For Most People; It's "Desktop Replacement"

I'm a pragmatist. Back when I was single, you'd never catch me darkening the never locked doors of Walmart. A lot of that has to do with my solidly Asian upbringing which raised me on German cameras, Swiss watches, and British clothing. But, over time, Walmart changed and so did I. Marriage, and children has shaped me into someone who simply does what needs to be done and use whatever will do the job with little regard to pedigree. There are however a few areas that my little side-business affords me relatively high-end equipment. And of course, that means in my hobbies of photography, computers and A/V equipment, I use brands such as Nikon, ThinkPad, and KEF. This doesn't keep me from recognizing the realities of how technologies fit into "regular" peoples' lives though. 

For most people; this is their reality where computers are concerned. They just need something that works and hopefully will last past it's well beyond it's 1 year warranty period. The price of these things are typically somewhere between $400 and $600. Most people are drawn in by ads that start with the magic number of "3". Unfortunately they rarely look closely at the details and that the other two numbers typically put them far closer to the far less comfortable "4", so by the time they get out of the store, they are quite often way too close to the dark and sinister "5" number! Then they notice that the anti-virus is only a 60 Day trial and the included Micro$oft Works isn't compatible with Office. Even worse, that M$ Office listed on the box is only for a 30 Day trial. So, $100-150 later, they are an ambivalent owner of a machine that costs them close to $600 and will probably not last past it's 3rd year. But that's OK.

What's their options? One of these? They're OK sitting in the corner of the family room, but kind of hard to balance on your lap, huh? Which is where the concept of the "Desktop Replacement" came into existence. In actuality they were already around. 

All the way back to the days when Adam Osborne created this monster, the handwriting was on the wall.

Even better, when Bill Moggridge adapted the flat Sharp panel technology into the Grid computer of 1982 at a smokin' $8000....minimum. I actually have one of these Grid cases in my closet. Kinda cool.

The days of the desktop was numbered. Really the concept of the desktop wasn't for home users anyway. Other than "enthusiast", who really wants to open up a computer anyway. Plus the ultimate arbiter of all things home oriented would throw their weight into the fray and the outcome would be academic. When something much smaller, which could be folded up and put away (never mind that no one ever puts them "away") is an option, what do you think your wife will choose to buy? So, the end of the desktop as we know it was just a matter of waiting this laptops became cost effective enough to be a viable option. That number was roughly $1000 (retail). At that point; the laptop computer became a "commodity", Walmart started carrying (and selling) them in bulk and the war was over. It completely didn't matter that a device made to be that much smaller, generating that much heat, that was supposed to sell for that amount, ultimately meant a very cheaply made product! So what if it dies in 2-3 years!?! We'll just buy another!

Thus was born "Black Friday", Green Wednesday, Purple Thursday; it simple doesn't matter anymore. Of course, it wasn't always this way. I remember ordering $2500 for mid-line ThinkPads and $4500 for high-end ones!

"Normal" run-of-the-mill laptops such as this cost around $2000, and couldn't do much of anything compared to full-blown desktops that everyone bought which came complete with CD-ROMs, capacious 340Mb hard drives and huge 15" VGA (640 x 480) tube monitors! 

Laptop computers were stuff of super-spies, like this IBM ThinkPad 701 (Butterfly) used by the bad guys in the 1996 Mission Impossible. You remember; the one where Tom Cruise breaks into the CIA to hack an "unhackable" computer and steals the secrets on an unheard-of Magneto-Optical disk? This $5000+ computer was considered so cool, it was even used in the "Golden Eye" James Bond movie as well! 

Generally you can tell where a product fits in the market by the cost of the the accessories surrounding it. In those pre-2000 days, if you were cool enough to have a laptop, it might very well end up in a Zero Halliburton briefcase (or it can hold stacks of money or bags of cocaine...your choice), or this specially "fitted" leather briefcase by some Italian name I can't pronounce correctly. Not the space of the Magneto-Optical drive so you can read your stolen secrets from the CIA. Now, sometimes people bring me my technological patients in (appropriately) Walmart bags!

But today, the "laptop" computer is the province of soccer moms and part-time ministers like my friend Tony who owns the Gateway NV78 so that can get a little bit of "work" done while he's watching TV. 

Recently, while doing a some work on it, I was really impressed with it's capability. The 17" screen has about the same resolution of the typical 19" desktop screen you can pick up from Best Buy or any other place, and it's rather large chassis easily fits a full-sized keyboard complete with a number keypad. To my surprise, when I opened it up to look at what turn out to be a 320Gb hard drive, there was space for a second one down there as well! Wow, if the buyer wanted to, he/she could put two commonly available 1Tb drives in there and turn this machine into quite a storehouse! Now the build quality pretty much stinks, but it looks good. Of course, you take something that cost $5000 and cut more than $4000 from that ......you can imagine what happened. Technological advances can only do so much. Costs have been cut so much; they can't be made in the U.S. and Japan any more, hence "Made in China". Of course, profit has been slashed to the bone, but ultimately the killer has been build quality. These things, can and do break on a very regular basis. And so exists the current state of modern technology.