Have laptops killed the desktop? (Dell closing factory in Austin) | Hacker News Reader

Have laptops killed the desktop? (Dell closing factory in Austin)

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17 pointserickhill38 comments

Dell is closing a plant in Austin as its desktop business continues to wane. DMN may require login (sorry) but it's an interesting story. Basically, Dell is closing an Austin computer factory, and lay off thousands worldwide.

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I think that, in the future, the idea of reserving special places in homes and offices to use computers will seem quaint, like the way we think of reserving whole rooms for giant mainframes. No doubt people will still want reserved working-places, but the computing arrangements will be much more flexible and integrated.

I still don't get why people by HDTVs and not just an HD projector for the same price or cheapter

I have neither; is the image quality the same for both?

How much does a good, portable screen cost?

AFAIK LCDs have higher image quality and good screens are not cheap. The cheap option is to paint a wall with special paint and use that as a screen.

I bought a 47" Westinghouse LCD last year.

$100-$200 for portable screen (or use awhite/ beige wall and you'll be fine)

Image quality imho is very, very nice on a projector.

FWIW, imho, its' about the same as a movie theater, at scale

My understanding of the current situation is that good projector bulbs are fragile, only last about 1000 hours, and can cost as much as half the projector's price. After a few bulb replacements, the cost of a projector can be the same as or more than a large HDTV, so other factors come into play: you get a bigger-but-dimmer picture with projectors, some of the cheaper DLP projectors are bright but flicker horribly, etc.

I've read several articles about small projectors using LEDs that should be hitting the market Real Soon Now(tm): novalux.com, as well as some stuff from established companies. They should be cheaper, too: a few hundred $. I don't know when this will occur, however.

Because projectors require a few things that TVs do not.

1. A dark room

2. Nobody getting in between the projector and the surface it is displaying on

3. Extra space

Don't get me wrong, projectors are cool, but there is a reason they aren't as popular as regular TVs.

this is a hacker crowd -- I imagine most people here have a ton of content already on a computer, which using a projector makes it much easier to watch.

1. agreed on dark room.

2. if the projector is mounted high (as it should be) this is not an issue

3.I was in military barracks half the size of a normal bed room and my projector still had a very tight 4-5 foot screen on a bare wall -- oh and it was $600 OTB.

All good points, to which I would add:

4. Projectors often have fan noise

Setup.

I flick my TV on, you go plugging things in and finding a nice wall to point at.

and post-setup? with a $600 projector rand a $200 surround sound system, an Xbox 360 or laptop, it's honestly 15-20 minutes to setup.

Unless my info is out of date (Checked this a couple years ago), the projectors use something like 2 orders of magnitude more energy. Over the long run this can lead to a significant cost difference.

Desktops and laptops in current form-factors have been around for more than 10 years. Both of them have been gaining speed and features, but the basics haven't changed much: laptops have always had 80% of speed at 120% of the cost.

I don't see anything new, that hasn't been around 10-15 years ago, that will push desktops out.

I use both, for various reasons.

It hurts to watch laptops users trying to get something done without a real mouse with applications not designed with keyboard navigation in mind. It's like watching stop-n-go traffic. Unless, of course, that laptop happened to be a ThinkPad with it's gorgeous "UltraNav".

This is why I love vim: I am equally productive with it regardless of the machine I happened to run it on.

So WHY do you think desktops will disappear? What is it, that current crop of laptops offer that I couldn't get in 1998?

>"laptops have always had 80% of speed at 120% of the cost."

Where do you get this from? I have the impression that the price difference has been decreasing.

This article has nothing to do with the death of desktop machines. It is just a simple reflection that it is cheaper to make them in places other than Austin. I am in fact surprised that they haven't already closed all of their US-based manufacturing.

It's disappointing that people aren't interested in optimal productivity when carrying out knowledge-work tasks like programming and editing photos (most laptop users don't hook up a big monitor to get high resolution).

Macbook Pro + 30" cinema screen is what I'd buy if money were not an object.

I totally think so. Why should I be tied to a desk, when I can take my laptop anywhere.

So that your boss knows your actually working.

If my boss only knows I'm working by observing the physical placement of my body then we have more serious issues to worry about than whether I'm using a laptop or a desktop.

Bosses are concerned about productivity, but it is really hard to measure. So they use physical presence as a proxy. The whole concept of working remotely pretty new (~10 years old?), so it is going to take some more time for people to think differently about what it really means to be working.

How about the evidence of actual work produced? The facetime model is seriously broken. It doesn't promote productivity, it actually decreases it when employees figure out how to falsify the results.

http://www.paulgraham.com/opensource.html should be required reading.

Preaching to the choir, I agree with you.

What I am saying is that gathering evidence of actual work produced takes a long time and is hard to do. It might take a couple months to figure out if someone who is only at his desk for 4 hours a day is doing good work on a problem, or merely lazy.

Desktops are going to be around for a long time...

- Gamers have an insatiable need for power, and the fastest computers are always going to not be laptops.

- A lot of people are very price sensitive, and desktops are always going to be less expensive.

Don't be so sure either of those are that important.

You can get a laptop with comparable power to some of the more expensive desktops now for about the same price. Look at the Gateway p-6831.

Also more and more power will continue to be fit into laptops, and I think it is only a matter of time before a desktop tower is a waste of space for even most gamers.

Extrapolating trends is of course dangerous, but isn't it reasonable to say that people want as much screen real estate for screens?

http://www.pibmug.com/files/wideview.jpg

That people will want ever more realistic graphics, with ever more realistic physics engines?

I don't think so. Most people don't want massive screens and don't know how to effectively use more than one anyway.

Game developers are already having problems with the expense and time required to push out the artwork for today's games. There will come a point, and it might even be here with games like Spore, where the industry will focus more on gameplay than having the most advanced games possible. Regardless, there are quite a few laptops that can play Crysis without problem. I linked to one earlier, and it costs under $1300.

/And/ with more people playing games on consoles, the need for high end PCs just to play games is less important. I think there are many factors that are coming together to make desktops less useful.

Of course there will always be those hardcore fanatics that just need the speed that only a big desktop tower can push out, but those numbers are decreasing by the month I bet.

Can you carry your 24'' LCD with you? And that ergonomic keyboard? For me its not the CPU thats the problem, its the ergonomic keyboard and the LCD. I dont care whether its a "desktop" or a laptop connected to an external display acting as a CPU.

edit : the laptop form factor is horrifyingly unergonomic. i refuse to work on laptops for extended periods of time.

Ergonomics. If you want to keep using your computer for years to come, you should learn something about it.

I don't think they killed it, but average Joes will be buying laptops instead of desktops for the foreseeable future. They have all the power needed for the basics.

I definitely see desktops becoming how laptops were years ago: a niche market. If you need a specific feature: i.e. lots of power or high-end gaming, you go with a desktop. Years ago people only got laptops if they had a specific need for mobility. The default option has already changed from desktop to laptop.

Laptops and servers are the future (present?), I think.

The laptop is your way of interfacing with data. Ergonomics (such as easy portability) are very important here. Hook up large display and maybe more comfortable keyboard/mouse when appropriate. iPhone provides another set of ergonomic trade-offs (even more portable, interface options even more constrained). Non-volatile storage in these devices become more of a caching mechanism over time; more and more of our data will reside on a server somewhere we never physically see.

Then the universe of large scale processing power and data storage is The Network. Amazon S3/EC2 and the like. Most people on the planet will never physically see this hardware at all. But we use these resources constantly as we browse, interact, communicate, and work on the web.

So, two directions for the future of computing. Ergonomics is King for consumer devices (Apple is thriving in this market), and economies of scale (Google the poster child here, interesting in that they do not design or develop hardware at all, but write software to make commodity hardware scale in amazing ways).

Computing started off with mainframes and terminals. Then we got to workstations. Now with the web and your prediction, we're going back to the server/thin-client model.

Isn't progress cool?

Could be it has something to do with Dell's position in the market for desktops and laptops. I'd rather buy a white box desktop and take the savings, but for something where service is more important, having a brand like Dell is more meaningful. Or maybe not... I'd definitely rather have a laptop. I wonder what the difference between price/performance in laptops and desktops looks like over time?

I asked that question a while ago and quite a few people responded: http://paulstamatiou.com/2007/12/21/are-desktop-computers-dy...

Last time I used a desktop was in 2004 I think. Try using a desktop in the bath or sofa or toilet :/

Also desktop keyboards still just don't work.

I know it's fairly unlikely, but remind me to NEVER use your laptop if we should ever meet.

my problem with laptops is that when i'm at home, i want to hook up external mouse and keyboard, and put it on some books on a desk to get the display at the right height (or plug it into an external display). if you're doing all that, a desktop makes some sense.

laptop using all the built in stuff is bad ergonomics.

My workplace:

- MacBook

- Apple USB Keyboard

- Logitech Mouse

- Apple Cinema Display HD 23"

Plus, I can carry all my work environment anywhere I go. If I want to be with my family and I don't need a lot of concentration I can take the MacBook to any room.

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