Laptops Taking Over Computer Market

I just bought my wife a laptop computer for Christmas. We promptly hooked it up to a router for wireless connectivity, and we've been enjoying it non-stop, including the kids!

I figured I was behind the times on this, but perhaps I'm just part of the growing trend toward computer mobility, as today's Los Angeles Times suggests:

After decades as the computer of choice for homes and businesses, the desktop PC is being pushed to the scrap heap by its smaller, nimbler sibling: the laptop.

They've been around since the early 1980s, but portable computers are finally taking over. Last year, for the first time, American consumers bought more of them than desktops. Sixteen of the 20 bestselling PCs on Amazon.com this holiday season were laptops.

U.S. corporations are expected to make laptops the majority of their computer purchases in 2008. BNSF Railway Co. already has. Of the 4,000 Dell Inc. computers it bought last year, 60% were laptops, so rail inspectors could file reports from their trucks and other employees could work from home.

"They were in a totally tethered world, and now they have no tethering at all," said Jeff Campbell, the Fort Worth company's chief information officer.

Faster, cheaper technology is behind the most sweeping change the computer industry has seen in a generation. Buying a computer that can be spirited away in a briefcase or backpack no longer requires a big sacrifice in performance, storage or money.

Through common devices called docking stations, users can connect their laptops to external monitors, keyboards and mice while seated at a desk, then eject them and work from a coffeehouse, library, airplane or living room.

The surge in laptop sales is also fueled by the pervasiveness of wireless networks in homes and public hangouts. Having Internet connections everywhere makes laptops much more useful.

Parents and kids consult laptops for quick facts at the dinner table as they once did with encyclopedias. Cocktail-party hosts fire them up to amuse with the latest YouTube video or television show. Workers plop them down on the road and connect to the office without missing a beat.

And sales are expected to accelerate as devices such as the iPhone and tablet PCs pack more power and utility into ever-smaller packages.

"It's not really a computer anymore," said Dag Spicer, senior curator of the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. "It's a companion, it's your memory, it's your teacher and your entertainer."

I mostly work on a desktop, at work and in my home office. I do like the mobility of the laptop around the home. This last couple of days I've been blogging at the dining room table, where I can sit with my boys and watch movies at the same time - family entertainment multitasking!

I like this section from the Times' piece, on the coffee shop etiquette for notebook computers:

With their newfound popularity, laptops are doing for computing what cellphones did for talking - bringing the activities into public places. With that, new social norms and rules of etiquette are emerging.

At Ritual Coffee Roasters cafe, a mecca for laptop users in San Francisco, owner Eileen Hassi hired an electrician last spring to disable the electrical outlets. Regulars at the coffeehouse were spending so much time riding the free wireless network -- as many as eight hours at a stretch - that patrons who wanted simply to sip their lattes couldn't find seats.

You're welcome to work on your laptop here, Hassi explained, "until your battery dies."

That's pretty good!

Photo Credit: Jakub Mosur, Los Angeles Times