I come to you today, not from the typical software mindset I’ve come from before, but rather from the hardware side of our industry.  Like it or not, we develop software that is designed to work on hardware.  It’s a sad reality really, that we are so closely tied to such a finite and real limitation.  I’ve been looking for a new computer for a while now, I figure it’s been years since my last one which was bought at a time when I was upgrading machines at least once a year; four years later I’m still using this machine that I’ve only formatted once since I built it. 

Looking around, I noticed a very astonishing fact in the world of hardware… Where have all the desktops gone?  Opening futureshop’s website as an example, I am greeted with the images of five different laptops, a smart phone, and a net book among countless other random computer goodies.  I used to consider myself the ultimate of computer geeks, if they made something new I had it, if they introduced a new model of video card I’d buy it… hell half the reason I worked in a computer shop is so that I’d get to play with the newest toys when they first came out.  Today I realize that it’s all about portability, connectivity, and seamless technology integration in our day to day lives, but come on people what happened to the days when owning the biggest case meant you had the most power? When you’d have an entire room with more wires than paint powering a four monitor system… not that anyone could ever use all the monitors effectively at a single point but you had it anyway!

Since before I can remember I’ve always had a home computer, and a laptop for when I travel and move around the house.  I don’t really see what’s wrong with this mentality, especially in today’s market when the most expensive laptop I could find (with windows of course) cost me $1200 and includes a whole bunch of useless and expensive features like a rotating touch LCD Screen and remote control.  Not that they wouldn’t be nice, but are they really practical?

I never thought that I’d consider my thinking as “the old way” when it came to do with anything involving technology… but sadly today I have to admit that day has come.