The great laptop vs desktop debate - Part 1

So you just got a new job and are asked what kind of PC you want. Laptop or desktop? What do you choose? Or perhaps you don't have a choice, what does your company give you?

According to a new article put out by Computerworld, the business world is deploying more laptops by a good margin that continues to get wider.

Robert Mitchell opines that this basically means that companies are demanding more from their employees without extra pay. It's a good part of the debate that will continue for as long as workers are workers and employers are employers, I'm sure.

Tonight, however, I'm going to look at what laptops are good at and when they are a better fit than desktops.

The new up and coming thing in mobiles, is of course the tablet PC. These are starting to make inroads into certain industries where they make a lot of sense. Was even talking to one of my City of Heroes friends tonight (hey Gabby!) and she was talking about how the hospital that she's a PC support tech at is deploying tablets for the new medical record system they are moving to.

Tablets are a perfect fit for situations such as hospitals where nurses and doctors can really benefit from a computer they can use while walking around. Just not practical to walk around with a regular laptop while trying to type on it. Whereas a user can write on a tablet just like a pad of paper with only one hand.

I'd say that once companies come out with tablets powerful enough that they will be great tools for graphics design people or other users that do a lot of drawing or graphics work.

Laptops, meanwhile, are a good fit for road warriors or other people who NEED a mobile solution. A salesman who is on the road more than at the office certainly needs a device that allows them to do their work while out in the field. Plenty of other positions require this type of mobility as well, such as PG&E technicians, car mechanics, HVAC techs and others.

And as they continue to gain in processing bandwidth they will continue to creep into markets and uses generally reserved for desktops. They won't really be able to replace desktops for graphics and CPU intensive applications, though, until they can be configured with similar hardware.

Then again, as Robert Mitchell said, companies are giving engineers and other workers that require mobility AND power two systems. Which makes sense, as nowadays the user can connect remotely to their desktop over a VPN and offload the heavy lifting to the "big iron" back at the office.

Computing power at the workplace is also becoming less of an issue to some extent as servers become more powerful and more apps are deployed via web based apps.

It would be impractical, to say the least, for managers to lug their desktops with them to meetings, although I would say that people tend to use the laptop to do other things instead of paying attention to the task at hand. A company where managers bring laptops to meetings, to do regular work or other things during meetings, has too many meetings and should look at structural changes in how they work versus using laptops as a stopgap to the issue. Then again, if you ask me, meetings are the bane of managerial existence and anathema to efficiency.

As laptops continue to come down in cost (they are now about the same price as a similarly configured desktop with screen) they will continue to make gains versus number of desktops deployed.

In the future, however, companies will have to keep a careful eye on positions where laptops make sense and where they don't. As well, businesses will also need to be mindful of the shaping legal landscape as far as overtime for salaried persons is concerned. Corporations like EA, Walmart and others are dealing with class action lawsuits stemming from how they treat salaried and other workers and I expect this atmosphere to continue as companies continue to push the envelope on the number of hours they can get people to work.

It's just part of the natural order of the world as things are in a constant state of ebb and flow. Laptops vs desktops, corporations vs workers, Windows vs everything else...as they say, everything is politics.