Desktops are here to stay!

Let’s be mindful of the fact that a large proportion of smartphone users are really not “power users” in the strictest sense. By this, I mean that ordinary folks use smartphones basically to make and receive phone calls, take and view photographs, send and receive video images, send and receive emails, use “Face Time” or […]

Let’s be mindful of the fact that a large proportion of smartphone users are really not “power users” in the strictest sense. By this, I mean that ordinary folks use smartphones basically to make and receive phone calls, take and view photographs, send and receive video images, send and receive emails, use “Face Time” or the likes of it, watch movies, and play some silly games. When the small screens of smart phones are found wanting, folks opt for phablets, i.e., smartphones with large screen sizes (equal to or greater than 5.5 inches in diagonal).
These applications, together with mobility, are the reasons for the popularity of smartphones. As a species, we humans like to talk. Also, smartphones actually make people feel good. I remember the first few days after I bought my Galaxy Note 4 phablet. The gadget was so beautiful and pleasing-to-the-eye that I couldn’t help admiring it – fiddling with it much more frequently than I did with my earlier handset. (However, after a few days, I consciously suppressed the excitement.) The point is that one can get hooked to these gadgets if the proper self-control is not exercised.
It’s no wonder that the demand for mobile phones is in the billions, and still growing, albeit, less steeply. All these volume spells revenue for the businesses manufacturing the devices. This trend is the apparent reason why some IT experts are predicting the demise of desktops at the expense of smartphones, phablets, and laptops.
It is quite true that fewer people are going to be using desktops (and perhaps laptops) relative to smartphones when compared to the pre-smartphone era. The reason for this is clear. Folks, who, before the proliferation of smartphones, were using laptops and desktops solely for surfing the web and receiving and sending emails, may not need laptops and desktops anymore since smartphones perform the same tasks quite well, and do so with the added advantage of mobility. Another case for the use of smartphones is the availability of applications (apps); of which there are millions between the two dominant operating systems (IOS and Android). There is virtually an app for anything you want to do on the Internet as a consumer. Most of these apps have been developed specifically for smartphones.
In spite of the relative value addition by smartphones as described in the foregoing, desktops do have a place in tech advancement, as certain tasks or projects will always require their use. These tasks include those requiring significant amount of computer power and storage space, graphics/image processing, large-scale document or computer program generation, virtually all type of engineering analysis, accounting, document management, database management, and so on. The sheer size of the monitor is an attractive feature for many. Things just get pretty cluttered on a cell phone, making the system quite awkward, if not impossible, to use in many mission-critical scenarios. (Most studies have shown that larger screens can make you more productive!)
Mr. Victor Rios, VP for Desktop, Workstation and Visual Business at Lenovo, appears convinced of what I am trying to say here: “Desktop users are fully productive all of the time. In other words, desktops are consumption devices, but also creation devices. Laptop users are fully productive, half the time. Laptops are also creation devices but the mobile nature of laptops means that users cannot always be productive when they are being mobile. Tablet and other mobile connected devices are less creative. It is very difficult to create a presentation or respond to a proposal on a tablet device, much less create a 3D render of the latest supercar! So users tend to resort to tablet devices for consumption of information.”
Storage space factors and raw computing power are simply in favour of desktops, as it is just difficult to endow smartphones (and even tablets and to some extent laptops) with the storage space and power you need for many tasks.
Victor Rios’ statement in an interview in September of 2013 is still valid today: “Desktop systems continue to be a core staple in many businesses because of the additional physical security they offer over mobile devices, a lower overall cost of ownership, the extra power and storage that some users will need and the social impact of leaving work at work.”
Finally, David Goward of A1 Computers and Service is more emphatic on why he thinks desktops cannot be matched by laptops, tablets, or smartphones: “Your phones, tablets, net-books, laptops, or the new ultra-books all have an inherent set of design flaws and compromises. These are the processors power, screen size, battery life, and let’s face it some of them are downright expensive.” Goward gives some reasons why he thinks the desktop computer is here to stay: they are less expensive for the disk storage they provide, they are more powerful, you can plug a ton of peripherals into desktops, you get larger screens with desktops, you can use your desktop to play computer games, fixing a desktop is easy and cheaper, you can use software more efficiently on a desktop, desktops are more secure and they last longer. Desktops may not be disappearing soon.