The Tlog - a technology blog

From reading other blogs and sites, especially (but not only) those related to technology, I am increasingly feeling like a dinosaur, for a reason: I don’t have a laptop. I just have two desktops and a server.

And sometimes I feel like I’m almost the only one in the world.

Don’t believe me? Read an aggregator of tech blogs like Planeta Asterisco at any time — either now, 3 months ago, 6 months ago, and probably 6 months from now as well — and you’ll find many people posting about their new laptop, the laptop they’re considering buying, the compatibility problems they had between a particular Linux distro and their laptop, how their new MacBook looks so good :), and so on. This is not just a couple of people, either, but a lot of them.

I virtually never see anyone posting about a desktop system. When someone does, it’s invariably about an old one, bought several years ago; when they buy a new system, it’ll obviously be a laptop.

Am I a dinosaur? Or an alien from Mars? I don’t have a laptop. I don’t prefer laptops.

I’ve had laptops during several periods of my life, always company ones, and since I now work at home I don’t have one. I wouldn’t mind having one, but it’s not a priority at all; I’d buy one, perhaps, if I was lighting cigars with €500 notes. It’s useful if you travel a lot (which I don’t), but as a primary work machine? To me, no way.

You see, the thing is this: no matter how technologically advanced laptops become, they’ll always have a problem: size. No, I don’t mean that they’re too big (or small). I mean that they have conflicting goals. On one hand, they must be portable, meaning as small and light as possible — after all, that’s the point, isn’t it? On the other hand, if they go below a certain size, the screen will be too small to show a decent amount of stuff at a readable size, the keys will be to small for your fingers, the keyboard will have to “sacrifice” several (independent, on desktops) keys, joining them together (with the use of an extra key, “Fn”) so that it fits. That’s why most laptops (there are exceptions, of course), these days, have very similar sizes: it’s the best thing they could come up with. Bigger than that, they’re less easy to carry; smaller than that, they become more difficult — and unpleasant — to use.

Which is why I far prefer a good desktop. No more compromises. Decent keyboard, decent screen, and, guess what, it’s also a lot cheaper, and with virtually no hardware incompatibilities (I haven’t had to install or configure a hardware driver manually in years, on several versions of Suse and OpenBSD)!

As I said, I wouldn’t mind having a laptop, though I’d still use my desktop 99% of the time (I don’t travel much). It’s simply a lot more pleasant to use, I can type faster, have a 19″ screen, and so on. A laptop, to me, is simply not worth buying, unless I simply didn’t know what to do with my money. For both work and games, give me a desktop any day.

So I really don’t understand all this obsession with laptops. Sure, if you travel all the time, or need one for your job, it’s understandable. But, other than that… I don’t see how people can give up a decent keyboard and screen. Is it a “status symbol”? Is it because everyone has a laptop, these days?

Really, I’m curious.