Laptops taking over Desktops now?

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Fragster

Weaksauce
Joined
Jul 21, 2006
Messages
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Everywhere u look, people are trading/selling their desktops for gaming lappies and its becoming like a trend. My friend just sold his rig (with a 7900GTX) and bought himself the M1710 laptop and the funny thing is that the laptop is still hooked up to his 20" Dell LCD, hence totally raping the word 'mobility' :rolleyes:

Another one of my buddies said his next system would be a 17" gaming laptop even though he's got a kick-ass AMD system with a 24" Dell. I mean if u really need the mobility factor (if u have a job that puts u on the road/away from home most of the time), then I see the need but if a person will still the have the latop docked on his $500 computer desk, then why are people doing such a stupid move, especially the fact that laptops are expensive and hard to upgrade anyway? :confused:

Or is it just another fancy thing to have like now? :rolleyes: Kinda like when the razor phones hit the market and every Pre-K kid wanted to have one so momma can know when to pick them up :rolleyes:

Fragster
 
mm... yep.
I would like a gaming laptop. would sure be easier to have a LAN. but that's about it for me. Desktops aren't that hard to packup. just another trip to the car

heck, I have a hard enough time trying to keep my data organized on one computer. I can't even imagine having to coordinate 2 computers.
 
I used to have a 17" Alienware gaming laptop, it was a beast. Didn't need it though so I sold it. It wasn't very practical, damn thing weight 12lbs.
 
Notebooks are neither expensive nor difficult to upgrade. I would go so far as to say that most common upgrades are easier on a notebook since the upgrade bays are easy to identify and access, and the proliferation of PC Card, ExpressCard, Bluetooth, etc. devices means that upgrades are generally tools-free and require no software/drivers.
 
its scary, my friends about to do the same thing. im offering to put together a desktop for him for cost, but he refuses, he wants a laptop. i keep telling him "i have no control on laptop prices, i cant get you many deals, if any. youll be sacrificing an enourmous ammount of performance if you go with a laptop". nope, wont do it, must have a laptop.

what ever happened to the lunchboxes. remember those things? with a few easy mods and a micro ATX board you could make a small, totally portable, extroordinarily high performance system. but with everything crammed into current laptop packages, you cant get cooling, and without that cooling, you cant get performance. not to mention theyre a bitch to repair.

my dad owns a toshiba satilite, donno which model, but the feet fell off, staples wanted to charge $25 for rubber feet.... O.O. are. you. mad? sonys worse, $45 for them.

nope. i was just offered a P3 laptop for free. said no, find someone who actually has a need for it. i have a desktop computer everywhere i need one.
 
I dont game very often, the last game i really played was wow.
I bought a laptop, Acer 1694wlmi (ATI x700 128meg) in january, and i havent really used my desktop since. i take it to work, i take it to school, i sit with it on my lap while im on my comfy couch watching TV.

my desktop has since been pulled apart and i havent been keen enough to put it back together yet. lol

once again, im not a big gamer though, never have been. But ive been happy to play some Splinter Cell:CT and farcry multiplayer on the laptop and its been great.
 
I bought a laptop for school and occasional work use...now I just use it to read the news or surf the web downstairs. Ill use it to play older games, or when I travel sure. But right now, my desktop has everything I need. Big screen, lots of storage, and sufficent cooling to keep it on almost constantly without burning a hole in my pants.
 
MrWizard6600 said:
what ever happened to the lunchboxes. remember those things? with a few easy mods and a micro ATX board you could make a small, totally portable, extroordinarily high performance system
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They always sucked. Those cases and motherboards were tremendously expensive compared to normal alternatives. They were the bastard child of a desktop and notebook, and managed to combine the price of laptops with the portability of a desktop.
 
Laptop gaming people are generally the folks that are scared to open their box and pop a new video card in. You know, the people that spend $2,000 on a new system every 3-4 years. For them, they might as well go laptop.
 
I build systems all the time and have a Shuttle myself, but when I'm plugging all kinds of crapola into my system after moving things around I often get tired of all the cords and clutter that even a SFF system has. I then dream about the uber-DTR notebook. Then I think about the price and go back to my desktop.

With my clients I've noticed another trend with notebooks - that people downsizing, getting divorced, whatever - that the ones with smaller apartments frequently don't have an office or den anymore so they want a notebook to use at the dining table.
 
Laptops are nice in the way they provide portability and you can lug everything you need in a one bag. But performance is a major hit.

Certain people prefer laptops, certain people prefer desktops.
 
xonik said:
Notebooks are neither expensive nor difficult to upgrade. I would go so far as to say that most common upgrades are easier on a notebook since the upgrade bays are easy to identify and access, and the proliferation of PC Card, ExpressCard, Bluetooth, etc. devices means that upgrades are generally tools-free and require no software/drivers.
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Component for component, laptops are in fact more expensive, and if you think they are not difficult to upgrade, try getting a new graphics card for a laptop, compare that to popping in a new graphics solution for your desktop. I say this as a laptop gamer...for what I paid for my laptop I could have gotten a much better system that was INFINITELY more upgradeable.
 
I bought my first laptop a few years ago after I joined the Air Force thinking that it'll be easier and more conveinient to own a desktop-replacement type laptop. I then realized that sitting in an airport and being bored to tears knowing that my laptop has like 45 mins of battery life really sucks. I also realized that since I couldn't really travel with the thing, I started hooking up other stuff to it like a 20" monitor and an external hard drive. I was like" Dude, just build a desktop and be done with it." I sold that massive 12" behemoth and I've gone with a smaller every time. I now own a Dell M1210.

Yeah I like to game on the go (and I still can with the M1210) but when you travel a lot, you really start to notice how much of a pain those big laptops really are.
 
Technoob said:
Component for component, laptops are in fact more expensive,
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The claim was that notebooks are "expensive," not "more expensive." Big difference.
and if you think they are not difficult to upgrade, try getting a new graphics card for a laptop, compare that to popping in a new graphics solution for your desktop. I say this as a laptop gamer...for what I paid for my laptop I could have gotten a much better system that was INFINITELY more upgradeable.
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You're right, but I guess the trend towards people purchasing notebooks really shows who are serious gamers and who are casual gamers. Most people know which category they fall into, and if they don't, they usually have the money to buy both types of computer.
 
I switched to a laptop earlier this year. I just got tired of all the wires, and bulk of the system that I had and instead of going into a smaller box etc. I bought a laptop. I'm definitely not a hardcore gamer so it fits my needs really well.

The biggest benefit is that I can take it into the living room where I can watch a live MotoGP race through the HTPC and have the timing screen on the laptop. :cool:
 
I do not think laptops will replace desktops. I just think the "average" person will have one desktop and one laptop in their households, unlike my 8 desktops and 3 laptops :)
 
I had never had a laptop prior to starting my current job. Granted, it's a different setup, but this laptop is no slouch (T2500 Yonah, 1gb RAM, x1400 gpu, etc) and I still prefer my desktop any day of the week.

I've said it many times to friends: I will never complain about having a laptop, but I will never have one as my primary computer.
 
xonik said:
The claim was that notebooks are "expensive," not "more expensive." Big difference.You're right, but I guess the trend towards people purchasing notebooks really shows who are serious gamers and who are casual gamers. Most people know which category they fall into, and if they don't, they usually have the money to buy both types of computer.
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Also keep in mind that the people who buy a computer with the primary intent being gaming make up a very, very, small percentage of the overall computer buying public.

I find laptops and desktops are handy for different things. I had a laptop provided to me with my last job, and it came in handy. If I had to go to a conference I could bring all of my data with me. If I had to make a presentation I could build it on the laptop and then just plug it into a projector wherever I had to present. That being said, I hardly ever used it for anything other than work stuff. I have a WiFi network in my house, but I have never been tempted to do computer related stuff anywhere but my desk, so the laptop usually just got locked in my workspace at the end of the day.

I don't game on my desktop, but I do everything else with it. The two biggest drawbacks of laptops for what I do at home are lack of screen size, and lack of hard drive space. You can get what, 160gigs or so max in most laptops? I am almost out of space with the 500 gigs I have on my home machine, and I could add one of those 720 gig Seagate drives easily for a quick boost. Also, while it is nice that laptop screen resolutions have finally pretty much caught up with desktops, I like having size as well as real estate, and I don't even want to contemplate what it would be like carrying around a 24" laptop with the same resolution as the 2405fpw.
 
NulloModo said:
I don't game on my desktop, but I do everything else with it. The two biggest drawbacks of laptops for what I do at home are lack of screen size, and lack of hard drive space. You can get what, 160gigs or so max in most laptops? I am almost out of space with the 500 gigs I have on my home machine, and I could add one of those 720 gig Seagate drives easily for a quick boost. Also, while it is nice that laptop screen resolutions have finally pretty much caught up with desktops, I like having size as well as real estate, and I don't even want to contemplate what it would be like carrying around a 24" laptop with the same resolution as the 2405fpw.
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That's the thing about notebook docking stations. They offer standard display interfaces (VGA, DVI-I, etc.), better video capabilities (with Lenovo's ThinkPad Advanced Dock, anyways), and more drive expansion options. I am considering the purchase of an eSATA ExpressCard adapter so that I can connect several terabytes of storage from an external enclosure with only a single cable. It sure solves storage problems quick when you consider external enclosures as an option for notebooks.
 
xonik said:
That's the thing about notebook docking stations. They offer standard display interfaces (VGA, DVI-I, etc.), better video capabilities (with Lenovo's ThinkPad Advanced Dock, anyways), and more drive expansion options. I am considering the purchase of an eSATA ExpressCard adapter so that I can connect several terabytes of storage from an external enclosure with only a single cable. It sure solves storage problems quick when you consider external enclosures as an option for notebooks.
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They help solve some of the problems of desktops vs. laptops in the stationary situation, but then once you have to go mobile, unless you want to stick a bunch of external HDs in your laptop drive, you are out of luck. Better to keep them seperate in my opinion, and just use the sync option to copy over important documents. Still, that keeps one very seperate from the other.
 
Naw, local storage is plenty for almost every notebook user. 100+ GB is a lot of documents. Store archived data and other non-essentials (porn?) on external or networked storage for easy access at home or in the office.
 
I have an e1705 Dell laptop and it is a beast, it can play most newer games on medium quality and stable, despite the performance of laptops though i would never make a complete switch, as I can't really get my hands on the inside of a lappy if something goes wrong, if it breaks you either rely on the warranty or you are stuck buying a new laptop. With Towers i can store plenty of hard drives, and i know what is inside my computer, i built it, i know it's innards better than my own, and you appreciate a working computer more when you know you nearly destroyed it in a fit of rage getting it to work in the first place :cool: . Laptops will always have their place, just like desktops, some people just don't have the need for desktops unless they are power hungry, storage whores like myself. I see the need and use for both however, and use them accordingly, it's really a great thing to have it both ways
 
GreenMonkey said:
Laptop gaming people are generally the folks that are scared to open their box and pop a new video card in. You know, the people that spend $2,000 on a new system every 3-4 years. For them, they might as well go laptop.
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generally speaking? no...there are guys who lan + travel so much that need their setup needs to be practical yet still give good frame rates.. and who have also been selling computers and hardware when most of you were on your mamma's teet. its all about being practical. therfore laptops fit the bill

when I don't wanna spend $50 each way on the ferry I bike it. a laptop or SFF suit the bill to a T. into the backpack and I'm golden
 
Laptop's are very nice to have dont get me wrong I own 2. But laptop's will never replace a desktop for me, the cost to peformace ratio so WAYYYY to high. You spend 2000 and build a really nice performace desktop, and that same desktop in a laptop would be 3000-4000 dollars. I bought my gf and I both laptop's for work and travel and lately i dont even really use mine. When i am not at work i am usually on my office workstation or my gaming rig. There are times when they are nice to have, but really i dont see the need for having them. For me the biggest thing is the cost ratio to performace.
 
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