It is 25 years since the IBM personal computer was launched. And for all this
time it has occupied more and more desktops.Â
Now there is a challenger. Notebooks with their attractive price bands,
the status symbol tag, portability and mobility are threatening to displace the
desktop from the desk. The DQ Top 20 results this year show that desktops grew
at an impressive 21% over last year. But notebooks grew at an astounding 168%!
In the US, in the first quarter of 2006, desktop sales fell by 2.6%, while the
unit sales of notebooks grew by almost 30%, according the NPD group.
So is the desktop on the way out?
Pitching for notebooks are new technologies that make them cost and weigh
less and deliver more. Add longer battery life and wireless connectivity, and
the cheerleading squad is complete. Also, notebooks score on the cool quotient.
Enterprises also believe that notebooks deliver higher productivity levels. A
notebook user puts in 7.7 hours of additional work, according to a 2004 survey
by Dell. Look around you, and you will probably come up with a comparable figure
for your company.
Notwithstanding the growth of notebooks, the power equation is in favor of
the desktops. Speed, storage and display options are much higher on desktops.
And power users are unlikely to shift over-notebooks simply do not have enough
juice for their hungry applications. Gamers, multimedia developers, high-end
graphics designers and music editors, architectural and other design
professionals would make up this lot. It is hard to visualize a gamer all cooped
up in front of a laptop to enjoy a good death-match online. And all said and
done, the small size keyboards and displays are not the most suitable for many
users. It is possible that the gamer could also be a software consultant
visiting various companies. Then he would have a laptop for his presentations,
while a high-end desktop or a PlayStation would cater to his gaming needs. We
all know of architects, programmers and graphics professionals who show you
their work on their laptops, but go back to their offices to work on a high-end
desktop. There are many more homes now with the desktop as their entertainment
center.
The other segment that would prefer desktops is the 'up-graders'. These
are the people who really know the innards of their desktops. They like to
up-end the performance by replacing bits and pieces. A new monitor, more RAM, a
hard disk, a better graphics card, a FireWire port, and if all else fails, a new
motherboard. They like the freedom to change things the way they want. A
notebook does not allow that freedom. If the display is gone, or you want a
bigger screen, get a new computer. If you want a better processor, sorry, buy
again. If you want more storage, look for an external hard disk-but that takes
away the portability. PCMCIA cards allow for some addition of features, but they
are limited. So if you want the flexibility to chop and change your machine the
notebook is a big no.
Notebooks are cheaper-but not cheap enough. In developing countries, where
there is a huge need for increasing computer penetration and where e-Governance
projects mean installing computers by the hundreds, across the country, one
cannot imagine an onslaught of notebooks. Add to that the much higher cost of
repair-which include battery replacements, AMCs and, clearly, the notebook is
not a mass-market product. At least not yet.
Clearly it is not time to sound the death-knell for desktops. They will
continue to live on and even reign in areas where entertainment, high
performance and freedom to upgrade are important. Their market share will no
doubt shrink. Till finally we see a decent hybrid product that combines the
benefits of both forms.
The author is editor-in-chief of CyberMedia, the publisher of Dataquest. He
can be reached at shyamm@cybermedia.co.in