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The Death of the PC - 5 years?
Rigamortis
Member UncommonPosts: 207
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
Comments
Will never happen.
PC Gaming will evolve but you will never see the end of the PC. Its like saying that Cell phones are on their way out.
Lets see your Battle Stations /r/battlestations
Battle Station
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.
Very good points across the board.
What will always exist is a desire for "bigger, better, faster, more" in regards to video games. We'll always be able to have more power in a PC sized case, so PCs will always be able to provide that, but that's not to say that it will always require a PC sized case. If that modular cell phone idea takes off, it might be possible to have something like a modular laptop sized gaming rig in the future.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I've thought about this a lot myself. My job has revolved around PCs and Windows for a long time. I've had to learn a lot of different tablet devices and Operating Systems in the last few years. For a long time all there was was PC with Windows or Linux. MAC was a very small market until they started using Intel processor's and tablets.
From my experience so far it seems that many consumers have converted to tablets/smart phones already. They are small devices that you use on the go. They aren't really that great for gaming that requires intense graphics since their CPU and GPU are much less powerful then a desktop or even a laptop. Most people don't need that power though. They use their device for apps, browsing the web, writing documents, and communicating with others.
The workplace seems to still be very oriented towards PCs. The main problem with replacing PCs with tablets in a workplace is that there is no replacement for something like windows domains. From the server you can configure a lot of the clients settings all in one go and allow access to various folders on the server.
PC gaming seems to be picking up steam right now because Windows is more stable, Nvidia is actually righting good drivers, and game companies are writing games that don't crash much. Most of these games have support for the Xbox 360 controller (something computers never really had in the past). There were controllers/joysticks, but there was never a standard developers could use until now. The biggest edge PCs has though is that they are big and because of this can contain very powerful CPUs and Graphics cards. Tablets and Laptops can't really contain these due to size and heat. It's possible someone will be able to invent something that is powerful, small, and runs cool, but it doesn't seem likely anytime soon. Manufacturers are already reaching the maximum point on how small they can shrink things from what I've seen. Steam is also a huge reason for the PC gaming surge of late. There was not an easy way to buy and install games before steam. Many times they didn't work right after the install and you had to figure out what was wrong.
in conclusion it looks like tablets/smart phones will replace the PC in the home for the majority of people, but those who want to do computer graphics, gaming, or anything really creative will use a PC. The tablet seems more a supplemental device in business at the moment. Most people seem to still use PCs as most business software is still written for Windows.
Good album *reaches for spotify*
Oh, and the PC will certainly outlive me.
People making blanket statements like "the PC will be dead in X years" should be shot. When they claim things like that, they usually do so with very specific demographics in mind. In this case, it's very possible that the PC will be dead in 5 years, for the "casual PC user" demographic. You know, the people who just check email, facebook, and play a couple of browser games.
What they aren't considering is the fact that the PC market still consists primarily of Business and Enterprise users. People *work* on computers, and that is not going to change any time soon.
You make me like charity
For way more than 10 years there has been all kinds of effort in going to a thin client which would still be some sort of a low powered PC. but i really haven't seen much success. I just know where there's a will there's a way and businesses have a desperate need to trim down the costs of the employees workstations.
lol, 486? try a 286?
I upgraded it to a 386 a year or so later.
Absolutely ridiculous statement on so many levels... it was a sales pitch and nothing else.
Technology moves fast, no one argues this point; but tablets are not perfect, they have down sides. As things are now tablets could be used in endless ways that they currently aren't. They aren't being used for these things because it would be annoying, troublesome, and inconvenient.
Intels NUC's are increasingly popular for a lot of things, that performance and engineering could be in a tablet... but that would stupid for what they are being used for. The person from the radio show had no insight what-so-ever into what the market uses PCs for.
If this shill wanted to at least sound semi-intelligent he should have said in 5 years laptops will be a thing of the past and replaced with tablets.
Desktops for gaming aren't going anywhere either. The CPU die keeps getting smaller and less power required for the same operations of the larger die, this is true. Then why have power supplies gone from 400 watts 10 years ago to 800+ today; its because the demand the applications place keeps growing... shrinking the die has been the only solution to having to run a special outlet into your house to power the damn thing. Unless everyone decides playing Angry Birds is the only game they need, desktops aren't going anywhere.
For this man's brilliant prediction to come true.. not in the way he said it, but in some similar way. Certain things would need to happen; an optical CPU would need to commercialized to the public or similar advancement, or a battery 1000x better then what is available now make it mainstream, or they way software runs would have to change on a fundamental level and replace all software around today.
My prediction is, in 5 years I will still have a desktop.
I have a 386, but before that my father brought home a computer for work called a PC AT or XT? I used to play Double Dragon in EVGA and it ran in DOS from a 5 1/2 inch floppy disk.
You can already see the shift happening with cross platform gaming. That is just a stop gap for the transition... as PC sales shrink, tech shrinks, and other platforms/peripherals continue to grow companies will drop the least revenue generating avenues. What we know as a desktop PC today will be one of them.
That is not to say MMO/online/PC gaming is dead... Think on this, the top tier smartphones now hold enough CPU and memory to run a 100 zone EQ1 server.
What we will start seeing is developers moving peripherals to the next gen and PCs morphing into tablets that blow by everything we have in a big box today. Google Glass/Oculus Rift are just a few examples into that area. Controls are getting better and allowing more freedom. In many ways we are on another cusp of innovation...
1980 - 1GHz PCs were science fiction.
1990 - High definition tablets were science fiction
2000 - Smart phones were science fiction
Just imagine, what we think is science fiction today will be widely used reality in a decade.
The PC is going to die because it is quickly becoming obsolete... gaming as we know it will adapt and bring even better things moving forward.
-Atziluth-
- Never underestimate the predictability of stupidity.
Wait a sec.......I bring up a statement a radio host I listen to on the Weekends make about PC's and I'm the one being insulted / attacked for it? LOL what gives?!?!?!
-Rig
Agreed!
Currently playing SWTOR and it's MUCH better than it was at launch.
For some reason I doubt you smartphone could run a Everquest server. There is just to much data to process and way to many connections. I don't think it would even come close. I could be wrong though.
The fools are skipping your penultimate sentence. It's a well-documented behaviour, I'm afraid
There is no alternative to a PC. Why would it die?
MMOs finally replaced social interaction, forced grouping and standing in a line while talking to eachother.
Now we have forced soloing, forced questing and everyone is the hero, without ever having to talk to anyone else. The evolution of multiplayer is here! We won,... right?
the radio host is wrong, dumb, ignorant, intentional parrot, or an innocent parrot
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-01-28-pc-gaming-market-to-exceed-USD25-billion-this-year-dfc
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.
lolwut
/demtablets
Ryoshi1 as Rikimaru