Last year saw sales of laptops surpass desktops for the first time ever. And that trend is unlikely to be reversed anytime soon as notebooks see their price ever-decreasing and power ever-increasing to either match or overtake desktops. Could this result in the death of the desktop as we know it?

I am one of the few people I know not to have yet made the switch to using a laptop. I’ve never even used one having stuck to my guns in believing that having a powerful desktop PC in my living room is more a boon that having a portable laptop would be. But 2009 could be the year I make the change, especially as my desktop has seen better days.

The thing is, for someone such as me, who needs a computer for very general day-to-day tasks, writing, blogging, emailing, and listening to music, there’s no need to own a super-powerful, bang up-to-date system with the latest processor, graphics card and whatnot. Instead, I’m better off sending extra money on getting more ram and a bigger hard drive. Which a laptop can provide without any trouble.

And in fact, a laptop can provide many benefits over a desktop that are becoming increasingly important. The portability is obviously key, with a notebook providing someone with the capacity to take their work anywhere. And with Wi-fi becoming standard in many public places, the Internet is also becoming an entirely flexible and portable resource.

What’s definitely helping sales of notebooks is the increasing range of low-cost machines such as the Asus Eee PC and the OLPC XO series. While not suitable for everyone, it has brought the opportunity to own a PC to a whole new crowd.

With the stock of laptops increasing, there could also be a shift in terms of territorial importance in computer sales. While the biggest desktop manufacturers, Dell and Hewlett-Packard, are American companies, an estimated 80 percent of laptops are manufactured in Taiwan.

As Reuters suggests, the only real market keeping the desktop alive is that of the PC gamer. To play the latest and greatest games you need to have an ultra-fast machine and laptops just don’t do the job. Having said that, PC gaming is also becoming somewhat of a niche in the face of powerful games consoles such as the PS3 and Xbox 360.

I don’t think the desktop will completely die for some time yet but all the signs are pointing towards that day eventually arriving. Until then, expect to see laptop manufacturers attempting to speed the transition up and desktop manufacturers innovating in an attempt to stage a comeback.

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 at 8:55 pm under Notebook, Opinion, Technology.

Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
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