The great laptop vs desktop debate - Part 2:

Last night I talked about why I thought laptops were being deployed more than desktops, by a two to three margin, in corporations. Tonight I'm going to turn the coin and discuss why, in my opinion, desktops are undervalued and what situations they should be pushed strenuously to users.

First off, let me do a quick rant on speed. I see a lot of blogs, comments, editorials, etc. where people say things like "fast enough for today's needs" or "those computers are plenty good for what that person does". This is a horrible attitude to take when it comes to your users.

Companies pay for every missed cycle of opportunity, whether it comes from a receptionist, a programmer, manager, CEO or attorney. ALL members of a corporation are interconnected and the slowdown of a system used by a secretary can affect a higher paid "VIP" just the same as if the slowdown happened to the VIP's PC.

An IT manager should always look to deploy the fastest most capable systems that can be afforded to every position in a campus. Does this mean that everyone should get the same system as the graphics developer or other user with extreme bandwidth requirements? No...what it means is that IT managers would be remiss to shortchange employees just because they don't get paid much or because they are perceived as not needing "much power".

Often people make these judgements when they have no good idea what a user will use the PC for is capable of doing with a PC.

Also, a clean system cannot be used as a good baseline for how fast a system will be during day to day use. As well, a new clean system will be faster than a used system with a full load of apps.

And let's not forget the psychology of speed. What is fast today is merely average tomorrow. As systems get faster, we expect more out of them and do not really get that perception of speed after months of use. Humans are built to detect acceleration or change in speed and not velocity itself.

OK, so much for quick rant...as you can see the whole "fast enough" attitude is a big pet peeve of mine, because in business fast enough, isn't. There are only 24 hours in a day and most of us spend most of that doing things other than work...do the math.

So where does that leave desktops? At the top of the heap in my opinion. For a company that CARES about it's employees, and is really concerned with efficiency, a desktop is the best choice. Why?

Firstly, desktops are just faster all around. Faster CPUs, much faster graphics cards, faster memory buses, faster hard drives, etc. and you get the point.

Plus with desktops it's pretty standard nowadays to be able to connect multiple monitors and use them all as one big desktop or as multiple desktops thusly increasing efficiency by a wide margin. Some studies showed something on the neighborhood of 30% increases in productivity when using multiple and/or larger displays. Laptops have problems with high resolutions/multiple monitors, particularly in graphically intensive situations.

Pricewise, there's no contest either, although things are getting closer every year, particularly with the last couple of years as growth of CPU speeds on the desktop has slowed quite a bit. Still, for the same price as a base laptop with decent CPU and memory (512MB is minimum that should be deployed to any system in an organization these days) you can get a much faster desktop AND 19" LCD screen, plus external keyboard and mouse.

Support wise, desktops are also a better deal as they have significantly fewer failures overall and are much easier for in house techs to replace parts as necessary.

Things of course get fuzzy as we move toward the future. According to experts, the upcoming version of Windows (no, still not calling it by that mountain view name...actually Windows Mountain View has a nice ring to it) will be more efficient (faster boot, much faster network stack, etc.) than XP, but in my experience, as they add more features and we continue to add more and more applications to our systems, things will continue to reqire more speed. This means that for most of us, a desktop will continue to be the best option.

However, in corporations, things might be swinging the other way. As enterprises continue to put their toes into the "virtual server" waters as well as greater use of web based applications, speed of desktops will be less of an issue. Since well designed networks will continue to move processing cycles away from PCs and onto servers, the power of the PC becomes less of an issue.

Of course, in most cases these types of systems can be more costly than a PC is today especially when you consider that the user still needs some sort of system and monitors, particularly LCD panels continue to be a major part of the price of a PC.

And that leaves us with mobility. What about those users who REALLY require it? Well, for them, laptops will continue to be the system of choice as mobile users have no choice but to lose speed for transportability. And as I mentioned yesterday, there are other positions, professions, industries and functions for which a tablet is the overwhelmingly compelling choice. But for most users, who only move between two places, home and work, a laptop often isn't the best choice.

Of course if you want to use your PC in the garden, couch, coffee shop, or yes, even on the pot, a laptop or tablet is the only choice. But you pay a hefty price in speed and price for that sort of flexibility.

Then again, with computers, IT and life in general, you always pay more for flexibility.