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Why laptops shouldn't replace desktops

David Coursey AnchorDesk

Published: 09 Jul 2003 13:31 BST

I was not thrilled last week to see that sales of notebook computers are now larger than the sales of desktops.

Not that I don't understand the attraction. Notebooks are, after all, romantic computing -- in the sense that notebooks allow you to take your computer to someplace more romantic than your office. That is, as long as it's a romantic place indoors -- notebook screens don't work outside, at least not for me.

So I guess taking a notebook to sunny Bora-Bora to write my columns on the beach is out of the question (and my travel budget).

Thanks to the wonders of Wi-Fi, I can now sit here in my easy chair writing this column in my study. I could take it down to the Starbucks over by the shopping centre -- except that the town I live in is so small that our Starbucks (of which there are two) aren't yet "wired" for wireless. But the coffee shop downtown is, and I could head there if I really wanted to get out of the house.

But what if I left my notebook there by accident? While a thief might (or might not) have trouble getting at the data on the machine, one thing is certain: I would have no access to the data. What would this cost me?

That's just one of the downsides of notebook computing -- and, therefore, one of the reasons I don't think portables should replace desktops as our primary PCs.

Of course, it's possible to lose data on a desktop. But I think the average desktop is a much more secure data repository than the average notebook. Why? Besides the omnipresent danger of loss/theft, a notebook is also much less likely to be backed-up than a desktop. And, though I can't prove it, the rough-and-tumble nature of laptop life does seem to do in their hard drives faster than a placid desktop existence.

Microsoft hasn't done much to help in this regard. It would be nice, for example, if when I plopped my laptop on the desk, it would automatically synchronise files with one or more desktop machines, which themselves would background sync among themselves. That way, I'd have copies of my important files living on all my machines; if one machine crashed, I'd still be covered. To me, a computer that never loses a file is real "trustworthy" computing.