Maybe. Laptops are definitely making inroads into the market, and will continue to do so, but as the article points out, there will always be a place for good, comfortable, cheap machines for people who aren't road warriors.

I use my laptop a lot when I'm traveling, but it remains a PITA to carry around and continually reboot and renetwork, and I'm always glad to get home to my nineteen-inch screen and ergonomic keyboard. Not to mention my three CPUs and KVM switch. They'll take away my desktop when they pry my cold, dead fingers off my Logitech.

The desktop computer is healthy, and will continue to be as long as they are cheaper to deploy than laptops. Last time I looked, I could buy and operate two desktops for every laptop - no way would I buy a laptop for someone who does not need to be mobile.

Let's not mention the fact of how much easier it is to work on a desktop. I have a laptop and I need to replace the CMOS battery. Damned if I can get to it though, without removing the entire guts of the laptop and put it back together afterwards. I don't want any screws left over...

Right, easy to repair, easy to upgrade. I just went from an Athlon 1800 to a Sempron 2800 MB, with fast 1 Gig of RAM. Nothing else changed, and it cost me less than two hundred bucks.

There's also going to be a ton of people like me who simply do not like trying to do serious work on laptops.

Well, such is the glory of the market economy that we enjoy. So long as there is realizable demand for the product, it will continue to be supplied. CEOs and pundits can continue to predict the demise of this or the rise of that--but at best, they can only really influence things at the margin. Just ask Microsoft how its Tablet PC sales are doing, despite the resources they've put into pushing them.

I switched to exclusive laptop a few months ago. I have a docking station, "regular" keyboard, and large flat-screen monitor for use in the office. All of my files are shared onto our department server, so I never have to worry about backing up (the server is backed up daily).

I have to undock the computer to take it to class with me or to take home or on trips, but that's relatively painless.

Bottom line: I like it, and the docking station gives me the best of both worlds.

Eventually, I expect PDAs (like my iPAQ I hardly ever use any more) will have enough capacity that their docking stations will provide similar capability.

Desktops aren't going anywhere for development. The code I work on takes 1 1/2 hours to build on my quad hyperthreaded Xeon Dell but the fasted laptop we could find for any amount of money takes 3 to 4 hours to build it.