PC Parlance - 'Tower' vs 'Desktop'

[peterb]

Something to do with switching between real and protected mode?

Yes it was, but reading up on it, it seems the whole architecture was flawed, and that continued into later designs for compatibility purposes. It was to do with the size of the internal bus and memory addressing - the 640K protected memory space. IBM in 1980 wanted to adopt a different architecture and wanted to use the Motorola 68000 series CPU - but it wasn't available, so the had to make do with the Intel 8086 (actually the 8088 which was a cheaper cut down version).

The 68000 series became the mainstay of Apple's operating system for 25 years or more until they went down the Intel route.

The 68000 was arguably a better design - but better designs don't always get the recognition they deserve

More info here

http://world.std.com/~swmcd/steven/rants/pc.html

and here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8086

[Dashers]

I have a workstation on my desk top...

What is often missing in these conversations is the context of the word. The word can change definitions depending on how it is used.

I've got a desktop computer at home. It happens to be in a tower form factor/chassis and not a desktop form factor.

Our company largely deploys 'thins', but we have some desktop users. I'm a desktop user, but I have a tower, as it happens, it sits on my desk behind my wall of screens. Many years ago, we had desktop (i.e. form factor) which were suspended in an upright position under the desks with integrated supports. What do you call that!?

I rarely use the word "tower". I tend to only use it fully qualified (mini, mid, full-tower).

[Ttaskmaster]

Many years ago, we had desktop (i.e. form factor) which were suspended in an upright position under the desks with integrated supports. What do you call that!?

Underslung workstation?

[snedger]

A computer is a computer is a computer - unless it's a mainframe, then it's a proper computer.

Desktop is horizontal and on the desk.
Mini tower is vertical, but is a desktop when it is horizontal - sits either on the desk or floor.
Tower is vertical and on the floor, unless you like noisy fans in your face - other distinguishing factor is that a tower has more expansion slots than a desktop.

Desktop


Mini tower


Tower

[Galant]

Except for the floor part. There's a solid argument for not placing any computers on the floor, unless you're in a 'clean room'.

If there's a difference it surely just comes down to intent in design, because usage can vary and generally is irrelevant. I've had and seen horizontal designs used in an upright position and vertical designs used lying down, and all with or without any desktops in sight...

Admittedly, none of the 'towers' had the largest form factors.

[DanceswithUnix]

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

It wasn't so much flawed as just stupidly specified.

In an era when the world was already being written in 'C' which expects a flat address space, they took the nasty 20 bit segmented addressing of the 8086 and baked it in so hard it was painful. That got you protected virtual memory where processes could have their own 1MB address space, but arrays etc had to be kept under 64KB if you wanted any sort of performance. The memory protection was so awful only OS/2 used it.

They did all that 286 nastyness in about three times the transistor budget of the 68000, so they could have done something usable like every other processor out there.

The 386 had the same segmented addressing, the difference is that you could set the segment registers to zero and pretend they didn't exist and use a 4GB addressable range just like the 68000 range had been able to do for years.

[Smudger]

Yes it was, but reading up on it, it seems the whole architecture was flawed, and that continued into later designs for compatibility purposes. It was to do with the size of the internal bus and memory addressing - the 640K protected memory space. IBM in 1980 wanted to adopt a different architecture and wanted to use the Motorola 68000 series CPU - but it wasn't available, so the had to make do with the Intel 8086 (actually the 8088 which was a cheaper cut down version).

The 68000 series became the mainstay of Apple's operating system for 25 years or more until they went down the Intel route.

The 68000 was arguably a better design - but better designs don't always get the recognition they deserve

More info here

http://world.std.com/~swmcd/steven/rants/pc.html

and here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_8086

The Motorola was put to arguably better use in the Amiga, discreet sound and graphics chips way before PCs had them...

[snedger]

Except for the floor part. There's a solid argument for not placing any computers on the floor, unless you're in a 'clean room'.

If there's a difference it surely just comes down to intent in design, because usage can vary and generally is irrelevant. I've had and seen horizontal designs used in an upright position and vertical designs used lying down, and all with or without any desktops in sight...

Admittedly, none of the 'towers' had the largest form factors.

There's a solid argument for cleaning a room

[peterb]

Many years ago, we had desktop (i.e. form factor) which were suspended in an upright position under the desks with integrated supports. What do you call that!?

A knee-capper

[Galant]

There's a solid argument for cleaning a room

I don't think there's any normal environment where even the most fastidious cleaner could prevent a PC on the floor from attracting dust. Even less so an office.



#nocomputerleftbehind

[badass]

I use one of those Cube cases. Is it a desktop or a tower?

[DanceswithUnix]

I use one of those Cube cases. Is it a desktop or a tower?

If you put a laptop hard drive in there, then you could argue it is a laptop

[chinf]

I use one of those Cube cases. Is it a desktop or a tower?

Yes

[Xlucine]

I use one of those Cube cases. Is it a desktop or a tower?

A waste of space

[EndlessWaves]

I don't think I've heard desktop used to describe a case form factor in some years. Horizontally oriented cases are generally called either HTPC or small form factor these days.

Desktop is used to refer to a computer without a battery that's Windows/Mac OS capable. An All in One is a desktop, a raspberry pi isn't and a VR backback isn't (yet?).

Tower is an interesting one. Clearly it's not synonymous with desktops. An iMac is a desktop, but I doubt it ever gets referred to as a tower.

But are all desktops without screens towers? I don't think I'd ever use the world tower to describe as MiniPC myself, but I'd certainly understand the intended meaning if someone else did.


An annoying trend I've seen lately is to refer to storage as memory. 'I want a desktop with enough memory for all my photos'. No doubt prompted by the misuse in the phone world, now that phones seem to have become memory limited and are specifying how much they contain it'll hopefully die out.

Or maybe memory will become RAM and storage will become memory.

[TooNice]

An annoying trend I've seen lately is to refer to storage as memory.

I am pretty sure that isn't a recent thing. I am sure that I've heard storage being referred to as memory 20+ years ago; usually by people who do not exactly know what's inside the casing.
And I understand why. While we have a short and long term memory for our recollection needs, if left unspecified, it is usually taken to mean the long term rather than the short term. And I can see the similarities between our long term memory and for long term storage.