Why do you still have a desktop PC?

by William Maher | Thursday 24 November 2011

Tiny desktops are impressive, but make us wonder if they're missing the point about why some people stick with big towers.

In an era of shrinking laptops and phones, owners of PC towers still unashamedly buck the smaller-is-better trend.

So it's with interest that we spotted this tiny PC, the Lenovo IdeaCentre Q180, seen in the video below, which is supposedly the world's smallest "fully-functional" desktop PC. The thing is 22mm thick and when it's in the upright position it is 19.2cm high - shorter than an iPad.

It does make us wonder about the lasting appeal of the PC tower though. For all of the little Lenovo's tricks - including optional Blu-Ray drive, a fancy remote control, and the ability to attach it to the back of your TV - it's clearly a second machine, or an "extra" PC. Lenovo is pushing it as a way to turn your TV into an entertainment hub.

This makes sense in the lounge room (although for all the Q180's features, such as 500GB HDD and DirectX 11 support, we'd still be tempted to go for a WD TV Live instead of a US$369 computer).

As for tiny PCs taking over from towers? Despite colleague Jon Honeyball's argument here , not all of us are holding our breath for it to happen anytime soon.

What do you think? Add your opinion below.

What does your PC look like? Show off your photos here.

See more about: pc | lenovo | ideacentre | q180

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makecoldplayhistory 24 November 2011	In a lot of cases, the desktop PC is obsolete. However, for real work (Photoshopping, coding etc) the productivity of a desktop PC can't be matched. Not even by very high end laptops which lack screen real-estate and the ease of use that a desktop's keyboard and mouse offer. For a growing majority of people, there are now better options than the traditional desktop towers. Comment made about the PC & Tech Authority article: Why do you still have a desktop PC?? Tiny desktops are impressive, but make us wonder if they're missing the point about why some people stick with big towers. What do you think? Join the discussion.
amcmo 24 November 2011	Quite Simple! I put the Mobo in I want, likewise the CPU, Video, Morory, Hard Drive. I end up with the performance I want with premium parts rather than the 'built to a cost' assemblage in most notebooks, or even brand name desktops.
warwolf 24 November 2011	I like having a PC for the kids to use, they can't sneak off into their bedrooms with it. :) We have it in a high traffic area so everyone can see what you're doing!
wattsquilpie 24 November 2011	You wouldn't ask if you saw the size of my hands.
rubaiyat 24 November 2011	Hate pokey screens, truncated keyboards and touchpads that make it feel like you are trying to do needlepoint wearing oven gloves.
monkie 24 November 2011	So far,I have been spot on in regards to PC v Tablet.The tablet is on the way out because smart phones have been trampling them non stop.Who want's an over size smart phone.The PC is the bench mark & will always be in front,showing how it's done.The only place you will probably see a tablet is in resturants, scrolling through a menu or a top shelf magna-doodle.
workingdog 24 November 2011	PC stands for Personal Computer. Or, at least that's what I've been taught since about 1979? PC's are for REAL WORK. That little thing by Levono is a plaything.
Haratu 24 November 2011	If you like to save some money and upgrade computers yourself a large case is very useful to allow working on it. Large devices generally facilitate ease of use, construction and repair. THings that smaller devices and tablets do not allow you to do.
Gregmond 24 November 2011	How well will that thing play BF3 ? Will it run a AMD/ATI 6970 or better video card ? Or dual video cards ? In a Medium tower case I can build a reasonable gaming PC for under $1500 (inc 24" monitor) - show me a laptop that will match it for that price ? Oooh and don't try to tell me xbox/ps3 for gaming - they are crap for decent FPS - mouse and keyboard for the win. Mr Honeyball needs to do some serious work with computers not just use them for email and web surfing, yes a current Smartphone has more grunt than a PC from 10 to 12 years ago, but without decent input/output devices it is still limited in what it can do.
rubaiyat 24 November 2011	Gregmond wrote: Mr Honeyball needs to do some serious FPS with computers... Just correcting your interrupted line of thought.
DrLOK 24 November 2011	After reading Mr Honeyball's article and the comments that followed I realized that nobody takes into consideration the army of seniors with money but poor eyesight! At 70 I build my own computers and it is such a pleasure and challenge. I am not interested in bloody little smartphones/tablets/i Pads et.al to watch TV and twitter. I like my 24/19" combo to Photoshop, play Crysis2 and chess with Chessmaster! Give me my Lian Li stuffed with the overclocked 2600K, Vertex3 SSD and GTX560 OC Ti card any time Mr Honeyball. I should also remind you the vinyl records, valve amplification and perhaps even the CD's. Are they all dead too? Check the Acousticsounds.com, no MP3 recordings there.
pidasms 25 November 2011	I stick to the desktop full size tower for most things, like video, audio and photo editing, backing up, typing multipage articles, recording TV, burning disks, receiving podcasts, using GPS mapping software to record and share tracks routes and maps. The snartphone, netbook and powerful 16" laptop I also own are great for some things when away from the PC, and enable mobile computing, but are no match for full size keyboard and mouse, 24" full HD screen, connected stereo amp with bookshelf speakers with 6" bass drivers, three internal SATA hard drives total 2.5GB, attached 2.5 GB external hard drives as well as a 1TB NAS in raid for backups and remote access to my files. How does John Honeyball expect to do all that with a tablet? Doe he really think I can upload 1GB of stuff to someone elses site without keeping a local backup? Why when a NAS is so Good? Most of the tablets have less processing power and storage than my galaxyS2 smartphone. I looked at Tablets before settling on a netbook-half the price, 10 times the storage and heaps more RAM and processing power. It will edit photos, upload them to the web, type documents, backup to external hard drive,play 2GB MPG2 files and even burn DVDs via external drive, great for travel, but no substitute for the PC at home, especially when it comes to multitasking and editing all but short videos. Cant see any reason to add a tablet-whats it good for?
myklb 25 November 2011	During a recent trip away with a fiddly little smartphone, I decided to buy a tablet, but it was still luxury to get home to my desk. The old black box in the corner takes up about 1/30 of a cubic metre. I've replaced all its guts several times over the years, but what I really love is the 1/3 of a square metre of screen real estate (twin 23") that it drives. I wonder if I can turn the tablet into a graphics tablet for the real PC, so it's still useful when I'm not on the road.
DJ... 25 November 2011	From the comments it's obvious that PC&Tech Auth is not the target market for this little box. But there are still millions of "Consumers" who would like a plug & play experience with a small (perhaps cheap) box to do a specialist task - entertainment. Accept it, PCs are getting smaller and cheaper and being used for multiple purposes beyond playing Hi-Res games and Photoshopping. Now if I can get this box to run Linux I have a special use for it in networked CCTV.
zaphod6502 25 November 2011	I have an Antec P182SE which is classed as an advanced mid tower case. It has extra space for high end 22cm video cards and lot's of room to keep cabling tidy. Due to the large size it requires less cooling and is virtually silent. I've used it over three internal upgrades. As a gaming computer it is ideal. There is a place for all size of pc's. It depends on where/how they are being utilised.
Imagine476 25 November 2011	I am only new to this PC world, 4years and with the help of your magazine I specced and built my own PC 2 years ago and I happy with it. I run 3 screens when and for normal PC work I use 2 screens. One of the major PC problems is heat and a small one is limited in what you can do by it's heat dissipation abilities. I have also had my PC clocked to 4.2 Ghz quite stably in summer. Can a small PC be so versatile. i7-860, Giga MoBo, Noctua NH-D14, Corsair 750W HX-750, HD 6970, 2x1TB HDD, in a big tower with plenty of fans and heaps of air flow. Can you be so versatile in a little package?
diaoling 25 November 2011	Because it is the first time I bought on the http://www.apple2010.com, but also gave me his first gift
mike.macdonald 25 November 2011	Laptops are toys. Yes, lotta grunt etc, but what happens when I want to add more disks locally? What about screen size (it's always about size guys!) What about the keyboard? I use products that map extra functions to the numeric keypad under certain circumstances and to use them I have to use something like ctrl-'insert numeric character here' or something. The first time I tried it I split a gusset! After a few more attempts I gave up and got a docking station, which had batteries in it, and all the connections I was happy with. Don't tell me I can add keyboards with out - I know! But I'm not a wanker and don't sit on the train working, or doing anything else when I'm travelling. I sit in front of the things for long enough as it is!
photohounds 26 November 2011	You can't argue with the usefulness of portable computing - hell, I even do some useful surfing on a puny 4" phone screen :-) When it comes to photo processing I can tell my image software to use 5 out of the 6 physical cores. This is more than enough grunt to get the job done in less than a week I also simultaneously keep a useful desktop to do something else while the other cores slave over hot pixels. When it comes to photo editing a small screen is a wast of time. Here's why (IMO): You can judge "the shot" from a few similar ones in an instant. Not so on a little screen. Time is money and little screens on 'puters waste your time. It doesn't take long to waste $1500 worth of time ... so get a big screen. Some of the Apple ones seem to hit the price/performance sweet spot. Try Dell if you're strapped and Eizo if you're loaded :) Now to 'justify' a 4.7" phone screen so I can me more productive when mobile :-)
Wombat2 26 November 2011	One question Mr Honeywell how did you write this article? I cant imaging you huddled over a smart phone trying to type on those tiny little keys into the cloud, why would you want to? I've been using computers since the early 80's and I've heard these profound prophesies all before. Well we're still here and intend to be for a long time. As for Cloud computing I don't trust it. It's too accessible to those dags from anonymous and other such criminal groups. I like my data where it is - on my PC (which I built) These gadgets are fine in their place but not for real business.
rubaiyat 27 November 2011	mike.macdonald wrote: Laptops are toys. Yes, lotta grunt etc, but what happens when I want to add more disks locally? Even on my desktop I have stacks of external drives. USB 3.0 and FW800 make those almost as fast as an internal drive. Thunderbolt makes it even faster. FW and TB don't put any penalty on daisy chaining devices. TB has some odd rules, but no performance hit. Quote: What about screen size (it's always about size guys!) Macbook Air or MacBooks all have Thunderbolt ports so adding HDDs and screens or any peripherals, will be a push over when there are TB accessories for all the niches. So far we have screens, some HHDs, RAID arrays and banks of graphics processors. TB also lets you use a desktop computer such as an iMac as either a screen or external device. Quote: What about the keyboard? I use products that map extra functions to the numeric keypad under certain circumstances and to use them I have to use something like ctrl-'insert numeric character here' or something. Get a decent OS then. That's the problem. Quote: The first time I tried it I split a gusset! After a few more attempts I gave up and got a docking station, which had batteries in it, and all the connections I was happy with. Don't tell me I can add keyboards with out - I know! But I'm not a wanker and don't sit on the train working, or doing anything else when I'm travelling. I sit in front of the things for long enough as it is! Why do you have a laptop then? I am not a fan of laptops myself but I could imagine making room for one in the future, like a Macbook Air, as the pros largely eliminate the cons.
911TS 27 November 2011	Like amcmo above, a desktop tower allows me to install quality parts that I want, not the cheap trash installed in many laptops. One quality tower box usually sees me through two or three generations of chipsets. I can easily add new gear I want such as the extra HDD, SSD & TV tuner I have added. Next year I will swap out my Bloomfield based mobo/CPU for an Ivy Bridge setup. I also like using a decent size screen (currently a 24 inch 1920 x 1200) with plenty of space for web pages to render (I hate having to scroll all the time) and Windows Gadgets on the side.
petergaskin 27 November 2011	Why do i still have a tower? My wife doesnt even like the thought of using a track pad. She may relent if I attach a mouse to the laptop. laptops being easily carried away are easily stolen. Towers are a bigger problem. Finally, i have watch my daughter's laptops - die relatively quickly - due to over heating and other issues. So my tower - which is now 4 and a half years old, has easily had a replacement viedo card and a replacement monitor added. So much easier to work on towers. The attraction of cheap laptops tho' is almost too much to resist
William Maher 28 November 2011	Hi everyone, we've started posting photos of readers' PCs: http://www.pcauthority.com.au/Feature/280887,what-does-your-tech-man-cave-look-like.aspx The aim is to let you see what gear everyone is using, from graphics cards to mice pads. Hopefully over time, it will give us a new way to understand the thinking that goes into your tech area. You can send us your pics. Just click the link above. Edited by william maher: 28/11/2011 04:25:47 PM
woogaman 28 November 2011	Being a POWER USER. I have more computers than most people have hairs on their heads.(No Offence intended). So the question could be is? How are your tv's,dvd players,set top boxes & a lot of other junk programmed?? I have forgotten how many Hp Ipaqs & radio's I have reprogrammed with the humble PC. Now I go back too the Com 64 days where we lived in a regional area & that's all we got when we were 11 or 12. Because I have lived on a Hybrid power supply for more than 20 years. I have come up with ways & means of doing things. So I was out there before Green became Green. I have rebuilt all laptops for the kids from parts on the net & saved a lot of money & why buy something new because the Jones have better. The Pc will not die just because you have seen an Apple ipad in the latest Transformers movie's. I told my eldest son years ago if I wanted a game machine performance, I would not be stuffing about with an Sony or xbox. Because they are made for the mindless masses. I would build my own Hi power pc that would make the xbox he has look like it's rubbish! Because I am writing this on a laptop & not an ipad means bs too me.I said something about the mindless masses. Just look at the OS called android? The meaning of the word explains it all. So I will not own an Android or become one?? Now that I have seen this article before & read it. I didn't comment on it. But the comments are worth more reading than the first article was in the first place. Now being human the writers of articles are only testing the waters as I would say. But this is the www at work & we will see it change for the best. We are the people & we own the www & not all these Governments who want too silence the 21st Century. Regards Dan
asuperpower 29 November 2011	I can't believe PC Authority made an article like this.
DrLOK 3 December 2011	Mr Maher, would it be possible to obtain the ages of the participants in this discussion and run some stats? From the above I do not believe there will be many at <20 years of age. I am 70.
amcmo 3 December 2011	I'll admit to MANY years past 20. Woogaman, WE don't own the www. Because of the infrastructure needed for it to function, it is either owned by governments or corporations.
rubaiyat 4 December 2011	woogaman to, too, two. Is it that hard?
mrrktomes 13 December 2011	Desktop is the good for use in the home or in the office. We work fastly in the desktop pc. In laptop work is not going to fast. I daily use desktop pc for watch the movie with my family. In laptop we can't watch the movie with family easily.
tonemarky 21 December 2011	PC is for Individual .I like having a PC for the children to use, they can't put off into their rooms with it. We have it in a higher visitors place so everyone can see what you're doing. Big gadgets usually accomplish convenience of use, development and maintenance.
val_Ss 24 January 2012	Is it just me or does anyone else think that if you compared a desktop PC with a laptop PC, each of them having the exact same components, you'd get a higher performance from the desktop PC? I have to admit though, I prefer the mobility that you get with a laptop.
willtell 24 January 2012	val_Ss... I would have difficulty finding a laptop that matches I high end PC. From my experience (and it's very possible that I'm wrong), nearly all laptops have mobile chipsets due to the low power requirements. So although it might be a Core i5 with nVidia 5xx series, but it's the mobile variant of both which will run at far lower clock speeds. Therefore the desktop version would comprehensively best the laptop version in benchmark performance tests - real world and synthetic. rubaiyat... Thunderbolt won't make your drive work faster. It will however allow you to run multiple drives through the same port without a performance penalty due to the very high bandwidth. Whether you're using eSATA, FW800, USB3.0 or Thunderbolt, the limitation in performance hinges on the HDD itself. I've tested all three (except TB Thunderbolt due to the lack of availability) and performance is almost the same. As for the topic in general... The whole point of a laptop is mobility. If you need a computer that you can easily take with you, than a laptop is the answer. Otherwise you can't beat a desktop for flexibility, value and performance. I have a desktop at home and at the office. I also have a laptop at the office. The laptop only gets used if I need to travel or run a presentation/demonstration. 95% of my work is done using a desktop.
petergaskin 24 January 2012	You probably can buy a laptop that matches the power of a desktop pc. In doing so, you lose the benefits of portability and battery life. The fact that lapotps were reducing in price far faster than desktops, while more quickly adopting new technology - trying buying a name brand low end desktop pc with a usb 3 port, this makes the decision as to whether to stay wuith a desjktop that much harder. The All in one desktop pcs are mroe laptop than desktop. retailers seem to be pushing All in ones rather than desktop pcs. Just try buying a desktop pc from Dick Smiths!
aaricevans 26 January 2012	There are many reason of it. It is more weighted than laptop and not easy to transfer but it is more flexible to do work on it than laptop. Also it is in less cost so easy to buy. And thats the reason for it.