There are a number of reasons someone might choose to buy a laptop over a desktop PC but the three most obvious justifications are:

• To save space: in most cases, laptops take up far less room than a PC tower and monitor; useful if you live in a small bedsit or flat;
• To save money: The most basic of laptops and notebooks are now available at very low prices, with desktops usually retailing much higher  (though the cost gap is more narrow if you know where to shop); 
• Portable computing: Using a computer on the go would be next to impossible should we be forced to carry heavy desktops around with us!

I know these are the very same reasons I have decided to purchase laptops instead of desktop PCs over the last ten years. These reasons are not good enough in my friends’ eyes however, who keep telling me that a desktop PC would make for a far better investment. I am beginning to agree…

Laptops: A Portable (and Costly!) Problem

 

 

I love to browse the internet from the comfort of my bed (using an appropriate laptop stand of course) but it is exactly this option of portability which has caused me to damage my various laptops over the years. My list of all-too-common laptop breakages below will explain further why this is the case.

It is my experience that laptop repairs tend to be more expensive (and hassle!) to get fixed and this means that I have purposely allowed technical problems to worsen until each laptop in question eventually dies its death. Laptops are harder to mend because they are sealed units, making them difficult to get into (unlike PC towers) and they also often require specialist parts only available from the manufacturer (again, this is far lesser a problems with desktop computers).

Buying a new laptop after the complete demise of the old one seems a far thriftier option then constantly shelling out for expensive repairs!

Laptops: The All-Too-Common Breakages

USB Ports

I – like many others – prefer to use a computer mouse instead of the built in touch/track pads of the laptops I have owned over the years and as such, there is nearly always a USB mouse connected to my laptop. Should you set your laptop down too vigorously and/or at the wrong angle however (as I often have), this will see the connection pins inside the USB slots become warped and/or snapped off, eventually rendering them useless.

Carelessness with plugged in memory sticks and other USB powered devices can cause the same fate for your USB slots and this goes some way to explaining why only one of the four USB hubs on my current laptop is in working order. Relying on this one slot means that I also own endless USB hubs, many of which have broken ports for similar reasons (i.e. me being a clumsy oaf).

The stationary element of a desktop PC means that I have never broken a tower USB port – it is possible but definitely not as easy!

Power, Microphone, and Headphone Jacks

I am also constantly breaking these various input jacks in a very similar fashion to the USB example above. As a music buff, the death of my headphone jack one week after acquiring my new netbook was devastating (my laptop was not insured), for it no longer meant I could connect my laptop to my kick ass sound system. I have tried using a USB sound card with a built in headphone jack as an alternative but I find that sound quality suffers terribly as a result of this option.

At least the laptop still worked after I broke the headphone jack; unlike the time I broke the pin in the power input jack on my very first laptop!

Again, the stationary element makes these jacks harder to accidently break when they are a part of a desktop computer.

Ripping Off Keyboard Keys

I like to give my laptops a vigorous wipe down every now and again, for they have the habit of harbouring germs otherwise. Unfortunately, this often sees me inadvertently ripping of several of the laptops’ keyboard keys. There have been occasions where I have been lucky enough that the keys came off without snapping the plastic used to secure each to the device but more often than not this is not the case. Asking PC and laptop repair shops to replace individuals keys is a complete nightmare – most will tell you what a costly (and therefore arguably pointless) process this is.

Breaking keys on a desktop keyboard peripheral is less of a problem considering that it is not part of the computer itself, as is the case with laptops.

Internal Component Breakage

I have dropped my various laptops a number of times (and from ridiculous, 6ft heights!) but I have been quite lucky as this hasn’t killed any of my laptops to date. I did however break an internal component of one of my laptops by doing this. Upon picking up the dropped laptop, I could hear a loud rattling inside – this was the wireless internet card meaning I had to return to the use of an ADSL cable in order to access the internet.

With desktop PCs, there is rarely a reason to pick up the computer tower and as such, these breakages are far less likely to occur.

Wine/Coffee/Tea Tsunami

This is one of the scariest laptop accidents, for there is not only a minor chance of electrocuting oneself but also a high likelihood that your laptop will never work again. I have totalled one of my own laptops by inadvertently force feeding it a bottle of red – something that would not have happened should they not have been placed next to each other on the floor! If I had had a desktop PC, there would have been a chance that I would have drowned my keyboard with the wine instead but this peripheral is far cheaper to replace than an entire system.

Should you happen to spill a beverage on your own laptop, it is important to remember that you should not attempt to turn the device on for up to 48 hours after the accident. Should your laptop be capable of surviving, this won’t be the case should you turn it on whilst some of the internals are still wet, as this will cause the circuits to fry.

 

The author of this guest post – Kat Cole – is a serial murderer of cheap laptops. This is why when her current notebook finally gives way she will be investing in a high quality desktop PC.

Further Reading:  I Don’t Care About Tablets – Here’s Why