Apple has their A-series SOC (system-on-a-chip) parts. AMD is touting its APUs. Intel is beefing up their graphical offering with their Haswell-series next year. All of this points to a future where formerly-separate parts of a computing device are consolidated into a single chip.

I’m excited.

Now I am, by no means, a system designer or some kind of engineering so I speak only from the expertise of others and also with rampant speculation. However, I am excited about the future where the components we choose become simpler and simpler because they are required to do more and more of the heavy lifting.

A future where the surface of a motherboard is not pockmarked on every little corner with yet another little chip doing some minute little task. A future where chips are not lauded just for how fast they might be able to crunch numbers, but the other tasks that that single chip is able to perform so ably.

First I need to take a step back into the past and what thoughts would go through my head as a system-builder. Here’s a sampling:

• What overall manufacturer for the CPU?
• What CPU architecture?
• What socket or slot does it need?
• What chipsets are available for that socket or slot?
• What wattage is the CPU?
• Does this chipset/board combo support this wattage?
• What RAM is needed?
• How much can it handle?
• What power requirements for the system are there?
• Does the power supply meet the requirements?
• How about graphics cards?
• Now how does that power supply hold up?
• Hard drives?
• Sound?
• Network?
• BUELLER!?

You get the idea. I haven’t even begun to purchase anything yet. Now Intel is the worst offender, but it seems that every new chip architecture brings a new socket or chipset requirement but AMD is almost as bad (and maybe more confusing with AM2, AM2+, AM3, etc.).

However, combining things brings it all down a little bit. Instead of wondering what graphics card you need to purchase, you have it on-die with the rest of the CPU. This brings down the total wattage of the system. This makes choices of other components easier (or nonexistent). This means less chips and pieces on the main system board so that less stuff can fail.

That’s great!

There will always be a place for discreet components for those who really want/need to mix-and-match stuff for the best outcome in their situation, but in most cases less = more for consumers.

As a follow-up to my last post, I talked with a former boss today and he made a great point (and I’m going to be paraphrasing).

If you are going to purchase a laptop, please spend more money and get a business-class laptop from whatever manufacturer you are looking at. If you are really interested, look for things like the following:

• If the laptop has a frame inside
• What that frame is made out of
• What the body of the laptop is made out of
• If it has the ability to park the head of the hard drive when there are sudden motions
• What the heat dissipation is like
• What types of warranties you can get for the laptop

Usually, a business laptop will have better options available and better warranties. This will get you a better machine, especially if you are planning on moving the machine around a lot. Consumer laptops are normally going to be plastic and have a plastic frame (if anything), and that is more likely to cause trouble.

Just something else to keep in mind.

This past week I worked on four client laptops (from various manufacturers) with failed hard drives.  The week before that it was another two. This school year I’ve probably helped people with laptops at least a dozen times where the hard drives on their laptop died or was in the last stages of dying (and was luckily able to pick off some of their data before it went “belly up”).

In the same amount of time, I have no dealt with ANY desktop hard drive failures.

Zero.

Talking with someone on Sunday, they asked why the hard drive in their one year-old laptop died but the one in their 6 year-old desktop hasn’t died. So I gave them the normal spiel:

• You move your laptop around much more often than your desktop.
• If a hard drive is going to die, it is probably going to die some time in that first year or else run for a nice long while.
• Smaller components running at higher speeds have a smaller margin-of-error before something goes wrong.
• You move your laptop around much more often than your desktop.

Really, I just stick with the first and fourth ones above. A desktop, within reason, pretty much stays put as soon as you get the thing going the first time.

This is one reason I have been holding out for the new Mac mini to be released (crossing my fingers for the event on October 23), it seems that desktops are more “rugged” than laptops or portables. Much of that is perception, but there are a number of benefits being a desktop has over a laptop:

• You don’t move as often.
• You don’t have a hinge attached to your screen (hopefully).
• You don’t spend part of your day stuffed inside of a bag where temperature changes are mandatory.
• Heat is not as much of an issue because you have more space to work with.

That’s just a few. One not named, but what I have been thinking more about is this:

• The inability to work everywhere.

There have been a number of times that I’ve pulled the laptop out almost anywhere and started working. That might seem like a great thing, but is it really? I find having a certain place where you work can be a huge benefit to productivity because you can surround yourself with familiar surroundings to help get yourself into “the zone”. I also liken it to keeping distractions out of the bedroom so that it stays the area where you sleep. That’s why we threw the TV out of there a long time ago. Keeping work contained to a single room of the home can keep it at least a little bit separate from your family.

I’m hoping to try it.

There are benefits to each, but right now I’m leaning toward a desktop + tablet for my computing needs for the future. Now I need to wait out that new Mac mini.