Office Hardware December 03, 2008 1:00 PM

Black Friday Marked the Death of the Desktop

By Robert L. Mitchell, Computerworld

You know that desktops are dead when on Black Friday you don't see a single "free after rebates" come-on for a desktop computer.

I like to keep one or two of these low-end machines around for testing. But this year the ridiculous deals on desktops didn't appear at my local Circuit City or Best Buy.

With the economy in free fall and retailers going all out with incentives and discounts to lure shoppers, the lack of incentives on desktops speaks volumes about their declining appeal to the masses.

On the bright side, it looks like I won't be spending any time this holiday season disinfecting a new Windows Vista machine that came laden with free trial software, advertisements and other "crapware."

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