Laptops take command

The sibling rivalry between desktop PCs and laptops tilt in favour of the latter.

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 bestselling PCs on Amazon.com last holiday season were laptops.

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 fuelled by the pervasiveness of wireless networks in homes and public hangouts. Having Internet connections everywhere makes laptops much more useful.

Parents and children consult laptops for quick facts at the dinner table as they once did with encyclopaedias. 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 per cent in 2007 to 31.6 million, while desktop sales slumped nearly 4 per cent 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.

More Stolen Moments

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 Christmas 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. With users liberated from having to plug their laptops into phone jacks, the promise of mobile computing finally was realised.

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.

More bang for the buck

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 per cent 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.

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 mini-notebooks or sub-notebooks.

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 healthcare fields.

From the looks of it, the laptops and consumers are currently enjoying the honeymoon stage.