Comment by mmooss
14 days ago
How do you know that? Desktop form factors are much more flexible, making them effectively smaller. They don't need a case - you can disassemble them, build them into cabinets and consoles; you can reduce their volume to a keyboard (or less).
They’re not looking for a science fair project, it’s a production piece of IT equipment.
Adding a bunch of bespoke equipment is an unnecessary risk when a well understood off the shelf product fits the bill. It’s just office equipment for doing basic computer tasks. A laptop is appropriate.
Much production IT equipment in industrial and many other settings is what I described. It's a mature, commonplace form factor. It's in cars (without keyboards), control rooms, server racks ...
That said, I don't know why they use laptops, and it doesn't look like you do either.
I’m not making things up. Much has been written about the use of PC on spacecraft. As it turns out, PCs make good PCs:
https://gizmodo.com/how-astronauts-use-laptops-on-the-intern...
https://web.archive.org/web/20160526014418/https://www.techr...