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Laptop vs. Desktop

I'm sure most us both have a laptop and a desktop. However, since 2006, I no longer work on desktop: I'm happy with just two laptops (one connected to an external large screen). I can process 100 million rows of data a day onn these machines, and can do pretty much anything I was doing on the desktops.

Do you think that in the future, professionals like us will rely less on desktops? When working exclusively with laptops, you have the feeling to work for a "portable company", especially when your company is an Internet one and its properties or "assets reside on servers across the country.

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Permalink Reply by Zsenia on June 9, 2008 at 1:16am: I think that laptop is definitely synonym to mobility and I think although we would like to say that it doesn’t matter, it does!
A laptop gives you mobility and, somehow, independence. It offers you somehow self-esteem that you can develop and deliver interesting things from anywhere (I think that a Modeller or an analyst need to have this freedom, because we are generally great minds… and great minds need a perspective of freedom).
So, yes …laptop for surely.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by John Logsdon on October 1, 2008 at 2:38am: While you are right that for many purposes a laptop is adequate, there are a many reasons why a desktop or even rack are to be preferred for serious (in the computational sense) work:

1) Laptops don't last as long because they suffer from knocks and poor cooling so you have to replace/upgrade them more frequently. I recently decommissioned a 486DX100 (a desktop from circa 1993 to the younger readers or those with poor memories for such trivia) that I was using as a mailserver with time between reboots for the last 10 years of its life of about 5 years (ie I rebooted it only once after L-5 years).
2) Laptops can get lost or stolen and that can be inconvenient, embarrassing or lead to prosecutions.
3) A laptop video card will be tuned to the maximum resolution of its screen and on a big screen you just get bigger letters - better to buy a pair of glasses. On a desktop you can always install a serious video card that will make a big screen worth while. Fortunately most projectors are lower resolution than a laptop.
4) A laptop will always have substantially lower processing power than an equivalently priced desktop and have a lot fewer features, lower clock and bus speed, less memory and storage etc.
5) A serious laptop will still give you a bent shoulder.

On the other hand, as a fashion statement a laptop is much better and if all you want to do is to impress, a flashy laptop may get them thinking that you are serious. But they may also wonder whether your day rates reflect the laptop rather than the work, which is not what you want them to hear.

I use a desktop with twin 24" screens for the real estate and a 3 year old laptop that also has a wide screen and access off-site computational facilities where necessary. The laptop network drives are mounted on the desktop which takes an hourly snapshot for backups. When it comes to replacing the laptop, I would seriously consider one of the new lightweight laptops - less than 1kG - which are neat, sufficiently functional and adequate for presentation. If I need to demonstrate computational power, I hook it up to a 3G card and a compute server somewhere, which is much more impressive I think.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Stephan Ogenstad on October 16, 2008 at 6:20pm: I think that portable systems are important to people, to be more flexible and effective. I think that the laptop will soon become a portable terminal, where software will be placed on large servers. When we "Google", transfer money from our savings account to checking account, buy something over the web we don't really use much software on our laptops, so we should not need Word, PowerPoint, SAS, ... on our own laptop.
Stephan; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by John Logsdon on October 17, 2008 at 2:48am: I agree that processing power or software is not so important when using internet access and the computer - whether laptop or desktop - becomes a semi-intelligent terminal. But I didn't see that as the question.

An issue that has come to light for me since my earlier post is repetitive strain injury. I acquired that by using a laptop with a flat keyboard even though I incline the whole computer. I didn't realise it until I took a long weekend off and the symptoms went away.

So I plugged in a decent external keyboard and treated myself with frozen peas and topical ibuprofen to reduce the inflammation. It's now gone away.

But that means that if I ever need to use the laptop for extensive work away from the office, I need to carry a keyboard around as well as the mouse (I hate tracker pads) with even more risk to my back...:)

In the end, for office use, a desktop with a good keyboard is still my choice and when away I will put up with a laptop.; ▶ Reply to This