PC Parlance - 'Tower' vs 'Desktop'

[Saracen]

We techies call it a PC. Average Joe call them desktops.

Tower is used to describe the case ONLY e.g. Mid-tower case

Now, perhaps.

In my day as a corporate techie, a desktop was a computer that fitted on a desktop as opposed to a minicomputer, or bigger. And your choice of case was desktop or .... desktop. Your options weren't much more varied than how many external drive bays it had, and the colour of the logo. There were no laptops, though IBMs integrated system unit, fold-up keyboard and tiny (4 or 5") monochrome (orange on black, IIRC) was a baby step in the direction of portables .... doubling up as a gym workout when you moved it.

[Saracen]

Now, perhaps.

In my day as a corporate techie, a desktop was a computer that fitted on a desktop as opposed to a minicomputer, or bigger. And your choice of case was desktop or .... desktop. Your options weren't much more varied than how many external drive bays it had, and the colour of the logo. There were no laptops, though IBMs integrated system unit, fold-up keyboard and tiny (4 or 5") monochrome (orange on black, IIRC) was a baby step in the direction of portables .... doubling up as a gym workout when you moved it.

I remember running an AutoCAD demo on one of those. Make a minor change in a model of the space shuttle and come back in an hour or two when it had finished redrawing the screen. And that was a wireframe model, not rendered. It ran, though. Like a sloth in treacle, in high gravity, but run, it did. If barely.

[DanceswithUnix]

I would say that Desktop is a class of machine, like laptop or tablet or phone.

Within the desktop class are towers, shoe-boxes, media centers, gaming rigs and probably lots of other niche roles that a PC can fill. But in all these PC sub-types, if you want to expand or repair the machine you will use components from the desktop ecosystem: PCIe cards, CPU, PSU.

[Smudger]

I remember when my desktop was the same size as a tower, just rested on its side, with the CD (not DVD) drive horizontal. I think this was about the time HP started to put the little rubber feet on the side (bottom) as well as the bottom (side), so you could put it under the desk as well.

My first 'tower' at work was the HP Vectra VL, I think, like this:



But we also used to stack them on their sides as polling machines. Running MS-DOS 6.

[mycarsavw]

I had multiple HP DC5100s but some were MT and some were SFF.

The DC5100MT was a vertical tower machine and the DC5100SFF was a horizontal machine but both were called Desktops by HP.

DC5100MT - http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/p...r_na-c00279324

DC5100SFF - http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/p...r_na-c00279254

you should thank yourself lucky people don't refer to the pc as the hard disc. it's worse than calling desktop or phone wallpaper a screensaver

Those people are the ones who point out my newly upgraded monitor and say, "oooh you've got a new computer."

[scaryjim]

... I remember back when my parents got their first PC pretty much all PCs came in a desktop case ... The term obviously had enough traction that it continued being used for the entire category ...

... your choice of case was desktop or .... desktop. Your options weren't much more varied than how many external drive bays it had, and the colour of the logo. ...

Nice to know I'm not the only one old enough to remember that

... you then get into the various terms people use for a base unit (that, a desktop PC without any peripherals or monitor) - which may include things like "box" and, surprisingly, "CPU". ...

you should thank yourself lucky people don't refer to the pc as the hard disc. ...

Oooh, yeah, I'd forgotten that one. And confusing people when they say things like "You've got a big hard disk" by replying with "Not really, it's only 20GB"...

I remember when my desktop was the same size as a tower, just rested on its side, with the CD (not DVD) drive horizontal. ...

CD Drive? What's that? Try 5.25" floppy disk....

[peterb]

The first portable - I suppose if you were strong enough, it could sit on your lap.

Around $5000 in 1987 iirc - but that did come with a 20MB hard drive! (and the obligatory 5.25" floppy/ 8" floppies were considered old technology by then.

That was when 'formatting' a drive really DID format the drive, writing the sector structures from scratch.

[virtuo]

I'd say "Tower", is just the form factor of the case.

Terms like "Desktop", "Laptop", "Palmtop", "mobile" describe how (or where) the system is designed to be typically used.

A "Desktop" (or Tower) would be used at a desk, a "Laptop" probably used to be used on your lap. I would say it'd be perfectly fine to use either, although Tower seems to be used less often now.

How about "Laptop" and "Notebook"?


All I can say for sure is that Person B is the kind of pedant who gives us IT people a bad name, and wouldn't be on my Christmas card list.

[Smudger]

[DanceswithUnix]

The first portable - I suppose if you were strong enough, it could sit on your lap.

Around $5000 in 1987 iirc - but that did come with a 20MB hard drive! (and the obligatory 5.25" floppy/ 8" floppies were considered old technology by then.

That was when 'formatting' a drive really DID format the drive, writing the sector structures from scratch.

Brings back memories, I had one of those in my first job to replace the BBC Micro with CP/M addon box that we programmed on. Graphics was "Hercules" monochrome.

I had forgotten all about Hercules, or possibly blanked it out for the horror that it was. Next computer after that was an Atari ST, lovely lovely Atari

Pretty sure mine was a 10MB hard drive, though it was a while ago so I might be wrong

Edit: The luggables were replaced with proper desktops in the end, they were 12MHz 286 so 50% faster, and had an entire 2MB of ram allowing the use of a ram disk with all that spare over 640K. Bad, bad times.

[cheesemp]

We call them workstations or client PC. Its easier when differentiating between servers that we usually deal with and a myriad of different Windows PC options we support as clients (laptops, traditional PCs, tablets etc). Either way Tower is pretty dated terminology nowadays i'd only use desktop in your position.

[scaryjim]

... The luggables were replaced with proper desktops in the end, they were 12MHz 286 so 50% faster, and had an entire 2MB of ram ...

2MB Luxury!

My parents' 286 12MHz only had 1MB - but then we did have a 40MB hard drive, so I probably shouldn't whinge too hard

[peterb]

Ah, the 286, a flawed design iirc (but can't remember why) corrected in the 386.

[chinf]

Ah, the 286, a flawed design iirc (but can't remember why) corrected in the 386.

Something to do with switching between real and protected mode?

[scaryjim]

Ah, the 286, a flawed design iirc (but can't remember why) corrected in the 386.

Wikipedia tells me there were a number of errata in the B- and C-steppings that were corrected by a later E-stepping.

If wikipedia ever goes down ... well, I'll let Randall Munroe finish that thought for me:


https://xkcd.com/903/

[TooNice]

I also only refer to a "Tower" only as a form factor, and understand "Desktop" both as the kind that you put a monitor on top, but also more generically as a PC.