Poor old desktop PC, sitting unloved in a dusty corner

I am sure that the use of Laptops is a fashion and is not driven by practicality. Using a Desktop PC with a keyboard firmly positioned on the desk and large monitor located at head hight is not likely to give back problems, wheras bent over a laptop located on your knees which moves as you use it will. My Desktop tower unit has had a larger hard drive installed, a bigger monitor and additional RAM. It was upgraded from Windows XP to Windows 7 64bit and despite its age is still perfectly adequate for my needs. It is neither practical or cost effective to do any of these things with a Laptop PC. There is also the problem that Laptop batteries have a life and if it is still possible to purchase a replacement when they fail, it will certainly not be cheap. Whilst I accept that a Laptop is portable and a Desktop PC is not, I would suggest that a Tablet is a much better solution if portability is your criteria, with a Desktop PC also available for when you wish to do work that is not as convenient or possible on a Tablet.

Well there’s not much support for laptops in this Conversation, so I hope Which? will take note and keep their eyes on desktops well into the future. The serious world has not ‘moved on’ and just because the newer IT developments give portability, and are more image-making perhaps, it doesn’t mean we are all going to forsake our trusty heavy-weight machines in favour of the racing model. We have a laptop in the house [somewhere] but everything we do is on desktop PC’s, and I don’t think there is anything better for creating and processing documents, spreadsheets, reports, web browsing across a number of sites, and all the other functions mentioned by previous contributors. We don’t have smartphones or tablets because when we are ‘on the move’ [as important people say] we are usually in the company of each other or friends or relatives and it is not appropriate to use a gadget. Likewise, we cannot see that any communication devices have a place in the bedroom or the kitchen or the sitting room. We also think our PC’s should be shut down no later than 7 pm [I probably shouldn’t have written that – I expect somebody’s going to dig up one of my late night posts from a very old conversation; it’ll be the exception that proves the rule!].

My last desktop PC stopped working eight years ago. I gave it to a technically minded friend to see if she could get it working and after several false starts where it worked for a couple of hours before crashing, I gave up on it and bought a laptop. This was the best decision I ever made. Instead of being isolated in the study/spare room on the desktop, I could sit anywhere in the house – except the lavatory – and use the laptop. Instead of spending a couple of hours a week on the PC, I now spend more than a couple of hours a day on the laptop. About the only thing I miss the larger screen PC for is large spreadsheets, but as time goes on, my spreadsheets become fewer and smaller.

I only have one laptop, no smart phone or tablet, unlike most of those posting in this discussion. I would not have a smart phone because the screen size would be useless for me. If all of you multi device keepers had to select only one device to keep, which one would you choose?