who has ditched a desktop permanently?

[Soundguy]

I used to always be a desktop pc user ( or at least a tower that sat onthe floor anyway ). when my desktop gave up the ghost a while back, I started using my netbook as a desktop replacement. didn't know how I would like it... now it seems like 'normal' for me.

I use an external monitor, and have a usb keyboard and wireless mouse.. however I've even ditched the kb for more desk space.. besides.. it's easier to just get used tothe micro keyboard than switch back and forth.

for business apps and the like I havn't found anything the 1.6ghz atom wouldn't run.

plus I can just unplug everything and toss it into it's softcase, and it ends up about being the size of a book when it's ready to travel. All my fiels with me.. everything.. can't imagine going back to a desktop with 'portability' like this.. it's too convienient.

I have a couple other friends that went solely netbook, or have a net top when their desktop died.

on the plus side.. not too much worry about power outtages.. and when local utils are out, I can hit town, and find wifi, or as a last resort, go broaDBAND. wife has a iphone, and has since almost stopped using her desktop...

any other with similar experiences, and how's it working for you?

( note : my netbook is on xp, though I do have a vista laptop I had before the desktop died. it's a pretty heavilly configured laptop, though..I mainly use it for work or where I need horsepower.. etc. thus.. even at home.. it rarely gets used..)

soundguy

 

[Dmace]

I have a desktop that I use as a "Server" only since I have 1TB of hard drive space on it and a quad processor for streaming online content to my TV.

For my daily use, my wife and I use laptops that connect to the server for wireless internet, storing photos, videos, etc..., and printing (no need for a network printer).

It's so much nicer to work on a laptop where ever in the house I want and have the desktop for stuff where I want a 24" monitor like AutoCAD drafting. Laptops are so much more advanced now it makes sense to use one over a desktop but I still wouldn't rely on one as my sole computer for backing up data and media. They are still not as reliable.

 

[MossRoad]

Hey Soundguy,
I've been using a laptop for my desktop for probably 4 or 5 years now. it is a 1.7G P4 mobile processor with 2G of RAM and WXP. It has USB, firewire, parallel port, serial port, modem and network ports. I have a DVD burner in it. It has a full sized keyboard, a nice touch pad, too, although I keep a small USB mouse in my bag for those rare occasions where precise mouse control is necessary, like photo editing, drawing, etc... It also has a huge add-on battery attached underneath it. It weighs a TON but I am very pleased with it. I have a docking station on my desk at work. I have a larger monitor to the right of the dock. I toss the laptop in the dock and open it up so I have two monitors. I keep Outlook and some process monitoring programs open on the right and use the laptop monitor for whatever I am working on at the moment. I have a keyboard tray under my desk with wireless keyboard and mouse. The dock sits at a nice angle, so the laptop sits back on my desk pretty far so I have enough room to work on papers in front of the dock and 2nd monitor. We have a network area storage system where all of my documents live, but I also have my laptop set up for offline folders. When I put the laptop into the dock, it automatically syncs my documents between the backup server and the laptop. That way I have my docs with me when I take it out of the dock. If I remove it from the dock, it senses that and automatically switches to WIFI and acquires the wireless network fairly quickly. When I dock it, WIFI turns off and I am back on the wired network. I take it to meetings. I use it to connect the serial port to machinery to control PLCs and run diagnostics, load firmware, retrieve logs, etc... I run presentations with it around the building. And I take it home with me every night. If I get called at home or on the road I can fire it up, connect to my wireless in the house (or hotel on the road, etc...) use a VPN and it is just like I am at work (except for the little drinks with umbrellas :laughing: ).

The dock is really nice. It has a 2nd DVD/CD drive in it so I can copy disks directly without having to make ISOs. It has the network connection, VGA and Digital video outputs, serial port, parallel port, telephone modem, 6 usb ports, firewire port, speaker outputs, keyboard and mouse, etc... The Cambridge Sound Works speakers with sub woofer sound great in my cubicle! :cool2:

One of my favorite features is the modem in the laptop. I have it connected to my desk phone with a T connector. I right click on a contact in Outlook and tell it to dial the phone. The modem in the laptop dials the connection over my desk line. I just pick up the phone and talk. Man, that's lazy. :laughing:

For someone like me that is on call 24/7/365 it made much more sense for the company to get me this rather than a desktop AND laptop. If I did not have this benefit through my employer, I would have at least one laptop at home for mobile use, vacation, etc... I would definitely get a docking station. :thumbsup:

 

[2manyrocks]

Have the wife's netbook for portability, but also bought a refurb Gateway SX 2800-01 small form factor for pretty cheap. It takes the Atom processor in the netbook quite a bit longer to run digital compression on an audio file than the Gateway. The Gateway isn't portable. It's a tradeoff between speed and portability. Maybe I should have bought one laptop instead of two machines.

I'm still experimenting with it, but so far I'm liking OpenOffice. Free to download.

 

[czechsonofagun]

I did. because there is no room for a desktop in the house. But fixing laptop is a pain in the donkey, let me tell you Desktop is fixable like house made out of Lego.
For the summer I will rebuild the desktop that's permanently in my shop and run Mandrake on it or something like that. There is nothing like online radio - I can even listen to Czech stations

The plan is to get a network server to save all family files and digital assets on and after that it will make no difference where I approach it from. My ideal is network, data backed up on a server, desktops in strategic locations and a personal netbook to take anywhere.

 

[timswi]

I did. because there is no room for a desktop in the house. But fixing laptop is a pain in the donkey, let me tell you Desktop is fixable like house made out of Lego.
For the summer I will rebuild the desktop that's permanently in my shop and run Mandrake on it or something like that. There is nothing like online radio - I can even listen to Czech stations

The plan is to get a network server to save all family files and digital assets on and after that it will make no difference where I approach it from. My ideal is network, data backed up on a server, desktops in strategic locations and a personal netbook to take anywhere.

Czech stations..Love that. Last summer I had some Russian masons here to install stone on my foundation..They were great. They didn't speak a lick of English, and listened to Russian rap all day..it was pretty interesting.

I haven't ditched my desktop, in fact my old Dell blew up this past winter, and I replaced it with another desktop. I have a laptop for work, and to be honest, I really don't like it.

 

[EddieWalker]

I played around on a Dell Netbook with a 10 inch screen, and before that a Dell Laptop with a 17 inch screen, but I just hated the size of the screens. I have a 22 inch screen right now, and wont a bigger one. I like to have allot of screens up at the same time, and I enjoy chating on yahoo or facebook. When I have chat going, I'm also surfing the web and going from screen to screen. I just can't do that with a small screen.

Eddie

 

[Abe460]

I have to say one thing I miss about a desktop is multiple screens...I could cry now that someone reminded me--thanks.

Work supplies me with a laptop and my old ones get used by my wife. My desktop is still sitting on the desk where is was when the master hdd crashed a couple of years ago. Got tired, also, of paying $700 for a video card just to see it for $200 a 6 months later. Seems that way with all parts. I have no use for that anymore, so all is good.

For me there's really no point in a desktop, since I have hugesnet and don't have the bandwith to do anything other than surf. We have plenty of disk space in our laptops so as long as we back up our files to the external hdd, everything is peachy.

Like someone said before, being able to work or surf anywhere in the house is really nice.

 

[JB4310]

The way I look at it and the way things are going, the laptop is the new PC and the blackberry, droids, palm pilots, PDA's etc are the new portables. Was in best buy the other day and they have 4 aisles of laptops and about half an aisle of pc's and half of those have no towers.

Also look at the fact that all the manufacturers are making Less of the tower computers and more those all in one monitor thingies, talk about a repairers nightmare.

I'm gonna be forced to consider the transition to laptops in the near future, as I have 2 kids that will need them and I have an aging PC. It'll be nice to get unchained from the desk. I predict in the not to distant future we'll almost all be using portables. pretty simple prediction, don't have to be Nostradamus to see this one coming

JB.

 

[Soundguy]

what netbook do you have?

mine is an asus.. I found that you have to manually turn it to full performance mode. it's 2 automatic performance modes are power save and high performance. when on battery, it slips to power save, unless you change it, and when on wall power it goes to high performance... after digging a bit, I found out high performance was still like only 80%.. you can manually select super performance and open up full processor and video speed.. made a difference on my asus netbook anyway.. but beware.. if you use it on battery, it will kill the bat in about 45m vs the 2hrs it normally has.

soundguy

Have the wife's netbook for portability, but also bought a refurb Gateway SX 2800-01 small form factor for pretty cheap. It takes the Atom processor in the netbook quite a bit longer to run digital compression on an audio file than the Gateway. The Gateway isn't portable. It's a tradeoff between speed and portability. Maybe I should have bought one laptop instead of two machines.

I'm still experimenting with it, but so far I'm liking OpenOffice. Free to download.

 

[Soundguy]

go buy you one of them inexpensive 32, 36 or 42" tv's from best buy.. whatever the house brand is.. they all seem to have vga ports on them. when we got a new tv for christmas, I played with the tv ont he computer for a while.. looked awesome!.. and was way cheaper than an lcd monitor half the size..

soundguy

I played around on a Dell Netbook with a 10 inch screen, and before that a Dell Laptop with a 17 inch screen, but I just hated the size of the screens. I have a 22 inch screen right now, and wont a bigger one. I like to have allot of screens up at the same time, and I enjoy chating on yahoo or facebook. When I have chat going, I'm also surfing the web and going from screen to screen. I just can't do that with a small screen.

Eddie

 

[Soundguy]

I have to say one thing I miss about a desktop is multiple screens...I could cry now that someone reminded me--thanks.

.

you can get a laptop with a dual head video card.

I have a gateway with one and my friend has an alienware laptop with one..

soundguy

 

[texasjohn]

Yep, use a laptop now for almost everything.
Have multiple bricks so I don't have to carry it around too often between several "home" locations.
At each "home" location, I have an additonal display so I can have two going at the same time.
Will never purchase another tower/desktop.
However, still have several towers laying around...plan to do a server thing soon as someone else is doing.

I, too, on my desktop use 4 displays and when doing a lot of production work absolutely use EVERY display and even use 3 desktops...this effectively gives me the content of 12 display screens on 4 physical displays at one time.

Just replaced a hard drive in son's laptop..$80 at Fry's for .5 terrabyte, 7200rpm... having been in the industry for over 30 years, I still am completely amazed by continued dramatic reductions in cost, size while increasing capacity and performance.

 

[Soundguy]

remember when tb hard drives were something that was 'talked about'.. now it's like 'run out and get one at walmart'

heck I remember upgrading to a 524mb hdd in a 386 sx 16 compaq at work.. and was peeved that dos would only format about 90% of it.. ( as a single partition that is.. )

soundguy

 

[tommu56]

H I use it to connect the serial port to machinery to control PLCs and run diagnostics, load firmware, retrieve logs, etc..

The tried to get me to use a laptop at work for plc stuff I still prefer a desk top I don't have too far to go so I built a crash cart with all my stuff on it and use it to do the programing.
IT keeps pushing us to go the laptop route wont do it for now.They are resistant to let us network the plc's on "their" network, I pull the wire and program so we (other techs and I) got our own pirate network they do give us the IP addresses so no real hassle if it gets cross connected.

tom

 

[2manyrocks]

We have the Dell inspiron mini 10. It probably has more power and features than the desktop I bought ten years ago. I have no clue if you can run it in a performance mode or not.

I noticed a product at Newegg the other day that allows you to plug in SATA drives almost like usb flash drives. It and a 1T drive was on combo sale for $99. I didn't buy it because I was concerned about bending the connectors on the drive with repeated swaps.

In concept, however, I think we're going to see smaller, portable processors with enough drive space to operate on a portable basis and separate, larger external storage drives that are plugged in only when needed for backup.

We're getting to the point where there are so many older desktops that they can be had pretty cheaply and will still work for typing, internet access, and some media applications. I bought a working, complete Dell 170L optiplex system a week or so ago with the original software for $60. I intended to use it in an application where it wouldn't matter much if it were stolen or broken, but it would still be adequate for its intended use until that happens. It's not like a netbook that is going to walk off if I leave it laying around. Plus, I can mess around with different types of Linux and if I totally mess it up, it was only $60.

 

[jwstewar]

After the house burnt, while we lived in the trailer the only thing we had was the laptop. At that time it was pretty new, so it was speedy enough for most things (actually still is). As soon as we got in the house and got all of the furniture, I built us a new desktop. The laptop just doesn't have the performance we need/want for what we do. We do a lot of photo editing and video creation. The last few days I've been doing a file conversion for a car dealership using SQL Server. With the size of the file, I would think of trying on my laptop - maybe some of the newer high end ones, but not this one at 2.2 Gighertz. Just as an example, there was one of the videos Monica was working on. She started it on the laptop, took it almost 4 hours to render, moved it to the desktop for some reason and re-rendered. It finished in just under an hour.

Like someone else, I'm wanting to build a new desktop, install Windows 7, and then redo the existing desktop and make it a home server. Currently it has dual 640 GB drives in it, but has room for 4 more internal drives and supports RAID. So when I redo it, I'll probably RAID the 640s together for the OS and get 3 or 4 larger drives and RAID them together for data.

 

[bp fick]

Gave up the desktop 10 years ago. Found the notebook to be more personal and simplified "clutter", both physically and in having access to files. Since I travel a lot, my "brain" and "filing cabinet" are always with me, at the kitchen table, in my easy chair, or on the road.

Wifi certainly contributed.

 

[eepete]

Eddie, I agree there is nothing like more screen space!

Soundguy, one of my screens is a TV using the HDMI input. Also, the 1st hard drive I bought was $2K for 8 megabytes! Had to build my own controller.

Texasjohn, wish we had a frys around here. Screens are good, here's a pix of the 6 screens on my MAC. Two of the high resolution apple ones, 3 of the sub $200 HDTV sized montiors, and the TV.

So I've not ditched my desktop, I've added more attachments! I do have a laptop for when I'm traveling and need more than the iPhone.

Pete