P_C or Laptop

Mac laptops less reliable than ASUS, Sony notebooks

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2521740/apple-mac/mac-laptops-less-reliable-than-asus--sony-notebooks.html

That surprised me, for I have a lot of respect for Apple hardware. They're not indestructible, but I expected they'd be pretty close to Toughbooks for reliability. Guess I was wrong. SquareTrade says they're in about the middle.

I really like the Apple MagSafe power connector. The power connector has been a pain point on probably half the laptops I've touched. Apple really did that one right!

And note: Laptop failure rate is on average 20.4% at three years. (I couldn't find a similar failure rate study on desktops.)

Gartner Research: "A locked and well-managed desktop PC can cost 43% less to keep than an unmanaged one." ~Desktop Total Cost of Ownership: 2011 Update, Gartner RAS Cor Research Note G00208726, Federica Troni, Mark A. Margevicius, Michael A. Silver, 16 November 2010, RV2A612011

(My experience has been consistent with this.)

More:
https://www.google.com/webhp?q=laptop%20vs%20desktop%20cost%20of%20ownership#q=laptop+vs+desktop+cost+of+ownership

itguy08 wrote:

cdevidal wrote:

The useful life of my desktops has been around 10 years. The useful life of my laptops has been 2-3. I've got one limping along on my desk that has at least 15 physical problems that was built about the same year as the desktop on the floor which only has a USB port issue. As long as I keep the laptop in the same place it should be OK, which of course negates the advantage of a laptop. I had to buy many small components (USB sound card, USB network card) to work around the hardware failures of the laptop. It's useful, but not for much longer.

Buy a better laptop then. Still rocking a 2008 Macbook Pro, the firs unibody model.

Yeah, about my Macbook. Early 2009 13". Crack down the LCD. Also has a crack in the base plastic (which does not make it unusable, only cosmetic.) It was a gift to me in that condition because they know I like to make old hardware tick. I have to connect it to an external monitor to use it, because replacing the screen is just too darned expensive, which was one of the points I made here.

And it was likely cracked in the first place because of one of these six reasons.

You're going to have a hard time convincing me Macs are indestructible, because I've seen too many of them fail. I used to work (many moons ago) at AOL tech support for Macs. (OSes 7 and 8, if that tells you anything.) In the interim time I've seen friends who must use an external mouse because their trackpad failed and replacing the pad costs too much, which is why I said what I did.

I've even gone to using Toughbooks, which have the lowest failure rate in the industry, when I purchase laptops for friends and family, and even those have failed me. I'm going to visit my mom and will work on her Toughbook. Had a failed hard drive and will continue to having a failing screen because replacing laptop parts is more expensive.

Face it, laptops have a higher cost of ownership for at least six reasons. (Are you getting the theme here?) :B

itguy08 wrote:


Buy a better laptop then. Still rocking a 2008 Macbook Pro, the firs unibody model. All items work 100%. Been dropped once or twice, I replaced a few hard drives and batteries along the way but other than that, it's solid. It was a desktop replacement for many years, so it has not lived an easy life.

Yes, Macs are expensive but like everything else you get what you pay for.

That being said, I've got both - laptop and a 27" iMac. Different use cases for all of them. Editing photos and videos, other high end work, the iMac, hooked up to a 24" Samsung monitor any day. Portability the laptop any day!

I have a 2008 aluminum MacBook of similar vintage, and it has seen some pretty extreme usage through my college days. The battery died in it (easily replaced), and the HDD was upgraded a couple times. It still runs the latest version of OS X (Yosemite), so I still have it by my bed, although even with 8 gigs of RAM, it still is sluggish at times. However, my home directory has essentially not been changed since 2008, which is pretty good, as my Windows machines, I've had to usually rebuild them every few years due to some glitch in the OS, so I have to fetch all my files from backup and create a new home directory.

This year, I'm looking to get a desktop/laptop upgrade, so I probably will just buy a 13" MacBook Pro, which is basically the same shape and size as my old one, except with seven years of improvements, and a better screen.

cdevidal wrote:

The useful life of my desktops has been around 10 years. The useful life of my laptops has been 2-3. I've got one limping along on my desk that has at least 15 physical problems that was built about the same year as the desktop on the floor which only has a USB port issue. As long as I keep the laptop in the same place it should be OK, which of course negates the advantage of a laptop. I had to buy many small components (USB sound card, USB network card) to work around the hardware failures of the laptop. It's useful, but not for much longer.

Buy a better laptop then. Still rocking a 2008 Macbook Pro, the firs unibody model. All items work 100%. Been dropped once or twice, I replaced a few hard drives and batteries along the way but other than that, it's solid. It was a desktop replacement for many years, so it has not lived an easy life.

Yes, Macs are expensive but like everything else you get what you pay for.

That being said, I've got both - laptop and a 27" iMac. Different use cases for all of them. Editing photos and videos, other high end work, the iMac, hooked up to a 24" Samsung monitor any day. Portability the laptop any day!

I switched to an iPad a couple years ago and have never looked back.

We actually have both - tower / monitor for home and a laptop for travel.

I do a lot of photo work and need the monitor here at home for that when doing final work on images.

We have a Sony Vaio laptop with a Sata hard drive (real fast data transfer and processing speeds). Paired with a e-Sata (external hard drive) 2 TB, it is super fast as far as saving, storing and viewing pictures and videos. If you just surf the net, ie.. check e-mail, online banking, etc.. the new chromebooks are the new rage. We just picked one up for $300, that is the high end, and we love it. It just allows you to access anything you need to do on the internet. The kids can do homework on it as they save their docs from school to their google cloud account. You can get a chrome book for as little as $150. USB 3 is the new high speed data transfer standard that you might think about when buying a new computing device. You have to pair this standard with another USB 3 device(external hard drive) to benefit from this higher speed.

quoyfab wrote:
I believe that with the exception of office/workstations that desktop PC's will follow rotary phones and land lines.

I love my laptop, the wife is a devout tablet fan.

Cool. Show me a tablet with four CPU cores, 8GB of RAM, 2TB of RAIDed hard drives, a full-sized clicky keyboard, a scroll mouse, and two 25 inch monitors, that costs less than $500. I've got some work to do.

:W

Been in the IT field since 1997. I don't understand those saying laptops are as durable as desktops, and less expensive? On what planet? :h

I have gotten several good used off-lease business desktops for home use for around $100 off CraigsList. They run very well, especially if it's an ex-business model. Business-class machines tend to be built more sturdily. Oh I might have to throw more RAM in, but that's so easy I walked my mom through it over the phone, and costs around $50.

Laptops are more expensive -- in both initial and ongoing costs -- for at least six reasons:
1.) They're made with smaller, thinner, lighter parts, which are more fragile.
2.) They're almost always man-handled and not stationary, thus necessitating more frequent repairs.
3.) Their parts are less universal; A Dell desktop video card can be placed into an HP desktop, but because laptop parts are less universal, they cost more. Ever price replacing a laptop power socket? $60-100 easy. I once tripped over a laptop power cord, and spent about that much for the part and about an hour or two replacing it. By contrast a power supply on a desktop can be swapped for around $20, and it can be a quick DIY project. I walked my wife through it over the phone :B Just remove the cables and put the new ones where you pulled the old ones. Hard to beat a job so simple.
4.) You get more bang for your buck out of a desktop since the components are developed there first and only later developed for a laptop; So desktops get CPUs first, hard drives first, etc. Thus a laptop side-by-side with a desktop of the same age is going to be slightly slower, have less capacity, etc.
5.) Laptop repair requires more specialized knowledge. Any parts monkey can swap an LCD desktop monitor, but you have to find a specialist for a broken laptop screen.
6.) And expansion tends to require more expensive components.

The useful life of my desktops has been around 10 years. The useful life of my laptops has been 2-3. I've got one limping along on my desk that has at least 15 physical problems that was built about the same year as the desktop on the floor which only has a USB port issue. As long as I keep the laptop in the same place it should be OK, which of course negates the advantage of a laptop. I had to buy many small components (USB sound card, USB network card) to work around the hardware failures of the laptop. It's useful, but not for much longer.

The only real advantage of a laptop is the portability. The price of laptops certainly has come down a lot, so the cost advantage of a desktop isn't what it used to be. Still, I'd guess the total cost of ownership of a laptop to be to roughly 2-3 times that of a desktop? Ballpark guesstimate.

I've had many a laptop and desktop fail in almost 20 years being in the business, but I'd much rather replace parts in a desktop, for the sake of both my wallet and my time/energy/sanity.