Soon there will be no reason to have a big, boxy computer on your desk. | Hacker News Reader

Soon there will be no reason to have a big, boxy computer on your desk.

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2 pointsrobg10 comments

In the mean time my first ever desktop still barely works, as does the most recent one (that I gave away).

But of my 4 previous laptops, the Dell is fried, a Macbook Pro got his motherboard replaced recently (under warranty otherwise it would have been too costly - Apple prices), the iBook awaits to be sent to service (again) and a MacBook Pro was sold and subsequently died months later on the next owner.

The lifespan of laptops is severely shorter compared to the lifespan of desktops. No wonder they are selling so well: you have to replace them every few years.

I'm actually thinking on buying again a desktop.

I already don't have a boxy computer on my desk. Last time I had a boxy computer, it sat on the floor. The last boxy computer on my desk was, IIRC, an IBM-AT lookalike with a 386 inside it. I then moved the 386 motherboard and disks to a big tower that sat happily under my desk for years, moving from motherboard to motherboard. The last one it had was a dual Pentium 60. Wicked fast for the time. I then had a quick succession of smaller ATX towers, before moving to notebooks. I had been using notebooks since mid-2003 and never looked back.

The only boxy thing on my desk is my IBM monitor that will, eventually, be replaced by a large LCD, but not before its flyback transformer burns out (it's making funny noises for a couple months now). The vintage bondi-blue iMac that doubles as sound system and iPod docking station is on the desk, but it is anything but boxy.

The only thing that bothers me about the all notebook route ( and trust me, I'd really like to do this) is that their disk drives are still butt-slow. I do a huge amount of creating and modifying virtual machines for deploy. The copy/clone operation that takes my disk array of cheap desktop sata drives 5 minutes to do takes my macbook pro nearly half an hour. All the cores and ram helps too. Those who work with large video, audio and graphics files probable have similar experiences.

Lets just say that there will be less reasons to have a big, boxy computer on one's desk...

Fork out the money for an SSD and you'll never look back.

In a laptop, they beat HDs twice over: they don't need to be slower than desktop models to save power/heat AND they aren't more expensive compared to desktop models due to size. In fact, SSDs are increasingly only available in 2.5" format.

I can't second this recommendation enough. An SSD in your laptop makes such a colossal difference that it's almost impossible to describe to someone who has never used one. :)

Thanks (and to the reply to this as well). I've been a little reluctant to shell out for an SSD not knowing what's hype and what's real. Recommendations from actual people on HN is probably enough to push me over the edge at least for my MBP.

If you were going to buy just one and use it as you primary (only) drive in your most important computer, which brand and model would it be?

I recently did build a desktop computer and chose the Intel X25-M (80GB). Intel's SSDs are generally considered to offer very good performance, and that one seens to give the best value for money.

From the graph it looks like Tablets will be consuming demand for desktop computers. Really? If someone asked me and I hadn't seen any recent data I would have suspected that sales would have been drawn out of notebook and netbook numbers as well.

How many of these sales will be first time buyers? How many of these sales will be cannibalizing other sales?

"Soon?" I haven't had a "desktop" box since probably 2003 or so. I switched to the Mac by way of the Titanium PowerBook and within a month or so I found I was using it exclusively. I retired my old, bulky desktop machine and never looked back.

People who have several monitors attached to their desktop are not going to switch to a tablet or laptop any time soon.

But it will certainly be a niche product. Any other niches it can fill?

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