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SAN FRANCISCO—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 best-selling PCs on Amazon.com this
holiday season were laptops.
US
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 percent 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,
Texas,
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,
California. “It’s a companion, it’s your memory, it’s your
teacher and your entertainer.”
For
something celebrated for being light, the laptop sure is
propping up the computing industry. Analysts say US laptop
sales rose 21 percent in 2007 to 31.6 million, while
desktop sales slumped nearly 4 percent to 35 million.
Overall, laptops are still underdogs, but they’re expected
to account for the majority of US computer sales in 2008
and of worldwide sales in 2009.
By 2011,
research company IDC expects portable computers to
comprise 66 percent of all corporate PCs sold, up from 40
percent in 2006, and 71 percent of all consumer PCs sold,
up from 44 percent.
Vicki
Halphide, a mother of two in Laguna Niguel, California,
bought her first laptop, an Apple Inc. MacBook, in
November. As she moves around her house, she carries the
Mac under one arm and her 10-month-old, Danielle, under
another. It lets her perform many of the tasks that the
Dell desktop sitting in a bedroom does, but in new places:
she does her shopping while standing in the kitchen and
checks family finances in the living room.
“It’s
easier to find more stolen moments,” she said.
The
computing industry has buzzed about a laptop revolution
for decades. But portable computers were slow to gain
popularity because they weren’t very portable. One of the
first on the market, in 1982, weighed in at 23.5 pounds,
nearly three times the average weight of today’s laptop.
They also didn’t perform well compared with the desktop,
yet cost more.
The
computer and semiconductor industries typically put better
components in desktop PCs, then scaled them down for
laptops. By about 2002, however, laptops began to hit a
design wall—the faster chips and bigger hard drives were
burning up too much energy.
Internal
fans could not keep laptop components cool enough. Despite
its name, the laptop got so hot it couldn’t be used on
users’ laps.
But that
all began to change in 2003 when Intel Corp. introduced
its Centrino technology: a microprocessor and
multifunction chips built specifically for the portable
computer.
Although
not as fast as desktop PC processors initially, Centrino’s
claim to fame was that it came with a wireless Internet
connection in the core hardware, making laptops better
able to jump on the Internet anywhere there is a hot spot.
The number of hot spots, many free, has exploded in the
last few years.
With users
liberated from having to plug their laptops into phone
jacks, the promise of mobile computing finally was
realized. Computer manufacturers began to pressure
component makers to make products that used less power,
and they responded with technological breakthroughs that
let laptops run programs quickly without burning too hot.
But price
has been the biggest driver in the jump in laptop sales.
Desktops always have cost less than laptops, because it’s
more complicated and more expensive to make compact
components for a small machine. In the last four years,
though, the price difference has narrowed. Although
desktop-computer prices have remained relatively flat
(buyers today get more bang for their buck), the average
price of a laptop has fallen more than 20 percent as the
worldwide market for laptops has opened up and more
competitors jump in. Already, some bare-bones laptops can
be found for less than $500. The nonprofit One Laptop Per
Child initiative is one of several groups trying to bring
the price of a portable computer down to $100.
With their
newfound popularity, laptops are doing for computing what
cell phones did for talking—bringing the activities into
public places. With that, new social norms and rules of
etiquette are emerging.
At Ritual
Coffee Roasters café, 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.”
Although
laptops have become the growth engine for the computer
industry, the line continues to blur between phones and
computers. Hand-held devices such as Apple’s iPhone are
allowing people to do things they could never do before on
a phone, such as listen to music, watch videos and easily
surf the Web.
The desire
to slim down has led computer makers to create a
subsection of laptops known as mininotebooks or
sub-notebooks. Sony Corp., for one, makes a $2,499 version
for frequent business travelers that weighs 1.2 pounds and
features a 4.5-inch screen. (On the flip side, for
programmers and video gamers there are laptops known as
desktop replacements, or “luggables,” that feature huge
processors and screens as wide as 20 inches. They weigh as
much as 18 pounds.)
And then
there’s the tablet PC, a hand-held computer with a touch
screen that connects wirelessly to a network.
Manufacturers have experimented with the tablet PC over
the years, but they’re making another push to market them
to the sales, education and health-care fields. Dell
recently introduced the Latitude XT, its first tablet PC
for less than $2,500, which provides more than nine hours
of battery life.
Laptops
could get so small that they become something else. Japan,
for example, had its own laptop craze several years ago.
But the country is already bypassing the traditional
computer as a hub for digital life. For the last five
quarters, computer sales overall have slumped as Japanese
consumers have turned to souped-up phones and other
devices that plug directly into printers and TVs.
But for
now, laptops and consumers are in the honeymoon stage. | 
