I have been looking around for a cheap computer to replace our old Win XP tower that has started acting flakey. I don’t need anything fancy, all this computer is used for is email and a little word processing, it’s just getting old. So I started looking.
To my amazement I can go to pretty much any major retailer and get a usable laptop for around $300. But if I want a bottom of the barrel desktop computer the best I can do is somewhere around $400. It seems to me that the cost of a case plus processor, memory and hard drive for a desktop would be worlds cheaper than case plus display, keyboard, touchpad, processor, memory and hard drive for a laptop.
So, If they can sell a laptop for $300 why can’t they sell a basic desktop, again sans peripherals, for something like $200? Is there just no market?
I’ve seen them. Here’s one from Fry’s at $244. When I bought my first desktop (as opposed to having inherited them) in 2004, it was $199, which corresponds to about $240 today. ETA–and that one I linked to comes with Windows 7. The one I bought had some flavor of Linux installed that I had to overwrite with a copy of XP.
Laptops in the $300 range tend to be netbooks rather than true laptops - they use Atom processors and limited graphics chipsets and aren’t good for much beyond running a browser and the lower range of office apps. They usually come with the Starter version of Win7, an OS so stripped you can’t change the desktop pattern or connect to a standard network.
Laptops and bottom end desktop systems run Celeron, i5 and up chips. Most come with at least Win7 Home. They typically start with RAM and HDD sizes above the maximum size found on netbooks, and screens at least one size bigger than netbook 10-inch. That’s where all the price differences come in.
If you feel really adventurous you could always buy a Raspberry Pi. <£30, all in. Not exactly top of the range, of course, and you would have to install a particularly exotic brand of Linux on it by your lonesome to get it working, but still, if you just want a bog standard computer without peripherals, and for a low price, it might be fine.
That’s not entirely true. Here’s a $280 laptop at Best Buy with a Celeron and Windows 7 Home Premium. Not the most powerful thing but certainly not a netbook. That’s not even Best Buy’s cheapest laptop; you can save a few bucks if you get an AMD E-1, which I’m guessing is a Celeron equivalent.
If you want an i3, you have to jump up to $380.
I went shopping for a desktop a while back (for someone else) and ended up telling them to buy a laptop instead, after coming to the same conclusion as the OP. At the low-low end, desktops carry a $100 premium over an equally crappy laptop, and I have no idea why.
Consider going with a laptop even if you actually want a desktop. Assuming you get one with USB (which they all have) and some form of video out (most offer VGA, HDMI or DisplayPort) it’s easy enough to plug a monitor, mouse and keyboard into it and have a nearly-complete desktop experience without giving up floorspace to a metal box filled mostly with air. And if you ever need to hit the road, just unplug a few cables and take it along.
The only things you’ll miss out on are extra drive bays and PCI-based peripherals, but USB will take care of all your expansion needs. Get one with USB 3.0 and you’ll be ready for anything.
I gave up on desktops years ago. Now I run a dual-monitor development environment on an 11.6" Core i7 laptop and (aside from the lack of USB 3.0) I couldn’t be happier with it. When I travel I just stuff it in the side pocket of my carry-on and my work goes with me.
When I was looking for a new computer, I briefly considered desktops and All-In-Ones, then found they were similarly priced to laptops of the same specs, although the desktops had a larger monitor. I know the desktop versions of parts (eg 660 video card) are more powerful, but it’s still odd that the price difference is so low. Maybe laptops sell more so there’s economy of scale? I wonder if desktops are on the way out.
Lower expectations for display quality on a netbook than on a low-end desktop;
Wi-Fi chip costs decreasing;
Desktops need larger power supplies;
People buying low-end laptops use them for light duty such a Web browsing and word processing;
Gaming is done mostly on desktops, so even home desktops need more processing power.
10-15 years ago laptops were aimed at the business/professional market, which presumably could afford to pay more than home users, and now it’s the reverse;
Most users tolerate small screens, slow processors and small disk drives on laptops. Mainly because they recognize that slow processors are a trade-off for improved battery life, small screen for size and weight of the laptop, etc. And partly because low-end laptops (especially netbooks) are generally purchased to supplement desktops, not replace them.
For desktops, most users don’t care about energy efficiency (because they don’t run on batteries). Users expect decent graphics performance and generally better specs out of a desktop.
High-end full-featured laptops, generally 15" and larger, are often labeled as “desktop replacement” laptops. These can be quite expensive - it’s easy to spend >$2000 on one.
I think it’s probably as simple as this - the laptops compete more directly with the tablets (iPad etc.). The tablets being extremely popular now, and the fact that for many people, they do everything they need, are smaller, more portable, and the battery lasts longer, there’s just no reason to own a laptop. For many people. So laptops are taking a beating in the market, and sale prices are being adjusted to reflect that.
Desktops do not compete as directly against tablets, so there’s less reason to drop prices.