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Several years ago Intel made a prediction: that notebooks would become more important than desktops, thus justifying the birth of the Centrino platform. Believing in such a thing back then was silly, notebooks were far inferior to desktops in every aspect. Their displays were horrible, portability wasn’t that great, performance was poor and they were hardly flexible.
As time went on, the gap between notebook and desktop performance began to shrink. Intel first addressed it with CPUs, building the Centrino platform and eventually all of its desktop CPUs off of the same basic architecture that it used in its mobile cores. These days you can get nearly top binned processor frequencies in a notebook just as easily as you can in a desktop.
As Intel made headway in the CPU space, ATI and NVIDIA pushed further with mobile GPUs. Quite possibly the biggest gap continues to exist between desktop and mobile GPU performance but given the right form factor, you can actually play modern games on a notebook without giving up too much. And if you’re playing titles that are a generation or two old, a reasonable mobile GPU is well suited for the job.
LCDs also improved in quality and technology, today’s LED backlit panels offer good viewing angles, fast response times and a slim enough profile to be used in some very stylish implementations.
The final separation between desktop and notebook performance was always the disk drive and as of the past year or so, we’ve seen that divide narrow. Solid State Drives are small enough to fit in a 2.5” drive bay and offer the same performance as you’d get in a larger machine; Intel’s 2.5” SSD is easily as fast if not faster than the best 3.5” HDDs you get in a desktop PC, and with the advent of the SSD the final bricks of separation between notebook and desktop performance came crumbling down.
Going forward I expect to see the difference between a desktop and a notebook diminish. Apple touched on something very interesting with its new LED Cinema Display; the monitor has a built in power adapter for Apple’s notebooks. As the line between the notebook and desktop gets blurrier I’d expect to see more situations like this, where your desktop is simply defined by the monitor you plug your notebook into when you’re at your desk. It’s also possible using PCI Express cabling, to have your GPUs stored outside of your machine, perhaps in the base of your monitor, to improve gaming performance while docked in desktop mode.
The possibilities are limitless but I suspect that this notebook vs. desktop debate will fade away and a new discussion will form over the next few years. At that point we’ll be debating MID (Mobile Internet Device) or PC...
Laptops have come a LOOONG way. So have tech in general. I am still astounded that I can spend $500 to build a tower that is many times the power [not to mention, more diverse purpose] of, say a 360. Anyways, laptops will always be inferior to a desktop, just as Mobile devices will be inferior to laptops, but MAN the gap is just narrowing. As for gaming: nobody is stupid enough to want high-high-end performance on a laptop. Most people either dont game, or game at medium settings [for the latest games] or high settings [for last gen games], which means a midrange 9600M GT is more than sufficient for most [sane] laptop enthusiasts.
Honestly, you don't take Catepillar to win you a Formula One as well as you don't take F1 to raze old building. Notebooks are nice for light office use (sincerely have you tried working with BIG excel data without very big or two screens?) and allow a lot when you try to present something somewhere (like closed beta of software you developed and you know is working on that certain machine). For some heavy duty use, there are severe drawbacks... For the PC you get ergonomic keyboard so you don't screw your wrists coding one software, you have huge screen or two+ so you can actualy have the huge pile of windows spread all over and avoid alt-tab mining. Combining the notebook screen and monitor screen won't work due to different size of screen pixel (aka we'd like to be able to use our eyes after we get the job done). Nowadays you can also have desktop computer running more silent than a laptop (passive cooling, liquid, huge slow rpm coolers...)
Though it is quite clear laptops have decent performance nowadays to serve well to most of average users - surf the internet, type few pages in Word and send an e-mail.
AS for users who look for more the laptop won't simply do (especially long term) - no dual disk drives for raid-1 backup, not enough performance to do some heavy duty work (and when there is the machines tend to go "red hot"). Also, somebody should realise that 512MB RAM and Vista simply won't do (waves to various laptop manufacturers... honestly 512 won't do with XP as well)
So... each of his own. If I were a traveling bussinesman, laptop would be my best friend. If I was to let's say video editing, 3D Max etc... I am going to hug my desktop.
I have thought of this. Only thing holding us back is the gpu. But i would love to get rid of the big desktop. We will get there...maybe.
I like laptop because it is convenient.When i am on cafe,or in other country i can't move my desktop with me.Everything importance is on my laptop and is with me.More practical is the laptop.I don't play games.I have desktop PC and laptop,i am not gamer.Maybe i like laptop from desktop.To play games have time,to do your work is most importance !
I've stuck with a desktop all these years, not necessarily for gaming reasons, but because laptops have always seemed like a liability to me. Battery life always declines over time with any rechargeable appliance, and laptops just seem to break or crap out more than desktop computers. I'd consider getting a laptop for work use, but I could never go ONLY laptop.
Agree with Sasquatch. No laptop will ever be able to hold a decent SLI, mirrored hard drive, and kick-butt video card. The space just isn't there for that kind of power without making the laptop the size of an old Commodore SX-64. Okay, I kid to an extent. They might be able to make laptops almost as upgradable by modularizing CPUs and video cards, but no laptop will be able to hold multiple drives, a powerful GPU, and a high-speed multi-core CPU without a battery the size of an encyclopedia to make it last beyond 25 minutes.
Soon, the main concern between desktop or laptop will be memory. A large tower will always triumph in storage compared to a sleek laptop.
laptops will never be as good as desktops. Desktop with 1200 watt power supply can use things that laptops can't, if you make things energy efficient, you can put more of it in a desktop.
When I'm at home i only use my desktop. I don't find my laptop all that useful unless I'm out and about. But, if i had a laptop with equal - or almost equal - power, I think I would use it over my desktop.
Well, I only use a laptop. If Moore's law continues, then it will only make sense that the difference between laptops and desktops won't matter eventually. That is unless people continue to find uses for increasingly burgeoning computer power which simply can't be relegated to the size of the laptop. This seems unlikely, at some point, enough power has to be enough right? As far as gaming goes, most people (Will Wright included), think that this generation need for power in order for graphical prowess will be maxed out. So, will developers and gamers need more power for other applications, besides graphical prowess?
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