COMMENTARY--With lowering LCD prices, and the gap between notebook processors and desktop ones getting ever slimmer, conventional wisdom says that the humble desktop PC is headed for the same place as 5 1/4in floppies and people who actually liked Myst.
OK, Myst is just a personal bias, but a man's allowed to dream.
The latest theoretical 'saviour' to herald in the new era of small portable computing is the Tablet PC, announced this week by Microsoft and being adopted by a small horde of technology companies as the Next Big Thing (tm).
All I have to say to that is that I'll keep my desktop PC, thanks. I'm something of a packrat; I tend to keep everything computer related that I buy, which explains the Amiga, C64 and two Atari 2600s that clutter up my house. But I'll be keeping my desktop PC for reasons other than sheer bloody mindedness.
For a start, there's still a steep price difference, no matter what anyone may say about cheaper notebooks. Admittedly, I can buy a dirt cheap Celeron based notebook for under AU$3,000. It's just that $AU3,000 can buy me a 2GHz+ desktop system with more features than you can poke a glidepad at. According to one Australian notebook vendor, decent Tablet PCs won't be coming in anywhere under the AU$5,000 mark. At that price, I'm more likely to invest in a notebook than a Tablet PC in any case. Then again, that AU$5,000 could buy me my desktop PC, an awfully large bag of jelly beans, some Dr Pepper, and I'd still have enough left over for a decent two week holiday.
Tablet PCs are equipped with some nifty technology; I'll give them that. A reactive touchscreen that can measure ink depth by pressure? Swivelling screens and/or detachable keyboards? Yup, that's cool. The geek in me definitely responds to that kind of thing. However, cool only carries so far where my hip pocket nerve is concerned.
True, at the moment, Tablet PCs are aimed squarely at the corporate market. They're intended for sales force automation and as a replacement for all of the notebooks companies invested millions of dollars in only two years ago. These things filter down, though; notebooks were once productivity machines, but now the top of the line units always come with hefty 3D graphics processors, Dolby Digital surround sound and DVD drives, which, as I'm sure you know, are vital for running Excel tables and checking customer databases. These top of the line units are treated as employee bonuses, with the hidden idea that you can always get a bit more work done on the train, plane or at home. Gee boss, can I have a AU$5,000 Tablet PC in return for my entire social life? I can? Wow.
Then there's the upgrade path. Call me strange, but I like the idea of making a single large investment that can then have better components organically grafted onto it. Eventually there may be nothing left of the original, except perhaps the case. It does mean, however, that a PC that my wife bought in 1994 is still running today. It doesn't run much like the original did, but it's still there. Total cost of upgrades has been under AU$1,000.
Compare this to the notebook market. Let's say I purchase a top of the line notebook at around the same time as the 1994 desktop purchase. A 486 notebook, with, say, 8MB of RAM. What are the chances of upgrading that? Nil. So, presuming it still runs eight years later, I've saved my AU$1,000 by spending something like AU$12,000 then, and what's more, it can only run Windows 3.11. If I was feeling particularly silly, I could have purchased the Tablet PC's spiritual ancestor, the Newton. If you'll forgive me, I'll just go and chuckle darkly somewhere.
The kicker is the replacement parts strategy. As I mentioned above, I'm something of a packrat, so I have plenty of aging technology lying around. Some of it works well, some of it I haven't actually powered up for a while. What I'm keenly aware of, in terms of the integrated units -- such as my aging PDA -- is that if it dies, it dies totally. It might make an amusing doorstop, but that's about it. If my theoretical notebook loses the use of the 'e' key, thn I'm in srious troubl. My own handwriting is hard enough to decipher, without a faulty Tablet PC providing output of the style "EhFu Suug Fyrdy" for me to ponder over.
I'm not much of a keyboard killer (although I have worked with people who are) but the process of plugging in a new desktop keyboard isn't too onerous for even me in my laziest moods. Likewise mouse, monitor (as long as I don't mind a bit of lifting) or CD-ROM drive. Try getting a CD-ROM drive for a notebook more than a couple of years old, and most vendors will greet you with a blank stare and a finger pointing towards a new notebook. Before too much longer, that same finger will point in the direction of a Tablet PC. After all, there's more profit to be had selling a whole new system rather than a replacement keyboard.
Are notebooks and Tablets the future of personal computing? What do you think?
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