I totally think so. Why should I be tied to a desk, when I can take my laptop anywhere.
- 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.
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.
http://www.pibmug.com/files/wideview.jpg
That people will want ever more realistic graphics, with ever more realistic physics engines?
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.
edit : the laptop form factor is horrifyingly unergonomic. i refuse to work on laptops for extended periods of time.
http://www.paulgraham.com/opensource.html should be required reading.
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.