When Mallory Greene left her job to co-found the digital funeral services company Eirene in June of 2019, she purchased a laptop from her former employer. Before long, she found it wasn’t the right tool for her new life working from home.
Greene says she always felt uncomfortable hunching over the small screen, and found the ability to take the laptop with her to the couch or the kitchen table created less-than-ideal working conditions and too many opportunities for procrastination.
“Posture wise, slouching over a small laptop wasn’t working for me,” she says. “I decided I would rather have what I considered a more legitimate office setup — a desktop. It felt more like I was going to work every day.”
That need for a stronger division between work and personal spaces only got more pronounced as the pandemic set in. “I needed to have a very clear separation, so that when I step away from my desk I’m stepping away from work,” she says.
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After years of losing the spotlight to smaller, sleeker laptops and tablets, desktops are enjoying a renaissance with remote and hybrid workers like Greene who seek to optimize their at-home work experience for the long term. Other key drivers of desktop sales include the growing numbers of PC gamers and digital creators, two communities that rely on superior speed, storage, and compute power. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), PC sales shot up 14.8% between 2020 and 2021, representing nearly 350 million devices — with desktop sales growth outpacing that of laptops in the second quarter of the year.
After using a desktop for the last two years, Greene says it’s become her device of choice.
“I’ll always work remotely, and it’s been key to my productivity,” she says.
More computing bang for your buck
Jitesh Ubrani, research manager for IDC’s mobile and consumer device trackers, says three key consumer types have driven the rise of the desktop computer over the past few years — remote workers, gamers, and creators — each for different reasons.
For remote workers, he says that in the early days of the pandemic, many assumed they would be back in the office within a few weeks. As those weeks turned into months and eventually years, however, many sought a more permanent at-home setup, and discovered even more benefits with a stationary device.
