I own a Mac G3, and use a Dell at work. I used to own an Apple II+ back around the end of the 18th century (or, so it feels). Why is the computer I have today only slightly smaller than the one I owned 20 years ago? I mean, it seems like you can get a laptop computer, monitor and all, that’s just as powerful as most desktops, yet they’re less than half the size of a desktop computer. Where’s this discrepancy coming from?
The size difference is a combination of cost and features. If you price comparable systems (chip speed, storage capacity, etc…) for laptop vs. desktop you will notice that the laptop is invariably more expensive, sometimes by a significant factor. It costs money to make electronics smaller by the kind of factor that we’re talking about, so in general to keep desktops more affordable, they don’t make them quite as small.
Second is the feature aspect. Typically a desktop machine will include a whopping huge hard drive, and two, three or more other portable storage media drives (CD-ROM, DVD, floppy disk, zip disk, etc…) along with various graphics cards, modem and/or network cards, the list goes on and on. Plus there’s usually room in the case to add a few more items of your own choosing after you get the thing home.
A laptop machine is not designed to be quite as expandable. Typically there is only room for one type of drive at a time in the casing, though there has been significant improvement in modular design so that you can switch out drives if the need arises. It also usually has a smaller screen that is typical for a desktop. Again size (and weight) constraints win out in the design considerations.
Another factor is cooling. Leaving space in the case allows better airflow, which allows for faster processors that consume more power. Desktop processors are typically faster and cheaper than processors meant for laptops, which are specially designed with power saving features.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there was resistance to buying a computer that is too small, since one might feel that he’s not getting enough for your money.
Of course, you can buy a pda that is faster with a lot more storage than your Apple II. I think a lot of design is fitting as much as possible into a standard form factor, not shrinking the box.
On the PC side, you can get cases in all shapes and sizes. Some PC motherboards are really small. With modern, fast processors cooling is a real issue - just look at the size of the heatsinks. For general use PCs, you might want to look at Shuttle systems.
A modern PC is fully compatible with the original IBM PC, which was produced not long after the old Apple II. You might run into problems with some of the original PC cards since they expected a PC running at 4.77 MHz and the bus speed in your computer (if it even has an ISA slot) is 8 MHz. However, the PC case is still basically set up to handle full length cards. Full length cards used to be very common. Now they are almost (but not quite) extinct. Most PC cards will fit into what is generally referred to as half length, and some of the smaller PC cases will specify that they are only suitable for half length cards.
Room for a few full length cards, plus the power supply, plus the motherboard, equals the size of a PC case.
If you want to put it into perspective, your desktop PC is fairly close to the processing power of a cray supercomputer from the days of the Apple II, and that thing was a heck of a lot larger than the case you have now. And there’s a good chance your coffee pot has a microchip in it that is more powerful than the old Apple II.
Laptops don’t generally come with interchangeable parts, but PC/104 computers do. The typical PC/104 case is about the size of a brick. These computers are typically used for embedded controllers, so they tend to be small but expensive. A small brick sized computer isn’t out of the price range for most folks though, so if you want small, there’s one option.
Yes, you can get what are called “low form factor” machines, that combine (most of) the benefits of a desktop with (some of) the benefits of a laptop. For example, the Dell GX150 has a smaller board, a laptop CDROM drive, and mostly on-board features. OTOH, it rivals toasters in heating capacity ('cause it’s so small), and upgrades are restricted to half-height boards that might (say) end up being slightly more expensive, whilst still causing the targeting reticle to disappear in your favourite game. :smack:
Your computer is compatible with 99% of the stuff from the Pentium era onwards, and with most of the stuff from the 386 era even. You ever have to look for a fender for an '83 Dodge Foobar? Be happy nobody has to look for floppy drives for a '99 model IBM Aptiva.
You can buy smaller footprint computers if you want to, but you can’t expand them much.