home when you need a change of scenery for stress relief. Though professionals like graphic designers, video editors, or enterprise software developers with heavy-duty computing requirements might want the more affordable power that comes in a desktop system, many web workers will indeed find that laptops offer what they need.
Still, we don’t necessarily want or need to live by laptops alone. You could supplement a powerful and budget-minded desktop with an ultra-portable Internet appliance like the Nokia N800 or the HTC Advantage. Maybe later this year we’ll see an ultra-thin 12″ MacBook Pro, which might be a good mobile complement to a 20″ iMac at home.
What’s your choice for computing: desktop or laptop or both? What would your ideal “computer wardrobe” include?
Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
As a web/graphic developer, I’m trying to sell my 17″ widescreen workhorse HP laptop in order to build a desktop.
The reasons? I thought 17 inches was enough when not plugged in, and the 200GB internal drive sounded like enough when I bought it, but it just isn’t. That single core Turion isn’t as fast as it used to be… It’s time to upgrade again.
The lack of upgrade ability is what has driven me back to desktops.
Under $800 at NewEgg will get me a dual core AMD with two gigs of RAM, a nice video card, all the bells and whistles and a 22″ widescreen LCD. All OSX86 compliant parts too :)
I work as a senior online content producer and I have both a desktop and a laptop. I use the laptop more often than the desktop because, like you said, with the desktop “you can’t move to another room in your home when you need a change of scenery for stress relief.”
I hate being tied down to one place. It makes me feel like I’m in timeout. That’s the beauty of wireless technology. (although, I have fallen asleep in bed with a laptop while working, probably not a good habit….)
With two web workers, heavy software development and testing, hosting web sites at home, and kids being brought up in the computer generation, we’ve got a litter of computers here. Two big servers running virtual machines for backbone, a couple of standalone servers that I haven’t virtualized yet, Windows, Linux, and Mac laptops, hefty desktops for serious work, and the kids get the hand-me-downs. It’s an addiction. I count 14 running boxes at the moment…I think.
I do most of my work on my tiny Dell XPS M1210, which I love. At 12.1″, the screen is probably too small for many web workers, but much of my work is in communication, IM, web, and email, so I don’t need that much screen real estate. When I do have to sit down to graphics processing, running a virtual worlds event, or similar, I fire up my home-built desktop powerhouse and keep my m1210 on the desk as well as a comm station.
My husband has a similar setup, which means we run four computers most of the time, and have a myriad of older machines tucked away for testing purposes.
Currently – I’m kind of chained to the desktop to do most of my work – a Tiger Direct built by myself computer, I have an old laptop-thinkpad that I have now installed Xubuntu on; still messing around with it, “my” laptop that my other half uses now – older thinkpad, my file server; another Xubuntu box, and then my video/audio workstation, not networked.
What do I want? Macbook Pro would be nice! I hate being tied to one spot to get work done. I’d much rather sit on my couch or lay in my bed at times.
The word here is – Laptop donations are accepted — in trade of course for an ad on my site(s)!!
Rex :)
Laptop(s), laptop(s), laptops.
A nice big beefy laptop (aka desktop replacement) running Windows XP as the main machine, with a Mac on the side running Parallels, so I get the best of all worlds.
At home our main computer is a 15″ Toshiba Satellite A40 laptop and typically “feels” like a desktop because it is normally connected to an external 19″ monitor, full-size keyboard, a printer and a real mouse. When we want or need to go somewhere else with the computer, we just disconnect it, pick it up and go. Here are a couple of disadvantages I have found in this setup:
(1) The main annoyance I have found it that if the default BIOS setting for video output is set to select automatically, then if we boot up with the external monitor connected, and later want to disconnect it, the system doesn’t detect this, so the system is left in a state without any video. Alternatively, I can set the BIOS video output setting to always go to both the laptop screen and the external monitor, but then I am restricted to the resolutions of my laptop, and to add more grief, my external monitor is a widescreen LCD while my laptop screen has “normal” dimensions and so the graphics are stretched somewhat on my external monitor. (When I “upgrade” in the future, I’ll likely get a widescreen laptop—unless I find I want to dump my widescreen monitor too.)
(2) The audio port is located in a place convenient for connecting headphones (on the side, near the front), not speakers, so the speaker cord is in the way of the DVD drive and not nicely tucked away at the back of the laptop like the other connections. It would be nice to have a digital audio connection at the back for connecting Dolby 5.1 speakers and a regular audio port for headphones at the front of the laptop.
Another thing, our external monitor is DVI capable…and I have not seen any laptops on the market that have a DVI output port. Has anybody found a laptop with digital audio and video output options? I would love to find a true media laptop with digital audio and video output (for both monitor and TV) and then I can’t think of a compelling reason to go back to a desktop.
We also have a couple of old desktops that are used by the kids or are intended to be setup as mirrors of the laptop (I’m considering using a combination of Unison and a version control system like Subversion or Mercurial), so that we can work on either sync’ed up computer.
I use a MacBook, but hook it up to a flatscreen monitor and external keyboard when at home. This has been a good combination for programming, writing, graphic design, etc.
At the moment I run a 14.1″ HP DV1066 which is about three years old. The Pentium M processor and gig of ram are starting to show their age but it fulfills all my needs – communications, downloads and lots of graphic design. The 14″ screen is the most important part, its the optimum balance of portability whilst remaining usable for graphics. I have a more powerful desktop but never touch it. I really want a Blackbook but can’t justify it until it can offer something my current rig doesn’t (other than OSX of course). With that I’d team a big HiDef flatscreen and and Apple TV.
@Mike Gunderloy… and I thought I was a bit extreme! I don’t really have any servers inside the firewall at home (other than network backups), just 2 Mac laptops, 1 Windows desktop, 8 assorted Mac desktops, occasional Linux, and a few other odds and ends network devices. I do a lot of images and video, so CPU, disk space, and RAM are all important, and keep me mainly on a desktop. I tend to get a long life out of my workstations, so I don’t like to skimp on specs. But for communication, I have been migrating largely to web-based so that aspect is more portable.
I have a beefy desktop workhorse that sits in my home office and that holds up well for my software development tasks (databases, webservers, source control, etc). I also have a laptop that isn’t quite as powerful and I use for lighter tasks.
When I’m at home and need to get some programming work done, I often find myself opening up the laptop and a remote desktop session to the desktop downstairs. With a good network it’s quite acceptable. The GUI isn’t as responsive but at least the processing continues to be fast in the background. It’s a strange feeling when you have a windows vista session with visual studio open on a tiny macbook.
I have the wardobe, I have used Acer laptop given to me by my folks(like a comfy blanket), a custom desktop with a wide flat panel monitor for serious web production, and the brand new addition, the Dell Inspiron 640 for presentations and conferences:)
Last November I combined a Mac desktop and Windows laptop down to a single MacBook Pro (running Parallels). It was a problem when I traveled and I didn’t have access to graphic files that were on the Mac. Now everything moves with me and no worries about keeping files in sync.
Laptop all the way. I have two homes in two different states, I have about 3 different “workplaces”, and another few around my main home. I do loads of research in libraries… and institutional libraries are often difficult to find a free computer to work on. Mobile working appeals to me. I don’t have a lot of data to store – it usually gets backed up onto my external hdd anyway, I can always have my information with me, and I don’t need to fuss with syncing between multiple machines (I’m not a huge fan of web-based tools).
The freedom to move is liberating too!
I don’t know if it’s just coincidence, but I also had lost weight since scrapping my desktop PC 3 years ago and moving to a laptop…
Laptop vs desktop.
It’s totally personal. I personally use a laptop because I need the portability.
Currently I don’t have the funds for a desktop in addition to the laptop, but that’s probably what I’ll end up going for when I do get the funds.
But desktops are better, unless you need the portability function.
My desktop is in a decicated part of my home, I go there to work and nothing else. I plan on buying a laptop sometime this summer when SP1 comes out for Vista, my goal is to be able to blog / surf at the local Panera bread or on vacation or at a friends house, however I’m a bit weary of blogging while watching TV in my living room. I watch TV to relax and destress, not to do more work in front of.
When I finally do get a laptop I will be buying an external hard drive just for it. Too many times I’ve had to take apart friends’ laptops and fix hard drive issues (like the old freezer trick), soda gets spilled in them or they get stolen. For the amount of work I do, I need to have a secure backup for that stuff daily.
i have a custom built rack in my bedroom that has 2 switches, three routers (one per ISP), three Wireless Routers, A full height fileserver with about 800 GB of space, a RAID-5 1 Terabyte NAS, a desktop that i use occasionally(once in 3 months maybe), An ATA-186, a 8×24 PBX and an HP MFD. Also, theres an old P-1 90Mhz and an industrial server in the rack that i use for testing.
I got some custom cables, connected a KVM switch to the systems and ran the cables about 20 ft. through the walls to my study.
The only machine i actually work on is my laptop which i work on while lying in bed. I access all the other machines thru the network.
i am so happy to find this place. i was really bummed over losing gc. this will be so comphy for all of us. thanks!
HAD a laptop. It had a small plastic and metal grounding clip that broke/fried on the motherboard. Replacement motherboard more than the laptop’s value. I eventually may get either a real cheap replacement or invest in a more hardened, robust laptop (like a durabook or similar). Surrounded by desktop work stations here at work and several at home/home office. I like the standardization of parts for PC’s, I build my own and can easily replace anything that fails from a wide variety of inexpensive parts. I wish that laptop designs were more standardized and user serviceable. I am setting up my new home office with a scenic view of the river and so it will be a nice combined work and relaxation area with a new desktop that is in a custom (home built) wood cabinet and also designed a desk system that will let me work standing, or on a stool or on seated on a desk chair. It will also have a bench where I can build and do repair work on computers.