Gizmodo has a good opinion article about the demise of the desktop PC, with a few interesting revelations and some other points which I can’t help but agree with wholeheartedly.

A recent report on the PC industry showed that sales were in a downturn, no surprise, but that laptop shipments grew 10% year to year while desktops dropped an amazing 23%. 80% of retail computer sales today are notebooks, which doesn’t even include machines like all-in-ones which generally use more notebook tech than “old school” desktop parts.

Some of the reasons for this fall are cited as the lack of price disparity & relative value between desktops & laptops, simple usability in a notebook, and the slow death of PC gaming. I can’t agree more.

Especially over the past 1-2 years, notebooks have been increasing in value and for the basic user, there doesn’t exist enough of a price difference for people to consider a notebook over a desktop. Basic desktop models only have 17-19 inch low resolution monitors, which isn’t a huge step from a 15-17 inch low resolution notebook LCD. Performance and connectivity is similar enough in the two form factors and there are NO cables, cord, or widgets to plug into the laptop to get it working out of the box, aside from the uniquitious power cord which every electronic device in the world has and even my grandparents know how to plug in. On a related note, when I started a job at a large company, I wasn’t even offered the option of a desktop, only the choice between three laptop brands. (Do you know which I chose? )

The point on gaming is a strong one for me. Almost 3 years ago, I parted and sold my decently well spec’d desktop rig. Several hard drives, lightweight case with a window, overclocked processor, and a high end GPU to get my PC gaming fix. Over the many years of PC gaming, I spent a lot of time and money keeping up with the Jeffersons. Not only were graphics cards swapped more frequently than underwear and clock speeds challenged on a weekly basis, but a lot of time was spent getting the games to run well, or even run at all. PC gaming is not a universal plug-and-play experience. Different hardware combinations produce different results in the error-filled, human-created ether that is software. Tweaks here and there produced subtly noticeable changes in the gaming experience. Moving a tweak or overclock a hair too far meant instability.

I ditched my desktop in part as an effort to spend less time and money on gaming, but also as a move to a simpler, more reliable, and more useful form of computing. I kept my nice LCD, acquired a second hand docking station for my ThinkPad T42, and had a competent desk computer as well as a portable computer. And I got a little bit of the money I’d sunk into desktops over the years back. Win, win? Not for everyone.

Not hindered by size and power limitations, desktops will have a performance and expandability advantage over laptops for the forseeable future. Until SSD’s mature significantly, as well as come down in cost, desktops will have a big advantage in storage speed, which itself has a big impact on system performance. Connectivity is more abundant and upgrades like storage & RAM are generally cheaper. But is that advantage something that most people need? Not really, and the numbers show it.

Source: [Gizmodo]