My question is somewhat analogous to comparing apples and oranges in that they are both fruits but work differently. i.e. laptops and desktops are both comps but work differently. Regardless, my question is , (if its possible to ocmpare) if I have a desktop that is a pentium 4 3ghz and a laptop that is a dualcore 1.6ghz, which is 'faster'?

Seems to me as far as performance the desktop is faster because it loads things more quick and just looking at specs 3ghz is faster than 1.6 by basically two times regardless of the parallel proc. So is it correct the desktop is faster? Or how would we compare desktops and laptops?
Thanks in advance,
Fox

The PC is faster for the reasons you have noticed, it all depends on if you need to be mobile or not, you still can take your PC where ever you go, I run my entire set up in the van when I am on the road with a power inverter, no probs.

Can you repair the laptop, maybe not, you can always repair the PC. 1.5ghz, 3ghz, who cares these days, they are all fast. You still need to buy the best you can of which ever you decide to get, dual core, dual processor, quad processor what ever, get today's technology, my single PC plays 4 monitors, dual output video cards, 2 each, now they have a single video card that plays 4 monitors, I have three PC's with 12 monitors, a laptop with its screen and a second 37" LCD that I use for the main monitor, unless I plug into the 80" HD Projector. Minority Report, I got you.

Your question of which is faster from the basis of "footprint" is really not relevant these days.
I manage "blades" in a multi-platform environment and these blades are even smaller than a full size mainframe of past days. It runs circles around any desktop.

By footprint I mean size and configuration. If you were to buy a laptop and desktop with equivalent hardware/software/specs you would probably not see a difference.

It really all boils down to the OS and what you are running on top of the machines. In today's IT environment, smaller does not have to be slower.

Sure, the dual cores are faster, more memory is better and additional swap space on disk is nicer, but how you use the machine is the key. :)