Businesses will always use desktops. It will be a long time before your average office desk is kept warm by the small footprint of a laptop. Ergonomically they are certainly not something you would want to be sitting in front of for eight hours a day unless you plugged it into a laptop stand with a keyboard and mouse, at which point it becomes a virtual desktop anyway. Not every business is full of road warriors remember. Even as a journalist it’s been a long time since I ventured further than a few kilometres from my desk for business. Not a warrant for a laptop.

Aside from businesses though, if recent trends are anything to go by, consumers are beginning to realise that maybe they don’t actually need a laptop, and that desktops have now become more than just a large hunk of plastic sitting under your study desk cramping your feet. New, stylish desktops are littering shop shelves.

Slim form factor desktops are everywhere. The size of a software box or smaller in some cases, you barely notice they are there. Acer, Asus, and Dell all have some great offerings. But there is also the mega gaming behemoths that have reinvented themselves with lights, colours and power that will take down the jumbo that the laptop had a bit of trouble with. Alienware’s recently relaunched shop has some stunners, especially in green, and Dell is starting to make the gaming PC look more than sexy. Altech have also been pushing flashy desktops with their NRG range.

Of course, there is always Apple. As I sit in front of a 20-inch iMac bashing out this blog I have to wonder how the desktop will ever die while companies like Apple keep reinventing them in forms sexier than your girlfriend, or ex-girlfriend at least.

Desktops have also found new ways to make themselves useful. Windows Media Center and Apple’s Front Row have revolutionised the possibilities for the desktop PC.