UNKNOWNINCOGNITO said:
Recently my brother got a new laptop. A Dell brand with intel i5 core inside. 300 GB. 4GB Ram. Windows 7.
It works perfectly and in my opinion it is far better then my Samsung net book. It occurred to me that he could all his work and manage all his media easily with no fuss with his new laptop, while mine would lag and struggle under simple commands, to me realization this laptop was better then all home desktop computers I've used so far.
So it got me thinking what was the point of the desktop computer now ? everything is now done through laptop devices which are just as fast at managing the workload. The only obvious advantage I see from desktop computers is games but from what i've seen most laptops can already play high end games to a good graphical level. (I mainly just play minecraft on the pc anyway)
So my question and discussion is, Are there any value in desktop computers today ? Do you own one ? What's the main difference.
I think you raise an excellent observation here, the gap between laptop and desktop gaming has never been closer, its so close now, especially with the price point of gaming laptops ($1500 for 8/10 / or $2000 10/10), there is serious merit to having a gaming laptop as you can save on having two seperate computers, and its cheaper (done correctly).
There are still a couple of advantages I see with desktops, and disadvantages with laptops (especially gaming ones). Desktops are much easier to upgrade/rebuild/tinker with than laptops, even for those who are trained at doing so; laptops seem to date faster, and when you combine those two factors, things like graphics card upgrades become a huge hinderance, (usually resulting in either another 1.5k spend, or dealing with last gen graphics), gaming laptops in particular are quite large, have very little battery life, and are heavier than standard and professional laptops. Worst thing with gaming laptops, is once they date, they are still heavy and large, and normally don't operate as great laptops once their batteries get even worse (I'm on a 3 year old Dell XPS M1530, thank god it has a 2.6MHz DC and 4GB, otherwise it'd be useless).
I've had a lot of thought on this matter in particular as I'm considering my next step for pc hardware, and I'm wondering whether or not I folk out $1k for an excellent laptop (like your brothers example), $1.5k for a very good gaming laptop, or get a sub $1k laptop/netbook/tablet and find more reasons to use my PS3, or even option 1, and spend less than $500 on the next wave of graphics cards for my desktop monster.
But without a decent desktop, or relatively well functioning laptop, buying into the current gaming laptop market could be a great choice.