QOTD: For Which Apps Do You Need a Desktop?

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I like my home office, it is ergonomic and the display is large and great, so is the keyboard and mouse. My broadband connection performes better than wifi so wired it is. The build quality, battery life, data security, performance eyc are all issues with laptops that make anything other than casual browsing a pain.

I am really sad so many people actually think you get the same performance per dollar when it comes to portable equipment. Everyone in my family wants a netbook, thay suddenly think they can have their home computer experience replaced with a 400$ mobile device and be happy about it. Some are even convince to replaced their fixed line broadband for mobile broadband even for desktops. They thought they don't need much, we only surf the web. Until they start using 3G modems...

I wish there was some way people like us who knows could make us heard above the marketing hype. Everyone from the CEO down to the housewife now makes IT-decisions based on marketing rather than information from independant IT knowhow.
 
My reasons, cheaper price, easier to upgrade, can have much more disk space.

Best for music too in a home studio, although high end laptops like a Dell latitude E6500 can work well.

Best is to have both a laptop and a desktop, and desktop can act as backup for the more fragile laptop. And when one is shaky, the other one can be used to access the Internet and find help
 
There are plenty of reasons:
1. Gaming
2. My PC videocard has DVI output, unlike the majority of notebooks. Thus, I can use big LCD with a decent matrix (ViewSonic VP930)
3. My PC has an audio card with 3 otput channels, so I can use 3 pairs of speakers (in the living room, in the kitchen, in the bathroom).
4. I can drink tea or coffee without a risk of killing my PC.
5. My keyboard is more convenient than a notebook's keyboard.
6. My DVD-RW drive burns DVD-s faster than any notebook's DVD-RW drive.
7. With it's weight of 11 kilograms, my PC is much harder to steal.
8. Price.
 
Having 2,4 GHz C2D and 2GB RAM plus 250GB 7200 rpm drive in laptop i like a JUMP in future compared with my old desktop PC. I mean, change in performance of laptop brought that kind of usability that was restricted only to Desktop PCs. Now it is opposite, wireless, on battery, mobile and fast - more pros. for laptops than for Desktop PC. SSD are nails to this coffin ... put one in and you can forget about desktop. Only really super-high resource "sucker-apps" may need desktop and still ... desktop WITH SSD inside.
 
I've both desktop and notebook.. 2 desktops, one with XP one with 7, the notebook has vista (will go to 7 once it gets released). Desktops are for photo editing, games, some forum management (the one with 7) and to some firmware flashing on the XP one. The notebook is used for everything else like downloading photos from my camera, surfing and to travel.
 
-Pretty much every game released in the last several years

-Audio software like Reason, Ableton Live, various instrument plug-ins etc. While they would work fine on a dual-core laptop with an external audio interface, having quad-core, a PCI audio interface with 10 in/10 out etc. just makes things operate much smoother.

That's about it I think. What it comes down to is that if I wanted a laptop that matched my mid-range Quad core system that cost maybe $600 to build, I would have to spent more than five times as much and it still wouldn't be quite as flexible and powerful in all areas.
 
Another thing, storage. I've got 1.5TB total. There's no laptop that ships with that kind of storage yet. Also notebook drives tend to be rather slow compared to even mid-range desktop 7200 RPM drives.
 
Its not terribly often that I need my desktop but I do like it a lot better for some things.
As far as applications are concerned I have been really happy for my desktops speed in some of the calculations I've had to run this past year.
Excel 2007- try graphing mulitiple info on 18000 data points and see how well it keeps up. A bug I'm suprised MS hasn't fixed it yet (slow in 2003 and dreadful in 2007)
Matlab- Have run some neutron flux calculations that aren't exactly fast
I have also run some monte carlo simulations that take some time to run too.
Sometimes it just nice to have the speed of my oc'ed destop but besides gaming its just an ocasional thing when I'm really glad I have its perfromance.
 
[citation][nom]naidnerb[/nom]I am very pleased to say that Avivo Video converter 9.6 work like a charm in transcoding. Despite Tom's reviews I say that GPU is involved in transcoding ANY format as is fast like hell. But for TOM to be fair is to drag nVidia to even AMD when it's no way for that in real world. I owned nvidia GPU and couldn't use CUDA in transcoding for free. Avivo is free and uses STREAM a lot and Badaboom isn't free so I didn't manage to use CUDA in transcoding. There's such a big difference here that Badaboom performance doesn't even matter...You came up with that Cyberlink Media Esspresso story like being the best in transcoding to make Avivo look useless. Esspresso is useless comparing to Avivo, recheck on that honestly... Other than transcoding is Grid and Rainbow Six Vegas 2.[/citation]

Seriously. You need to get on the Avivo bandwagon. Try transcoding 1080p H.264 to DVD MPG without it. It's a serious time saver. And free! And you need a desktop graphics card to do it... Any video editing or long-running process, decent games, home server-type things. But these days you need a desktop and a laptop. At least one of each in my opinion.
 
I made the switch to a laptop about 2 years ago and I've never looked back... but I paid for it. I was the guy who always had the "high-end" PC so moving to a notebook was not something I thought I could swallow. I found a "desktop replacement" laptop with the screen and video card I wanted and upgraded everything else as the months went by (processor, memory, and hard drives). In the end, I had a laptop that was just as powerful as any gaming rig I could have build... only it cost 4x as much. I'm sold on the laptop experience now. There is definitely something liberating about playing Fallout3 in the Lay-Z-Boy while the wife and kids are on the couch watching TV next to me. I'll never be tethered to an office desk again.
 
I made the switch to a laptop about 2 years ago and I've never looked back... but I paid for it. I was the guy who always had the "high-end" PC so moving to a notebook was not something I thought I could swallow. I found a "desktop replacement" laptop with the screen and video card I wanted and upgraded everything else as the months went by (processor, memory, and hard drives). In the end, I had a laptop that was just as powerful as any gaming rig I could have build... only it cost 4x as much. I'm sold on the laptop experience now. There is definitely something liberating about playing Fallout3 in the Lay-Z-Boy while the wife and kids are on the couch watching TV next to me. I'll never be tethered to an office desk again.
 
We definitely think having one of each is really the way to go. We have the laptop sit in the living room so we can surf and do quick things there. But on to the question.

We have a desktop for the control and power. With a desktop we can get the exact components we need. We can upgrade them piece by piece over time. All of which we just can't do in a laptop. As for power, you just can't cool a laptop enough to really run the best of the best nor can you fit it all in a size that I consider easily portable.

Adobe CS4 & Games is where the desktop really thrives. All the other day to day stuff can easily be done on our laptop quickly in the other room while watching tv.

Someone mentioned bloatware, but if you order your laptop from Dell Small Business side, they come nice and clean. Just an FYI.
 
gridpool:
Seriously. You need to get on the Avivo bandwagon. Try transcoding 1080p H.264 to DVD MPG without it. It's a serious time saver. And free! And you need a desktop graphics card to do it... Any video editing or long-running process, decent games, home server-type things. But these days you need a desktop and a laptop. At least one of each in my opinion.

I forget to mention that I transcode to watch movies in HD especially 720p mpeg2. It has a very nice effect of bringing you more into the action. I recommend all of you "In the loop", a new british comedy that comes very close of what media and masked advertising means even in big political games.
I think that's a pro Intel and pro nvidia game around here that I used to play but only for my friends. Not anymore...I wait the day AMD brings more cache to CPU's cuz are much more cheaper and I'm not some big university doing research and needing 100 i7 CPU's on the same platform.
 
"QOTD: For Which Apps Do You Need a Desktop?" is entirely the wrong question.

What should be asked instead is "QOTD: For Which Apps Do You Need a Laptop?"

If you don't _need_ mobile computing a desktop is superior in every conceivable way.
 
Games and creating stuff for games.

The only computer that can run at 100% for hours on end in hot and dusty environment, without an addiction to cans of air, is a desktop.

Besides, the prices for top level mobile CPU and GPU is ridiculous!
 
I think the main drawback of notebooks internally is fact that you are confined to landscape mode on the display. I prefer portrait mode at all times unless gaming. I have 3 monitors in portrait mode on my desktop machine. I could certainly use the matrox triplehead products to use my 3 displays, but when I am mobile it would not do me any good. The display on the notebook/tablet can be used in portrait, but then you are confined to using the pen/multi-touch. If only a company would develop a nice mobile swivel and rotate display system to do portrait mode while still using the keyboard. I guess you could always just carry around a wireless keyboard etc.. problem.. no wireless peripherals are very secure. Bluetooth is a joke.

I agree that desktops offer better performance and customization. I don't see myself abandoning the desktop for another several years or more.
 
i've always sworn by the desktop, but im starting to consider switching to a laptop exclusively. i'm getting close to being able to consider using a console for gaming as i've become less of a hardcore gamer over the past few years. without a need for a computer with a powerful video card, a laptop becomes a real possibility for the first time.
 
Desktop: Media Center (with TV tuner) as my DVR, games, 3D composition programs, video editing programs, video converters, listening to music on good speakers, watching movies on a good screen/speakers, etc. Basically my main computer still.

My laptop is mostly for notes in my college classes, on the go stuff (DVD or basic games while traveling), and some Photoshop fun (convertable tablet/laptop w/Wacom pen & touch).
 
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