Saturday
Aug112012
Question: desktops?
Saturday, August 11, 2012 at 3:00AM Can you see a time where you will not need a desktop PC? Of if you do not have one, can you see a time where even laptops are not popular? I still believe both form have many years left in them.
Reader Comments (10)
No, not really, even though I use my mobile devices more and more. Cloud and NAS access make it much easier to use just mobile devices. But I'll always use my MBA "docked" to my 24" Cinema Display. I mean there are times when the small screens of portable devices are too limiting and none have the power of a full desktop or laptop.
My laptops are my desktops - both married to a large monitor and Keyboard and mouse.
Mobile devices are great but they cannot yet replace a real PC
I guess it depends on what you want to do. For my personal needs my netbook is enough, if I want a big screen I plug it into my 32" tv. Battery life is good, it portable and as far as I'm concerned, it's kinda a pc in my pocket (bag!) But while I'm on holiday my phone gets used most. I don't have internet at home, so either I tether my netbook or I just go online directly with my phone (yes, it's hard being poor and loving gadgets and technology !)
I don't see a time when I won't need a large monitor or the equivalent and a keyboard and possibly a mouse or some other pointing or gesturing device. However, I can see a time when I will have one or two portable devices with enough power to easily do what what my MacBook Pro does. In fact the iPad isn't that far away. We already have the technology to have a dual use portable device. It would use a portable operating system such as iOS when mobile and a desktop operating system, such as OS X, when docked. And by docked I mean hooked up to an external display (monitor, TV, wall).
You know, having thought about it some more and feeling a tad negative, portable devices are far more powerful than the hardware we had not so many years ago. Thus our phones have the potential of running operating systems far more complex than they are currently. But of course.... that would cut out a whole market of sales. Imagine people just buying mobiles and hooking then up to a large screen, mouse and keyboard when they need to. Where would the desktop and laptop market go?
You know, having thought about it some more and feeling a tad negative, portable devices are far more powerful than the hardware we had not so many years ago. Thus our phones have the potential of running operating systems far more complex than they are currently. But of course.... that would cut out a whole market of sales. Imagine people just buying mobiles and hooking then up to a large screen, mouse and keyboard when they need to. Where would the desktop and laptop market go?
Where would the desktop and laptop market go?
As with the horse and cart, and buggy makers, manufacturers would need to evolve or die... or become solely server manufacturers.
The iPad has replaced a cheap laptop for my parents and they are much happier with it. If they are typical light users (primarily of the Internet) then I would expect laptop and netbook sales volumes to continue tumbling, though the market will always be there.
Stalwarts of the PC sector like Dell and HP will adopt tablets with gusto, probably via Windows 8, replacing those bottom end sales. Perhaps the margin on a tablet is better than a cheapo laptop, anyway, so everyone's happy.
Desktops will become less important (which will probably mean costs go up as margins fall). But I will have one past the current one.
I dont need power from a laptop, so I'm happy with my mb air. I do want to do the odd thing at home (handbrake for example) that needs more grunt.
For £300, I've built a very decent top spec desktop (reusing things like monitor, keyboard, graphics card, windows license etc).
The same specs would be over £2,000 in a laptop. Until this gap changes, I'll continue to rebuild the Desktop.
As a developer, I couldn't even conceive of the idea of not using a desktop orientation.
Without a doubt, the mobile is quite powerful enough to fulfil the computing needs for most users.
For a sophisticated user interface, which most creator / developers use, the screen / keyboard / mouse solution will rule for some yet, but I suspect that it will be a diminishing sphere.
I can and have used a mobile phone App to post content onto a blog (as a user), but I wouldn't use a mobile App to design the look or function of that blog (as a developer).