About 2 decades a decade ago, many people would’ve considered themselves mobile phone enthusiasts because even though PCs were already existent, they were not as abundant as they’re today. Back then, it took special need – and to an extent, wealth – for people to decide to actually get a PC. Today on the other hand, PCs are becoming like mobile phones, getting more and more common and easier to acquire by the way. As a result, many people have both a PC and a mobile phone, and struggle with the constant battle for which gets more of their attention.
Again, about 2 decades ago, what was referred to as a personal computer has undergone a lot of change, redefinition and evolution. A desktop was probably the image peoples’ minds would conjure on hearing “PC”. Today, we have laptops that can go hours, maybe a day or 2 even without having to go near a power source. And considering how much time we spend on our laptops versus phones, it makes it a bit more difficult to separate the two, because they do almost the same thing today, give or take one or more unique features of each.
For me, which I give more attention is usually dictated by the combined effect of what my web activity looks like at the time, my mobility, and what applications I have installed on both devices. For instance, I expect to spend more time than usual on my phone if I have TikTok on my phone. On the other hand, if I have a lot of work to do, I obviously will be spending the greater majority of my time clacking away at keys on my laptop. But if it comes down to choosing one, I guess I’m more of PC enthusiast than a mobile phone. I say this taking two major things into consideration.
Mobility
One of the strongest is for the mobility it provides (uhhh obvious?). Unlike Landlines which preceded them, we can now cross continents and travel the world with phones in our pockets. Imagine how much wire it would take to run landlines that connect all the phones we now have.
Sidetrack, I actually found it a bit funny when I saw that the inleo prompt today was asking us to choose between being a PC or a mobile phone (basically, a smaller mobile pc. Lol) enthusiast. It felt like a tautology of some sort to me. I know there could be a degree of separation between the two in the sense that mobile phones aren’t as complex as PCs as used in the context of today’s topic, but they’re still both personal computers nonetheless, right? Talk about over analyzing and going off trail. Anyways, back to the topic….
I don’t go out much unless absolutely necessary, so unless I’m going out, my mobile phone is starved of attention. These days, I find that I have less and less use for my phone, but the surprising thing is that I’m just coming to this realization writing this post. Phone calls and photography aside (I do neither frequently), I’m almost always using my laptop for every other thing. As I write this post, my phone is lying next to my laptop as a hotspot source. It’ll probably stay like that the entire day until I have to make some phone calls. It’s a different story when I’m outside because then, I most definitely can not be on busy streets while clacking away on a huge device such as a laptop.
Web Activity
Web activity for me basically runs through light browsing, emailing, and maybe some social media time on Reddit, X and WhatsApp. I’ve always preferred doing all the mentioned on a laptop over phone, and since these are what I spend the majority of my indoor days doing, it makes sense that I would be more PC-inclined.
WhatsApp is what I sometimes use my phone to access, but I just recently installed it on my pc, and even though I don’t use it on my PC always, I spend even less time on my phone now unless I’m just tired of the monster weight of my laptop of my laps. As for Reddit, the subreddits I hang out on are more text-heavy than media, so I’m mostly reading and typing stuff, and I prefer PC for that too.
Also, for the sake of convenience, majority of the things I do requires me to be able to open multiple apps and web pages and switch between them constantly. That is easier to do on a PC than on a mobile phone.
Even though my post largely focuses on how PCs (laptops specifically for me) are better for me, I believe it’s obvious that mobile phones are still important for day to day life, and has it’s own unique advantages, some of which I mentioned already. Which gets your attention more really comes down to your needs and prefence.
All images are mine