SAN FRANCISCO — After decades as the computer of choice for homes and businesses, the desktop PC is being pushed to the scrap heap by its smaller, nimbler sibling: the laptop.
They've been around since the early 1980s, but portable computers are finally taking over. Last year, for the first time, American consumers bought more of them than desktops. Sixteen of the 20 bestselling PCs on Amazon.com this holiday season were laptops.
U.S. corporations are expected to make laptops the majority of their computer purchases in 2008. BNSF Railway Co. already has. Of the 4,000 Dell Inc. computers it bought last year, 60% were laptops, so rail inspectors could file reports from their trucks and other employees could work from home.
"They were in a totally tethered world, and now they have no tethering at all," said Jeff Campbell, the Fort Worth company's chief information officer.
Faster, cheaper technology is behind the most sweeping change the computer industry has seen in a generation. Buying a computer that can be spirited away in a briefcase or backpack no longer requires a big sacrifice in performance, storage or money.
Through common devices called docking stations, users can connect their laptops to external monitors, keyboards and mice while seated at a desk, then eject them and work from a coffeehouse, library, airplane or living room.
The surge in laptop sales is also fueled by the pervasiveness of wireless networks in homes and public hangouts. Having Internet connections everywhere makes laptops much more useful.
Parents and kids consult laptops for quick facts at the dinner table as they once did with encyclopedias. Cocktail-party hosts fire them up to amuse with the latest YouTube video or television show. Workers plop them down on the road and connect to the office without missing a beat.
And sales are expected to accelerate as devices such as the iPhone and tablet PCs pack more power and utility into ever-smaller packages.
"It's not really a computer anymore," said Dag Spicer, senior curator of the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. "It's a companion, it's your memory, it's your teacher and your entertainer."
For something celebrated for being light, the laptop sure is propping up the computing industry. Analysts say U.S. laptop sales rose 21% in 2007 to 31.6 million, while desktop sales slumped nearly 4% to 35 million. Overall, laptops are still underdogs, but they're expected to account for the majority of U.S. computer sales in 2008 and of worldwide sales in 2009.
