Oh, you bought a DESKTOP!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
61

I am so glad I graduated from college before laptops became ubiquitous. In grad school, a few people would bring them - but they ended up being so distracting to the student by pulling them out of engaging lectures that I’m surprised professors didn’t ban them outright. I see absolutely no practical reason to take notes on a laptop. Noisy, distracting, disruptive and unengaging. I don’t care if you type faster than you write. If you want to transcribe the lecture, then record it with a $10 mp3 player with a recorder on it and do it on your own time.

Colleges are filled with computer labs, and they nearly all have shared server space. If you need to work on a document/paper, you’re only minorly inconvenienced by not having to lug a 10 lb. lap/nettop around with you.

62

Woah. Chill out, man. Since when is allowing or disallowing laptops in the classroom about “rights”?

And, while I can’t speak for others, I can’t do a satisfactory job teaching when students are in their computers. It’s not about grades, it’s about me being able to provide the best learning environment and tools for everyone, and I can speak with experience that [warning, anecdote ahead!] I don’t get the feedback I need to do my job from people who are on computers (obviously, this is likely not the case for courses/subjects where using the computer is a part of the subject matter).

It’s not about control, it’s about ensuring the environment I’m working in is conducive to me doing my job well. Which is in the best interests of the students as well.

I know your post I quoted wasn’t directed at me, but I just want to let you know you’re coming off fairly rude.

63

Ah, I should have specified I choose laptops for personal use. At work I’d never use anything without dual monitors. I love my 22" and 24" widescreens too much, and I spend my days with half the Adobe Creative Suite open at once so I need the POWAH!!!1 of a desktop.

64

The day I bought my laptop was just about the last day I switched on my desktop computer. I use the computer for recreation and hate being relegated to one corner of the house when I want to use it. With the laptop, I can stretch out on the couch, do computer stuff and watch TV at the same time. If it’s nice out, I can drag the laptop outside. Admittedly, now that desktop computers are coming with 27+ inch displays, the tide may be changing. That kind of real estate makes even a 17" laptop look pretty weak. So I could see ending up with both at some point.

65

Most people would be well served by having a nice desktop computer where they can get real work done, and a truly portable platform for when mobility really is needed (such as when traveling, or when you want to look just like those people at starbucks typing away at the next american novel).

66

I used to have a laptop, but I replaced it with a desktop a couple of years ago. I rarely need the mobility unless I’m giving a talk, and then I just borrow one of my husband’s laptops, which happens maybe 3 times a year. I really should just get a netbook, as the netbook + desktop combo is probably best for me.
I prefer a desktop because 90% of my home computer use is gaming, which is vastly better on a desktop. At work, half of what I need to do is writing, which can be done on either, and the rest is manipulation of images, which is much easier the larger the screen is. A desktop is a no-brainer for me.

67

Right.

Again, the optimal setup for 90% of people out there is a desktop + a truly mobile netbook or small form factor laptop.

But instead what a lot of people do, god only knows why, is go laptop only, which of course will ultimately disappointed.

People either get monsters that they hate lugging around, or they find they can’t do what they want to do with their ultra portable device.

68

I have a desktop and a netbook, but i’m not sure i completely agree with this.

If you’re not someone who needs acres of screen real estate, and if you’re not a gamer and you don’t need ultra-fast processing speed and heaps of memory, then a decent 15" laptop is probably perfectly fine for all your computer needs. Small enough to take it when you need it, and powerful enough for just about anything you’re likely to do.

Unless you’re into gaming, you don’t need bleeding-edge graphics, and most modern laptop processors, combined with 3 or 4 gig of RAM, will comfortably cope with email, internet, office work, as well as multimedia stuff like listening to music, watching DVDs or online videos, photo editing and even basic video editing.

A large proportion of my friends are academics, and they all survive perfectly well with laptops as their only computers. They need to be able to take them to school and on research trips, and none of them do anything that would require a more powerful computer. Some have a second, larger monitor at home or at their office for more screen space, but that’s about it.

69

I like my desktop. I never go anywhere anyway.

I had a laptop for a while. It was okay but I couldn’t do much before it would start getting too hot. It made me nervous. I hated the keyboard size and the touch thingy, so I got a mouse but eh, just give me a desktop. I ran Sims 2 for over six hours today and my computer is still cool to the touch.

70

I’ve been mobile-only since 2000 when I bought my first notebook. I got it because I was moving overseas and wanted to be more portable.

At my first job here I had no computer. It was a rural Japanese office and they were seriously old-school. There were 3 shared computers, and you were expected to get on, get your shit done, and get off.

That PowerBook saved my sanity and made getting things done in both my personal and work life about 100,000,000 times easier. I was traveling about 4 days a week, and since I could take my computer with me everywhere I was always able to get saved information and take notes. It doubled as a DVD player for the first couple of places I lived too. Wasn’t worth it to get a TV and player when I wasn’t going to be established in one place for long.

Depending on the job, you might have a computer at your desk, but at a lot of Japanese companies, there will be a bank of shared computers. If you value your sanity, you’ll have a portable, because having to reconfigure one of the fucking shared computers Every. Single. Time you sit down, and decipher how the last user set everything will quickly spike your stress levels.

I take my computer to and from work every day. At home, I sometimes park it on the coffee table so I can work or do other stuff while watching TV or playing games. Other times, I’ve brought it into the kitchen for recipe reference, or YouTube, or whatever.

We have a good desktop computer, but that’s primarily my wife’s. She’s at home more than me, and I have half my life on my notebook. I rarely use it unless I need to use a piece of software I don’t have on my machine. In ten years, I’ve only briefly considered getting a desktop.

I game on a console. I don’t play on my computer 90% of the time. The computer is for work, writing, and reference. When I bought it, it was plenty powerful enough to run just about any available games, but I found that I haven’t really cared about non-console games since Diablo 2 days.

A desktop would be next to useless for me, an expensive waste of space that I might get to use for an hour or so a day when I’m actually home. I’d be stuck in whatever spot we put it instead of being able to move to the kitchen table, or in the living room, or take it to a coffee shop, or on a trip. You guys advocating desktops must be home a hell of a lot more than I’ve ever been in my adult life.

71

Yes, there are defintely times when a laptop comes in handly. If you are just doing word processing, web development and such, the laptop is perfectly fine. It also doubles well as a demo machine, and allows you to work anywhere. (I store all working data on a portable hard-disk so I can work on laptops and desktops. I guess in the future people would be asking, ‘What’s the deal with working from a stand-alone PC when you can just plug into a cloud server?’ etc)

In Singapore, tertiary schools have already gone laptop-based. Some schools want every students to get their own laptop as to cut down infrastructure cost (yes, the students pay for their own laptop. Yes, the school shifted the cost of infrastructure to the students). Predictably, though, more students use their laptop for DOTA and WoW than actual studying, and I think it’s a mis-guided attempt.

There are pros and cons for both laptops and desktops, but the best is to use them…for what they are meant for.

72

Ditto to all of this, in slightly different flavors:

If you’re going to take responsibility for leading any kind of discussion or meeting or group endeavor and making it productive, for example accomplishing some goal like teaching or satisfying a paying audience, you have to influence things in a special way. This could appeal to control freaks I guess, but, you still have to influence things in a special way regardless of whether you happen to like this part. Probably, people whose primary motivation is controlling others are not going to wind up in academia much anyway.

I can’t talk to somebody in quite the same way if they don’t appear to be paying attention to me. If I don’t see their eyes open a bit wider at critical moments, I don’t know if they just “got it” or if I need to keep trying. Lots of valuable things can happen when the student and teacher don’t interact; this is why books work. But lots of things can’t happen when they don’t; this is why people attend lectures. If you want an education without the interaction, use a library and work a bit harder at it; don’t occupy a seat in a lecture hall. Those are for participants.

I find it rude when I am giving my attention to other people and I can’t tell they are giving theirs to me. Especially, I think education in general is most often partly a paid performance and partly a gift to the student. Students who expect to receive the performance as a paid-for service, without regard to their own contribution, as if they had rented a movie, are rude in the extreme.

73

Why the fuck is BigT so emotionally invested in laptops? Does build and sell the damn things or something?

74

Question: If you buy a top of the line desktop for home, and then a lightweight netbook to carry around with you, is there a way to use the netbook to access your home desktop and all of its resources? Of course, I know there are services like GoToMyPC.com, but are they efficient and easy to use in this respect? Using the desktop remotely in this manner, could you do, let’s say, high bandwidth internet activity without getting so bogged down by bottlenecking at the remote site that it isn’t worth it?

75

I have a desktop at home. A notebook for work. A netbook for travel. A iPhone for on the go.

I’m fondest of the desktop. Its just capable of more. I can play WoW on my notebook, but to get the same performance I’m spending a LOT more on a notebook. The notebook is really only long term usable when docked and I have a decent keyboard and monitor on it. Transporting it is nice, but its heavy compared to the netbook - and now I take most of my notes on the iPhone and send them to myself.

76

Is this another version of the “Mac vs. PC” threads?

I can run the original Sims on my laptop with no problem. I never use the touchpad either – I have a mouse.

I liked my desktop (well, when it was new, but it had to be junked, then) but I’m happy with my laptop. The only thing I don’t like about it is having to worry about finding a place to plug it in, but no big deal. I have plenty of power strips around the house. (I rarely, if ever, run it on battery)

77

I always use a desktop as my primary computer - less expensive, more reliable (have had this one for six years) and I love having a big screen. I’ve picked up a cheap laptop to use essentially as a netbook for note-taking and suchlike, and the combination suits me quite well. If I had to drop one, though, that laptop would go bye-bye.

78

I’ve had two laptops in the last 4 years and they both met the same fate: cracked screens. I didn’t even drop them. Repairing the screens cost almost as much as buying a new laptop.

My old desktop monitor, on the other hand, blew a capacitor after 6 years of use. I was told I could fix it by getting a $2 capacitor but I would have to solder it myself. I decided to just buy a new, bigger, monitor for $100, which was still cheaper than repairing the laptop screen.

I’ll probably never buy another laptop again if I don’t have to.

79

Ugh, I HATED it when people brought their laptops to class. There’s not many things worse than sitting next to someone who brought their 17" neon-green alienware laptop to class with them. Besides the frantic clicking and typing, when the CPU fans start up you’ll be lucky if manage to hear anything in the lecture.

I don’t think I would have as much of a problem now, because of the more reasonably sized computers out now. Really though, unless you are in a class that specifically needs it, don’t bring your mobile desktop to classes like College Algebra.

80

It depends on the class and on the person. I always sat at the far edge of the room so I wasn’t in people’s way (and my laptop is quiet and don’t have clackity fingernails), and I took very good notes on my laptop. Especially in art history, where I could not only type notes (which I can actually read later, as opposed to anything I try to write by hand) but could also google up the artwork we were studying and put thumbnails in my notes. Whenever a student missed class, the professor sent them to me to get a copy of the notes, because they were considered to be the next best thing to having been at the lecture. In fact, the she didn’t make me take the final exam, largely because I provided this service. (But also because I’d never scored less than an extremely high A on any paper or exam in her class, and I’d had her for a few classes before.) I had a history professor ask me for a copy of my notes at the end of the semester once, too, and had me write a “how to take notes” mini-essay for her to give to future students.

Of course, I was a non-traditional student in my mid-30s and not some easily distracted 19 year old, too. My professors knew that I was taking notes and not goofing off.

Also, re: eye contact? I have to look down when I write on paper. When I’m typing, I’m looking at the professor (or whatever is being shown on the board/projector) virtually the whole time.

As for the main subject of the thread: I have both and I like both, but honestly since I got a 17" screen laptop I don’t use the desktop much anymore. I would like a larger screen (I do a lot of graphics work) but I can live with what I have. That, and the new house we moved into doesn’t have room for an office, so there isn’t a place to set up my desktop. I use it remotely as a file server for now. :confused: