There have been numerous claims over the last few years about the 'death of the PC' but none of them had any credence. Even the latest decline in PC sales totally ignores the longevity and upgrade factors involved in PC's in the first place, probably the best way to judge how the PC is doing, is to look at PC component sales, just sales of GPU's alone should be enough to give a fairly good indication of how healthy the PC is.
People are less likely now to buy a new PC than they are to upgrade the components on it, its cheaper for one thing, and many people don't have a need for the latest operating systems, when the one they already own works fine as is, and thats ignoring the whole Win8 controversy which also doesn't do any favours for new PC sales. PC's are very modular, you don't have to be an expert to upgrade, and most people 'know someone' who can help them out or do it for them, people on average are increasingly computer literate and less afraid to 'have a go' and lets face it, upgrading a gpu in a PC is about as simple as it gets.
Its probably no surprise either that both major consoles are now X86 based architecture, and assuming the next consoles continue the trend, then its highly likely that the next ones will be even closer to being PC's, even if their focus is primarily gaming. Its even possible that the next console won't be hardware, but an OS that you can buy as an alternate boot for your PC that enables you to play their games.
Web Developer by trade and no, I don't see it happening.
Someone asked me recently about getting an ipad to replace their computer. I told them it was a bad idea. Once I started talking about how they would have to find apps to replace all the programs they had on CD they gave up on the plan.
A PC without the internet is still worth something. Why settle for a device that is practically worthless without the internet.
Those portable devices just sell more because they are a vanity item since people see you with them. They are like new clothes. Many people don't wear out clothes before they buy new ones. Same with desktop computers, behind closed doors and offices there are plenty of older computers running.
Trust me on this, I see browser statistics all the time. Mobile is not very big on most of our sites. Mobile is high for social media but company websites and the like - honestly - if you make an app - you are wasting money unless it's a way for people to pay you. Deep information searches also aren't mobile friendly. Comparison shopping is where mobile gains share but most of the shopping is from the big sites so don't expect to get ahead selling specialty cookies or ebay items.
It is getting harder to find standard non wireless modems - that's true but I wouldn't be concerned about the PC itself. The push to try to get you to buy wi-fi devices though is large. Why not make you buy something that you will replace yearly or so. It just makes them more money and having those juicy signals in the air instead of being corded - oh Google just loves that. They already got caught sniffing wireless networks with their cars that drive themselves.
Wow... I... wow.... This is some real sh!t. So good, it beared repeating.
PC gaming ain't dead. Proof? The Xbone/Ps keep getting closer and closer to being PC's without ever offering the choice of being a PC.
I think both these posts provide the ultimate point. Integration.
the PC platform will always have the horsepower and customization to effectively do the jobs that newer tech tries to take over. The market isn't going to kill a machine that can do everything and replace it with stuff that can do SOME things.
What I think we'll see in the next 5 years is further cooperation and integration of devices with PC's. Near Field Communication is one indication. WiDi is another. Any time these new technologies are created, your PC is the first to be able to embrace it, even if it's 4-5 years old. Meanwhile, if your phone or TV or pad are 2+ years old, that tech is unavailable.
PC's will always be faster, have more storage, be more capable of integrating with newer tech via software or USB/upgrade slot hardware, process faster, read/write faster, basically do everything better with the exception of fitting in your pocket. But there's nothing stopping a component being made that does fit in your pocket that controls your PC. With an android phone and a VNC viewer app you can do that, already.
There's very little that a smartphone or ipad does that a PC can't do better. Heck, with Skype or Google Hangouts, a PC is a better phone than a smartphone is...
there is an incredible piece of tech I stumbled on Kickstarter, its tower that is as big as like a 3DS I forget the name of it, Really check it out and yes its for gaming too.
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
The world will always have more than enough demand for the PC experience but that hardly means that towers are guaranteed to survive in the consumer environment.
Electronics are getting faster at breakneck speeds and I can't help but imagine that they will eventually be grossly overqualified for the things the average consumer demands. We're probably not even as far along as we could be on the consumer level because of the investment it would take to move to a new standard. There is just no reason to expect we'll always need something the size of a large cat tucked under our desk to have the full experience.
So the tablet might replace the PC but I bet it wont harm the PC mentality.
Just as mainframes were replaced by mini's, PC's will be replaced by mobile devices. Not in the next 5 years, but most likely in the next 10 years.
I'll never forget the reaction of my boss when I showed him an article in PC Magazine in 1989 which discussed the possibility of using 486's as servers to replace mini's. He had over 15 years experience as an IT professional (which made him a minor god in those times). He smiled condescendingly and said: "Don't get too excited now, those are just toys, not serious data processing devices. They will never be able to do what our IBM System-36's can do. Not in a million years..."
Ten to 15 years from now your tablet "PC" will be what replaces your current "under-the-desk" gaming powerhouse for all but a small group of (rich) enthusiasts. It will most likely wirelessly communicate with all the peripherals you care to use. Quite possibly you will be able to fold it up like a piece of paper and put it in your jeans pocket.
Intel has seen the writing on the wall. Their processor development and production is being geared to cater primarily to mobile devices. That's the new growth market, that's where the profit lies and that's how the company will survive the next decade. If they don't, ARM will eat their lunch. "PC's" in future will have to use mobile device cpu's, why bother ?
Dedicated gaming/entertainment devices (a.k.a. consoles) will rule, because they will be the most cost effective solution for gaming.
Generally in business, being the best at something is no guarantee of success. Being cost-effective is.
True. But IMO it won't have a "death", rather, it will evolve.
I'll never forget the reaction of my boss when I showed him an article in PC Magazine in 1989 which discussed the possibility of using 486's as servers to replace mini's. He had over 15 years experience as an IT professional (which made him a minor god in those times). He smiled condescendingly and said: "Don't get too excited now, those are just toys, not serious data processing devices. They will never be able to do what our IBM System-36's can do. Not in a million years..."
Well, there is a difference in practicality improvement between:
-Something going from being the size of both a washer and dryer to becoming the size of a stereo reciever
and
-something going from being the size of a receiver to being the size of a small magazine.
It's absolutely impractical to have something the size of a sys/36 in your house to do word processing or gaming, particularly given that at the time, that's pretty much all you could do at home, anyway. this means that there was next to 0 market outside of the commercial realm for such a beast. Meanwhile, the PC was practical to have in the home, and so the market steadily grew as PC's were capable of doing more and more things.
And as server cluster technology began to grow, and you could have a couple dozen 486's in the place of this massive mainframe(and quite often cost less), it became the more practical, scaleable solution.
A final point: notebooks didn't kill PC's, so IMO there's no reason to think that tablets will, either. And notebooks had even more going for them. They can do nearly anything a PC can, they just sacrifice some performance for portability. Matter of fact, I'd say tablets are probably cutting much more into the laptop market than the PC market.
TL;DR mainframes went extinct because there were no longer any good reasons to keep them compared to a cluster of PC servers. In contrast to the PC in our modern era, which still has an acceptable form factor, and still does most everything better than its handheld competition and consoles, no matter how many of them you manage to stack together.
Here we go again. This has been rehashed many times, and the reasons why the people claiming that PCs are going to die off are completely clueless haven't changed.
Some people want high performance, such as to play games. For them, tablets will not be a serious alternative to desktops in the foreseeable future. The only way tablets ever could be a serious alternative is if some revolutionary change to technology made performance no longer scale with power consumption.
Some people use a computer to do real work, not just simple web browsing. For those people, a desktop will always be superior because of the form factor, even if you could match the price and performance in a tablet--which will probably never happen. Multiple large monitors, a full-sized, wired keyboard that can be positioned independently of the monitors, and a wired, laser mouse all greatly increase productivity over anything that you can do on a tablet.
But the biggest reason that PC sales have been falling is one that tablet enthusiasts tend to ignore: PCs last longer--and in particular, last longer than they did 10 or 15 years ago. If you used to replace your PC every 3 years and now do so every 5 years, you've just reduced your PC purchases by 40%--even though you use the PC just as much as you did before.
Tablets, by contrast, have much shorter life expectancies. A large fraction of the new desktops purchased today will still be in service five years from now. Most tablets purchased today will be discarded, abandoned, or dead entirely in five years.
Topic should have ended after this post.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.' -Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid." -Luke McKinney
From my experience and what I have seen, a lot of people use tablets and smartphones for browsing/youtube/watching movies etc. Laptops are becoming way more popular than PCs too. I personally don't see the point of having a PC UNLESS you are a gamer. You can have a laptop and it will address all your needs. A lot of my friends have a tablet, smartphone and laptop but almost none of them play PC intensive games.
In our office everyone uses laptops. You can't find your traditional tower PC anywhere in our offices and we are a massive organisation (100k+ employees and $150+ billion revenue). We use iphones as our phones and senior people also get ipads. We use ipads in a lot of our conferences too. We give all attendees an ipad for the conference's duration and they drag it around with themselves. THey can check all the agendas, powerpoint slides and relevant materials on their ipads. It's just soooo convenient.
I personally haven't owned a tower PC in a very long time and I play PC games from time to time. My laptop is light enough (under 2kgs) and it is more than capable of playing a lot of games on 1080p. I paid quite a bit for it but I don't like PCs. PCs don't allow me to do a lot of the things that I want (e.g. drag your computer in your bed and watch youtube movies, browse when lying down etc.)
This is all from my point of view. Please don't talk about stats and representation etc. I am not claiming any of these things. Just sharing what I have seen around me.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
PC's as we know them, might be dead in five year's. Would be a more accurate statement.
"Personal Computer" doesn't this describe a desktop, tablet , cell phone or laptop?
Technically they are all "computers". I think what the OP was referring to us tower/desktop PCs. Tablets and phones are usually not included in the PC category. Laptops are sometimes included in the PC category, sometimes they are not, go figure.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
From my experience and what I have seen, a lot of people use tablets and smartphones for browsing/youtube/watching movies etc. Laptops are becoming way more popular than PCs too. I personally don't see the point of having a PC UNLESS you are a gamer. You can have a laptop and it will address all your needs. A lot of my friends have a tablet, smartphone and laptop but almost none of them play PC intensive games.
In our office everyone uses laptops. You can't find your traditional tower PC anywhere in our offices and we are a massive organisation (100k+ employees and $150+ billion revenue). We use iphones as our phones and senior people also get ipads. We use ipads in a lot of our conferences too. We give all attendees an ipad for the conference's duration and they drag it around with themselves. THey can check all the agendas, powerpoint slides and relevant materials on their ipads. It's just soooo convenient.
I personally haven't owned a tower PC in a very long time and I play PC games from time to time. My laptop is light enough (under 2kgs) and it is more than capable of playing a lot of games on 1080p. I paid quite a bit for it but I don't like PCs. PCs don't allow me to do a lot of the things that I want (e.g. drag your computer in your bed and watch youtube movies, browse when lying down etc.)
This is all from my point of view. Please don't talk about stats and representation etc. I am not claiming any of these things. Just sharing what I have seen around me.
It depends on what kind of business you are in. If the only software you need to use is Word, Powerpoint, Access, and Excel, sure, a laptop is fine. If you are an engineer or 3D artist or any of a bunch of other professions, you are going to be using high-end software that requires lots of RAM, massive hard drives, and often high end graphics cards. Add to that, not every business wants to use computers that their employees can pick up and take home with them without anyone noticing.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
There have been numerous claims over the last few years about the 'death of the PC' but none of them had any credence. Even the latest decline in PC sales totally ignores the longevity and upgrade factors involved in PC's in the first place, probably the best way to judge how the PC is doing, is to look at PC component sales, just sales of GPU's alone should be enough to give a fairly good indication of how healthy the PC is.
People are less likely now to buy a new PC than they are to upgrade the components on it, its cheaper for one thing, and many people don't have a need for the latest operating systems, when the one they already own works fine as is, and thats ignoring the whole Win8 controversy which also doesn't do any favours for new PC sales. PC's are very modular, you don't have to be an expert to upgrade, and most people 'know someone' who can help them out or do it for them, people on average are increasingly computer literate and less afraid to 'have a go' and lets face it, upgrading a gpu in a PC is about as simple as it gets.
Its probably no surprise either that both major consoles are now X86 based architecture, and assuming the next consoles continue the trend, then its highly likely that the next ones will be even closer to being PC's, even if their focus is primarily gaming. Its even possible that the next console won't be hardware, but an OS that you can buy as an alternate boot for your PC that enables you to play their games.
I wish companies would have their own PC gaming OS, but it is not a reality because that would take away their walled garden. It would allow people to examine and modify their OS. With tablets and consoles companies are generally in complete control of what you do with their devices. With desktops that is not the case and is a large part of why I use a desktop. If the next console is the Microsoft/Sony vision of having everything in the clouds that would suck for gaming even if you could play the games on the PC. That means you will never have a copy on your hard disk of software you paid money to use. Personally I'd rather have the software available to use offline.
First off, I am old enough to disclose that my first PC was the Tandy 1000 I bought at Radio Shack back in the late 80's. I also studied the architecture of the 8088 / 8086 chip. Since then....I have owned and built more PC's then I can remember. On the weekends I listen to a guy on the radio who does a Tech Show. He is very knowledgeable and I respect his opinion the majority of the time.
However, this last weekend he made a bold statement I completely disagree with. He said the PC (as we know it) will go the way of the DoDo bird and not be around in 5 years. He theorizes that everything will be going to "PC Tablets". Sure, the PC market has taken a sizable hit since the IPAD and other tablets have become very popular. However, with the multi-billion dollar video game industry as well as the major players in the GPU / Video cards, there is no way (in my opinion) the PC will die. Thoughts?
-Rig
No offense, but the guy sounds like an idiot.
While he may be right that tablets are becoming more popular, he's overlooking one glaring fact. Personal Computing (as we know it), is becoming MUCH more diverse. PCs aren't dying, but their uses are being diffused over multiple different platforms. We have consoles for pure comfort gaming (though consoles with this latest generation have been blatantly struggling to keep up w/ what PCs can offer). Tablets & Cell Phones offer bite-sized gaming you can play on the run or over the toilet (they're essentially replacing hand-held consoles).
PCs are high-end / high-customization. They exist for people who want control over their gaming experience, from how well the graphics run, to their FPS, etc. Only PCs really offer this.
In fact, the primary downside to PCs atm (as a gaming platform), is that to the average layman they are still somewhat inaccessible. By this I mean that the average person is still somewhat uncomfortable with building their own / customizing a PC. However, this is also changing and becoming MUCH more user friendly; with modular PCs being in the experimental stage.
Saying PCs are going to disappear is like saying TVs will dissappear, because we can watch video on our cell phones. It doesn't make any sense, because it delivers on a feature in ways only it can offer.
Well I started out on a vic 20 with 3.5k memory (wow) now I have a tablet,ebook , laptop and gaming pc , each one occuplies a specific spot.
Laptop I use for my day to day work etc and my gaming pc is just that for my games . I cannot see pc's disappearing for a long time , however I can see things merging for example you have a base unit that you plug your tablet in to give you more power for gaming ect . I can see it progressing along those lines
Also I even spent money on a 16k expansion pack for my first computer it cost £90 which was a lot in those days
PC's as we know them, might be dead in five year's. Would be a more accurate statement.
"Personal Computer" doesn't this describe a desktop, tablet , cell phone or laptop?
Technically they are all "computers". I think what the OP was referring to us tower/desktop PCs. Tablets and phones are usually not included in the PC category. Laptops are sometimes included in the PC category, sometimes they are not, go figure.
I know
It's just funny how a term like "personal computer" when it was coined meant a Commodore, Apple, Atari, Tandi or any other computer that was affordable and used in the home at the time. Gets corrupted into such a narrow term, basically meaning a "Desktop Running Microsoft Windows"
I also had this argument with a mate when he bought the latest playstation and he made a off hand comment about how in a couple years they wont make games for the PC because the tech inside consoles is so good now.
I think over the last couple years PC gaming has gone from strength to strength and looking over the next two years at what games are planned. I see the opposite happening I believe the novelty of console gameing will were off and PC will become more dominant than ever.
Plus I explained to my mate that my pc may of cost more than his plastic toy but I built my PC about a year and half ago and its far superior to the tech in PS and Xbox I also explained to him he will probably be stuck with that plastic toy for about 5-10 years were games will never look any better than they are now. Were as my PC will be playing the best graphics of any game to come and modding them so they look better than anything mere console gamers have ever seen.
The limitation of mobile devices is the battery and while the computational power is much higher now than it was 10 years ago we have pretty much the same power from battery now compared to what we had 50 years ago. Its not like the idea of a mobile PC is something new, it has existed in the form of a laptop, and the current restriction for the laptop is todays battery. To kill the PC there has to be an evolution in batteries.
Iselin: And the next person who says "but it's a business, they need to make money" can just go fuck yourself.
I also had this argument with a mate when he bought the latest playstation and he made a off hand comment about how in a couple years they wont make games for the PC because the tech inside consoles is so good now.
I think over the last couple years PC gaming has gone from strength to strength and looking over the next two years at what games are planned. I see the opposite happening I believe the novelty of console gameing will were off and PC will become more dominant than ever.
Plus I explained to my mate that my pc may of cost more than his plastic toy but I built my PC about a year and half ago and its far superior to the tech in PS and Xbox I also explained to him he will probably be stuck with that plastic toy for about 5-10 years were games will never look any better than they are now. Were as my PC will be playing the best graphics of any game to come and modding them so they look better than anything mere console gamers have ever seen.
I believe the main problem for consoles is that they just came out, but PCs are already capable of better graphical quality and effects. My PC has a core I7 and a gtx 680 with 8 gb of RAM. It can output better graphics even with Windows and DirectX API causing overhead. The hardware is just that much better. In previous generations of consoles they had a fair advantage over PCs when they first came out. I remember playing games on the Nintendo Entertainment System and it had something like 256 colors. This is compared to my PC which had EVGA graphics I believe that was limited to purple white blue and black I believe. The games looked horrible lol. Then consoles had an edge in 3D gaming with systems like the Xbox and Playstation 2 vs the graphics cards of the time. The tables have turned and PC hardware is the best now. It's also a lot more user friendly then it used to be. I remember trying to get games to work in DOS and Windows 95. The games always wanted to use 64k of conventional memory instead of the massive amount of extended memory that was available. Windows 95/98 had lots of driver problems and crashing. Windows 2000 pro and XP started to become more user friendly. Windows 7 and 8 are fairly stable and easy to use. Steam does most of the work in terms of installing games for you. Nvidia software will configure many of the recent games settings automatically for you based on what hardware you have.
The limitation of mobile devices is the battery and while the computational power is much higher now than it was 10 years ago we have pretty much the same power from battery now compared to what we had 50 years ago. Its not like the idea of a mobile PC is something new, it has existed in the form of a laptop, and the current restriction for the laptop is todays battery. To kill the PC there has to be an evolution in batteries.
I'd imagine there would have to also be an evolution in the ability to absorb the heat generated by complicated x86 CPUs. The reason laptops and tablets tend to wear out quickly is because there is no place for the heat to escape and it limits how powerful a CPU and GPU you can use. Of course there is also the size factor overall. From what I've been reading they have things so small it's not becoming feasible to shrink them anymore.
From my experience and what I have seen, a lot of people use tablets and smartphones for browsing/youtube/watching movies etc. Laptops are becoming way more popular than PCs too. I personally don't see the point of having a PC UNLESS you are a gamer. You can have a laptop and it will address all your needs. A lot of my friends have a tablet, smartphone and laptop but almost none of them play PC intensive games.
In our office everyone uses laptops. You can't find your traditional tower PC anywhere in our offices and we are a massive organisation (100k+ employees and $150+ billion revenue). We use iphones as our phones and senior people also get ipads. We use ipads in a lot of our conferences too. We give all attendees an ipad for the conference's duration and they drag it around with themselves. THey can check all the agendas, powerpoint slides and relevant materials on their ipads. It's just soooo convenient.
I personally haven't owned a tower PC in a very long time and I play PC games from time to time. My laptop is light enough (under 2kgs) and it is more than capable of playing a lot of games on 1080p. I paid quite a bit for it but I don't like PCs. PCs don't allow me to do a lot of the things that I want (e.g. drag your computer in your bed and watch youtube movies, browse when lying down etc.)
This is all from my point of view. Please don't talk about stats and representation etc. I am not claiming any of these things. Just sharing what I have seen around me.
It depends on what kind of business you are in. If the only software you need to use is Word, Powerpoint, Access, and Excel, sure, a laptop is fine. If you are an engineer or 3D artist or any of a bunch of other professions, you are going to be using high-end software that requires lots of RAM, massive hard drives, and often high end graphics cards. Add to that, not every business wants to use computers that their employees can pick up and take home with them without anyone noticing.
I am guessing that if you are a 3d artist that's a different story. I think the only thing our laptops will fall flat will be the 3d performance. But otherwise they have quite fast CPUs (4 core i7) and what I consider lots of RAM - 8gb.
A lot of businesses use laptops because you can take them anywhere. You can go and work at home, you can take your laptop on client site. Often you just need to get your laptop in a meeting etc. Some times you have to work with other people away from your desk. In all these situations your desktop is kinda useless!
Although when you are at your desk everyone hooks their laptop to a big screen and uses a regular keyboard and mouse.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
From my experience and what I have seen, a lot of people use tablets and smartphones for browsing/youtube/watching movies etc. Laptops are becoming way more popular than PCs too. I personally don't see the point of having a PC UNLESS you are a gamer. You can have a laptop and it will address all your needs. A lot of my friends have a tablet, smartphone and laptop but almost none of them play PC intensive games.
In our office everyone uses laptops. You can't find your traditional tower PC anywhere in our offices and we are a massive organisation (100k+ employees and $150+ billion revenue). We use iphones as our phones and senior people also get ipads. We use ipads in a lot of our conferences too. We give all attendees an ipad for the conference's duration and they drag it around with themselves. THey can check all the agendas, powerpoint slides and relevant materials on their ipads. It's just soooo convenient.
I personally haven't owned a tower PC in a very long time and I play PC games from time to time. My laptop is light enough (under 2kgs) and it is more than capable of playing a lot of games on 1080p. I paid quite a bit for it but I don't like PCs. PCs don't allow me to do a lot of the things that I want (e.g. drag your computer in your bed and watch youtube movies, browse when lying down etc.)
This is all from my point of view. Please don't talk about stats and representation etc. I am not claiming any of these things. Just sharing what I have seen around me.
It depends on what kind of business you are in. If the only software you need to use is Word, Powerpoint, Access, and Excel, sure, a laptop is fine. If you are an engineer or 3D artist or any of a bunch of other professions, you are going to be using high-end software that requires lots of RAM, massive hard drives, and often high end graphics cards. Add to that, not every business wants to use computers that their employees can pick up and take home with them without anyone noticing.
I am guessing that if you are a 3d artist that's a different story. I think the only thing our laptops will fall flat will be the 3d performance. But otherwise they have quite fast CPUs (4 core i7) and what I consider lots of RAM - 8gb.
A lot of businesses use laptops because you can take them anywhere. You can go and work at home, you can take your laptop on client site. Often you just need to get your laptop in a meeting etc. Some times you have to work with other people away from your desk. In all these situations your desktop is kinda useless!
Although when you are at your desk everyone hooks their laptop to a big screen and uses a regular keyboard and mouse.
You can use a laptop for everyday things, but you can also use a tablet with a keyboard. there are even Windows tablets out now. The point is there are a lot of things that still require a lot of power. In the place I work at most people still use desktops. It is that way in a lot of companies. Laptops are OK, but I've found desktops to be more stable and reliable due to having more space for air circulation and ventilation. They are also very easy to upgrade if you need to add something a user needs. The only real advantage is you can take it with you, but since most people have a smart phone or tablet I don't see the need. It's just another device.
These guys who predict the end of the PC remind me of the nut jobs who claim the world is going to end every few years. I got news for them both... The PC and the world are still here and will be for the foreseeable future. I've seen predictions of the end of the PC over and over since like 1980 when the PC really first started. Every single prediction has been dead wrong and this one will be no different.
Think the future might also include big computers that stream processing information to terminals for users, would solve a lot of problems if cloud computing keeps improving.
The thing that you need to remember about cloud computing is that for many purposes, doing computations is cheap, but transmitting the results of those computations is expensive. Even for many cloud computing or HPC purposes, often the bottleneck is in reading in data or passing data between racks of computers, not in doing actual computations. If it's cheaper to do computations locally than it is to transmit the results of the computations, cloud computing can't help you.
Comments
There have been numerous claims over the last few years about the 'death of the PC' but none of them had any credence. Even the latest decline in PC sales totally ignores the longevity and upgrade factors involved in PC's in the first place, probably the best way to judge how the PC is doing, is to look at PC component sales, just sales of GPU's alone should be enough to give a fairly good indication of how healthy the PC is.
People are less likely now to buy a new PC than they are to upgrade the components on it, its cheaper for one thing, and many people don't have a need for the latest operating systems, when the one they already own works fine as is, and thats ignoring the whole Win8 controversy which also doesn't do any favours for new PC sales. PC's are very modular, you don't have to be an expert to upgrade, and most people 'know someone' who can help them out or do it for them, people on average are increasingly computer literate and less afraid to 'have a go' and lets face it, upgrading a gpu in a PC is about as simple as it gets.
Its probably no surprise either that both major consoles are now X86 based architecture, and assuming the next consoles continue the trend, then its highly likely that the next ones will be even closer to being PC's, even if their focus is primarily gaming. Its even possible that the next console won't be hardware, but an OS that you can buy as an alternate boot for your PC that enables you to play their games.
I think both these posts provide the ultimate point. Integration.
the PC platform will always have the horsepower and customization to effectively do the jobs that newer tech tries to take over. The market isn't going to kill a machine that can do everything and replace it with stuff that can do SOME things.
What I think we'll see in the next 5 years is further cooperation and integration of devices with PC's. Near Field Communication is one indication. WiDi is another. Any time these new technologies are created, your PC is the first to be able to embrace it, even if it's 4-5 years old. Meanwhile, if your phone or TV or pad are 2+ years old, that tech is unavailable.
PC's will always be faster, have more storage, be more capable of integrating with newer tech via software or USB/upgrade slot hardware, process faster, read/write faster, basically do everything better with the exception of fitting in your pocket. But there's nothing stopping a component being made that does fit in your pocket that controls your PC. With an android phone and a VNC viewer app you can do that, already.
There's very little that a smartphone or ipad does that a PC can't do better. Heck, with Skype or Google Hangouts, a PC is a better phone than a smartphone is...
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
The world will always have more than enough demand for the PC experience but that hardly means that towers are guaranteed to survive in the consumer environment.
Electronics are getting faster at breakneck speeds and I can't help but imagine that they will eventually be grossly overqualified for the things the average consumer demands. We're probably not even as far along as we could be on the consumer level because of the investment it would take to move to a new standard. There is just no reason to expect we'll always need something the size of a large cat tucked under our desk to have the full experience.
So the tablet might replace the PC but I bet it wont harm the PC mentality.
The PC "as we know it" has a limited lifespan.
Just as mainframes were replaced by mini's, PC's will be replaced by mobile devices. Not in the next 5 years, but most likely in the next 10 years.
I'll never forget the reaction of my boss when I showed him an article in PC Magazine in 1989 which discussed the possibility of using 486's as servers to replace mini's. He had over 15 years experience as an IT professional (which made him a minor god in those times). He smiled condescendingly and said: "Don't get too excited now, those are just toys, not serious data processing devices. They will never be able to do what our IBM System-36's can do. Not in a million years..."
Ten to 15 years from now your tablet "PC" will be what replaces your current "under-the-desk" gaming powerhouse for all but a small group of (rich) enthusiasts. It will most likely wirelessly communicate with all the peripherals you care to use. Quite possibly you will be able to fold it up like a piece of paper and put it in your jeans pocket.
Intel has seen the writing on the wall. Their processor development and production is being geared to cater primarily to mobile devices. That's the new growth market, that's where the profit lies and that's how the company will survive the next decade. If they don't, ARM will eat their lunch. "PC's" in future will have to use mobile device cpu's, why bother ?
Dedicated gaming/entertainment devices (a.k.a. consoles) will rule, because they will be the most cost effective solution for gaming.
Generally in business, being the best at something is no guarantee of success. Being cost-effective is.
Topic should have ended after this post.
"The problem is that the hardcore folks always want the same thing: 'We want exactly what you gave us before, but it has to be completely different.'
-Jesse Schell
"Online gamers are the most ludicrously entitled beings since Caligula made his horse a senator, and at least the horse never said anything stupid."
-Luke McKinney
From my experience and what I have seen, a lot of people use tablets and smartphones for browsing/youtube/watching movies etc. Laptops are becoming way more popular than PCs too. I personally don't see the point of having a PC UNLESS you are a gamer. You can have a laptop and it will address all your needs. A lot of my friends have a tablet, smartphone and laptop but almost none of them play PC intensive games.
In our office everyone uses laptops. You can't find your traditional tower PC anywhere in our offices and we are a massive organisation (100k+ employees and $150+ billion revenue). We use iphones as our phones and senior people also get ipads. We use ipads in a lot of our conferences too. We give all attendees an ipad for the conference's duration and they drag it around with themselves. THey can check all the agendas, powerpoint slides and relevant materials on their ipads. It's just soooo convenient.
I personally haven't owned a tower PC in a very long time and I play PC games from time to time. My laptop is light enough (under 2kgs) and it is more than capable of playing a lot of games on 1080p. I paid quite a bit for it but I don't like PCs. PCs don't allow me to do a lot of the things that I want (e.g. drag your computer in your bed and watch youtube movies, browse when lying down etc.)
This is all from my point of view. Please don't talk about stats and representation etc. I am not claiming any of these things. Just sharing what I have seen around me.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
That was the most ridiculous thing I heard for a long time
As someone else said, that will never happen.
It will change maybe, but PC as we know it today will stay for as long as the earth is still here
PC's as we know them, might be dead in five year's. Would be a more accurate statement.
"Personal Computer" doesn't this describe a desktop, tablet , cell phone or laptop?
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
Technically they are all "computers". I think what the OP was referring to us tower/desktop PCs. Tablets and phones are usually not included in the PC category. Laptops are sometimes included in the PC category, sometimes they are not, go figure.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
It depends on what kind of business you are in. If the only software you need to use is Word, Powerpoint, Access, and Excel, sure, a laptop is fine. If you are an engineer or 3D artist or any of a bunch of other professions, you are going to be using high-end software that requires lots of RAM, massive hard drives, and often high end graphics cards. Add to that, not every business wants to use computers that their employees can pick up and take home with them without anyone noticing.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
I wish companies would have their own PC gaming OS, but it is not a reality because that would take away their walled garden. It would allow people to examine and modify their OS. With tablets and consoles companies are generally in complete control of what you do with their devices. With desktops that is not the case and is a large part of why I use a desktop. If the next console is the Microsoft/Sony vision of having everything in the clouds that would suck for gaming even if you could play the games on the PC. That means you will never have a copy on your hard disk of software you paid money to use. Personally I'd rather have the software available to use offline.
No offense, but the guy sounds like an idiot.
While he may be right that tablets are becoming more popular, he's overlooking one glaring fact. Personal Computing (as we know it), is becoming MUCH more diverse. PCs aren't dying, but their uses are being diffused over multiple different platforms. We have consoles for pure comfort gaming (though consoles with this latest generation have been blatantly struggling to keep up w/ what PCs can offer). Tablets & Cell Phones offer bite-sized gaming you can play on the run or over the toilet (they're essentially replacing hand-held consoles).
PCs are high-end / high-customization. They exist for people who want control over their gaming experience, from how well the graphics run, to their FPS, etc. Only PCs really offer this.
In fact, the primary downside to PCs atm (as a gaming platform), is that to the average layman they are still somewhat inaccessible. By this I mean that the average person is still somewhat uncomfortable with building their own / customizing a PC. However, this is also changing and becoming MUCH more user friendly; with modular PCs being in the experimental stage.
Saying PCs are going to disappear is like saying TVs will dissappear, because we can watch video on our cell phones. It doesn't make any sense, because it delivers on a feature in ways only it can offer.
Well I started out on a vic 20 with 3.5k memory (wow) now I have a tablet,ebook , laptop and gaming pc , each one occuplies a specific spot.
Laptop I use for my day to day work etc and my gaming pc is just that for my games . I cannot see pc's disappearing for a long time , however I can see things merging for example you have a base unit that you plug your tablet in to give you more power for gaming ect . I can see it progressing along those lines
Also I even spent money on a 16k expansion pack for my first computer it cost £90 which was a lot in those days
I know
It's just funny how a term like "personal computer" when it was coined meant a Commodore, Apple, Atari, Tandi or any other computer that was affordable and used in the home at the time. Gets corrupted into such a narrow term, basically meaning a "Desktop Running Microsoft Windows"
Seems kinda dumb.
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
I also had this argument with a mate when he bought the latest playstation and he made a off hand comment about how in a couple years they wont make games for the PC because the tech inside consoles is so good now.
I think over the last couple years PC gaming has gone from strength to strength and looking over the next two years at what games are planned. I see the opposite happening I believe the novelty of console gameing will were off and PC will become more dominant than ever.
Plus I explained to my mate that my pc may of cost more than his plastic toy but I built my PC about a year and half ago and its far superior to the tech in PS and Xbox I also explained to him he will probably be stuck with that plastic toy for about 5-10 years were games will never look any better than they are now. Were as my PC will be playing the best graphics of any game to come and modding them so they look better than anything mere console gamers have ever seen.
The limitation of mobile devices is the battery and while the computational power is much higher now than it was 10 years ago we have pretty much the same power from battery now compared to what we had 50 years ago. Its not like the idea of a mobile PC is something new, it has existed in the form of a laptop, and the current restriction for the laptop is todays battery. To kill the PC there has to be an evolution in batteries.
I believe the main problem for consoles is that they just came out, but PCs are already capable of better graphical quality and effects. My PC has a core I7 and a gtx 680 with 8 gb of RAM. It can output better graphics even with Windows and DirectX API causing overhead. The hardware is just that much better. In previous generations of consoles they had a fair advantage over PCs when they first came out. I remember playing games on the Nintendo Entertainment System and it had something like 256 colors. This is compared to my PC which had EVGA graphics I believe that was limited to purple white blue and black I believe. The games looked horrible lol. Then consoles had an edge in 3D gaming with systems like the Xbox and Playstation 2 vs the graphics cards of the time. The tables have turned and PC hardware is the best now. It's also a lot more user friendly then it used to be. I remember trying to get games to work in DOS and Windows 95. The games always wanted to use 64k of conventional memory instead of the massive amount of extended memory that was available. Windows 95/98 had lots of driver problems and crashing. Windows 2000 pro and XP started to become more user friendly. Windows 7 and 8 are fairly stable and easy to use. Steam does most of the work in terms of installing games for you. Nvidia software will configure many of the recent games settings automatically for you based on what hardware you have.
I'd imagine there would have to also be an evolution in the ability to absorb the heat generated by complicated x86 CPUs. The reason laptops and tablets tend to wear out quickly is because there is no place for the heat to escape and it limits how powerful a CPU and GPU you can use. Of course there is also the size factor overall. From what I've been reading they have things so small it's not becoming feasible to shrink them anymore.
I am guessing that if you are a 3d artist that's a different story. I think the only thing our laptops will fall flat will be the 3d performance. But otherwise they have quite fast CPUs (4 core i7) and what I consider lots of RAM - 8gb.
A lot of businesses use laptops because you can take them anywhere. You can go and work at home, you can take your laptop on client site. Often you just need to get your laptop in a meeting etc. Some times you have to work with other people away from your desk. In all these situations your desktop is kinda useless!
Although when you are at your desk everyone hooks their laptop to a big screen and uses a regular keyboard and mouse.
Mission in life: Vanquish all MMORPG.com trolls - especially TESO, WOW and GW2 trolls.
You can use a laptop for everyday things, but you can also use a tablet with a keyboard. there are even Windows tablets out now. The point is there are a lot of things that still require a lot of power. In the place I work at most people still use desktops. It is that way in a lot of companies. Laptops are OK, but I've found desktops to be more stable and reliable due to having more space for air circulation and ventilation. They are also very easy to upgrade if you need to add something a user needs. The only real advantage is you can take it with you, but since most people have a smart phone or tablet I don't see the need. It's just another device.
These guys who predict the end of the PC remind me of the nut jobs who claim the world is going to end every few years. I got news for them both... The PC and the world are still here and will be for the foreseeable future. I've seen predictions of the end of the PC over and over since like 1980 when the PC really first started. Every single prediction has been dead wrong and this one will be no different.
Bren
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The thing that you need to remember about cloud computing is that for many purposes, doing computations is cheap, but transmitting the results of those computations is expensive. Even for many cloud computing or HPC purposes, often the bottleneck is in reading in data or passing data between racks of computers, not in doing actual computations. If it's cheaper to do computations locally than it is to transmit the results of the computations, cloud computing can't help you.