Desktop or Laptop
 

Mods i wasnt sure where to put this so please move it if its wrong.

well my Pc died over the weekend and i dont think i will be able to bring it back to life. I am typing this thread from here at the office.
Question is what should i replace it with?
Should i use a laptop or desktop.

I like to play games, watch movies and surf the net email etc etc.

I would most likely continue to use Ubuntu or something like that.

Any advise?

nothing linux specific, but more and more i'd say a laptop, there's very little you couldn't do, unless you're addicted to putting funny hardware in it all the time. you want a desktop? buy a dock and a 20" LCD screen and there's a desktop... keep all your long term storage on a seperate device anyway, and there's even less logic in a desktop if you might benefit from the mobility of a laptop at other times anway.

I'll second the laptop notion - my son, an IT specialist, recently purchased his 4th home PC, and I couldn't, for the life of me, convince him to purchase a laptop.

IMHO, it's all about portability. In my home, I can take my laptop anywhere, and have total access to everything on my home network. Yes, even reading in the loo has taken on a new model...

Plus, for recipes, it's on the kitchen counter; listen to music outside or in the shed? There it is...tv too loud for me to concentrate? Into another room. Feel like lying in bed? No problem.

For my next laptop, I'm going to get one as slim & light as possible. One of my daughters has one that she carries in her handbag - an Asus (perhaps Acer, I can't recall.) I bought it for her a month or two after I bought mine (Toshiba Satellite), and was immediately envious because of the weight differential.

I even do intense graphics work on it using a small usb mouse in place of the touchpad.

cheers,

custangro those are cheap.. and Acid, i do have a seagate freeagent 320 GB usb external HDD.

Well, as to the desktop vs laptop decision, there's a question of purpose, of course. Nobody would keep a server on a laptop, for example. :) And even a wireless access point is better kept on a desktop. How do you connect to the Internet?

In general, desktops are cheaper, you can get a decent system for a fraction of price you pay for a laptop. You can build a desktop system yourself or switch hardware pieces easily, while with a laptop you're pretty much locked up with what you bought. With a laptop, your work is always with you, which can be a good thing or a bad thing, however... :) So, it depends...

I'd vote for a desktop, for a few reasons. First of all, considering the hardware, they're cheaper and easier to fix or replace parts when needed - or just upgrade things like audio or graphics hardware or such. If you're moving a lot and need a portable computer, then you wouldn't be asking - a laptop would be your only choice among personal computers. Nowadays, however, people can easily carry their data along them in external harddisks or USB-connected memory keys/sticks/cards/such - or have them on a server and access the data via ssh connection, making it useless to carry around a couple kilograms of old hardware that is prone to break when you hit it at something, and that eats up precious space at your bags. The only sane laptop you can get these days (if you're ever going to carry it along) is as small and light as possible, and typically they're either very expensive or very useless :)

In the end it's 100% a personal matter of taste, but in the world of today I see laptops as too big, too bulky, too heavy, too fragile and too expensive to fill their task as portable computers and data storages. If it's about the storage, portable media weights and costs less and fits into smaller space than a laptop, and if it's about carrying a thing you can use to surf web, make ssh connections, instant-message with people etc., those devices are also cheaper, smaller and lighter than laptops (not talking about cellphones here, they're mostly crap when it comes to "office" use; there are real alternatives, and not just the regular tablet "computers"). Of course you can buy a mac that fits into an A4-sized letter and boast with it, buying along a 24" flat Apple screen and think you're cool, but it costs a lot of money. And since you're asking, money is concerned, because otherwise you'd be buying both laptop and desktop (maybe two) and a commercial solution to share your data between them.

If you don't have a 24/7-online server or a nice small tablet you can use nor can you check your emails from anywhere but your very own personal computer and you do need to do it all the time at places other than your work or home, a laptop is (too bad) your only option I guess. But if you can deal with that (have a shell account someplace, own a couple hundred bucks cheery tablet that can IM, surf, mail and a dozen other things, ...), just get the desktop and be glad when you can actually buy spare parts for it when you need to. Or just save 50% because laptops do tend to be expensive.

Uncle Theodore
I have wireless for my work laptop and every other pc in the house is hard wired.
i connect via cable modem to my Juniper SSG 5 Wireless or my Sonicwall TZ170w
which ever i feel like using at the time