Good Ezines

Time was when the advantages of a desktop computer far outweighed those of a laptop. Not least of these was the price factor. Although prices for computers of both kinds have come down considerably – from the multiple thousands of dollars, to much less than a thousand, the relative price of laptops to desktops has changed. As much of the cost reduction has been due to miniaturization of components, this has benefited laptop design to a far greater extent. The desktop, although also reduced in size, has always had the space available.

In the 1990s the price of a laptop computer even approaching the capability of a desktop was approximately double. Compare that with today, where laptops are easily comparable in price with the desktop.

Although the early desktops only had up to four floppy drives, these were the original 8″ format introduced in the late ’60s early ’70s. Although the disks, and the drives that used them were developed to hold more data, in the 5 1/4″ format, it wasn’t until the 3 1/2″ floppy was introduced that it became practical to fit one in a laptop, still known as a “portable”. The first Hard drives were 8″ beasts and took time reducing via 5 ¼” to 3 1/2″ and then 2 1/2″ for laptops. Thus the laptop was always behind in the capacity area, until miniaturization started to bring the advantage to the laptop side of the equation.

Other disadvantage of the lap top in those times, the late 90’s and early 00’s, included factors to do with size, weight, and capacity of the various components and add-ons.

Hard drives of ‘large’ capacity – from 500MB upwards as the years, and developers, rolled on, were easier to produce in the 5 1/4″ format. This was no problem to fit in a desktop, and two or more could be added, very simply leaving one connection for a CD/DVD drive.

Contrast this with the laptop, which couldn’t fit a large format drive and needed a 3 1/2″ format to maintain the small, portable image. Unfortunately, these drives were more difficult to manufacture in any meaningful capacity, given the requirements of location, heat and impact tolerance. The playoff was, of course, price.

With the increasing demands of new and ‘improved’ operating systems, and other software, ever bigger and bigger file sizes had to be accommodated, and this meant more and faster memory – and processors we discuss this further at our http://laptopcomputerstyle.com website.

The memory development was proceeding in step with the increasing demands of the software, at the same time becoming more reliable and faster. More and more capacity was included on a single chip, with more heat being generated due to this. In the notebooks computer range, this increased capacity was accompanied by the need for a compact pluggable memory pcb, which generated even more heat, and had the additional overhead of a smaller socket bank to to allow for expansion, pushing up cost.

This article continues in Part 2 where we look at the heat factor, and how it has been overcome.

Tony is a retired computer engineer, now working from home on the internet, he regularly publishes websites, see Laptops – what you need to know.