How many of you deploy desktops in an enterprise environment vs laptops?

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JSoul98@reddit

My company uses both, desktops for some roles, then all of IT and other certain roles get laptops. It's probably about 60% desktops and theyre all micro except for very special use cases. (Full towers for security and machine learning)

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verifyandtrustnoone@reddit

Laptops only, 5 year life. Desktops are only deployed for high end developers that need ultra configurations.

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curleys@reddit

<3 "ultra config", like my finance staff that "need" i7's and 64gb's of ram for their god awfully large excel files from the state.

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verifyandtrustnoone@reddit

yup, i have staff that develop online and they tried to tell me that they needed a I9 with 64gbs as their current machine was slow... Yeah I am sure an I7 is more than enough to enter code into a website hosted SAAS.

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sync-centre@reddit

Buy i9 stickers and replace the i7 stickers.

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Valestis@reddit

Just 9 stickers, Intel is about to drop the "i".

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Yoconn@reddit

Awh really? Idk why that bugs me so much.

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Valestis@reddit

Yeah, it will be Core Ultra 5 or something stupid like that. https://pokde.net/system/pc/cpu/intel-renaming-cpus-names-15-years

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sync-centre@reddit

Can't wait until they release the Core Ludicrous 5, or maybe the God Like 5.

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curleys@reddit

core 7 plaid

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xenos86atwork@reddit

last excel file i made wouldn't open on that box either. "someone" asked for netflow data, and the last 5 months clocked in at 212GB

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incendiary_bandit@reddit

Lol that's like when my boss got asked for "all" out equipment data and they were being difficult. We have over 2 million assets registered. He made them a single csv file lol

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asdlkf@reddit

*laughs in thinkpad with an i9, 128GB ram, 4TB SSD, and 3080m graphics*

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BigAnalogueTones@reddit

Props, my i9 MBP has 1TB SSD 64GB ram but it’s loud as fuck, my m2 MBP with 16GB ram runs quieter and faster… I don’t run memory intensive loads on my mbps but I’ve still seen processes on my i9 with virtual memory size over 100GB… like wtf

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asdlkf@reddit

*adobe reader has entered the room*

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BigAnalogueTones@reddit

I don’t get it? I don’t think I’ve ever had adobe reader installed on any computer. I open PDFs in Preview. But I barely use pdfs. I’m mostly working in the terminal from different tmux sessions

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CyborgPenguinNZ@reddit

Adobe anything.....

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humm3r1@reddit (OP)

Yep, the M1 Max I have is pretty good and runs fairly quiet around 50-55C with fans at 2000 RPM on a custom fan curve with Macs Fan Control (45-65C for temps, and watching the CPU average sensors)

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asdlkf@reddit

honestly, i just have the machine because I ordered at exactly the right moment in the silicon shortage. I went to purchasing and said "I need a machine with a 4k display, 1TB SSD, Windows 11 support, 32GB ram, and discrete graphics, since my primary work function is reviewing large pdf files (think construction drawings), and I need it in < 2 weeks. " Purchasing said "well, basically [everything] for laptops is out of stock and ordering 9 months out. We can get [this one] tomorrow, but it's like $5k USD." "uh, ok. order it. "

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humm3r1@reddit (OP)

Sweet specs! My personal rigs are: AMD 5950x, 64GB RAM, 3x 2TB NVMe, RTX 3080 FTW3 10GB (without LHR) 14" MacBook Pro M1 Max, 64GB RAM, 1TB SSD I use the Mac when not gaming since the desktop with those specs is a space heater and it's not very fun in the warmer summer months. Our work laptops are generally whatever Lenovo's I can find on sale with 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD, mainly for using Office Suite and web browsers, with Acrobat Pro. I aim for the AMD Ryzen 5 or 5 Pro CPU's if I can, or else the Ryzen 7 or 7 Pro if the price is right since to my knowledge they outperform the Intel CPU's for the past couple of years. I could be entirely wrong and Intel has caught up though, I tend to check every time we do orders to get the best possible bang for buck as a non profit.

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AZRatings@reddit

Company I work at, it is probably 1-15 desktop to laptop ratio. We have pretty much gone full remote, with some users hybrid if they need a lab.

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pdp10@reddit

* Desktops are highly modular, repairable, cost-effective, high productivity due to superior ergonomics. We never plan to do post-deployment upgrades *per se*, but before commissioning and after decomissioning we'll often shuffle hardware around, and this flexibility strongly favors non-laptops. * Laptops have a built-in Disaster Recovery option of relocating users offsite, are somewhat more flexible in terms of deployment options because they're smaller and have one power plug, and tend to meet user expectations/assumptions. Note that if the users don't routinely take the machines with them, that much of the Disaster Recovery function can be compromised. They cost more to acquire, and more in peripherals like displays and USB-C docks. Repairability varies from fair to nonexistent. * In the recent past we've deployed a lot of NUCs, tower workstations for power users who need GPUs, some SFF but not an overwhelming amount, and most recently one-liter-class "micros" just a bit larger than the NUCs and with AMD SoCs. Last fall I retired my own NUC and went to a one-liter "micro". I do have a laptop as well, but I only use it when traveling.

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humm3r1@reddit (OP)

I actually really appreciate the DR angle here, I'll need to incorporate this thought into our policies in my main role!

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pdp10@reddit

My concern has always been that laptops make for the basis a great client DR plan, but not if half the users always leave them in the office. After Hurricane Sandy and COVID-19, there's more explicit appreciation of this angle. Many years ago we started issuing two power supplies with every laptop, because the users who did cart them around every day would inevitably try to get away with leaving the power supply in one location but not the other. This was easy enough to solve, but caused a stunning amount of labor and equipment expense up to that point. Emergency PSU requests, prematurely dying batteries, mysteriously "borrowed" PSUs that were never returned, machines that were always hibernated and never updated, etc. USB-C is almost finished fixing the PSU and dock pain-points, thankfully.

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humm3r1@reddit (OP)

The other nice thing is laptops have a built in "UPS" with the battery too and can mitigate power outages and data loss / corruption to some degree. I also am thankful for the USB-C switchover to really standardize things, only our oldest laptops came with proprietary plugs and majority of our current fleet for my main role come with USB-C, since we are on a 4 year cycle I implemented to reduce risks of hardware failures and impact on productivity as machines age and software increasingly requires more advanced hardware.

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No-Confusion-4513@reddit

any recommendations for those inexpensive USB C hubs?

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humm3r1@reddit (OP)

I’m in Canada, so have been getting hubs for $45 from Phantom Cables with B2B pricing. They have RJ45, HDMI, USB-C PD in port for a charger, and some USB-A ports. I’ll get a model number and link for you

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humm3r1@reddit (OP)

Should be this one https://phantomcables.com/products/usb-3-1-type-c-to-hdmi-2x-usb-a-3-0-usb-type-c-rj45-sd-micro-sd-dp-1-4-alt-mode-black?_pos=7&_sid=f19fe9d95&_ss=r

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pdp10@reddit

USB-C means we can hand out PSUs and docks like candy, without: 1. Asking what the user has. 1. Being inhibited from switching laptop vendors, or using multiple vendors at once, because of proprietary peripherals. 1. Ending up with a pile of orphaned proprietary docks. I don't remember if the vendors pushed those things on us, but once upon a time we had mountains of unused spares.

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Moontoya@reddit

til they get a 45w power pack with a laptop needing a 65w power pack Then you get the user coming back saying "my battery wont charge" yep, 45w is enough to run it, but not charge, OR charge it but not run it :\\

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asdlkf@reddit

we are a higher-end office; we are mostly all IT architects or engineers. We are standardizing on thunderbolt 4 docks so we can have a single cable dock with dual 4k display port monitors, 1G wired ethernet, USB keyboard and mouse, and USB/thunderbolt charging for the laptop. We are in the process of building out a new office space and will mostly be deploying hotelling desks.

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af_cheddarhead@reddit

Plan on purchasing two USB-C docks for each laptop, one to leave at the office and one for home use. Our corporate initially refused to pay for the second dock until the IT staff pointed out that only one dock defeated the DR angle.

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pdp10@reddit

That's an excellent point -- two docks for the same reason as two power supplies. But we're actually trying to move to BYOD for peripherals, first.

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af_cheddarhead@reddit

I would argue that a USB-C dock is not a peripheral, if only it substitutes for a separate power supply. BYOD for entire rigs sounds like a security and support nightmare, especially if I bring my own rig I'm going to damn will have admin rights on it. YMMV

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Emotional-Box-6386@reddit

To us, DR is the biggest factor why laptops are best. Heck, it enabled the workforce to be fully remote, also saving costs in Office space and electricity.

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asdlkf@reddit

a major point is laptops have built in UPS. some workers simply couldn't work in locations/facilities with frequent power outages or brownouts. a laptop with a battery/UPS built in makes power quality irrelevant (other than needing surge protection).

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aec_itguy@reddit

AEC here - we were \~80% desktop prior to 2020, and now all staff are laptops, only desktops we deploy are for heavy 3D workloads. Between the cloud push and laptops, our DR/BC plan for site drop/loss is literally "work remote until we have an office, or it's back online". Power or network's out? Go home. Office leveled by tornado? Stay home.

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Aperture_Kubi@reddit

We've been buying Dell Latitude laptops, unless you're talking about the display I've found repair-ability to be about the same as a desktop. We also deploy laptops with docks, so in the office the user gets the same ergonomics a desktop user would, we deploy both with the same mouse, keyboard, and monitors. For the handful of Macs we have they all have to be sent off anyway, fortunately we haven't had to ship off a desktop Mac yet.

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Wild-Plankton595@reddit

We have Dell Latitudes as well 3k, 5k, and 7k series depending on the need. Kiosks, POS terminals are a mix of 2in1s or small form factors depending on the location. We also have all in ones for some users that require heavier duty hardware, they can borrow a department laptop if they need to be portable for a meeting or something like that. We have close to 36k laptops, about 40k end user machines total. We get ProSupport for 4 years and are on a rolling 4 -5 year replacement cycle. We replace about a quarter of our fleet every year. I agree with laptop repairability. We do our own repairs with Tech Direct, we really only depot or schedule Dell techs to come out for motherboard and I think hinges because no one likes to do them. Since the whole team is dell certified/certificated/blessed by the Elders of Mount Dell, we do get refunded on repairs that we do under ProSupport. They ship out the part, we replace, send back the old, we get refunded… which is awesome.

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wanabeagirl@reddit

> high productivity due to superior ergonomics. A laptop with a dock and dual monitors provides the same experience while at a desk so I’m not sure that’s a really benefit for desktops.

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0RGASMIK@reddit

We built out a whole call center of nuk workstations…. apparently corporate didn’t like having the call center in their open layout HQ so they made the call center employees WFH. No one told IT. A few months later I’m in the HQ and ask where the workstations are. Worst part was no one realized they were full blown desktops and they had been connecting to the monitors with laptops anyways…………. A few of them quit or got fired and usually monitors are not on HRs priority list of equipment to get back so they were lost to the universe. Laptops or AIOs going forward.

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Aggietallboy@reddit

My CFO DESPISES laptops.. everyone still gets a desktop. We replace them on a 5 year cycle, and we're getting Optiplex 7000 (soon to be 7010's) SFF. The quad monitor support that Intel added in with the 12th gen cpu is REALLY nice for us (generally triple monitors), being able to drive them all with the on-board graphics is awesome. We run a 34" wide, and 2x 24's for most users, and all of them are general business apps, so 3d acceleration etc.. is absolutely useless for us. Cost differential is roughly $400 less than the equivalent laptop/dock combo (200 for the laptop, 200 for the dock and around 10 for the \~20% likelihood of needing to pay to replace the battery within the 5 year span, but after the "battery warranty" ends) with otherwise identical specs. The CFO won't sign off on the extra cost with : * What about when someone forgets their laptop at home * What do you have them do if they forget to put on their pants? * What about when the laptop gets stolen/broken * We get warranties that cover accidental breakage, and we have insurance and encryption for if they are stolen/lost * What about when they let their kid use the laptop * Well.. the policy says they aren't allowed to do that... * But now I need to get another dock etc etc for them to work at home * Just like our WFH now, if you don't have the gear you need at home, you have an office to come to where you do have the gear...

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Difficult-Ad7476@reddit

Not to mention easier to patch. I rarely agree with c suite but your CFO knows his shit. Hats off to him. We went from all desktops to laptops. Been a nightmare…

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aec_itguy@reddit

>but your CFO knows his shit He knows how to watch the bottom line at the cost of user efficiency, that's about it.

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humm3r1@reddit (OP)

Our CFO is also pushing for cheap Windows laptops and trying to dissuade from Mac's, however I think we should allow for Mac's if user's are asking for them as the marginal $200 difference in cost is less than the impact to productivity when the user is learning how to use Windows over Mac, and we should accomodate their preferences wherever possible imo.

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pdp10@reddit

It seems the users aren't expected to be efficient off-site.

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dravenscowboy@reddit

what’s the DR plan if the office is compromised. Water leak, gas leak on the block, tornado takes part of the building? BYOD and remote into the office?

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DasaniFresh@reddit

How so? We use Intune and it’s a breeze

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humm3r1@reddit (OP)

We also use Intune and haven't been seeing any issues with remote patching. I just set the deadlines and the warnings to patch a few days out, and it's been fine.

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fullthrottle13@reddit

How tf do you deal with that CFO. I would tear my hair out.

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digitaltransmutation@reddit

Ever since the popular virus, the policy is that any worker who can reasonably work from home should be issued a lappy even if it's docked 99% of the time. rule of thumb is flex location vs fixed location. Something like a bank teller happens exclusively happens at the teller counter, while a fraud analyst is a laptop job.

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danjah2003@reddit

I'd like to point out the use of the word "lappy" to reference a laptop. I like it and am adding it to my vocabulary. Carry on.......

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reduser5309@reddit

I'd like to point out the use of the word "lappy" has created an impromptu HR meeting with me and my supervisor. Apparently that term hasn't become normalized and asking the IT intern for a lappy is frowned upon.

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humm3r1@reddit (OP)

Hahahaha! Amazing.

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husqvarna42069@reddit

Ah someone born after the days of homestar runner

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3MU6quo0pC7du5YPBGBI@reddit

> Ever since the popular virus, the policy is that any worker who can reasonably work from home should be issued a lappy even if it's docked 99% of the time. My company issued laptops to the majority of workers before the pandemic. When WFH was announced on a Thursday 90% of the people didn't show up at the office Friday. As far as I understand there were some scaling challenges with the VPN, and a fair bit of questions from the non-tech people, but otherwise it went pretty smoothly for a company that was mostly in-office prior to that.

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MrStealYoBichonFrise@reddit

I work for a 20,000 employee enterprise. All our task users that work in the office get desktops or a thin client for VDI. Managers and people that need to be in and out of the office or to customers get laptops. Some task users will also get laptops if they are in a lot of meetings. If they work from home or hybrid they get either a laptop or VDI. Overall desktops and VDI heavily outnumber the amount of laptops we use.

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urnaono@reddit

I'm looking to set up thin clients + VDI for our org and was wondering if you have any recommended reading on the subject

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EnvironmentalState48@reddit

I work for a manufacturing company. For us, things are quite a bit different now vs. 4 years ago. Before the pandemic we probably only had about 20 laptops. Now we have about 70. The other 120 systems we have in the facility are dell 7070 micro systems with full windows. We are an SMB so the cost of VDI was beyond what we could as for. Closest we get is remote app for dynamics ax.

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serverhorror@reddit

Standard is Laptop. Some locations have thin clients. Other form factors are specialized devices that have requirements that are not, conveniently, available as notebooks.

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mfraziertw@reddit

Anyone who has access to PII or Company Jewels should be on desktops. Laptops are a luxury. The company I work for is roughly 70% desktops 30 Laptops IT and operations folks have laptops.

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MonoChz@reddit

>Anyone who has access to PII or Company Jewels No, you should implement good security practices.

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mfraziertw@reddit

Our industry has a bad habit of that information walking out the doors. The industry across the board uses desktops for the advisors and sales people.

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MonoChz@reddit

Okay. But, serious question, how does a desktop prevent that?

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mfraziertw@reddit

Makes it harder to walk away with information and print it at home? Take it home and take photos of the screen in a super obvious manner that would raise flags on a trade floor. Just makes it harder and more obvious with a laptop you can go home and do stuff in the privacy of your own home. A determined person is going to exfil data. It raises the stakes and hopefully makes it harder for the bad guy. Giving you chances to catch them. Cybersecurity Defense is a game of inches and minutes. Not if but when and for how long. It also hopefully gives you evidence of them doing bad things so you can sue.

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GnPQGuTFagzncZwB@reddit

99% notebooks. The only "desktops" are workstations with big graphics cards in them. If they could stick them in notebooks it would be the end of desktops altogether. Side note, we have a few sub compacts for things that only run one program like shipping, and we have a couple all in one's.

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HellDuke@reddit

To start off we are a call centre so this may skew things a bit especially with the shift to work from home after COVID hit. There was always a disparity between management and agents or their team leads. For management or IT it was always a laptop since you'd need to be mobile so for those we had docking stations when in the office. An agent on the other hand was always desktop only. The type has shifted a bit with the time. We used to have SFF for the most part (in some offices we still do) however recently the Desktop Mini form factor has dominated some of our recent purchases. But as I said COVID shifted things. With people working from home now you need to issue a device to everyone. That's the other thing that is different. A team lead, management or IT would have their dedicated device. For everyone else, you'd walk into the office, find an empty spot and sit down. Nobody had a device for them specifically, just seats for a specific team. That said, since it's still a little bit of limbo as to whether there will be any major return to offices we continue to stick with desktops. That said, some places, like in my country, even have the office being shut down simply because there aren't enough that want a dedicated office for it to make financial sense, so instead there is just a rented workspace where you can book a room and work from there if you can't at home, but there is no infrastructure so you are still on VPN.

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MonoChz@reddit

SMB. About \~500 employees. 100% of our users have a laptop. We're primarily an Apple house thought about half the folks in our org also get Windows. Our standard is 16" MBP with 1tb ssd | 32 gb unless you're a developer. With the ARM Macs we're expected to average about a 5 year life (intel was \~3). We're currently redeploying Intel macs to support and accounting staff. We need equivalent to a gaming PCs (industrial design, CAD, animation) so we try to accomplish that with Alienware and Dell XPS on the Win side. Experience is so-so. Desktops are only deployed for high end developers that need ultra configurations to run BIM and render. We have a mixed bag of Mac minis/ultra and Dell towers. We don't do any in-house customizations/repairs anymore. It's cheaper to buy custom when needed than employee that expertise with our volume. Lifecycle is \~7 years. Most users with towers VNC into them from their smaller FF machines. Even before Covid, our culture was WFH friendly. Portability was good and desk-bound computers weren't common since we'd gather around conference room tables and airplay. I don't see us going back to that ever. For about the last year, we've been phasing out docks. The low-end ones no longer work with the hardware (ARM) and the decent ones cost about as much as 4K monitors with internal docks so we've largely moved to those. They charge the laptop and run most auxiliaries. Our standard is 1 Apple laptop, 1-2 Dell monitors with internal docks, apple kb + magic mouse. We also ship out a 7in1 dongle with USB, hdmi, etc.

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jason9045@reddit

Only desktops we deploy are in the warehouse spaces, which are semi-public areas. Everyone else gets a laptop, dock, and two monitors.

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DerBootsMann@reddit

same here , even designers get macbook pros and a huge monitors covid / post-covid , people work at least two days a week from homes

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ScriptThat@reddit

We do this too. Desktops are used where the job *has* to be done on-site. Everyone else gets a laptop.

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richard_fr@reddit

We deploy very high end desktops (i9, 64gb, etc.) to staff doing video editing because they offer better performance at a lower cost than a high end laptop. Everyone else gets a good laptop (i7, 32gb).

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rushed91@reddit

We got 2 HP elite minis, an all-in-one + a few iMacs. The rest are laptops, docks, two monitors and wireless combos!

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indigopearl@reddit

us too, nearly identical!

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zanzertem@reddit

+1 for this, we have this exact set up

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Pickleliver@reddit

We went from 90/10 desktops to 90/10 laptops. Now the emphasis is justifying why you need a desktop.

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IAN4421974@reddit

I have my desktop that is from 2012. Dell. Imaged myself and keep it updated with all the latest updates and security patches. It's on its third hard drive. I do network maintenance and management. I just need a couple of small programs, a web browser, Office, and a terminal window truly do my job. I could likely run just fine off a Pi.

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wscottwatson@reddit

For a long time, laptops were a must for "important" people. Some of them never left the desk. Nowadays, with more WFH, they are more likely to be used as a mobile device rather than proof of seniority. I know that the device that those executives "must have" now is anything from Apple. Just make sure you disable their access to the App Store! Otherwise you will have all sorts of surprising licence problems!

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snottyz@reddit

I'm pushing laptops mainly because everyone who currently has a desktop ALSO demands a laptop for meetings, remote work etc. So our device:human ratio is well over 1:1, which seems largely unnecessary. There's niche cases of course but I have departments where every single person has a laptop and a desktop, which is a waste of, like, everything.

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pdp10@reddit

We prefer to have a high device to human ratio, because that means that when something fails, it creates less of an emergency to replace or fix it. If an iPad Pro is a sufficient interim device, then giving the executives without another backup device a $750 tablet with a $150 keyboard is plenty cheap.

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snottyz@reddit

Fair enough. I work in public ed and we have limited budgets, so trimming unnecessary stuff where we can is important. We have spares on hand (usually leftovers from the previous device refresh, or the one before that...), if someone's laptop goes under we can get them back online with a spare in a few minutes. 1.1:1 is fine, 2:1 (literally more than 2:1 in some departments) is a different story imo.

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snowfloeckchen@reddit

You kind of suck not concidering thin clients \^\^'

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humm3r1@reddit (OP)

I forgot to include thin clients and zero clients in my original post :) those are very valid choices too especially with VDI, I take it you’re using these?

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legibryn@reddit

We are primarily desktops, our fleet of laptops is growing but a lot of our work force doesn't move around so Laptops are not been a priority for us yet. Also we have encountered lots of issues with docking stations that makes us hate them almost as much as printers.

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Arudinne@reddit

As much as I would love to switch everyone to laptops our environment is still primarily uSFF desktops. Even some "hybrid" employees have the equivalent of 2 full sets of hardware at home and basically tote their desktop to/from work. None of that is my call though. Both the Helpdesk Supervisor (who is in charge of that) think it's janky, but management doesn't want to splurge for a laptop and 1-2 docks every employee yet.

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OneRFeris@reddit

Our corporate office users all have laptops. Thanks Covid! There are some single-purpose stations (like in our shipping room for preparing package shipping labels) where we deploy a desktop, since mobility is required for those machines.

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mcotton82@reddit

We have use cases for both.

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Dok440@reddit

AEC here we are about 70/30 laptops to desktops. Pre virus we were all desktops and people who travel were also given a laptop. Today most get a laptop, two docks, two power adapters and we will also provide monitors, keyboard, mouse for home if needed as well as for the office. With very few exceptions everyone has only one computer now. Desktop users are either interns who are supposed to work closely with an engineer in the office, designers that need all the speed they can get and a few whose jobs require they work in the office. HP ZBooks have been pretty reliable for us. Generally, we have HP service contracts covering three years and after that we repair ourselves. After three years, if the repair is too extensive just replace it at that point. During the virus we couldn't get replacement laptops in a timely manner so we were replacing screens, keyboards/trackpads and various components just to keep things running. Fun days, learned a lot.

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megakotaro@reddit

Medium company (about 100 people.), manufacture industry. Boss says if we use laptop the employees will take out company's secret, so we use a lot of desktop PC. Only 4 laptops for emergency use. But we have Kaspersky Endpoint Security with a lot of policies suck as block usb, deny employee go to cloud storage website etc. Well... that's fine. I just an IT person not company's shareholder.

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dracotrapnet@reddit

Some small form factor desktops for shared workstations and seats that aren't allowed to work from home at all. A few standard size towers for Engineering and Document Control. Laptops for the migrant workers. About 70% of the laptop fleet never comes off the dock except for special occasions. We were sold on small form factor desktops and laptops when we got a call 2 hours after a hurricane evacuation was declared at a site near the gulf of Mexico. "Hey can you send one of your tech guys over to pick up pc's and move them to the main office or get them off the floor in case it floods? Maybe evacuate some of the important ones?" "HELL NO! We are not sending anybody when the evac was just declared." Funny thing, we did not lose a single desktop computer in that flood. However HSE had some laptops that were drowned by flooding, units they stored locked up in the on the bottom of a cabinet. They were spares for training new hires. The only other losses were from roof leaks. I had one network switch that the shelf it was on was within 2 ft of water level according to the high water mark. We lost a couple copiers. We decided on the small form factor because they remain on top of the desk, not shoved down below the desks like towers. If a manager has a panic like that one, we could tell them pick them up themselves, just unplug everything and carry the computer case, leave all cables.

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Ok_Fortune6415@reddit

200 employees. All desktops - top of the line, latest CPU. 64GB memory.

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Top-Pair1693@reddit

So I can keep my emotional support chrome tabs open

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Ok_Fortune6415@reddit

We can afford it, and we get way less helpdesk tickets because everyone has a beefy as hell machine (with dedicated GPU, may I add)

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IT-Man0@reddit

UK based - laptops for all users and have been for last decade. Although we now have a 60/40 split Windows to Macbooks. Very handy during covid where everyone just went home and continued working as normal

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LiberalJames@reddit

We've now entirely stopped deploying desktops unless it's for classroom environments

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CelticDubstep@reddit

We are 100% custom built desktops. Regular ATX Towers. Small company in a rural remote area which isn't covered by Dell/HP/Lenovo On-Site Repairs. If something fails, I can swap it out with a spare part or run up to our local computer store and pick up a new part. No recycling/e-waste companies around here, so I've been putting decommissioned systems in storage. I'll probably have a storage unit with hundreds of workstations when I retire.

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mrlinkwii@reddit

> No recycling/e-waste companies around here, so I've been putting decommissioned systems in storage. I'll probably have a storage unit with hundreds of workstations when I retire. depending on the local i believe theirs like charities that will take decommissioned systems and give them to people in need ( i dont have a name on hand , but have seen a few mentioned on this subreddit)

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mrlinkwii@reddit

>My experience has been majority of enterprises and work environments nowadays are laptop based, and rarely desktop based. depends on environment , their are environments thats are still desktop based

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mt379@reddit

Local govt here. Everyone has a tower. With windows 11 we are transitioning from large towers to small form factor ones wjth nvme drives (thank god!). Will make the transport of new pcs to all our locations a hell of a lot faster as I can load up my car and do a building. Plus the speed of nvme is so much better from our traditional hdd towers. As for Laptops, anyone that justifiably needs to do remote work gets one. We don't want anyone using personal laptops to vpn in and access our network, and it helps ensure we can deploy web filtering for them off site, and get alerts if anything is detected. I would hate if we gave everyone laptops.

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pizzacake15@reddit

Pre-pandemic on my previous employer, our standard deployed computer are desktops. Only execs and people with permission are given laptops. Come pandemic everyone is given a laptop up to the point I left them. My current employer only gives out laptops because people are either work from home or are a deployed resource.

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SpiceyDejarik@reddit

Where I work, it's mostly desktops. The boss doesn't like WFH, so he doesn't see the need to spend more on laptops. I get it, but it sure made things interesting when he was forced to let people work from home when people started getting Covid. They had to take their desktops with them and hook them up at home. That was some fun times. The salespeople get laptops, of course. I have a laptop because I am the whole IT department. The few of us with laptops that work in the office get docking stations. Desktops are all SFF, except for some special purpose PCs that are micro. On a side note, since I went all in with Intune and Autopilot, it's simplified my deployment. Laptops and Desktops both get registered with Autopilot and I've got them to where they pretty much configure themselves for the standard use cases. We have a bunch of offices around the country and no IT staff at any of them except me at corporate, so being able to ship a new PC straight from the vendor without needing it to go through my hands first has been great.

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no-dupe@reddit

It depends on geography and project, but my shop tends for the laptops where possible. For instance on an construction site office Desktop makes sense for most of users. In an office on the city we use mostly laptops. We avoid mobile graphical workstations - that’s the main exception on city offices.

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falleyrq@reddit

We have about 130 desktops and about 80 laptops at my current position. Some users have both.

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ie-sudoroot@reddit

Working in BIM environment so we have a lot of desktop workstations approx 30%, everything else is mobile laptop, OSX 1% & windows 69% then there’s just some thin clients for meeting rooms. Lots of MDM deployments incorporating corporate & personal profiles via intune.

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InformationUnited654@reddit

Desktops for office based workers, laptops for hybrid users.

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Tswizzle_Ma_Nizzle@reddit

We are a desktop only (SFF) but have a pool of “loan laptops” for staff that need to work remotely for usually short period of times. Some exec staff have laptops at home that are used to remotely access the environment. Apart from being stuck in a “90’s” mind set of EVERYTHING where possible to be on-site (as I believe we need to be more flexible /mobile ) the justification is to have a tight and controlled perimeter of security and cost saving(with a smattering of other smaller reasons) There is a shake up where exec are now seeing that we need to be in 2023 and “get with the times” spend the money, and be just as secure whilst mobile and flexible post covid

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PowerCaddy14@reddit

We have all laptops, docking stations, and two monitors. No desktops are assigned to anyone, rather users remote into them from their laptops such as developers.

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Superspudmonkey@reddit

Pandemic pushed us to laptops for most.

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LuckyWorth1083@reddit

Semiconductors we have everything. Literally

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Jit_litass@reddit

As an IT systems engineer. I have seen the change from desktops to laptops more frequently. Interesting though is that the desired setup is a laptop and a docking station with dual monitors

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Rnzzzzzzz@reddit

Couple of small form factor desktops for admin staff who are fulyl office based still, and on a couple of hotdesks "just in case".  Everyone else is laptop based.  Small company 30-40 employees.

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Strassi007@reddit

Since we have many on site people & can WFH, everbody uses a laptop. Mechnanical engineers have a desktop in the office.

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Ivelmend@reddit

Mainly laptops. And when not using laptops it's usually a thin client or a small form factor computer. Regular desktop towers are rarely used anymore. This info is mainly from Belgian small - mid sized companies (10-1000 people)

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prodders152@reddit

99% desktops, general dislike of Laptops in our environment, only given to road warriors and the odd special case.

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Random_Blaze@reddit

We are currently switching to Full Notebook. Everyone who wants one gets one. Everyone who was one gets a new one and can start to work Remote or at Home.

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Addfwyn@reddit

Hospitality industry, most places I have worked have used a mix, including my current position. Back Office: Almost entirely desktops, SFF, most workstations are shared between a lot of different staff and aren't being moved. Laptops are only deployed for users that need their own workstations and might have to connect to the office network from home, that is 99% just management. Front/Guest-Facing Positions: All laptops to minimize the amount of tech visible to guests. Everything is connected via a dock under the desk, so only one cable that guests can see. These laptops tend to be a different model (larger with full-sized keyboard) than the smaller ultraportables management use.

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Llew19@reddit

I work in quite a large manufacturing plant. Normal full time staff like engineers and admin etc get laptops (I got a Surface laptop 4), a dock, and usually two monitors unless a manager is being particularly stingy with their budget. Down on the manufacturing and assembly floors though, it's usually a desktop for production stations - very easy to add an extra HDD into a HP Elite desk and turn Raid 1 on. There are a few high end desktops with two CPUs and a graphics card in labs where more communal approaches to modelling happens, although a lot of the people who work in 3D get reasonable spec HP fury laptops anyway.

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Alzzary@reddit

Hello, in all my previous jobs in the past 6 years we had a mix of both, and still have, (100 users, 40 laptops and 60 desktops).

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shootme83@reddit

Depends on the role. Ppl with autocad, photoshop, etc always have a desktop. Those who work hybrid have laptop. Those who work on terminal server use thinclient.

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ZAFJB@reddit

Almost no desktops. About 25% laptops, and 75% thin clients.

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TechTino@reddit

We are a vdi house, so just thin clients everywhere.

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dalg91@reddit

Whatever works for the user/ use. Mostly desktop but if requested and needed we will deploy laptops

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2c0@reddit

We deploy mainly desktops - the working areas are fixed so there is no need for a laptop. We give a few that have a genuine need for WFH or using our BYOD meeting rooms. Some of our other sites are mainly laptop - It just depends on needs

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CyborgPenguinNZ@reddit

Everyone in our environment currently has a desktop and dual monitors in the office. Those who work remotely on occasion also have a laptop and if they regularly work from home we usually provision an additional 27inch monitor for their home use. That's probably a bit unusual in today's climate. Come next lifecycle replacement round I'm probably going to push to only issue laptops along with USB docks for the office and for the work from homers a dock for their home setup.

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expatscotsman@reddit

I have a few custom desktops for mechanical engineers because they need bonkers expensive GPUs to render schematics. I am looking to replace with workstation class laptops on the next refresh - they are more expensive, but it's cheaper overall than have to provide a custom desktop and a laptop for each engineer. That, and horrible Optiplexes that come with lab instruments that I'll probably replace with small form factor ones when they get too old

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I3U773RCUP@reddit

Decent size multi-state law firm: in-office is all Dell Optiplex desktops joined to the domain. Pre pandemic we had a small handful of loner laptops for the occasional remote use through Citrix. Post pandemic we have 10x the laptops all bitlocked and still using Citrix to access firm data but now we also send cheap ass HP desktops and monitors to attorneys’ homes if they request them. Total cost with dual monitors and webcams between $500-$700 for the entire home set up (still using Citrix.) These dual monitor + HP desktops end up being way cheaper then a single laptop. Remote equipment managed using Logmein. TLDR: In office - decent quality domain joined Dell desktops Remote - laptops and desktops connecting through Citrix (local hardware not really that important for Citrix use.) Laptops tend to be too expensive and

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tonyangtigre@reddit

Massive DoD contractor Laptops for nearly everyone that requires one. Desktops for shared use areas, drop-ins, etc. Closed areas typically see a desktop for the secure side, and sometimes they can bring in their laptop for the unclassified side, but some areas it’s not allowed and desktops are required for both sides (so laptop is left at home). Engineers typically get heavy duty laptop or heavy duty workstation. It’s not uncommon that a good chunk of our workers have 3 assets assigned to them due to the nature of their work, not including the work mobile.

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jocke92@reddit

Mostly laptops. But some desktop in manufacturing environments

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BalderVerdandi@reddit

Probably 98% desktops, and no laptops. We have a few "WFH" systems that are laptops, but it's a case by case basis and the costs for them are just crazy because they're setup to be used only outside the office.

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TheMagecite@reddit

Ever since Covid it’s pretty much all laptops now. Have a few desktops in warehouse spots but we literally have a mountain of spare desktops which were quickly replaced with laptops as they just don’t work with hybrid office roles.

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wanabeagirl@reddit

Except for a couple of video editing stations, I haven’t deployed a desktop at any company I’ve worked at in almost a decade. Laptops simply offer more flexibility- and that was especially helpful during the pandemic. Laptops are basically not upgradable, but we replace them every three years anyway. Support is the same or easier for laptops since employees can bring them to us and they’re easier to swap than a desktop. Actual repairs are done by the manufacturer anyway via NBD support so that’s identical for laptops and desktops.

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Paulythress@reddit

I deploy towers across all our locations. Only ones with laptop is management and doctors.About 25ish laptops and 80 towers

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highdiver_2000@reddit

AFAIK, no more desktops. All converted to laptops. Even for back end admin.

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LaHawks@reddit

Mac and HP desktops in shared lab spaces then maybe 20-ish HP minis for specific areas, like a check in desk. Then everyone else has a laptop with docking station. Approx 2000 FTEs.

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MasksArePatriotic@reddit

Hospitality still running around 65% SFF desktops but trending little by little each Capex cycle towards laptops

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Ice_Leprachaun@reddit

In manufacturing here. We are phasing out desktops for majority of engineers and admin staff and going all laptops. Basically, if you can work from home, you get a laptop, and only a laptop. The guys on the floor that just need to see stuff they are working on get a desktop since they aren’t going to be taking it home. Plus there isn’t as easy a way to protect laptops in a dusty environment unless we get all rugged laptops for them.

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stumppc@reddit

I’m in local government. We use desktops, laptops, ruggedized laptops, and ruggedized tablets. Police, Fire, Utilities, Transportation, and Public Works all need equipment thats rugged and purpose-built. Desktops are best for office shared use and different shifts, where people like dispatchers and firefighters share the equipment. Vehicles and mobile people like inspectors need their own ruggedized computing platforms. We have regular laptops, but those are more for finance, IT, managers, supervisors, executive assistants.

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AvonMustang@reddit

Mid Fortune 500 company and are nearly all laptops for people with about 90% Windows and 10% Macs. Most have a USB C "dock" with two monitors, external keyboard and mouse. Some people do keep the laptop open to use the laptop screen as a 3rd screen but it's not too common. There is the occasional desktop for stationary things like the UPS PC that's hooked to a scale and label printer but these aren't for individual use.

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tomaximoto@reddit

I work for a multinational manufacturing company, since the start of covid more employees are working in Homeoffice at least once or twice per week - to make that possible for all new hires we are giving our laptops 95% of the time. Before we had roughly 30/70 between Laptops and Desktops, now it is more like 60/40. When we used more Desktops we usually both USFF-models for office use and Full-Towers for heavy graphics card users.

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daven1985@reddit

Notebooks. I like my staff having portability.

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Kritchsgau@reddit

Only desktops go in zoom rooms now, all new starters get laptops. Only a handful of desktops now. Desktops as in like prodesk 600 g9 minis so small footprint.

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Usual_Beyond4276@reddit

We do a lot of intel NUCs.

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FrogManScoop@reddit

Both. Depending on employee role and needs as well as intended system use.

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JJROKCZ@reddit

Majority desktop in my environnement, basically only upper management gets laptops and out of 1000 staff maybe 50 have vpn access

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0RGASMIK@reddit

We have a user who requested a desktop. He got the new iMac. He treats it like a laptop. He travels around to different offices everyday… sets up his iMac. It’s very peculiar but it’s what he wanted.

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evantom34@reddit

We mix desktops and laptops in higher ed. I work for the trades and durability and cost are top priorities.

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htglinj@reddit

Engineering (CAD) while runs on laptops, benefits greatly from a correctly configured desktop. Also allows for longer usage as 3D CAD generally runs single-threaded, so CPU doesn't really change as max per core has been somewhat static, but able to upgrade video cards lengthens the lifetime. Now, throw in FEA (multithreaded) which greatly benefits from multiple cores and now you can have a dual xeon desktop and plow through cycles.

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otakunorth@reddit

it's getting rarer every day, the people that used to get desktops not get a laptop and a dedicated vm

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981flacht6@reddit

50-50 Administrative - desktop Those who need mobility or are Execs - laptops Anything public/kiosk - desktop Terminal servers available also.

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Agitated-Highway5079@reddit

So at my last position we never deployed laptops unless there was a solid business need. We reimaged every computer due to a cyber attack. 32 laptops 220 desktops. This was in the manufacturing sector Current job in 4 months I have imaged too many laptops to count and zero desktops. Seems to be since covid the focus has been laptops

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Capable_Obligation96@reddit

My SMB clients are mostly desktops in the office.

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DeejayPleazure@reddit

This thread makes me realize how far behind the organization I am with is. We have some 12 year old desktops in place, once it starts failing, we Frankenstein it. The only people who get "newer" hardware are the sales folks bc you know...money. even then, they are getting refurbished or deals of week.

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SousVideAndSmoke@reddit

Security, reception and retail get dell aio desktops, everybody else is laptop.

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waremi@reddit

Mid-sized quasi-government business here, 120 +/- employees working hybrid schedule half-in-half-out of the office. I'm not the hardware guy, I'm software development, but all employees have mini-tower desktops at the office and VPN into those from their company provided Laptops when they are working from home. Software is all Microsoft stack - some public and intranet websites that can be accessed from either the Laptops or Desktops when connected to the VPN, some MVVM C# apps that can only be run from the desktops. Lots of PII involved so security drives limiting out-facing UI or allowing information to end up on Laptops that could get lost.

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chipdewolfe@reddit

I’m in a K12 education environment, so my parameters may be a bit different. However, we deploy both and for several reasons. Every teacher and administrator has an assigned Chromebook. No dock (previous deployments taught us that far too many teachers left the laptop on the dock 24/7, killing the battery, which, while unused, eventually swelled and needed replacement). The Chromebook is high end, with plenty of RAM, a good CPU, and a garaged stylus. They have the ability to wirelessly cast their screen to the TVs in every classroom and the projectors in all presentation spaces (like auditoriums and conference rooms). With this setup, they can host large video conferences, edit video, handle 3d modeling, have a mobile interactive display, and interact with robotics/arduinos. This also gives them the ability to work from anywhere. Every classroom has a Windows desktop computer with multiple displays, including a wired connection to the TV. Should a substitute be in for a period, they can access resources shared by the regular teacher, present to the classroom, take attendance, communicate with the office etc. Loaner laptops tended to disappear, but not so much with the desktops. This setup also works well when hosting events and competitions after hours (when employee laptops have gone home for the day). The other advantage of this approach is some helpful redundancy. If Chromebooks suddenly have an issue with wireless display, teachers can jump on their Windows desktops and continue. If Windows machines are suddenly having difficulty printing, they can print from the Chromebook. Given that **most** of the software that we use is available from both platforms, this has kept disruptions due to technology errors to a minimum. This may not make sense in a corporate environment where substitutes are not really a thing and after hours events don’t happen in people’s offices.

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jason_abacabb@reddit

I work in a research environment. Many users have workstation grade desktops (dual xeon, high power cuda cards...) , almost everyone has a laptop. The workstation users RDP to their desktop after VPNing into network.

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ErnestEverhard@reddit

I'm definitely in a unique environment, but a laptop or any portable media is never going to happen. All fairly beefy desktops, all the time.

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xenos86atwork@reddit

100% desktops. laptops need 8021x and the people they paid to "make it work" made it a dumpster fire that i won't fix since it doesn't fall under my contract and hasn't been turned over to our task order

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ErnestEverhard@reddit

I work in a research environment, and a laptop will never be present, too easy to walk away with data.

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Hashrunr@reddit

Individuals get laptop + dock. Multi-user workstations are AIOs or a monitor with USFF mounted on the back. We have some high performance full tower workstations for people who do various forms of data analysis requiring high performance storage arrays and 1 or more GPUs, but we are slowly moving those workloads onto purpose built servers.

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pockypimp@reddit

I'm in a large corporation it's primarily desktops for the rank and file except managers and higher get laptops as they can work remote, have meetings in the conference room using WiFi, etc. At my site we have 109 laptops vs 171 desktops, around 40 slim clients. 90% of the desktops are shared use which leads to some interesting times with disk space issues. At my previous job it was closer to 1:1 because all of the sales reps had laptops so you could have a site with 10 desktops but 6 sales reps plus a couple of managers.

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Unclothed_Occupant@reddit

SFF for VDI users. Non-VDI users we are starting to standardize to laptop + docking station

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MonoChz@reddit

When you say standardize on docking station… what and why?

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iammandalore@reddit

We use laptops for everyone except engineers who need the power for CAD and such.

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jktmas@reddit

Users get laptops, but we have some kiosk machines that are micro desktops. Some people will never disconnect their laptop from their dock, but it opens up the option for BC/DR. If “new more scary Covid” hits, we can literally send any employee with a laptop home same day.

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flsingleguy@reddit

We use virtual desktops for all. We just place the Teradici zero client instead of a desktop and we are good to go. Still don’t understand why VDI is not super popular in 2023.

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DasaniFresh@reddit

We’re a VDI shop. It’s expensive and I wish we could get rid of it. Everything nowadays is SaaS

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flsingleguy@reddit

I am an IT Director for a municipal government and we support tons of software as a municipal government is really like 12-15 individual business units all with their own unique needs. There is some cloud, some premise, some browser based and some actual applications. We use the full suite of Office and resource intensive software like CAD and GIS. Our Axon body cam system is browser based, but still resource intensive when reviewing body cam footage. Some applications are CPU, GPU or memory intensive. We can provide custom desktop pools based on the needs of particular users. There is no wasted hardware and everyone is working from server tier hardware. I can easily scale up by adding more physical hosts to the hyperconverged platform and the users see no impact or downtime if we need to do it. I can provide a desktop to a zero client, desktop, laptop, iPad, iPhone, Android devices, Mac’s, etc. When the world shut down from Covid in March 2020 nobody had enough laptops to support anyone’s needs. So people simply put VMware Horizon View on their computers at home and they were remote. With Webex Calling they had soft phones and nobody missed a beat. No need to deal with remote troubleshooting of hardware as there isn’t any. If you want to take the next step with VDI you can push that workload from premise to cloud. I don’t know what I would do without VDI and having a department of two for 225 users.

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DasaniFresh@reddit

That’s for sure a perfect VDI opportunity. It definitely made my life easier when COVID hit. Just sent them home and their workflow remained the same.

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pdp10@reddit

* VDI licensing can immediately increase prices well into the "enterprise" band, depending on the platforms involved. As soon as you're an *enterprise*, everyone wants their cut of the action. * VDI introduces complications with peripherals, even when you think it shouldn't. * Latency can easily result in discomfort, often even when you think it shouldn't. Don't blame at me. I pushed hard for X-terminals in 1992. Roaming/stateful sessions was something I wanted later, but nobody's solution was nearly open enough -- we looked at Sun and IBM briefly. Then the laptop craze destroyed the prospect of customer acceptance with thin terminals, until wily Google gave us the Chromebook paradigm.

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Fancy_Possibility_47@reddit

This is because of voice, VDI in my experience doesn't get along very well with voip solutions.

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maxprax@reddit

We're using laptops for our call center employees 100% WFH on VDI with them. VMWARE, Cisco phones & Plantronics headsets.

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flsingleguy@reddit

I have VDI and use Cisco Webex Calling. Both platforms work great. You do have to be a little more mindful with webcams. Certain webcams work well VDI and some don’t. It also helps platforms like Zoom have VDI versions as well. I was just testing my VDI desktop with a 4k YouTube video at full screen and runs amazingly.

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vitaroignolo@reddit

I'd love to work for a place with this environment. So much less troubleshooting.

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a60v@reddit

I would guess a combination of licensing (if Windows) and the idea that a single point of failure can affect many users. And performance for users who need GPUs and/or powerful desktop CPUs. I'm sure that it works well for some, though.

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flsingleguy@reddit

In the age of cybersecurity it’s such granular control of desktops, patching, etc. You allocate the exact resources required and no waste and everyone working on server tier hardware and no desktop or laptop troubleshooting. That whole layer of management is eliminated. When you switch from Windows 10 to Windows 11, you just switch the users to a different desktop pool. So, there is no imaging desktops and deployments. It’s really an awesome foundational element to an infrastructure practice.

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armchairqb2020@reddit

Everybody gets desktops other than Sales.

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MonoChz@reddit

I think these replies should include industry.

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armchairqb2020@reddit

Noted. Manufacturing.

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lxaccord@reddit

75% desktops, 19% laptops, 6% AIOs. We’re moving towards laptops now since WFH is a thing

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Kahless_2K@reddit

People who are permitted to work from home get laptops. Everyone else gets Desktops or ThinClients.

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ooblongtea@reddit

We use SFF desktops. Most of our machines are shared. We have a few laptops that folks are assigned but they also have a basic desktop. We had a few running LTs as primary but it was an issue when a few kept forgetting to bring them in, so they have a normal desktop but a very basic laptop for WFH. The biggest gripe? A few are upset we don't give them admin rights so they can install software on their own.

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soggybiscuit93@reddit

Since COVID, we're transitioning to 100% laptops and are almost done. We deploy with Autopilot in a AD/M365 Hybrid environment.

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rednib@reddit

I work in a hospital and so all the clinical spaces have AIOs but staff typically get a laptop. I do consulting work for a mid-size business as well and they are entirely 100% laptops for all staff.

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hessmo@reddit

20% desktops + 80% laptops. We run a 24/7 operation with workstations that are occupied by shift employees, they use desktops generally.

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abortizjr@reddit

I deploy both, but laptops sparingly and ONLY when needed.

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keenoo55@reddit

We have all in ones at our branches, while office staff use laptops and plug into docks with dual monitor set ups

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C-DomiNations@reddit

coming from management, there are very few use cases where a desktop is required. If it is, it's a beast of a machine. Thus why they are so few and far between. I've had a few other mini's. I concur with your hypothesis. In my experience the current meta is 98% laptop

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fireice158@reddit

We deploy small form factor dell optiplex desktops in our environment. We do have some laptops, mostly for managers or other select employees that need the extra portability.

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Daisy_Bloodworth@reddit

We use laptops for our Staff & students. The only desktops in circulation are NUC's/Mini-PC's for laboratory equipment that is in a fixed location. Lifecycle for laptops/desktops is 5 years.

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NNUfergs@reddit

University: We tried to go exclusively laptops for all employees five or six years ago, but we got a lot of push back plus considering the lower cost of desktops (assuming not replacing peripherals) we went back to letting employees choose between windows desktop or laptop or a MacBook. Policy is a three rotation for all of them but that doesn’t always happen. We deploy ThinkCenters and ThinkPads. Low to mid tier. Desktops get two monitors, laptops get one additional monitor. Most users don’t need anything more. We certainly deploy more laptops than say 10 years ago but it’s pretty close to 50/50.

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sdurflinger@reddit

At our school we use all desktops so they're hard wired. We also give all teachers and students chromebooks.

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neminat@reddit

All laptops other than conference rooms

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finished_focus@reddit

Human services non-profit: Currently, a mix of old school desktops and laptops. Let’s say 50/50. We’re moving to laptops, USB-C/USB-A (both because of older laptops) docking stations, 24-27” single or dual monitor config (some users prefer single), and wireless keyboards and mice. SFF desktops for non-employee clients of the agency. We’re afraid of another pandemic or similar situation happening and being caught off-guard so we’re transitioning everyone.

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awetsasquatch@reddit

So working for a defense contractor, I actually deploy far more desktops than laptops, but that's mostly because over half of my working environment is a SCIF, so no laptops allowed.

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omare14@reddit

Approximately 400 users at my enterprise, multiple locations including corporate office. We have around 600 desktops, all micro form factor, and around 80-ish laptops for users with roles that involve roaming between locations and meeting with clients.

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Syhaque97@reddit

Giant enterprise here (10,000+ employees) Laptops only for employees (company is fully Hybrid). 5 year lifecycle for knowledge workers who get a standard HP G9 3 year lifecycle for “power users” who get an HP zBook

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The_Koplin@reddit

I guess I don't make your list because we don't use Laptops or Desktops per say. We use VMware VDI \~ 200 - 250 users, 250+ Thin Clients, Mix of Dell 3040, 5070, OptiPlex 3000's - life cycle is until they die, each user has x2 monitors. Some have three. 50-60 Laptops - setup more or less as mobile thin client terminals and remote workers. - 3 to 5 year refresh (this is our biggest pain point, but I am trying to teach the IT staff member reasonable for this how to use disk imaging to make his life easier) Server farm backing all of this is x6 nodes each with x1 AMD Epyc 7702P x64 core proc, 1TB ram and x3 Nvidia T4 video cards. Sessions are allotted x4 CPU cores, x12gb ram, and 1gb of video card. Setup for non-persistence. (IE every logoff users get a clean clone) Storage is all SSD vSAN (50TB). on 10gb and 100gb networking. x2 redundant sites and cloud backup. You could drop a bomb in my server room and we can have full services running again in under 30 min from another location. End users could use any available device to login to their session and be back in operation either locally or from a cloud hosted desktop image. All of this can be managed by 1 or 2 IT staff members if needed, at the moment our support staff is x1 Director, x1 Sysadmin, x2 helpdesk

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humm3r1@reddit (OP)

You do make my list! I forgot to ask about VDI with thin / zero clients :) I like VDI, I’m familiar with Horizon but haven’t run it myself. It’s especially nice because it can enable longer cycles for a thin or zero client to just connect and even for remote work you could in theory do BYOD as well (however not something I personally like to see, since it raises security concerns, but it could work).

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The_Koplin@reddit

Thank you!, I was being sarcastic, I hope you didn't take offence. Our agency went VDI because we had issues getting good tech help where we are. Long story short, our agency had desktops about 10 years ago when I started, and had 7+ IT staff. As we lost staff and the hardware was too old to support we faced a decision. Renew and have a lot of hardware to manage with fewer staff, or go VDI and shovel the staff budget into it (We had a small deployment already from a defunct company called Panologic). So thats what we did and there is not a single person at our agency that thinks that was a bad idea. Staff love the performance and stability, management is easy, and we can train helpdesk level staff on how to mange the most common VDI tasks. (I have hit some serious issues along the way, to the point I had reach out to then CEO of VMware Pat Gelsinger) (The reason I stayed with VMware was how they fixed the issues etc. LONG LONG Story) Speaking of longer life cycles, Just this year we finished changing out Wyse P25's from 2013.... 10 year old devices that worked just fine still. Our reason was so we could change over to just one video protocol to support, BLAST vs PCoIP. It simplified our image and management and gave us a better long term path. PCoIP is part of Teradici and is pretty good but BLAST offered us more. Like wise the P25's were Teradici chipped. VS the 3040's and such are all Intel chipped. Finally there is the multiplicity of our newer thin/zero clients. They support VMware, Citrix, Azure Virtual Desktops, Windows RDP, Amazon WorkSpaces, and Teradici's cloud. On the BYOD, security is easy honestly, I disable all remote copy paste, printing etc (in the gold image).. so the remote device is just a terminal of sorts, and any such device is put on our public part of our network, or they access our system from outside the agency. IE not trusted but can access the main login portal via HTTP/443 That's all that is needed for us to support someone via BYOD. During the height of Covid, my boss asked "how many remote users can we support", I said from my perspective, everyone is already remote so > 300. I have our primary access point enforce 2FA via Office 365/Azure and it works great. I could keep going on but my posts get pretty long, sorry. I am happy to share more if you want.

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Apprehensive-Swim-29@reddit

We have laptops mostly, Lenovo's and surfaces. We have a few 8ish year old desktops that everyone fights over because they're so much better than the laptops. We do cad tho, so I guess it matters. Our new wave will all be desktops: even with battery backups, we get 2 desktops per 1 laptop. It's rare any of us are "on the move" and need a laptop. We use rdp a lot, so if anyone works from home, we loan them a random old laptop and they rdp to their stationary laptop.

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reilogix@reddit

I do support two different businesses (break-fix) both of whom utilize beefy video cards and redundant hardware for mission-critical Autodesk and SolidWorks software. These titles are quite resource intensive…

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BillyScrimshaw@reddit

I'm pretty far from enterprise but yeah, I like desktops. Small or micro form factor, must have 2 display outputs. No optical drive. Internal power supply is nice but not critical. Worked K12 for a while and they used a lot of Dell AIO.

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noother10@reddit

The answer is influenced by the industry and usage per person. Where I work we have a mix depending on the requirement of the role. Currently we roughly have 3x as many laptops compared to desktops. One in four staff have a desktop. The desktops are mostly SFF (small form factor), but we have a good number of high end workstation for drafting/rendering. The laptops are 14" and 15" models, normally bought with docks and screens. Where we can we buy desktops as they're often half the price of similarly spec'd laptops. But we have a highly mobile workforce due to our industry where a majority of our staff travel to various locations during the week, so we end up with way more laptops then desktops. We do 3 year warranties, but no lifecycle. They get replaced as they die or as required due to needs. Just to add, tablets are also becoming more of a thing over the past few years. Work that might require manual processing and time wasted traveling has increasingly been replaced by SaaS applications that let people get their work via an app on their device. Also doing much more digital workflows to order/bill things as well as doing required forms and approvals. We roughly have as many iPads as we do laptops.

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hauntedyew@reddit

That really depends on the use case, but I can provide you with how it's handled at a TV station. Most users have an ultra book style of Dell Latitude laptop. The current line up consists of Latitude 7440s for managers, Latitude 5400/5420/5430/5440 for regular users like newscast producers or sales account executives, that sort of stuff. The exact 54x0 model just depends on when you started here and luck of the draw. Video editors and graphic artists, whether for news or promotions, all get HP workstations. Generally it's a mix of Z2 Mini G5 / G9s or Z8 G4 / G5s, just depends on how much Adobe After Effects they're really using. So realistically, it's a mix bag for the use case.

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Nomasuras@reddit

Previous org pre covid lockdowns was 80% Desktop 20% laptop, and now post covid lockdowns its now 98% Laptop on a 4/5 year roll and the 2% being AIO and a couple high end full form factor for CAD users. New Ord i oved to 2 months ago is a clusterfuck of about a dozen or more different brand and model laptops across 50 users, some ancient form factor machines, some small FF desktops and so far a single AIO that I've deployed at a customer service counter. I have my work cut out for me with getting this in line. Nothing is recorded no warranty status or anything and no age of device is recorded. Basically walked into someone else's dumpster fire with the free rein to purchase as many fire extinguishers as i need so thats nice at least.

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heroics_GB@reddit

100% laptops here. Approx 700 staff. Before covid there was desktops in the office but they have all need replaced now. Either fell latitude, xps or surface pro depending on role. I7 and 16gb mem min specs for everyone.

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spokale@reddit

We used to give everyone powerful laptops for at the office and at home, but have since switched to powerful desktops in the office and cheaper laptops for home, purely to TS into their work desktop. In the end the cost is about the same, but it's much easier and faster to repair desktops (especially when the supply chain issues were worse a year ago), the desktops tend to be more stable, and there's less money wasted on lost/stolen hardware. Plus, we can focus on laptops with long battery life for remote use rather than needing them decked out with powerful hardware.

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Sillysolomon@reddit

Last job I had, it was majority laptop but some desktop for certain areas because it was shared. Certain guys had both desktop and laptop. Depended on their roles. Idk who made that decision but it was probably at director level. They also upgraded to usb c docking stations from those docks that click into the laptop. Very few people had desktop minis or micro. Most desktops were standard size. They moved from an HP shop to a dell shop with mobile apple devices. Very few android phones or tablets. And very few macbooks. I don't they even had a mac desktop anywhere. I think they had a mac mini somewhere for someone because it was specially requested by the persons manager. I think laptops and desktops were on a 5 year refresh cycle. Though I think they should have shortened it to 4 years because towards the end after heavy use some of the laptops were just crap to use.

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Dharkcyd3@reddit

I work in a power utility. Half of devices are on the SCADA network (air gapped) and those are all Dell Workstation towers with 2 NIC cards. Then everyone has a corporate laptop (older gen Lenovo, newer gen Dell)

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AngryZai@reddit

75/25 desktop vs laptops. We are a HP company and only use those devices so we rely on the HP 800 SFF series. Easy to swap out units when they go back especially if mounted on the monitor or monitor arm. Laptops we only issue to managers or higher positions since they are always mobile. So to make it it simple if they are highly mobile and have good wifi it makes sense to deploy laptops and it makes it easier to WFH.

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PXranger@reddit

Medium sized hospital/health system, 5000 employees with about 50 external clinics and other facilities/offices. Each patient room has a thin client, Treatment rooms use thin clients. Offices have a mix of thin clients and towers. Work from home users are mostly thin clients. some workers use personal desktops or laptops and remote in. Typically, unless the user has a need for a dedicated PC (Webex/Zoom/Teams, image editing, heavy duty tasks needing a graphics card) it's thin clients, Citrix based running Win10 VM's. PC's run mostly Win10, some Win7 stuff remaining and now testing Win11 in our environment. Workers that have a role that involves mobile use are issued a laptop, with some workers receiving a ruggedized model with a touchscreen (Home health nurses, Social workers, etc.) Director level management and above usually gets a laptop for mobile/Home use, sometimes with a dock and multiple 1080p monitors as well as a desktop for office use. We have around 5000 end points, not counting assorted medical devices, printers, etc. Most of our thin clients are 3040 Wyse terminals with a mix of older (D10) and newer (Dell Optiplex). Desktops are typical business models, Lenova Thinkcenters. Laptops are business class Lenova, current gen T16's and older.

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EnergyAdvanced5554@reddit

Federal Gov't IT tech here. Just took a count. We're right about 50/50 in my units at moment. Percentage of laptops has increased slightly last 4 years. I do not see anything on the horizon that will make the ratio shift much. Probably be a migration to ultra small form factor/low power desktops over the next few years, but there is consideration that purchasing reduced performance devices may shorten the usable lifespan enough that it's a false economy.

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ChasingCerts@reddit

Trying to migrate everyone to laptop/docking station but there's a lot of technophobic people who think working on a laptop=tiny screen and keyboard at all times.

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BouncingWeill@reddit

We do a lot of vms with thin clients. Admins get physical machines. Those who need laptops get them in addition to the thin client or physical machine. If something dies, the laptop can serve as a backup. If something happens with the VM a new one can be spun pretty quickly. If something happens to the physical machine, they have their laptop.

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PVDnerd@reddit

Laptops for the majority of the users & desktops set up for multi-user. About 300 laptops and maybe 30-50 desktops.

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flashlightgiggles@reddit

I’m not a sysadmin, but my last employer upgraded the office PCs (about 1 dozen machines)…paid a local computer guy to build full-size towers with led fans and cheap GPUs. Nobody does anything that comes close to needing a gpu. The company’s IT person is more of a web designer…and didn’t know how to build a pc…prob doesn’t even know how to figure out how to order appropriately-powered office computers. Switched jobs cause that company sucked. Current employer deploys Dell micros for everybody.

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Adventurous_Ideal804@reddit

Deploy both desktops and laptops. Typically, dell latitudes 14 inch during covid. 16 after covid for users that get permission to work remotely. Most people work at the office with duel 27inch dell monitors and used 5050 sff. We did use 7040 but the 5050 are cheaper with no real drawback.

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TiredgeekTG@reddit

Only big beefy Origin machines for our graphics department. They used to remote into them but we had everyone take them home from the office.

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pongpaktecha@reddit

My company does desktops for the senior mechanical, electrical, and simulation engineers since they need the omph. They also get laptops still tho since desktops aren't portable

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Jaywid@reddit

Approximately 80% laptops 20% desktops with desktops only being used for locations/postions/applications that are not portable and cannot be remote (manufacturing or inventory related / tied to datcap devices /etc).

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SatanGreavsie@reddit

220 users, everyone has a MacBook Pro on a 5 year lifecycle, 16Gbyte min, usually 13/14” but some 16” for devs and artists.

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pipes990@reddit

We are still primarily desktops. Civil Engineering firm about 175 users. Still 90% desktops. Our CAD software likes a lot of hardware. We build our own in house typically $3-5k per machine depending on the user.

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Molasses_Major@reddit

Workstations for my power users...think industrial design, CAD, compute, animation. Mostly small to mid-size towers. All the storage they need is on a NAS locally. Laptops for everyone else...even the one's who think they are power users. They all get Lenovo's with 16/32GB of RAM and 1TB of NVMe SSD, so they are happy. If they are high up, they might get a smaller Lenovo X1 Carbon (that's my goto) Then there's the folks that want to do industrial design, SolidWorks, etc., on a cute fancy laptop...there's no helping them. They have nice shoes though...

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StingOfTheMonarch82@reddit

Mental Healthcare 20 locations 600+ employee We are moving to replace almost all towers with laptops. Most of equipment is 10+ years old. There will be a handful of towers for facilities/cooks/residential services who might need network access/resources but don't need a laptop

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fullthrottle13@reddit

100% laptops. I haven’t even seen a desktop at work in 6 years. We also have an option of Mac vs Windows. I reckon that laptops have come down in price so much, it’s easier to just buy new vs repair. My daughter even gets a Chromebook at her high school. I mean, the odd developer might bring one in from home to run some code locally but we have huge QA environment so why bother. Source: F100 healthcare.

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badfeelingpodcast@reddit

It depends on the user’s role. Only folks that need remote access (mainly sales reps, but a few others) get laptops. Sales reps can add their own keyboards/ mice/ displays. The employees that are parked at a desk all day get desktops. I’ve moved to micro form factor almost 100%. Some department heads have a desktop and a laptop that they keep at their home.

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Kaaawooo@reddit

While most environments are likely laptop based, desktops can't be neglected, especially when teaching IT. I work in a highschool and there have been dozens of students just this year who didn't understand that the actual computer was the tower, and couldn't figure out how to turn it on since they were just pressing the monitor's power button. It's very possible a few of those students will eventually make their way into IT programs.

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DavidCP94@reddit

I work for an MSP that supports small to medium sized businesses, rather than larger enterprises. The standard for most of our clients is desktops, then laptops in addition if remote work is needed (rdp to their main desktop usually, since most aren't big enough to make VDI or TS environments viable). We are seeing a trend of more clients moving to laptops only, but for us it's probably only 20-30 percent of our clients who have moved in that direction.

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Wolfpack87@reddit

I've done a couple different enterprise environments. Government, school, and big enterprise. Pretty much laptops all the way. If you need something to not move, just Kensington lock it down. The more standardization and less varrience you have makes it way easier to test, triage, and support.

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Chakasu@reddit

Salaried employees receive laptops. Hourly employees use shared desktops.

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_Koalafier@reddit

At my current job, we mostly use laptops. In my previous job, I built customs based on their role/project.

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RetroactiveRecursion@reddit

75 person office; are we an enterprise? Depends you you ask. Been all laptops for a while. Recently been questioning that as some new software runs less than ideal over vpn, but there are workplace/office culture issues so we're figuring it out.

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ImmaNobody@reddit

EDU setting like you. Faculty and most staff = laptops&docks. Part-time, lower hourly, work study = SFF. Researchers occasionally buy servers for crunching. Vendor supplied (with hardware) tend to be towers. Labs, kiosks, conference/classrooms, secured SFF. Hope it helps!

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kspecial41@reddit

I manage IT at a community college. Pre-COVID we were probably around 50/50 for employees. But as soon as the shutdowns started, we were immediately tasked with handing out temporary loaner laptops to everyone who didn’t have one. That was fun… But the directive to get everyone mobile ready long term came down pretty quick and we spent a lot of COVID grant funds on doing so in 2020/2021. As of today we are probably at least 95% laptops w/ docks for employees. The remaining 5% of desktops are more so tied to personnel whose roles require them to be on-site to perform their job functions. Think like public safety, facilities, shipping/receiving, printshop, etc. The desktop types are mostly SFF desktops with some oddball systems mixed in such as an Optiplex 3080 Ultra which is the model where the computer itself is kind of built into the monitor stand and you just put a monitor on it. Kind of an AIO but also kind of not. That sums up our employee environment, but we also have 20 plus computer labs which mostly all run SFF Dell desktops and a few labs with iMacs as well. All of our classrooms also have Dell SFF or MT systems in them connected to overhead projectors. We also have a couple of laptop carts around campus as well that are generally used by students for different purposes. So it’s kind of a mixed bag in terms of supporting everything.

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4mmun1s7@reddit

About 1200 employees. About 1/4 of them have laptops.

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T_T0ps@reddit

Desktops primarily, easier to work on and can be upgraded in various ways. Laptops are only given to those who work remotely. I work for about 20 companies and only 2 are primary laptops, but that’s only due to their specific work flow.

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PinballFlip@reddit

My agency has went about 80% laptops, 20% desktops when previously we were the opposite. We ordered lightweight. precision mobile workstations from Dell for the majority of our employees. Lots of iPads, and iPhones. We have a lot of users who have all three. iPads are replacing laptops in meetings and lightweight work like email or accessing our kb, cmms, etc

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lc7926@reddit

Work at an engineering company with roughly 1200 employees. Desktops were mostly gone when I started in 2017. We deploy computers with VPN already installed. Had no issues switching everybody to WFH when covid hit and didn’t need to worry about switching everybody since we had already gone to laptop-only environment. It was a huge help during the height of it all.

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IAmAnthem@reddit

SFF desktops in the thousands for my on-prem required stations. Maybe a quarter as many thin clients. Laptops are exceptionally rare. Classified systems :)

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techblackops@reddit

We deploy virtual desktops. We deploy laptops, but they're primarily just for people to connect into their virtual desktop. For stationary places like office desks we use zero clients that just connect to the virtual desktops running in our datacenter. We also allow BYOD, so people don't have to use a company issued laptop to connect to their virtual desktop, but we do pretty strict security checks on those devices to make sure they meet minimum security hygiene before they're allowed to connect in. And of course MFA on everything.

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SirLauncelot@reddit

There was also a growing trend of Wise terminals as a client for VDI sessions. Brings me back to terminals and terminals. This was before the pandemic, but could easily see it during as it was cheaper to manage and buy.

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rswwalker@reddit

Where I work most people prefer to leave their laptops at home, so we have desktops for everyone and laptops for management. The desktops we use are mini like Intel NUC for easy shipping. Laptops are all 14” for easy traveling with a standard hdmi port for plugging in an external monitor. The average worker can use their home PC to connect to Azure Virtual Desktop for WFH. It really is the most affordable solution as the desktop setup comes in at 1/2-2/3 the cost of a laptop and doesn’t need to be replaced as often.

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steamedpicklepudding@reddit

Automotive Retail. We deploy 80% SFF desktops with a single 24" monitor. Managers get a Dell Latitude 5000 series with a dock and 1-2 monitors. Only managers need to do any remote work. Works well for us.

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jeffreynya@reddit

Work at a large hospital and we have 1000s and 1000s of desktop in place. Patient rooms, ORs, labs, research, home users and more. We have even more laptops for office workers and many others as well. I would say it 70/30 laptop to desktop.

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bluehairminerboy@reddit

Usually desktops, a lot easier to repair if things go wrong.

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jwalker55@reddit

Non-profit, around 200 machines, 80% desktops.

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RideWithBDE@reddit

Thin clients

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r4x@reddit

This is the way.

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RideWithBDE@reddit

All our new deployments are zero clients. But slowly moving on from the thin clients. Cheaper, capable, and more secure. Easy peasy lemon squeezy

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r4x@reddit

Depending on your environment, it’s worth noting that PCOIP is going the way of the dodo in the next 5 years. For future planning, I’d go with zero clients that can do BLAST Extreme.

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AtLeast37Goats@reddit

Depends on the user Are they mobile? Laptop + dock and peripherals for their home base. Are they not mobile? Desktop We’re fairly even when it comes to what type of device we deploy. The dock bundle does cost a little more. But with so many thunderbolt 3 compatible laptops out there. Those docks will last a decade. If cared for properly. But then. There is virtualization. Where one company was deploying 2008 model desktops with NoTouchOS and their server farm handing out VMs. Worked great.

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suicideking72@reddit

I work for a US Government organization. Desktop are no longer allowed. If you REALLY want a desktop, you can have your supervisor fill out a form, then wait for a month. You will likely be denied. Those that think they need a desktop will be told to get a docking station with their laptop. We had a director demand a desktop because 'they're faster'. Denied. I haven't deployed a new desktop for around 5 years, since before covid. The trend is because of covid. If someone had a desktop, they would want a laptop so they can work from home. So that started the policy of no more desktops. We also have a 'one device per person' policy. You can't have a laptop for the office and one for home. They \*ARE\* portable.

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Banluil@reddit

Local Government here. Mostly desktops. A good number of laptops as well, because they became VERY popular during WFH with COVID. But, still the majority of deployments are desktops.

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NulledSyntax@reddit

Everyone in our org gets either a Surface laptop, Dell rugged, or a higher end Dell precision based on what their role is. We also use thin clients for our VM users (call center usually) and other than that we only deploy desktops to users at stationary areas (reception) or as equipment for services/tools (security/tools for field workers)

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Over-Island7324@reddit

300 mini-PCs. Laptops for executive home use or travel.

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patmorgan235@reddit

We deploy both. In some roles it makes sense for the person to have a laptop that's just theirs, for others shared desktops make more sense.

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thatdudejtru@reddit

Were a mixed bag. We have all in ones for MFCTR Team members, as well as Facilities. We have lower end Thinkpads for External Contractors, and t14s for Internal Clients. The random Phat-Boy P series for specific needs. Those are deskside. But then it get tricky, as most of my clients ALSO have lab Desktop/towers that they remote in. And man, simple laptop replacements can be a doozy lol

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beritknight@reddit

We were desktops everywhere, with about 50% of employees also having a small, light laptop for travel. After covid hit we moved to 100% docked laptops. Our only desktops now are a couple of kiosk type machines, and the conference room PCs (MTRoW).

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vic-traill@reddit

We deploy micro form factor Dell desktops for offices, cheap side laptops for WFH along w/ monitor, k/b, etc. as required. For my money saves on all the $$ to support TB docking and the support calls because users *still* can't figure out what cable to plug/unplug, and who wants to schlep a laptop around anyway?

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LyleSY@reddit

Hello fellow insufferable academic. Most employee machines are laptops because they demand them, even when they need more advanced hardware. We are about half virtual lab machines and half physical desktop lab machines now, both for bigger apps like GIS and especially 3D rendering. If we were teaching less demanding software we wouldn’t bother with desktops (design school)

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MonolithOfTyr@reddit

No difference really. We have a build bench with wall-mounted monitors for desktop and laptops just sit on their own. We image via WDS if the client uses a standard image or simply boot, configure with a local admin account, remove bloatware and possibly join to the domain if the client has a VPN setup. The laptops are typically ultrabooks so smaller and thin, easy to deploy or ship. Desktops are all USFF machines. Sometimes SFF or mini-ATX if requested.

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Competitive_Basil_50@reddit

We had a mixture of desktops/laptops at my previous job but when covid hit we moved 90% to laptops due to remote/flexible working. The remaining 10% were planned to be moved to laptops as and when replacements were needed. My current role is for a company that are 100% remote and so we only supply laptops.

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itsrout404@reddit

Laptops for users(a few desktops as a secondary for engineers(1 desktop per 30 ish)), sff desktops for shared work stations/kiosks/TV drivers. Refreshes are once every 3 ish years for eng folk and more like 4-5 for most others. If there is a major hardware change(ie: apple going from Intel to arm). We try to do the whole org within a year of the decent platform maturity to reduce the headache of managing a fleet with too much variation.

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Goldenu@reddit

We transitioned away from any desk-bound computer at the beginning of Covid and never looked back. We are 100% Microsoft Surface devices, mostly Surface Pros, but we have at least a few of every mobile Surface device. In fact the only less-mobile computer we have is the 85" Surface Hub 2, but even that's on wheels.

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BBO1007@reddit

Both. Manufacturing here. Food. Generally speaking salaried laptops, hourly desktops. It was probably desktops/laptops 70/30 % pre Covid. Now it’s 30/70.

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Professional_Ask1740@reddit

I’m an IT Manager at a mid sized firm (300). We had deployed desktops for call center positions but are switching those over to laptops. Pretty much the entire workforce is hybrid now. I try to make the case that people on phones should be in the office (network stability, security, etc) but the business won’t hear it because they want to be able to hire from a larger non-local talent pool. Too bad, because as IT I really appreciate the overall modularity and resiliency of desktops.

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Kengeph@reddit

Anyone doing thin clients?

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BigLeSigh@reddit

A small number of desktops in control room type scenarios - I think the factor is micro Everyone gets a laptop, it’s our BCP plan should a site be down, and hot desking makes office space more flexible

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nervehammer1004@reddit

Manufacturing environment. Thin clients RDP’ing to a Windows server on site on the shop floor. Desktops in the office spaces at the plants and some offices at the Home Office. Ultra small form factor with dual monitors. Management or specialized roles get laptops, docks and dual monitors. Home Office is majority laptops with a few desktops.

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pinganeto@reddit

if they get a desk, a chair and never work from home, they get a desktop. why pay more for a thing with less screen and more fragile if is going to sit on the same spot of the desk and never leave it for 5 years. so, currently 75% desktops.

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discgman@reddit

Laptops and few desktops. The mini form factor are ok.

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Bay_Sailor@reddit

In really large enterprises, you'll also see thin clients with a VDI server on the backend (or cloud-based VDI) serving up workstation images. But typically, with so many WFH employees, the new model seems to be laptops for everyone due to the flexibility you'll get from them.

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GrandOccultist@reddit

Have done IT in large manufacturing for a few companies over the past 6-7 years . Majority laptop for corporate/ supervisors / production team leads. In the plants and warehouses there are generally desktop stations where we use SFF units, plus some run some of the dashboards displayed around the plants, but the number is very small compared to laptops. Probably 1 desktop to every 35 laptops. Covid didn’t change this at all, laptops with a dock have always been preferred.

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msalerno1965@reddit

Higher ed university. At the current time, 3000+ admin staff are desktops AND laptops for home after COVID. 10,000+ students, various labs are all desktops. This is/may change drastically soon because we will be going to VDI for a vast majority of this. A VDI desktop is still a desktop. Applications need to be installed, Windows updates, security patches, everything. This is usually done with "images", and if you change the image, the next time the user logs on, they get a "new" desktop/computer, but their existing profile. Regular physical desktops, they are usually imaged at the start, and then updated as required over time using a third party like SCCM, Intune, Activa, etc. VDI requires a "thin client". A piece of hardware that has to be managed all on it's own. They are much simpler than Windows desktops, but they are still hardware. They have USB ports, a monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc. Something else to spill coffee on. So in the world of VDI, you still have a physical, non-mobile, thin client. This can be a laptop, and I imagine can be a Chromebook, cheap Android tablet, anything. But it's really still a computer on the desk. Additionally, the employer is still going to have to provide those thin VDI clients for home users who do not have computers (or don't want to use them, justifiably, for work). Security-wise, it makes sense to control the VDI clients as well. Otherwise how safe is it to rely on someone's home computer their kids have been using to download porn? Laptops have their uses, but most people get tired of hunching over and trying to work on even a 17" screen when they're used to a pair of 24's on their office desk.

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Medium-Comfortable@reddit

Our company only issue laptops, as we don’t have a production floor or warehouse or similar. We do not have fixed workplaces assigned, else the area of HR and Finance (for privacy reasons). We have a “work from anywhere” policy, so desktops would be counterproductive. Additionally you’ll get a BT mouse and keyboard. On the workplaces we have screens with a built-in KVM switch, so you just plug the USB-C cable in and you are good to go. Works for us, as it’s easy and flexible.

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Chaucer85@reddit

Enterprise firm, 1700+ users across 27 offices and 3 continents: we've slowly been getting away from using towers, mostly for the sake of travel needs. Legacy towers are still in use in the environment (we're talking like less than 30-40 total), but no new ones are being ordered or built out. Otherwise, all desktop replacement laptops, with docking workstation desks.

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stevewm@reddit

Not a huge company, but anyways... Retail store environment. 450 employees. 285 machines; 206 desktops and 79 laptops. Nearly all desktops are shared access and made up of mostly Lenovo Tiny USFF and some HP Micro USFF sprinkled in. Desktops are almost all refurb/off-lease units. Rarely buy brand new desktops. Makes little sense in our environment the way they are used. (A $250 refurb performs the same as a $600 new machine for our tasks) Laptops are given to store management or employees that travel/move work areas on a regular basis. These are always bought new. Our corp. office (only 20 employees) is entirely laptops with docks

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BLB_Genome@reddit

Pretty much all laptops and docks, besides a few that are desktops that are needed for stuff like rendering 3D models..

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HowBoutIt98@reddit

Conventional office workspace here with ~500 users. We are primarily desktop but also use laptops and tablets for the field. Windows devices are five year rotations while Apple devices are three year.

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ohyeahwell@reddit

We were a mix of half and half pre-covid/WFH, but at this point there are only 3 desktops left in our org. They'll be replaced with laptops soon enough.

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LaxVolt@reddit

Manufacturing Env, Primarily Desktops. We buy lots of OptiPlex's SFF and issue them out as needed. We just rotate stock on existing systems by repairing and re-imaging as they rotate through and buy a new lot when we get low. We tend to run systems into the ground. No actual life cycle. Laptops are more of a one off type thing without a real standard. The nice thing about the optiplex systems are they typically do not require tools. Parts inside a generation are 100% interchangeable. If a PS or MB goes bad just move the HDD/SSD to same chassis and boot back up. We are still running 7010/9020 systems in prod with just an upgrade to an SSD. Bracket and SSD are like $40 and extend the life of the systems. Considering most systems sit in dirty dusty environments with no temp controls and we get 5-8yr life cycle out of them.

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biff_tyfsok@reddit

Fortune 250 insurer: most areas are 100% laptop and have been since before COVID. One business unit (recent acquisition) insists on desktops because they're allowing zero WFH and have a micro-managing culture. Laptops are on 4-year leases (opex vs capex).

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Kelsier25@reddit

We were mixed prior to covid. Sales had laptops for mobility, support staff had desktops. Covid forced WFH, so we went 100% laptop. We've migrated to cloud for most things so our folks can be at fully functional at all times regardless of what's going on at HQ. We issue small, portable laptops and give each use a docking station, monitors, and kb/mouse. We've also gone paperless since covid too.

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boondoggle_@reddit

The boss who lets you use a desktop is a boss who doesn't mind you leaving a 4:59pm on a Friday and going completely silent until Monday at 9:01am... I haven't had a boss like that in 20 years.

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DaCozPuddingPop@reddit

We have a couple of all-in-ones in lab spaces that remain connected to various lab knick knacks and doodads. Other than that, all laptops, docks etc. All-in-ones are a 5 year lifecycle, laptops a 3.

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Twistedblud@reddit

Is that vmware workstation pro?

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ThatcherFucksReagan@reddit

Then you here . go to my paradise https://onlyfans.com/alexamoore1/c8

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xPsy__Ops007x@reddit

I work in a University in the US. I am also a System Admin. My IT Group supports about 2500 users scattered across the state. We utilize everything from the very small NUC's to full sized towers. i3 > latest gen. We also purchase the premium warranty on all which allows our Tier 1 guys to troubleshoot to determine the issue then call Dell. We primarily use desktops for all the researchers. We have about a 70/30 mix of DT to LP. The desktops are custom ordered from Dell to meet the users needs as some require very high end machines for analysis while others just need a bare bones system to check email and surf the web.

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a60v@reddit

Similar situation (higher educatio) here. We have a mix, depending upon use case and user preference. Our desktops are mini-towers and full towers, some with GPUs. Our laptops are a mix. We generally encourage desktops unless the user has a specific need or preference for a portable device. Some users have both.

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emptystreets130@reddit

It depends what space you're in. My current job in a dealership environment with sales and service, 98% of them will have desktops. The rest (manager, internet sales, executives, marketing, accounting) will get laptops. My previous job with a real estate company, everyone has a laptop, since they are all mobile.

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ANecessaryTransition@reddit

3800 Windows devices between 30+ countries about 600 are desktops, of those 100 are for high power computing, so Xeon CPU, RTX GPUs 128GB of RAM. The rest of those are primarily used in manufacturing and warehousing. Laptops are primarily Lenovo T series and HP EliteBooks and with about 200 being p series or ZBooks. (We're moving away from Lenovo because we got better pricing across the board from HP.) A few Lenovo X series tablets, but the defect rate we experienced was massive and specifically with the drives and detachable keyboards, so we stopped deploying anything tablet-esque until we find a model and style that doesn't make up 10% of our support when they're 1% of our fleet. Oh, and a few MacBooks because apparently it's still 2000 and adobe software still only works well on Macs.

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jrhalstead@reddit

In our org of 85 or so people we have three desktops, two of which are in conference rooms, and the other one is the admin assist's desktop because the president doesn't want her to have a laptop sitting on her desk. She also has a laptop at home but there you have it. Everybody else has a laptop

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d3adbor3d2@reddit

i think covid pushed enterprise work towards staff using laptops. obviously most of us are back at the office/work but i think we won't be going back to desktops for quite some time.

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antimidas_84@reddit

Mostly laptop, but for the plant and timeclocks we have some small optiplex towers around. As far as big ATX style form factors, we got rid of those.

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QuoteStrict654@reddit

So we have a split on physical and virtual. On the physical side it’s roughly 70% laptop, 30% desktop. We have roles that we do not want the users to travel while doing, so they get desktops to WFH. The cost /performance on desktop vs laptop is close but you still get more for less with desktops. My next person update will be to return my laptop for a desktop plus UPS. Im fully WFH and have no need to take my system with me, and if I do I can just use a Virtual Machine.

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Limeyness@reddit

We have 14000 desktops and about 3000 laptops

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Swarrlly@reddit

I work in the healthcare setting. We have about 8000 workstations. 2000 of them are laptops. We primarily deploy Micros and SFF.

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curleys@reddit

chiming in as IT sys admin for a few schools and our largest does hp AIO's for in classroom student use, about 6-12 units depending on the classroom. some office staff with permanent desks do have AIO's installed but it's rare. the rest of the 300 or so staff are all issued laptops and most staff desks are simply wired with a secondary monitor and laptop power cords for easy use to whomever sits there. the student are issued either chromebooks or ipads depending on the course load. this is k-12 charter btw. hope that helps.

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Seigmoraig@reddit

Most employees here use laptops except for the design team who need more specialized Quadro GPUs for their tasks in the Adobe suite Ratio is probably around 20 laptops to 1 desktop

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killyourpc@reddit

We are 90% desktop based. We were 100% a few years ago (even the IT department weren't given laptop's) but when COVID hit we started bringing in laptops for those who need remote access. It should be noted only 2% of are staff are permitted to work remotely and at that time they usually VPN into their office desktops from their laptops at home. More recently most of our corporate body started using laptops as well as our reception dept in case they have to WFH during storms.

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Far_Fox2574@reddit

When devices are shared among staff, Desktops Is what we deploy (small factor or all-in-ones). We give laptops to individual users, unless they explicitly ask for desktops.

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Auno94@reddit

For us (law-firm) only Laptops as we have a lot of travel or work from home. Even the secretaries get Laptops as it makes desk changes much more easy for us

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hops_on_hops@reddit

Municipal government here. We definitely have both. Most of our "normal" 8-5 office works have been moved to laptop with a dock. We still have desktops (physically secured) in public spaces like the lobby. We also have a lot of shift workers who need a bank of computers at locations rather than computers for each staff. Police, Fire, and Public Works all have a few little computer lab areas where staff can get on a desktop when needed. As for size, we're sticking with small-towers with an optical drive for now. The jump down to the usff would eliminate optical drives and our users apparently still need them occasionally. I think the tiny ones are nice, but honestly by the time you find a spot on the desk and route all the cabling I don't think the size of the box is a big deal. You've gotta be prepared to support everything though. We also have a decent number of ruggedized devices - those can be a challenge because they generally come from a less-popular oem and require more homework to get the drivers right. We also have some full-tower desktops with dual GPUs for a handful of Engineers and GIS Analysts. Gotta be able to sort out what requests need a laptop and what can be done with an iPad. Ps. Students should look into GIS. That sector is growing like crazy.

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Remote_Advantage2888@reddit

Depends on the environment but in our case the only reason to deploy desktops are for areas where there are shift workers and the desktops are mainly used for admin duties. Or the computer serves a specific purpose to operations such as CCTV, signage or live monitoring of workers environment. In rare cases, some staff require desktops for high end graphical needs. In most cases, laptops make most sense.

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Bumsauce_@reddit

800 employee org With 100 desktops (majority are AIO’s) & 700 laptops. Desktops are for labs, warehouses. Laptops are for all office employees. 3 year life cycle on laptops, 4 on desktops

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gestun@reddit

I work in the BPO space. My company employs over 250,000 globally. We only deploy laptops for people that travel regularly and for roles with on-call duties. We have a wide mix of systems but almost all are SFF or micro, with micro being preferred for WAH users, which is around 55% of our workforce. We have some mini towers, but we keep those in central sites to avoid shipping them. Probably about 2% of the environment are laptops.

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hiveface@reddit

I work in a research environment and only deploy towers and racked servers.

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Kurosanti@reddit

Working at an MSP I estimate 90% laptops + Docking station, 8% Small-Form desktops, 2% traditional desktops. (For designers and engineers)

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electricpollution@reddit

Fintech - all desktops for office workers except C-Suite

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Techpreist_X21Alpha@reddit

Truth be told our company was moving towards laptop prior way back when i first started in 2014. We slowly swapped out PCs with laptops. The few PCs we did buy were for reception pcs or onprem services (eg id badge / door swipes etc) All the other older pcs we just virtualized. So when covid hit, it was just business as usual for our office. Couldn't say the same for the other offices, they were in panic stations. These days with hybrid working its pretty much exclusively laptops. there are one or 2 exceptions, the marketing with their Macs are used in the office or they're taken offsite and used there. We're trying to ween them off those macs and get windows based machines.

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cayosonia@reddit

The pandemic pushed us into buying more laptops than desktops but I would guess at the moment we are 40% laptops to 60% desktops. We use SFF for customer facing staff (cashiers and reps).

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RustSpeed@reddit

SMB MSP - we manage about 800 devices and will generally try to steer people towards laptops as a way of reducing operating costs, we find that most of the time a traditional i5 desktop isn't very efficient for most of the day-to-day office tasks many of our customers face. A laptop is more efficient, enables WFH without the risk of BYOD, and is generally a more than capable enough machine for many of our customers. Even a lot of our power users are using high end laptops such as Precision and XPS models because the performance is still more than suitable for most workloads short of intensive CAD or photo/video work. We generally try to supply a laptop, plus a dock and at least one monitor as a package, most of our customers will take two monitors. For the ones who insist on desktops that's fine, but there's not really a massive cost saving in purchasing at least from our suppliers.

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persiusone@reddit

We are moving to laptops with docks for all users. About 90% there

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Aperture_Kubi@reddit

Higher ed, we're getting all full timers on laptops with docks, and all part timers/student workers/front desks on SFF desktops. But either way the users also get dual monitors and a desktop mouse and keyboard. Basically if covid 2.0 happens, lack of deployed technology will not be a roadblock.

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TheDkone@reddit

we are close to a 50/50 split, maybe leaning a hair towards laptops. desktops as they are being replaced are micros.

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spartaniimc@reddit

201 desktops 88 laptops The desktops are all standard sized Optiplex's. Generally, the laptops are for non-exempt employees (salaried), while everyone else gets a desktop unless they specifically have a need for a laptop.

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TheRuiner13@reddit

I'm 70% desktops 30% laptops Desktops are SFF

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StaffOfDoom@reddit

We have an even mix of both where I'm at. People who travel back and forth and work off-site get laptops. Everyone else gets a micro-tower. Where I worked at before was manufacturing. All the machines in the plants were desktops. Hourly employees got desktops (unless there was a special reason and the cost difference came out of that department's budget) and salary employees had the option of getting a laptop if they thought they'd be working from home or traveling. IT had both ("new" desktops, usually standard or mini tower and recycled laptops for traveling, laptop would be a remote-host only).

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l0ne-warri0r@reddit

Many of the companies moved towards virtual desktops, which is even easier to manage than the physical desktops or laptops. During covid vdi were were provisioned and assigned heavily in highly secured environment such as financial, banking sectors which made things easier for admins to manage, it need was a any type of device (laptops, desktops, android tablets, ipads etc )to connect to office environment, kind of BYOD Few of them to check are Citrix, VMware Horizon, Azure virtual desktop, Amazon workspaces etc..

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SlaveCell@reddit

A few things I learnt about managing desktops (XP Days): \- Make sure you have good inventory and what/how many monitors are attached (users borrow to add extra screens) \- Enable Wake on LAN so you can boot/wake them up on a weekend and update them \- They make excellent Remote Desktop targets foe WFH (Direct RDP/Citrix etc.), and having good inventory helps this process \- Use group Policy to stop users storing and losing local files.

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Tricky-Gear-236@reddit

~700 desktops ~100 AIO ~100 laptops We want to replace every desktop with AIO in the next 5-10 years.

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lucky644@reddit

I have migrated the company from desktops to laptops with docks. Makes us more agile to WFH. Laptops are 4 year cycle. Desktops and servers are only for high end applications. Desktops and servers are a 5 year cycle.

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Kidpunk04@reddit

Worked in healthcare, now back in manufacturing. Healthcare was like 90% laptops with dock and 2 monitors. Big push was they could still operate in the event of a power failure. You can do this with UPS under the desk, but it's 1 less thing to manage and take up space. Since they mostly just look up records on a cloud based EHR, battery life was really good. Now in manufacturing with engineers and CAD programs, it's about 40% laptops. Most stations are pretty static and don't need to move around.

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Connection-Terrible@reddit

I think it's still best to learn the hardware of a desktop computer, and do so using Standard ATX form factor, while providing and showing examples of different offerings, probably the Dell line of more compact desktops. That said, so much has changed in terms of ability to swap hardware on laptops that I'm not sure what I would "teach". I used to swap LCD screens out of the bezels all the time, now it's all sealed and shitty to do that.

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BadMoodinTheMorning@reddit

Only laptops since 2019. 3 year replacement cycle.

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matt95110@reddit

My company is all laptops with no exceptions. The only desktops you'll find are in the helpdesk area for plugging in random old crap that doesn't work with USB or something.

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HerfDog58@reddit

I would say that if the employee doesn't need to travel for their job, and doesn't have a WFH/hybrid schedule, give them a desktop for their office workspace. Otherwise it's a laptop with dock and monitors for the office, and a discussion with management about providing additional equipment for the home office. I'd venture that for the most part, doing upgrades to desktops for RAM/Video/Storage nowadays is increasingly rare. As such, a case can be made for laptops, all-in-ones, or small form factor desktops that can be hung on the back of a monitor. As cool as it is to be able to upgrade that custom built PC from 32gb RAM and 512gb SSD to add in another 192gb of RAM and 4 additional NVMe SSDs and a new NVIDIA GPU board, how often do you REALLY need to do that in the workplace...?

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Witch_Panties@reddit

All laptops here except for 20 desktops that are used for heavy data processing.

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buecker02@reddit

The older the execs the more they love desktops. Time and time again. It's annoying. insurance company with several locations across the caribbean - When I started I fought hard to get laptops in to replace our Lenovo Tinys. The winning argument is how the employees are going to work after a hurricane. With a laptop you can pick it up and go somewhere else where you can start working right away. 1 laptop, dual screens and a docking station for each employee. We pay for onsite support from Lenovo. Outside of AD and a test environment everything else has been moved to Azure. Personally, I feel all one needs is problem-solving skills. Do not worry about the details cause if you have the problem-solving skills you will figure the rest out. IT is constantly evolving.

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bruticusss@reddit

Desktops went out the window as soon as COVID hit

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Devil_85_@reddit

Depends on the use. More SMB here but around 350 endpoints. Currently about an even split with our administrative and sales people using laptops while our rank and file are on desktops for the most part unless their role is more specialized.

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genghisjohnm@reddit

I previously worked at an MSP supporting a little over 100 companies and I would say a majority of them used around 70% desktops and the rest was laptops for management or sales teams in those companies. I now work internal IT at a chemical research company and the split is similar. We have around 90 laptops total and around 600 desktops. The desktops in both circumstances were typically small form factor or micro form factor.

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adamjackpeter@reddit

All laptops here. 4-year refresh cycle. Which is great because the whole company has been WFH since 2020, but man I wish we could give out desktops instead. It hurts the environmentalist in me to think about all those Li-ion batteries just getting "recycled" (Read: thrown away).

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No_Mycologist4488@reddit

Multiple verticals here and other than CAD workstation; it’s been before COVID

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FC1PichZ32@reddit

We’re pretty much phased out desktops. 3 more users to go. All laptops at this point. The old desktops were minis and are now serving conference room duty and training room duty. All most are given away or cannibalized to upgrade the others

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malikto44@reddit

Desktops are just the usual form factor, mini towers. Something that is easy to service and upgrade. The reason why I like desktops, and push for them, is that they have fewer parts than a laptop, better cooling, and tend to be able to have more user replaceable stuff. For example, when it is time to sell off the desktops, I just pull the SSDs and call it done. With laptops, a lot of newer ones have the drive soldered onto the motherboard. I rather see users have a desktop on their desk, and a laptop than just a laptop. In my experience, desktops fail a lot less than laptops, so if a user is coming in and doesn't need a laptop, that is good enough. For developers and people using CAD or applications that need workstations, definitely a desktop. In general, laptops are decent, but a desktop can handle heavy loads without throttling due to cooling, assuming a work environment with a decent HVAC system. Either way, I like having them in InTune and have AutoPilot do the work for provisioning. That way, a desktop can go from being plugged in and turned on to fully provisioned and the company apps and EDR ready to go for the user. Macs are slightly different. I make sure they go into ABM/DEP and the MDM, so regardless of a desktop or laptop, they get provisioned, profiles installed and into the MDM.

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jcas01@reddit

Mobile users : laptop + dock , stationary users : traditional desktop

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Illgiveyoumy2cents@reddit

We deplore mini SFF work for our part time employees. It’s too much of a risk for part time employees to have a laptop and we don’t allow BYOD. Oh and we also use the mini Sff for our kiosk. Full time employees and sales get laptops since most of them are on a hybrid or move locations.

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Silent-Scientist-564@reddit

We use both. 60% laptops and 40% desktops. Laptops are for people that need to change desks all the time and for those that work outside in fields. Desktops are for people who only work from office. Or for people that need more horse power. I prefer desktops because last lot longer than laptops.

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Ohmec@reddit

Between all of my ~5k covered users, I would say we have a roughly 60-40 split between desktops and laptops. Desktops being the more common. We only ever recommend and supply SFF PCs, so they're microtowers. If anyone works from home occasionally, they will get a laptop and docks at both places.

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lvlint67@reddit

Generally speaking we issue each person 1 laptop. > objective is to ensure students are prepared to be technicians in the working world We'll troubleshoot as far as the OS... Once screw drivers start turning we call in support from Dell. The modern trend is that it's generally unsustainable to be doing intensive hardware maintenance in house. > If you do use desktops, what kind / size / form factor? Or permanent fixture workstations are dell's non-compact towers.

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humm3r1@reddit (OP)

This is how I do things as well for my main role - software troubleshooting but hardware we call in warranty from Lenovo. Offload the work and risks of hardware, I feel it's not really worth the effort to do in-house for the most part. My previous role, the organization was certified by Lenovo and Dell and we had a couple in-house technicians to do warranty repairs but then they also had over 10,000+ machines

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SilentModeWorkPhone@reddit

A few years ago in a different role, we had mostly HP/Lenovo but we required warranty packages on all systems. All technicians were certified for repair and they were done in house. One day when reviewing the warranty, I saw they included on site diagnostics and repair included. From that day on, we no longer repaired physically damaged systems in house lol

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ResponsibleBus4@reddit

We have probably 35 laptops and 65 desktops, most admin positions have laptops most operational level positions just have desktops, desktops are microform factor. We also have a lot of raspberry pis used for telemetry devices on public transit vehicles together and provide information.

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Georgiewho@reddit

I work for an Architectural firm and each architect needs the equivalent to a gaming PC. So majority of our users get towers. Admin staff get laptops.

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Steve_Tech@reddit

The vast majority of employees in our company have laptops. The ones they generally do not and have a desktop instead are employees that are strictly customer facing like front desk employees and even then there are exceptions to that rule. For the desktops, I generally go with the All in Ones to save on space, and SFF.

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BleedCheese@reddit

All laptops here and have been since Covid. Matter of fact, we're going through a refresh right now as the first batch is coming off of lease in the coming months.

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gwig9@reddit

Mostly laptops with a mix of regular business style (90%) and workstation style (10%). We do have a few desktops (generally workstation style) but are actively encouraging users to move to a laptop. Replacement schedule is generally 5yrs for regular laptop and \~7-10yrs for workstation style. We also have a few general use desktops (SFF or mini tower) that are available in conference rooms for guest use. We are considering switching these to just a usb-c docking station in the future as more of the workforce is 100% laptop.

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H2OZdrone@reddit

Healthcare (small clinics): managers and providers get laptops with docks. Everyone else desktops. I’m surprised at the number of places deploying mostly/all laptops. Our workforce is mostly in the office (clinics) where laptops outside of providers (exam room EMR or charting from home) would never get used. It would be interesting to understand what the workforce looks like

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mfinnigan@reddit

If you actually want to get data instead of anecdotes, you could look at industry reporting from like Gartner or Forrester (etc) or from the manufacturers themselves, to find out what they're selling to their corporate customers now and how that's changed over time. I work for a game studio; we have a mix of high-powered desktops, high-powered rackmount desktops, as-high-powered-as-we-can-get-them laptops, and decent thinkpads for people who don't spend all day in Visual Studio or Maya or playtesting.

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jimshilliday@reddit

Small nonprofit, 75 people, laptops with a few desktops for hotdesks and kiosks.

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ginkosu@reddit

Large hospital environment, mostly AIO desktops with laptops being secondary devices for when the need arises.

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Weird_Fly@reddit

I work at a K-12 school and for a private home building business (I am in the US): The school is primary laptop based, but we have a couple desktop labs and desktops for some office staff and secretary. Most of the hardware we use is donated, but we made purchases on new laptops for teachers, and new desktops (Mac Studios) for a lab. Everything else is donated. The homebuilder uses 95% laptops. The only desktops we have are mounted behind TVs in model homes to show availability and floor plans. Hope this helps!

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goochisdrunk@reddit

In a "Small Enterprise" type environment - Pre-covid we were probably close to 50/50 laptops/desktops. Since then we've moved to entirely laptop, minus a few shared machines assigned to an 'area'. Almost all of those have been changed from traditional desktop/tower machines to SFF or even Thin-Client configurations for Remote Desktop/App uses.

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Jenbu@reddit

Local government. All SFF desktops. 2 monitors. We go with Dell. Rugged laptops for police officers. Laptops for certain elected officials or those that actually have a need for one.

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HotVW@reddit

We have \~ 25 engineers. Most get both. The laptops get expensive when you are buying the to run Solidworks. The rest of admin, etc get desktops. We don't have many that work from home because of the nature of our business.

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frygod@reddit

In healthcare here. It really depends on the use case of the machine. Most mobile workstations have transitioned to laptops, but we also use desktops in places like nurse's stations, recovery rooms, kiosks, etc. The OR workflow is done almost entirely on all in ones affixed to anesthesia carts. We also have several hundred thin clients throughout the environment, with VDI made available for remote workers who want to BYOD.

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humm3r1@reddit (OP)

Do you use tablets at all for mobility, such as the crash carts / nurse carts to check in on patients?

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frygod@reddit

We're considering looking into tablets more (paired with the epic rover app) for rounding and things like that, but for the most part it's done with a laptop mounted to a cart. We also have plans to do more with mobile devices. A big worry with tablets and the like, though, is that stuff like that tends to disappear at an inner-city hospital if not bolted to something heavy.

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Lakeside3521@reddit

I'm in finance. Everyone except tellers gets a laptop. My goal was everyone could work from anywhere with minimal effort. Tellers we have a separate BCP plan for since they require specialized equipment.

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AmDDJunkie@reddit

Before covid we were heavy on the desktop side. maybe 75% desktop 25% laptop. Post covid we are nearly 99% laptop. To get a desktop you have to have special approval now.

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Moontoya@reddit

Do they need to move the computer, work from home, go off-site to meetings or work takes . Laptop Do they sit at a desk all day? Or your company doesn't / can't permit WFH ? Sufficiently powerful desktop It's that simple.

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TotallyInOverMyHead@reddit

German / Danish MSP here: Mostly Desktops, mostly medium towers, mostly triple to quad monitor setups (UHD, 27+"). Companies typically tend to stick to a 4-6 year lifecycle. typically replacing machines on a department-level and/or in 1/4 tranches (1 tranch per year) We rarely have companies request laptops, IF they do, they typically go all in. Windows operating systems are slowly dying in favour of linux based OS's that run webapps.

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jpm0719@reddit

We are mixed. I work for a bank, so our branches are outfitted with all in ones that are touch screen. Call center agents, and some back office functions that will rarely, if ever have need to work outside of normal operating hours in the office get micro machines that are mounted to dual monitor setups. All C levels have laptops, all mgmt has laptop, and anyone working im a loan or moving money position has a laptop as they could work from any branch or their couch if they were so inclined.

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mjmacka@reddit

No longer an admin, but a few years ago, this is what we did. Desktops (mini towers) were the default for corporates users. Laptops were the default for sales users. Desktops came in a few hundred dollars cheaper, were less likely to have someone's kids play with them, and had easy to replace/upgrade hardware. Laptops were beneficial for sales people because it gave them mobility but were more likely to be lost/stolen. I think we determined need based on the following: The mobility of the user. Do they need to travel for work? Do they attend meetings meetings and need a computer? Are they part of IT or Sales? Do they have additional hardware requirements? What devices do they need to connect to their computer?

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Brett707@reddit

Back in my MSP days, we did mostly laptops for a few clients. One was a Lithium mining company; everyone had laptops except for 1 person, and she specifically requested a desktop. We built 2 beastly systems (Core i9 128gb ram dual workstation cards) that ran some specialized software and people would remote in and run these programs. Most clients were moving towards laptops. But one was an eye doc and they went to laptops for the docs (4) the office manager and everyone else got i7 based HP Micro systems due to space.

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Shaded_Newt@reddit

Working at an MSP - We deploy Micro Desktops, and laptops. Anyone that needs a beefy computer gets an ATX or mATX device

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brune123@reddit

I deploy mainly laptops for the officer workers. I work in a factory setting and desktops are on the shop floors. Engineers receive hybrid assets, desktops if they come to office or laptops to remote to a desktop from out of office. Laptop lifecycles 3-4 years, desktops 4-5 years life cycles.

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timallen445@reddit

What ratio is your class material saying? I work as a vendor and most of my customers are laptop only as well as my own company I would say desktops in the enterprise are becoming more special use devices.

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humm3r1@reddit (OP)

Appreciate the reply! We don't have a specific ratio we specify, but have been using Lenovo M93P's this past year to go through overall hardware and components. However this is getting harder to source, and so we're debating how to shift in the future - do we go Mini PC's, Micro PC's, more laptop focus, etc. We'll likely keep a batch of M93P's but not give them to students to keep as part of their course fees and use them only in class for lab activities, and then figure out how to shift with industry trends.

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timallen445@reddit

If this was a lab PC I would see if there is a prebuilt company that would build with a low end Intel based ATX sized board. Outside of that systems are beginning smaller and more board components are being built into the processor SoC style. You might end up having to point at the primary CPU and then list all the stuff that's taken over on enterprise hardware.

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OtisB@reddit

In an enterprise environment, you'll see all types. For example, 800 employee healthcare org: About 550 desktops including probably 75 all in ones. Of the desktops most are minis or very small FF devices, some are mid-towers custom built for special uses. Some are vendor provided god-knows-whats About 350 laptops including ~75 tablet style like surface pros ~150 ipads ~250 smartphones

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progenyofeniac@reddit

Was just going to comment this, about healthcare. Lots of fixed workstations, carts, etc. for clinical locations. But office staff are largely moving to laptops for mobility. And in the average company where someone has a dedicated machine and could possibly work remotely, they're getting a laptop.

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raven-rhapsody@reddit

We have desktops for receptionists. Laptops for everyone else.

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XelaWatix@reddit

Hey, I am currently IT Team Lead in a finance company and everything is mini desktop base,  even the computer for WFH are mini desktops.

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selectivesadness@reddit

I use both laptops and micro PCs basically.

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Bguy9410@reddit

We are desktop based however we are beginning a transition to all laptops for our Headquarters staff. The only desktops we will continue to use will be at our branches (we are a Bank).

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gormlessthebarbarian@reddit

We about 1/3 desktop, 2/3 laptop. We use the smalled desktops, Intel NUCs and those tiny lenovo's. For warehouse and folks that can't or won't need to work outside the office. Laptops for the rest.

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MavZA@reddit

My current org is 100% laptop based. We’re a software developer. My previous org was 85% laptop based and 15% desktop based for pharmaceutical manufacturing 100% of those desktops was MFF desktops. There’s just no reason (IMO) to deploy desktops over laptops unless you need to do some crazy computations.

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MuscleHippie@reddit

Healthcare org with about 5-6000 users over large geographical area - 90% of users are on VDI solutions delivered via thin clients. Home users are given thin clients. All clinical areas are thin client. Some clinical workflows are tablet-based. The last 10% is some laptops for roaming c-levels, a few macs in marketing and desktop (midtowers) for 'power users'. Makes patch management (via images) way simpler and about 60% of those images are non-persistent - so if there's an infection or corruption, a reboot resets the image. Most of the thin clients are some form of Dell Wyse terminals. All VDI are deliver via Citrix.

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JD193@reddit

7000 workstations (all form factors) 3500 laptops 200 surface 85 AiO 400 Macs 2000 iPads 15k chromebooks PCs have a 3-5 year life cycle.

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Darkone539@reddit

Working in a hospital, wards get both. the vast majority get laptops for their own use.

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NokimR@reddit

previous job 250+users a90% laptops, some desktops, all desktops 14inch, with 1 or dual monitor set up. new job120+ users 96%laptops mostly 14inch with all dual monitor set ups. Both jobs cared more about weight than screen size so keeping it a light 2.8-3lbs makes people happy. brand in both companies were ITs choice. for desktops standard or micro varied based on needs, no specific preference unless it was for engineers in which case large towers was basically the only choice.

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VandalGrimshot@reddit

80+ employee IT tech- SFF, laptops, desktops. SFF are for media centers around the office, conference rooms, and mobile carts for presentations. Laptops most most employees \[paired with 2 monitors and a dock\], desktops for location based jobs- secretary, HR, Big Boss. Desktops are being phased out for any employees who require any sort of mobility with their occupation \[on site responsibilities/Hybrid WFH/etc.\]

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ZaMelonZonFire@reddit

K12 here. All teachers have a laptop and a Chromebook. Office staff have desktops. Administrators have had both, but I'm working to move them to a single laptop and a large display on their desk. (40" wide display)

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iogbri@reddit

We used to give sff desktops to programmers and laptops to project managers (most people in the company are one of these 2 roles). Last year we started giving everyone laptops to make work from home available to more and more people as they get their computers replaced.

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AcceptableMixture365@reddit

98% laptops in engineering design + build + software dev + manufacture environment. The only in Orem desktop hardware we have is needed for very high end capex total CAD work to put all the little CAD parts into one massive assembly and very few people do that.

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Lad_From_Lancs@reddit

in the office, mostly desktops apart from a select few. About 50% of working from home kit are also desktops - we give the option (although we do say 1 laptop + 1 external screen or PC + 2 matching screens)! We generally go with whatever fits that particular user prefers. People tend to work better when the equipment is what they prefer too work with. It does mean that an individual can have an office PC, a home PC, and sitting in the middle a VDI workstation which they remote onto. Yes, it's hellishly expensive and we are 'workstation' heavy, but works. I know the company my wife works for are all laptops, but the way of doing IT differs greatly from how our company operates. One size does not fit all.

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h00ty@reddit

It depends on the job of the employee. 90% of our hourly employees are on desktops, warehouse, production... WFH and salary employees get laptops etc.

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anonymousITCoward@reddit

It depends on the usage, some people really, REALLY want laptops, but leave them on their desks plugged into their docs... For desktops we usually bring in mini towers. We have a couple of odd ball uses for all in ones, like barcode check-in/out scanners

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Ham-Slap-22@reddit

University IT for Student Affairs: I'd say if we had more budget, we'd provide more laptops. We're upgrading some users to laptops, and deploying desktops to others. Our new equipment is probably 50/50. Laptops don't last as long, and cost more up front (and they can be more of a pain to manage).

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meballard@reddit

Since availability stabilized after COVID started, if it's issued to an employee, almost exclusively laptops. If it's shared and issued to a space, usually a desktop, SFF for normal use, towers for iMacs for lab/other specialized usage. Matthew

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thedatagolem@reddit

I haven't had a work-issued desktop since 2018.

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Kraszmyl@reddit

We have all in ones for staff not assigned machines. We have maybe six assigned desktops for specialized roles such as video editing. Everything else is docking monitors and laptops. ~1000 students, ~200 staff, ~3000 assorted program clients

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pinkycatcher@reddit

Mostly we deploy laptops, we do have some warehouse spaces where desktops are deployed (and likely will continue to be deployed), and when I do a refresh I'm planning on offering our engineering desktops. The problem with laptops is heat, it doesn't matter what crazy high specs you have, you're nearly always limited by temperature throttling, so a laptop with a big expensive CPU and GPU will regularly perform worse than a desktop with a generation or two older version of those processors.

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Oblong_Gatta@reddit

Laptops, docks, two monitors by default. Desktops for shared work areas where the job doesn't call for remote work. Desktops are available for those with desks in the office if desired.

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SysAdminDennyBob@reddit

10% desktops all shapes as sizes, mostly for kiosk type situations where multiple users walk up to it. The rest are laptops. It's a windows computer, nobody cares what the form factor is. It's a commodity device with a screen, cpu, storage... don't care.

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Ryanstodd@reddit

Corporate hq 50+/- employees: everyone has a laptop

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ColdSysAdmin@reddit

All laptops, dev's are switching to just laptops as well now. All laptops at my last job as well.

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learningheadhard@reddit

I say it depends on the environment. Things like POS systems would usually be desktops. For my environment, mostly desktops for front-end workers, and laptops for mgmt and backend workers at a bank. For a 1000 user environment, we only have about 250 laptops deployed. The desktops are shared among front-end employees.

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UCB1984@reddit

I'm in healthcare and we are pretty much 80% laptops now. The only places that have desktops are patient rooms and clinic rooms and a few shared locations. We use mini towers in those locations or thin clients.

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