In Defense of Desktops
I’m here to speak up about a tireless old friend who has been a part of
my life for over forty years now. In
fact, it has been a part of many of our lives for over a generation now.
I’m talking about the desktop computer.
I remember the day when Apple’s personal computer went by the name of “Lisa”. When the Macintosh was the original
all-in-one system and had no color to it.
When you could buy a “tower” or a “mini-tower” for around $2000, and data
was stored on these weird square things called “floppy discs”. When there were numerous variations of an
operating system called “DOS”. When
social media was called “Prodigy” or “CompuServe” or even that new-fangled service
called “America OnLine”.
Looking back, we’d see these things and say that they sucked. But back then, this was seen as “the future”. I should know, because I lived it. This was my world.
A few years back, I had bought not one, but two HP desktop mini-towers
from the nearby Best Buy store for about $435 each. Each have 8 gigabytes of RAM and a 2-terabyte
hard drive along with an AMD processor and graphics. They were a great deal at the time and they’re
still in service today.
Now, in the past, computer systems would continually grow and
expand. Hard drives would get larger,
RAM space would get bigger, processors would get faster, and prices would get
lower. It was the manufacturing version
of Moore’s Law. In theory, what cost me $435 two years ago
should cost $335 today, and paying $435 today should get me something with more
RAM, a larger hard drive, and better processor and graphics that my current
two-year old system.
And yet... I’ve noticed in my recent trip to that same Best Buy store
that computer prices for desktops have somewhat stagnated, and what they offer
have actually gone downhill.
I could not find my “great deal” computer on those same shelves
today. Where once there were rows after
rows of desktop computers, there were only a handful of “all-purpose” desktops,
and none of them could match the RAM or hard drive capacity of my two-year-old
system, and yet they cost slightly more.
The shelves that used to showcase a variety of desktop computers are now
filled with “all-in-one” desktops, laptops, netbooks, and a few super-expensive
“gaming” desktops. Even the gaming
computers, with the obscenely-overpriced processor and the 16GB of RAM and the equally
obscenely-overpriced graphics card that pushed the dollar value over the $1000
mark only had a 1-terabyte hard drive.
It seems that Moore’s Law is no longer applicable at least when it comes
to desktops.
What the hell, computer makers?
Desktops used to be the mainstay of personal computers, and now you’re
treating them like relics of a bygone era.
Keep in mind, of course, that we’re talking about the non-Apple
computers. The almighty Apple has always
lived in its own little world, with their cultist iSheep that will wait in long
lines to buy anything with an Apple logo on it that will be more expensive than
it needs to be. No, screw Apple. We’re talking about HP and Dell and Levono
and Asus and Acer and all the other names that used to fight over which
mini-tower desktop would prevail in the stores.
These are the ones that seem to be giving up on the general mini-tower
desktop system.
I get that the world is moving towards laptops and all things
Internet. Tablets are all the rage, as
well as smartphones and smartwatches and smart TVs to do all the work for dumb
people. Microsoft is tripping over
themselves with the idea of portability so much so that they’re making stupid
mistakes that
are worthy of their own article.
I know what “the dream” is for many of these tech companies. “The dream” is to have a
cheaply-made-but-expensive-to-buy system that will have everything accessible
through the Internet. All the files, all
the music, all the videos, all the photos, and even all the operating programs
would be available through the Internet, so all you would need is a simple
device that would access them flawlessly.
It’s a nice dream. It’s not my
dream, of course, but it still is a dream for someone looking to make money.
However, the Internet is not perfect, nor is it available all the
time. Providers
can fail. Some utilities worker can
cut a fiberoptic cable half-a-continent away, and you’re offline until they
decide to fix it. You can pay for a
service today and tomorrow have it be out of business and all of your stuff is
suddenly gone. Or some greedy corporate
exec will decide that your free or relatively inexpensive online service is “no
longer fiscally viable” and opt to stick you with obscenely-high subscription
packages. (Pay attention, Photobucket!) Malware
and ransomware attacks have been on the rise lately, so imagine all of your
work suddenly locked up in some encrypted nightmare and the host company
decides to not pay the ransom, or there is no ransom and the data is digitally
destroyed. Let’s not forget the
hackers and all the data they collect and sell from things in “the cloud”. Remember “The
Fappening”?
Let’s also not forget that we have the United States Department of
Justice firmly believing that anything... *any-thing*... that is out on “the
cloud” is
theirs for the taking, no warrant needed.
So all of those documents that you put “on the cloud”, all of the videos
and photos and songs that are out on virtual servers, they’re all fair game for
prosecutors to grab without any due process or constitutional safeguards.
To quote the very President who is in the White House because of the
Internet... “it’s a mess.”
This is where the netbook fails.
The netbook is not a laptop. It
may look like one, but it’s nothing like a laptop. A netbook has just enough storage space for
the operating program so you can access the Internet. It’s an Internet-only device and it is only
as good as your connection to the Internet.
If your connection fails, or if you’re in a dead zone with no WiFi, then
the netbook becomes an expensive paperweight.
This is something that Microsoft fails to recognize with their Surface
tablets. Nice looking systems. Expensive
as hell. But if you don’t have a
connection, then they are an expensive form of useless.
And that’s the truly dangerous part of this subject... computer makers
and retailers are blurring the line between a netbook and an actual laptop
computer. If all you’re looking at is
the price, and that seems to be all the retailers want you to see, then you
could be buying a netbook instead of a laptop and not know it.
Oh, but that’s okay, right? If it
has a USB connection, you could always plug in an external hard drive if you
need the extra storage space. And you
can add an external Blu-Ray player if you can’t do the digital download. And you can put in a mouse if you don’t like
the touchpad. And you may need a USB hub
to accommodate all of those USB devices.
But then it’s not portable now, is it?
Or... you can buy an actual laptop computer, which you could operate
without the Internet and has most of those things. Or you can buy a desktop which has all of
those things built-in.
But what about those all-in-one systems?
Those look nice, don’t they? Not
as many cables to worry about. No space
to set aside for a minitower and speakers.
Just a monitor and mouse and a keyboard.
Yes, they look nice. Everything
you need is right there in front of you, all compacted in one device just like
the original Macintosh systems... but minus the plastic iFruit colors. This is perfect for businesses or libraries or
a classroom where space would be a premium.
There’s just one problem: if something in there fails, then the whole
thing fails. If the monitor goes bad, or
the hard drive is bad, or if the RAM goes bad, or if the integrated graphics
card fails, then the whole thing is now an expensive form of useless.
At least with a minitower desktop, that kind of problem would be an
easier fix. If the monitor goes bad,
then you buy a new one. If the hard
drive goes bad, then you can replace it with a new one. If the graphics card fails, then you can have
a new one installed. You can even
upgrade your components without having to buy a whole new system.
And *there* is the catch, my friends.
If the laptop goes bad, or a netbook goes bad, or an all-in-one system
goes bad, then you have to buy a whole new device; not just one component. You can’t just “fix” it. Anyone who is in tech support will tell you that
it will cost you more to fix one of these things than to get a whole new
device. And none of them are cheap.
So it’s reasonable to presume that the gradual winnowing out of your
all-purpose minitower desktop has nothing to do with trying to copy the iCult
of Apple and everything to do with getting the maximum amount of money from the
masses that can’t afford to be part of the iCult of Apple. It’s a dream more of greed than of
technological progress.
Let’s get brutally honest here… computer makers are selling people short
if they think they can nudge out the desktop computer. We still need them! And we need them to be just as competitive as
your latest notebook or netbook or all-in-one system.
Every family that has a home network system through their Internet
provider needs at least one desktop to serve as a base station. If the WiFi goes down, you still need
something that is physically connected to the router to see where the problem
is. Is it the router? Is it the modem? You won’t know if all you have are a home
full of netbooks and tablets and not one device with an ethernet jack to it.
The Internet is not that reliable… at least not right now… so you still
need someplace to store your photos and songs and videos and documents that you
can access readily and are not just stored on some server in Helsinki that was
just compromised by a ransomware program, or put under an expensive paywall by
some greedy corporate exec who thinks that you’re not a “viable model” to
service. The cloud storage model is a
good model for backup in a pinch, but it should not be your first and only
backup!
And because photos and videos are getting larger and more detailed, that
requires far more storage space. And
that’s why I’m upset that the computer makers have stopped making desktops with
hard drives larger than 1 terabyte. The
technology is there today – as of this column’s posting date – to put a
10-terabyte drive into a computer. My
question is, why aren’t computer makers doing it? Two terabytes should be the bare minimum
right now for the cheapest desktop they make, and they shouldn’t even insult
people with a 1TB drive for a gaming system!
If I’m paying over a $1000 for a gaming system I better be paying for
more than just a bunch of overpriced brand names! Yes, I’m talking about you, Intel and Nvidia!
The trend of late has been to provide computers with a 1TB drive and then
throw in a solid-state drive as a backup to that. Again, this is more of a greed decision
instead of a tech one. Solid-state
drives are essentially large RAM chips, which make them expensive as hell. They’re great for a backup of your operating
system and a few key programs, but it doesn’t replace the need for additional
space for everything else you value, like your photos and videos and
music. I would rather pay for a computer
with a 4TB hard drive than one with a 1TB drive and a 500GB SSD. The former is a far better value.
Computer makers should be looking at the automotive industry to see how
to handle changes in tastes and trends. Yes,
in the 1990’s, auto makers, along
with the federal government, launched a slick campaign to get people to buy
those ugly oversized gas-chugging Sport Utility Vehicles. But they didn’t stop making minivans just
because they wanted people to buy the SUVs; nor did they stop improving the
minivan just because the urban assault vehicle was the latest-greatest overpriced
“gimme” toy on the market. They
continued to improve the minivan and add as many of the newest features as they
could. Because the automakers knew that there
still be a need for the minivan, even if the SUV was bringing them the big
money.
This is where the computer makers like Dell and HP and Lenovo and Asus
and Acer should be thinking. Yes, the
trend is portability and all things Internet.
Make things smaller and accessible online. The netbook and Microsoft’s Surface and
laptops and the all-in-one systems are the SUVs of computers. But the desktops are still the minivan workhorse,
and these should not be neglected in the corporate obsession for profit at all
costs.
No comments:
Post a Comment