I disagree – I’d prefer an awkward combination of hardware and OS type.
A laptop running Server 2012r2 is a server. A desktop running Server 2012r2 is a server. A server running Server 2012r2 is a server.
A laptop running Windows 7 is a laptop, a desktop running Windows 7 is a Desktop, a server running Windows 7 is a desktop.
Those don’t seem to meet the general requirements most have had to ID a “laptop” as a thing people carry around and is portable no matter the OS. I do agree that generally there is another way to get the type of OS out… but there isn’t a good way of getting “am I a server class machine” or “am I a laptop class machine” without device type being that.
I actually was hoping for the first two responses (show the chassis type) which seems to match more of what the “device” type is. For example if we extended this to have a Surface Pro in it, and extend the MDM “tablet” type to our regular agents, this means your version could never ID the Surface Pro as anything but a Desktop or Server as there is no way to show this.
We added “device type” as part of the original MDM architecture so values were iPhone, Android, Server, Desktop, Laptop, Tablet etc.
I’d rather have a discrete inspector that tells me only one thing about the hardware, and combine the “device type” inspector with the “operating system product type” inspector to get the permutations you describe.
Anything running Server OS is a server: product type of operating system = nt server product type or product type of operating system = nt domain controller product type
Clients:
Laptop: product type of operating system = nt workstation product type AND device type = laptop device type
Desktop: product type of operating system = nt workstation product type AND device type != laptop device type
I’d also want ‘device type’ to not depend on Windows; I’d like to be able to determine Linux laptops.
(based on my own guess as to how the ‘device type’ inspector might work. The Device Type inspector is in the release notes for 9.5.2, but not listed at https://developer.bigfix.com/relevance/reference/ )
The inspector is present in 9.5.2 but this is the first time any OS with a regular agent has the inspector and we are refining it more as we go along. Currently its only on Windows but we will expand that more, though I’m not sure that we would go into too much detail on some platforms (SPARC laptop comes to mind)
A distinction between VMs and laptops/desktops would be nice too 
How are ambiguous devices handled?
Is a surface book a tablet or a laptop?
Right now the only choices for a regular Windows agent are Laptop/Server/Desktop
Most of these are coming from Chassis identifiers and I need to look what a VM does to these detections
Regarding: BigFix 9.5 Patch 2 is now available
Can you tell us a bit about “Issue: 65820 - APAR IV83833 - New Device Type Inspectors (This item is also listed in the enhancement list for this patch )” ?
There is an inspector “device type” now on Windows which will do the work instead of the complex relevance. This inspector was previously only on Android and other MDM products before their retirement. This we are hoping will return a better device type answer to get Laptop vs other responses as the answer is complex on different hardware platforms.
Isn’t this is what determines the icon in the console too?
Do you expect the “device type” return to indicate the physical hardware or the type of OS.
Hardware.
It should return the same data as “OS Type all” currently return in the console/reports. If there is a need for a diferent inspector then name it logically, but I would expect “Device Type” to return the type of hardware. Maybe add a “OS Type” or “type of operating system” would fill the other need.
Laptop running Ubuntu Server:
Device Type: Laptop
Type of operating system: Server
Desktop running Windows 10
Device Type: Workstation
Type of operating system: Workstation
VM Running Windows 7
Device Type: Virtual Workstation
Type of operating system: Workstation
VM Running Windows Server 2016
Device Type: Virtual Workstation
Type of operating system: Server
iPhone running iOS:
Device Type: Phone
Type of operating system: mobile
Android Tablet running Ubuntu server 16.04
Device Type: Tablet
Type of operating system: Server
Android Tablet running Android
Device Type: Tablet
Type of operating system: Mobile
Chromebook running ChromeOS
Device Type: Laptop
Type of operating system: Workstation
The (major) problem I am having now, with the new inspector, is that any Workstation OS on a VM platform is being seen as a Server…
I’m having the opposite problem server oses installed on hyper-v are showing as desktops
If you’re interested in the type of the OS, does product type of operating system not provide what you want?
I almost had a heart attack when my server and workstation counts drastically changed… plus the Icons in the console. 
I imagine licensing is also foobared, but I don’t even want to look.
product type of operating system is fairly odd and only works on windows and only tells you if it’s NT workstation, server, and/or a domain controller. It’s also cumbersome to use in it’s current format and can’t output as a string.
Understood on all counts; but still I’d prefer the “device type” inspector to refer to hardware. If what we want to retrieve is the OS type, there are other ways to handle it (using product type of operating system = operating system product type 1 to find Windows Client, for example). It’s not so easy to tell a Laptop from a Workstation from a Server from a VM, though.
As far as ‘product type of operating system’ only working on Windows, yeah that’s unfortunate because it’s a Microsoft-specific description. On Linux operating systems, the methods for checking are probably distribution-specific (like parsing /etc/redhad-release). But as I understand it, the ‘devce type’ inspector is also only available on Windows and mobile device management extenders right now.
Maybe a new cross-platform inspector for “operating system type” is warranted?
That makes a lot of sense
Yes, I agree that operating system type would come in handy…
Especially for those that have been using device type to show if an endpoint is a server or not (while in 9.2) and we’re moving to 9.5.5…
Now, this changed between 9.2 and 9.5.2 if I read correctly, right?
Read this when you have a few minutes for a sort of comprehensive overview of the changes: https://developer.ibm.com/answers/questions/304878/why-is-device-type-is-unexpectedly-reporting-serve/
This is helpful and I understand how we can override the device types for endpoints if need be, but I’m curious if the Device Type inspector can be modified so that it returns “Virtual Workstation” for Win7/10 VMs – it currently returns “Server,” which is very misleading. The fact that this property behaves this way prevents us from using it in either of my previous two organizations. In both cases, I’ve created my own custom property for Device Type that handles this scenario as I’ve described.
That said, I think it makes sense to modify the source property to behave this way. Does anyone disagree?
Based on the discussion above, there is not a consensus here. You want it to be based on the OS, others want it based on the hardware. We do have other properties and inspectors that report whether a system is virtual or not, so it should be simple to customize the property to your preference using the _BESClient_DeviceTypeOverride setting.