Laptop Zombies. Computer Notes By Uncle Monty.

Laptop Zombies.

Computer Notes By Uncle Monty.

^^^

Is it the end of the desktop PC?
By Kelvin Soh.

TAIPEI (Reuters) - The age of the desktop PC appears

to be over as its more portable cousin, the laptop, surges

ahead with consumers clamoring for light-weight computers
in funky designs for use at home, in cafes and on the train to

work. Not a single desktop model figured on online shopping

portal Amazon.com's top 10 selling PC and hardware list

the weekend before Christmas, while seven laptop models

made the list.

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It was yet another sign that the former dominance of

desktop PCs is fading as wireless advances and lower prices

make laptops the preferred option for millions of PC users

around the world. "On both price and performance, laptops

are so competitive now it's surprising they weren't able to

catch up with desktops even earlier," said iSuppli analyst

Peter Lin. "The ability to surf the Internet wirelessly at

public places, the need to be able to take your office out

with you when you travel, and an increasing range of

notebook computers have all led to lower desktop sales."

^^^
Laptops posted a milestone in the third quarter of 2008,

passing desktop PC sales for the first time, according to re-

search group iSuppli. With an entry level price of $300 for

some basic models, laptops should bolster their position in

2009. They are forecast to take up about 55 percent of all

computer shipments, according to data tracking firm IDC.

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Many companies eagerly awaiting the era of the laptop

are in Taiwan, maker of about 80 percent of the world's

laptop PCs. They include the world's top two contract

manufacturers, Quanta and Compal Electronics, and two

of the most aggressive laptop brands, Acer and Asustek.
While those firms have seen their market share rise, the

world's top two PC makers overall, Hewlett-Packard

and Dell, have seen their share shrink.

^^^
Other companies that produce parts such as motherboards

for bulky desktop PCs are already switching production to

parts for other electronic gadgets such as iPhones. While

laptops used to cost more than double that of a desktop

with equivalent processing power, advances in technology

and economies of scale have dragged prices down so much

that little price differentiation exists today for most con-

sumers looking for a daily use PC, analysts say.

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"It's just evolutionary I suppose," said Gartner analyst

Tracy Tsai. "Things have reached a point where the price

difference is no longer as pronounced as before for many

consumers, and the average person is more likely to

choose the option that offers him portability over

the one that doesn't."

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SPECIALISATION
To keep their growth coming, Acer, Asustek and others

vying for laptop dominance are increasingly looking to

segmentation, taking aim at the wide range of computer

buyers. The runaway success of low-cost mini notebooks,

initially derided by many industry watchers but now one of

the fastest growing categories, could foreshadow a coming

boom in products offering a wide range of prices and func-

tions. "There is incredible choice in the notebook space

now," said IDC analyst Richard Shim. "You can get

notebooks at every inch size from 5-inch to 20-inch."

^^^
Alex Gruzen, Dell's manager for consumer products,

agreed that the days when his company could offer lap-

tops "in the same shades of grey" are coming to an end.
Segmentation comes in both form and substance. In the

former, Asustek offers a bamboo-cased laptop for the

environmentally conscious. HP has tied up with designer

Vivenne Tam to release the "world's first digital clutch,"

a notebook designed to look like a woman's handbag.

^^^
On the more technical front, companies are offering an

ever wider range of specialized laptops in varying sizes,

processing speeds, wireless capabilities and prices. Battery

life is also coming into play, with HP recently announcing

that one of its notebooks had broken the 24-hour barrier.
Faster boot-up times and features such as touch-screens

are also being touted as companies try to convert

former desktop users and build new markets.

^^^
WHAT'S LEFT FOR DESKTOPS?
As portability becomes the norm, some are asking if

there's any room left for desktops in the brave new era

of laptops. Salesmen at Taipei's Kuanghwa computer

market, one of the city's top PC hang-outs, said hard-

core computer game addicts may be one of the few

groups to keep buying desktops that offer greater

processing power for memory-intensive applications.
"Hardly anyone buys desktops anymore," said Elton

Tsai, gesturing toward the solitary HP desktop sitting

in his shop amid rows of laptops. "Anyone who is enough

of a geek to want real processing power can probably

assemble his own computer, saving himself at least a

few thousand Taiwan dollars in the process," Tsai said.

^^^
But not everyone believes the desktop, which was first

introduced in the 1970s, will soon be relegated to the

junkyard of history. After all, desktops can still offer

substantial savings, especially for those who are handy

with a screwdriver. "How can a laptop compete with a

desktop on price?," asked Gartner analyst Lillian Tay.
"Especially in the emerging markets where price is a

consideration, laptops simply cannot compete on price

with a group of people who slap a motherboard, a hard

drive and a few chips together to get a desktop," she said.

(Additional reporting by Gabriel Madway in San

Francisco. Editing by Doug Young and Megan Goldin)

Laptop Zombies.
Computer Notes By Uncle Monty.
^^^
Laptops are now everywhere. The growing problem

with such things is that such begins to control us

instead of us controlling it. Unlike regular fixed PCs,

the laptop can follow us everywhere we want to

take it and it then can drive our very existence like

laptop zombies interacting more with our mobile

machine instead of with our fellow humanbeings.

Laptop addiction is a craving for digital reality

instead of human reality.
^^^
The laptop is in many way just a glorified cell-

phone with its capacity to bypass human inter-

action much like we see with cellphone users who

talk ad infinitum-into a phone, but not to those

around them.
^^^

Beware of Laptop Thieves.

Another big problem with laptops is their vuner-
ability to instant theft from ever greedy and slick
thieves that can make a quick buck on your laptop
quicker than you can take a lap to catch them. Lap-
tops are easy to forget, though they shouldn’t be,
at cafes, libraries, on trains, and public places at
where they are fondly used by non-nerds
and non-geeks.
^^^
Some folkz use their laptops as a status symbol
of sorts or to show they're computer savvy, but
which it is now becoming quickly reduced to ordi-
nary everyday use without much status now at all.
Many Third World immigrants perpetually use their
cellphones in public in the mistaken belief that it gives
them some kind of social status and equality with non-
blacks. Many look absolutely ridiculous, if the truth
be spoken, with their constant gobby cellphones at
their moving mouths and their need to always
show off in public with their showy cellephones.
To have a cellphone is also for some immigrant
blacks to openly snub "racist" whites. While,

my own conjecture, is that laptops are used

by whites to show-off and to snub
those who don’t have laptops.
^^^
A laptop under $100- for every black kid?

Beyond such, what the laptop is doing is more

than ever making us a "Non-Wired Society" in

which we function only by non-wired means no

matter what kind of human problem or condition

we’re really in. But like money, we cannot, how-

ever, take the laptop with us beyond our present

human time and brief life span. I read somewhere

recently of a guy who wants his laptop buried

with him in his coffin and the guy is only in his

late 20’s. How pathetic and how non-wired

is he? Perhaps, he’s on crack, too?

^^^

And when I come to think about laptops, I

think also males tend to be more laptop prone

than women, if what I see at places like Café

Nero, in which say for four guys I see with their

laptops, I see only one female or two with such.

With also the growing widespread use of the

Dongle, the laptop comes even more mobile

than those that could only use WiFi or fixed

broadband or landline connections. Like cell-

phones, the human downside of laptop use in

public places also quickly cuts off person-to-

person conversations and even reduces

communications skills of some. It's like the

kid who can do great math on a calculator,

but who cannot add or subtract figures in

his brickhead or even speak or write pro-

per Queen's English. Laptop Zombies can

be much like such kidz that cannot function

outside or beyond the use of a laptop or a

PC. They live in a world of computer

psychobabble and far from the real

world of those not damaged by the rise

of what I call "The Digital Darkness."

^^^

All too many people bow first to the ring of their

infernal cellphone, and likewise, all too many bow

to their laptop like mindless and one-dimensional

zombies. If the Industrial Revolution changed

forever the human face of society, then the

Computer Revolution has brought about

laptop zombies that see no further than

their own nose.
^

As for the destop PC, they’ll stay, I think, for

the foreseeable future in the family home and

at ordinary business offices even if they become
supposedly “obsolete” at the rise and dominance of

laptops in the public place. People who are mobile
are more likely, it seems to me, to have mobile

laptops than those who are not like say the el-

derly or invalid or non-professionals or computer

illiterates. For myself, I have both a PC and a new

laptop and I suspect many other folkz who rely

on computers informally in their day-to-day

lives will have the same means. “Laptop for

the road, PC for the home,” is what I see

evidently emerging.

^^^

In the meantime, more and

more laptop zombies will clutter and choke

the public space at wherever they go with their

fancy machines that will all too often control them

and all facets and aspects of their private and im-

personal lifestyle. Soon they’ll become so robotized

and addicted that we’ll hardly know them by

any other name other than being

called "Laptop Zombies."

That's no life.

^^^

Just my thoughts, Uncle Monty.
+Harpers Ferry Day, 2oo9.

^^^