Desktops are going to be around for a long time...

- Gamers have an insatiable need for power, and the fastest computers are always going to not be laptops.

- A lot of people are very price sensitive, and desktops are always going to be less expensive.

Don't be so sure either of those are that important.

You can get a laptop with comparable power to some of the more expensive desktops now for about the same price. Look at the Gateway p-6831.

Also more and more power will continue to be fit into laptops, and I think it is only a matter of time before a desktop tower is a waste of space for even most gamers.

Extrapolating trends is of course dangerous, but isn't it reasonable to say that people want as much screen real estate for screens?

http://www.pibmug.com/files/wideview.jpg

That people will want ever more realistic graphics, with ever more realistic physics engines?

I don't think so. Most people don't want massive screens and don't know how to effectively use more than one anyway.

Game developers are already having problems with the expense and time required to push out the artwork for today's games. There will come a point, and it might even be here with games like Spore, where the industry will focus more on gameplay than having the most advanced games possible. Regardless, there are quite a few laptops that can play Crysis without problem. I linked to one earlier, and it costs under $1300.

/And/ with more people playing games on consoles, the need for high end PCs just to play games is less important. I think there are many factors that are coming together to make desktops less useful.

Of course there will always be those hardcore fanatics that just need the speed that only a big desktop tower can push out, but those numbers are decreasing by the month I bet.

Can you carry your 24'' LCD with you? And that ergonomic keyboard? For me its not the CPU thats the problem, its the ergonomic keyboard and the LCD. I dont care whether its a "desktop" or a laptop connected to an external display acting as a CPU.

edit : the laptop form factor is horrifyingly unergonomic. i refuse to work on laptops for extended periods of time.

Ergonomics. If you want to keep using your computer for years to come, you should learn something about it.

So that your boss knows your actually working.

If my boss only knows I'm working by observing the physical placement of my body then we have more serious issues to worry about than whether I'm using a laptop or a desktop.

Bosses are concerned about productivity, but it is really hard to measure. So they use physical presence as a proxy. The whole concept of working remotely pretty new (~10 years old?), so it is going to take some more time for people to think differently about what it really means to be working.

How about the evidence of actual work produced? The facetime model is seriously broken. It doesn't promote productivity, it actually decreases it when employees figure out how to falsify the results.

http://www.paulgraham.com/opensource.html should be required reading.

Preaching to the choir, I agree with you.

What I am saying is that gathering evidence of actual work produced takes a long time and is hard to do. It might take a couple months to figure out if someone who is only at his desk for 4 hours a day is doing good work on a problem, or merely lazy.