Laptops outship desktops for the first time worldwide
By Darren Murph 
posted December 24th 2008 9:57AM
posted December 24th 2008 9:57AM
Laptops have been out-shipping desktops in the US for years upon years (upon years), but it wasn't until now that such a scenario was true worldwide. According to iSuppli, global notebook computer shipments exceeded those of desktops for the first time ever in Q3 of this year, a "watershed event" according to it. More specifically, notebook PC shipments surged around 40% to 38.6 million units, while desktop shipments slipped 1.3% to 38.5 million. We'd say this is a marvelous day and a sign of what's to come, but haven't we all known that desktops were being reserved for hardcore gaming, computational science and games of chess for years now?
Ok, I agree that expensive is worthwhile. I have a MB Pro as my main laptop.
What I meant is: Expensive laptops come with either OS X or Vista. Since Vista suxr, either OS X or XP are preferred. I have both. That is my point of view.
@Zioncat please explain yourself. Just saying I am an idiot... I may as well rebuke "I know you are, but what am I"?
As noted above, desktops are upgradeable so you can keep the same chassis for longer.
Also, they tend to be more powerful and are certainly less likely to break, so even if half of the computers in use every day are desktops, laptop sales will be quite a bit higher. I know plenty of people who have bought replacement laptops because theirs was 3 years old and once the screen broke it wasn't really worth fixing; you wouldn't see that with a desktop.
I kept my last laptop for 5 years, which is pretty long for a low-end consumer laptop. My current desktop is 2.5 years old, and I can't think of why I'd want a new one, even if it was virtually free. The technology just hasn't changed that much. It was way more power than I needed then, and it's still way more power than I need. The only thing I can see in the future that would require me to buy a new desktop would be a whole new computing architecture.
The good thing is... even an inexpensive laptop with a Core2Duo processor will satisfy 90% of what people want. Web browsing, e-mail, Microsoft Office, etc. All of my friends and family use laptops... the only desktops they have are their old ones that they never took down. I only know one lady who recently bought a desktop for her home, and a guy that bought a desktop for his office. But other than that, it's a laptop world.
Short of gaming and high end video editing, a laptop can be used for daily computer tasks. If you buy a laptop today with 4GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive, that will last a while for "most" people.
This isn't surprising. The only thing that is holding back a notebook takeover is the thermal requirements of more powerful processors. Intel has been pushing power consumption down while improving performance the past few years, and now notebooks are simply powerful enough for most people. Notebook dominance is only going to accelerate too. ARM is going to start pushing their highly efficient processor cores into the netbook and slim notebook segments and Intel and AMD are going to have to push back before Microsoft decides to port Windows to something other than x86. Traditional desktops don't serve many needs anymore. Hardcore users are the only people who care about having the best performance and the ability to upgrade components. In fact, I've been noticing more all in ones lately.
Huh, I haven't bought a laptop in years. Been building my last couple of desktops too.
Laptops have taken the role of desktops and netbooks have taken the role of laptops, and smartphones are slowly taking the role of netbooks.
But I still resist, I have 2 desktops and an iPhone.
Now that laptops are as fast,cheep and reliable as most desktops and the fact that we are in the move and go decade lap tops make sense for a larger and growing segment of our world. we use our HP lap top way more then my desktop, even though it is faster and has a 19in widescreen. Now I just got my wife the Acer 8.5 for Christmas. It fast enough (1.6Hz) for her web browsing, friendster page,chatting and even YouTube, it also fits in her purse! I have been using it when ever she puts it down shit I want one now LOL.