Desktop renaissance? Nope, rebound of hefty PCs is just because there's notebook shortage – analysts

Planning on buying one of those cheaper laptop PCs? Some of you might have to settle for something altogether more desk-based due to the component shortages. It has been an odd three years in the computing industry, listing as it has from insufficient CPU availability in 2018, along with memory and panels, to a limited supply …

[Dan 55]

If you're stuck at home then you don't need to move around, a desktop is cheaper than a laptop, usually has a better spec, and is more future proof. Shame the analysts couldn't work that one out.

[Anonymous Coward]

I came here to make exactly the same point. If you're working from a desk at home, why would you need a laptop?

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Because you are working from the kitchen table and need to move it all out of the way when the kids come home?

Many of the hordes don't have multiple 4K monitor setups on their gaming rig in their gaming room. Although I do have a cupboard-under-the-stairs datacenter

[Anonymous Coward]

> You can buy a PC desk with wheels quite cheap, then once you unplug the cables you can move the desktop anywhere.

Oh look, a toboggan / go-cart / pretend shopping trolley for the children to play with! Great idea.

[zuckzuckgo]

And Apple fans can get the "Apple Mac Pro Wheels Kit" for about the price of a PC laptop.

[doublelayer]

Oh, that sounds fun. After I finish working for the day, I just have to unplug seven cables and wheel my desk somewhere else. I don't know where, because if I had a nice convenient place for the desk to be stored then I could probably just work from there and not move it.

[DoctorPaul]

My "hidden" home data centre is in what used to be the airing cupboard - loads of space after the old immersion heater was removed when we went combi boiler, and the various holes left by the removal of 22mm pipework make it a breeze to run all the cabling between floors.

Plus it has its own dedicated mains ring that used to serve the immersion heater, and the residual heat from the Plex server, 2 x Pi-holes, headless Humax freesat box, laser printer and ADSL router means that it still functions as an airing cupboard.

[Martin-R]

*two* Pi-Holes?

[DoctorPaul]

You need two for fail-over.

With just one, I found that the Pi would seem to lock up for no obvious reason after a few days, taking DNS down completely. Or defaulting back to normal DNS server if that's what the router's secondary DNS was set to.

With two pi-holes set to be the primary and secondary DNS for the router they seem to "flip flop" quite happily. When I look at the admin screens, its easy to see that one of the pi-holes handles nearly all the DNS requests for a while, then the other does the majority for a while, then back again.

No idea why this should happen, but the setup is so reliable that I recently realised that I hadn't logged on to them for an update for a couple of years. "It just works".

[Martin-R]

Fair enough! I've been running a single Pi-Hole for about a year now without noticing any problems. About the only time I log on is when it blocks something I actually want to access for testing purposes

[Mike Lewis]

Is your cupboard-under-the-stairs datacenter a HP?

[Roland6]

>Many of the hordes don't have multiple 4K monitor setups on their gaming rig in their gaming room. Although I do have a cupboard-under-the-stairs datacenter

So you've got yourself a 4K monitor/tv connected to the datacenter via Displayport/HDMI, a wireless keyboard and mouse and turned the lounge into your office... I don't understand why you are slumming it in the kitchen, or is it the coffee/tea addiction - need to be near kettle...

[doublelayer]

Some of us have larger residences and can easily work in a dedicated or comfortable room, or live alone so we don't have to move things as often, but lots of others aren't in that situation. Considering the number of people who live with family in a small place and may have two people working from home full time, there are many who won't have convenient dedicated locations to work and will use some other room. That is why some people (most people if we use the numbers from the article) still buy laptops even if they're not using them outside their homes very often.

[Roland6]

> Considering the number of people who live with family in a small place and may have two people working from home full time, there are many who won't have convenient dedicated locations to work and will use some other room.

Tell me about it! :)

Have 4 working from home, interestingly, the two teenagers found space for a (small form factor) desktop and large monitor - by tidying up their bedrooms. My partner by taking over my desk, so I was relegated to the kitchen table :)

[Mike 137]

Who'd have guessed?

“Nonetheless, without 100 per cent of the parts; a finished system will not ship: so a bottleneck is a bottleneck”

How true. Reminds me of the famous football truism "at the end of the day the winning team is the one that scores the most goals."

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Who'd have guessed?

>without 100 per cent of the parts; a finished system will not ship

He hasn't heard of the unique BCSPS (British cars of the 70s Production System)

[Blackjack]

There is also the fact laptops have risen way too much in price, plus desktops are upgradeable.

[quxinot]

Desktops are only upgradeable in theory, lately.

Go buy a good video card. Good luck. :(

[DrBobK]

Is this Intel/AMD specific?

Is there an M1 MacBook or iMac shortage? Genuinely just interested to know whether this CPU availability shortage is Intel/AMD specific (and whether it is having a greater impact on mobile vs desktop CPUs).

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Is this Intel/AMD specific?

I just ordered an M1 Mac and the tracking shows it will arrive a week earlier than promised.

YMMV.

[andro]

Re: Is this Intel/AMD specific?

I have not seen it reported but it seems obvious to me that the desktop sales begun their decline after the intel 2600k was released, and nothing worth while followed it up for many many years. People would buy whatever the mid tier desktop was then keep it for years. personally I ran my 2600k desktop for 9 years untill amd finally upped the game. ive updated two intel systems of my own in the last 2 years, and my mother in laws laptop to a ryzen model as well. so thats 3 purchases up from zero for many years thanks to amd. i suspect I am not alone.

[You're my wife now Dave]

Remember when?!

Remember that time when Lenovo shipped laptops pre-loaded with malware?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry!

Part of the problem is us in the NHS. As part of the "working from home" process we strip-mined suppliers of laptops, and then when the vaccination program started we went further and cleared the factories to provision the vaccination centres. In my CCG our supplier ran out of Dells and we bad to back fill with HPs and crash test the new build image. The first delivery of laptops had no smart card slot - essential as we operate smart-card based authentication - so we had to make a rush order of external card readers to get them provisioned.

[saskwatch]

Buy Directly From China

I've noticed little to no increase in prices on the laptops listed on Aliexpress. If you are willing to go with the risk & the absence of any warranties,

then there are bargains to be had. A few months ago I bought a low end unbranded laptop with a 15.5" screen, full keyboard, 8G RAM, 256G SSD and an Intel Celeron J4115 processor for a little over $400 CDN, delivered in about 2 weeks. Newer versions now use the J4125. It's a little light on battery power but handles all the tasks that most WFH folks do with ease. Switched it to Linux with little to no trouble at all.

[saskwatch]

Buy Directly From China

If you are willing to take the risk of buying from away then shopping from China may be for you. Recently bought a low end laptop through Aliexpress for a little over

$400 CDN & am perfectly happy with it. It has a 15.5" screen, full keyboard, 8G RAM, 256G SSD. It uses an Intel Celeron J4115 processor ( J4125s are more common now ) with more than enough oomph for WFH