A few years ago I restored a desk from the 1800s commonly referred to as a Charles Dickens desk. It was a beautiful piece of furniture and somewhat functional for written correspondence. However for use as a computer desk it would have been completely worthless. To begin with the entire desktop was set at a slant so as to better accommodate writing by hand.
Remember this desk was built long before even the invention of the typewriter. On each side of the slanted writing surface sat a superstructure consisting of tiny drawers. These would have been of no value as you no longer write on paper and seldom store such small items as envelopes. Office desks like the Dickens model are designed for the time they live in. Today we need a clean flat surface, a slide out keyboard shelf and someplace to put our PC’s power tower and laptop computers need even less.