Is the PC dead? What do you think?

Okay, so I see a bunch of articles talking about how the PC is dead. That people prefer tablets.

What do you think?

 

tablets are nice if all you need is a little more than a phone, but i wouldn't try to do my taxes on one...or anything that required more than a couple of lines of typing.

 

PC is not going anywhere. When you need to work on a computer, a mouse and keyboard beat touch screen any day. Tablets also run on a different chip architectural which, IMO, is inferior to what PCs have running. Also I don't see the video game market going straight over to console any time soon. The Steam console would likely be the best option were that to happen, but we're still talking about PC games at that point. All that said I do see the touch screen becoming standard, at least in laptops, within a decade. Windows 8 is a good start when it comes to touch screen and it's amazingly convenient and intuitive. I regularly switch between mouse and touching when browsing the net or doing light work on the laptop.

 

I agree, the PC is simply not going anywhere for the foreseeable future.

While tablets and phones may be nice, they simply lack the flexibility and power of a conventional desktop system. Atom processors may be "multi core", but they still do not come close to the power of my 5 year old Dual core 64 bit Athlon processor. And good luck adding video capture and multiple screens, and editing 1 hour video streams.

 

Not trying to be an as.. , but most tablet use either an Arm processor or in the case of the microsoft surface pro, a full "i" serie intel cpu, both of those are more powerful than the "old" Atom.

Pc's have their uses. You can't do cad or 3d design on a tablet for example.

I'm in IT and the present trend is moving toward virtualization of the desktop environment, especially for the clerical and business oriented applications. This means that we are moving back to terminals of sort for most users. Those "virtual" pc cost less to buy and are easier to maintain than full fledge pc.

Of course, for power users you still have to give them workstation class pc.

Where the pc risk extinction, is in the home. Those big and noisy tower and wire cluther of yesterday are less and less popular. People today tends to favor laptop over the desktop. Just walk into bestbuy or other big surface and look at the number of laptops models vs desktops. Peoples now prefer to surf the web on their couch instead of in the basement "office". Even the videogame market is now concentrating more and more on casual gaming instead of big AAA titles, most of which are available on consoles anyway.

I know it's a bad analogy most of the time, but pcs are like cars. When the first cars became available, only people who really needed them bought them. Then more and more common folks bought them and find some fun use for them, like getting out of the city and visiting the folks. Then the "nerds" got their hands on them and start tweaking them and a whole culture was created around the automobile industry. Then people changed, they've moved on. Most people who live in cities use mass transit since they don't want to have to deal with the hastle of traffic and parking. This is where we are in the computer world also. People don't find it fun having to tweak, debug, fix and upgrade a computer anymore. They buy the cheapest, most convenient and practical device for them, use it until it dies, rinse and repeat.

I use to build and sell about 50 system a year, as a sideline. I've sold only 2 since february 2012. Most of my regular customer who used to upgrade every 2 year to the latest and fastest have grown oldr and their kids spends more time on their phones than on the computer.

 

I saw an article from Blackberry's CEO the other day talking about the "death" of the tablet in five years.

Not sure I disagree.

My IPAD is cool for doing some fun things. Watching videos, skype, play some games, but, in truth, as a working tool, it is next to useless.

No local storage to speak of. Hard to connect to external devices. Very limited functionality.

I could see the tablet, as a tool, relegated to some niche lines then go the way of the gameboy.

i'm looking now for a touchscreen laptop small enough to be comfortable but with all the tools of a professional system.

When I find it I'll bequeath my IPAD to one of the kids.

 

I would love to see someone try to play Skyrim on a tablet. Even most laptops don't have high end hardware for demanding tasks such as video games and video editing. There are tasks tablets and laptops just can't handle. Desktops are still far more versatile partly because they are so customizable.

 

The vast majority don't give a hoot about Skyrim... You fail to see the big picture here. They are making less and less money with pc and more and more with iDevice gadget, so they'll move to iDevices. Soon your only source for a good cpu will be intel since amd is moving all it's production line to underpowered apu like the A serie, which btw will be used in both the ps4 and next xbox. So sony and microsoft are betting on lower spec chip because people want AAA super titles or because they are targetting the more casual and media oriented crowd?

There will always be an enthusiast/geek market, just as there is with cars, sound system, photography etc... But it is marginal for the industry.

 

You've forgotten about how much more open and versatile a PC is compared to a tablet as well. Tablets like to limit people to crap like the "App Store," from what I've seen, and of course installing a different operating system can be rather like jail-breaking a phone. Such a thing is a far different experience from a PC or even a laptop.

I hate Win 8, by the way. I hate any such touch interface, at least on a desktop system where it simply does not belong.. M$ did wrong by trying to force desktop users into Metro, IMO. They deserve to be slapped hard for that.

 

In other words, you're saying it's an iFad The Newton ][, if you will.

I think with more openness and better internal storage, it might yet go places. I still say it should be outfitted with sensors and turned into a tricorder, though. Then it would have a killer app.

 

Honestly, I think a lot of it is similar to what we saw in the early 1990's.

Pretty much over the last 6 years or so, there have been no real advances in desktop computers. They have gotten a bit faster, but since the advent of 64 bit processors and multiple cores, there is really no reason to go out and buy a new desktop every 2-3 years for most people..

Last year for Christmas I built a new computer for my wife, her first new one in 6 years. And I am still using the same desktop I did in 2007, with only a processor upgrade and improved video card.

In over 25 years in the industry, one thing I realize is that it is not the sales that matters, but the usage. I bet that the vast majority of people still use PCs for their regular usage, mostly using tablets and phones for when they are away from home. And when you factor in 9 hours for most work, and a few hours for commute, tablets and phones might even be used more at the moment.

But that does not mean people are gonna ditch their desktops.

 

I would like to see a tablet running matlab or archictectural design software .

 

Sure the PC is dead..........that's why STEAM has had seven straight years of over 100% growth. I see more people converting to laptops but today's high end laptops can play games almost as well as a midrange PC. I don't see people abandoning their desktop or their laptop for the tablet. They have both and they use them for different things. No one does their homework on a tablet at most they do some web surfing and play some apps or watch movies. Gaming and actual work are still done on laptops or desktops.

 

I don't disagree, Win 8 without touchscreen is just stupid. I see why they did it (force app store, make attempts at introducing ease of integration between products) but it was a dumb move. I heard they are bringing the start button back though in the next patch, which is good. Personally I hardly ever used the damn thing; I put all my important stuff in folders on the desktop or clip them to the taskbar, but a lot of people were pissed. For a laptop though with touchscreen, even just in normal windows mode it works pretty well. I think the touch screen is here to stay, and Windows will adapt to it. The problem is it'll almost certainly be a (*)(*)(*)(*)ty adaption, as Win 8 showed.

 

I think that as computers get smaller and smaller one could, in the future, have a 'basic' device that can be carried like a tablet but could be docked at home where you would have a large monitor, mouse and keyboard.

 

PC won't be replaced, they will just become different. Right now, there are very few advantages tablets have over PCs. The only things I can really think of are Ultra-portability, touchscreen, 4g ready.

Until voice recognition can interpret this guy, we have to have keyboards and touchscreen just doesn't cut it., plain and simple.

 

Driving is harder than surfing the internet.

We have cars that drive for us.

What is coming... is dangerous as far as information is concerned.

 

I still have a PowerPC-based Mac (a few, actually, but only one I use a lot), and you know what limits it today? Lack of software development targeting it. Hardware-wise, it's quite capable of modern functions. I mean, how could a 2.5 GHz quad core system with 16 GB of RAM not be, right? It's only because developers have abandoned it that there is little modern software available to run on it.

Anyone with a PC of comparable power is, as you've said, still set to do whatever. PCs reached a plateau some years back, I'd say, where speed hasn't increased as much for desktop uses, and neither do we have expanding needs for faster hardware. The web runs similarly now to how it did in 2007, video games push graphics cards a bit harder now but are otherwise about the same..

 

Yeah, I like to keep my apps and folders in quicklaunch/dock type of things. I did use the Apple menu for launching apps back in the pre-OS X days (I've been a Mac user since childhood), which was a lot like using the Win Start menu, but ever since OS X I've always tried to set up something similar to OS X's dock on any and every system I've used.

Why software makers feel compelled to mess with what works is beyond me. Why try to force us into new interfaces? Give us an option.

 

That reminds me of this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXV-yaFmQNk

The main difference is if you make a wrong turn on the internet, you end up with a 404 error or maybe some malware.

If you make a wrong turn on the highway, you can easily kill yourself or someone else.

The lack of severe consequences for using the internet wrong allows people to learn how to do it better, faster and more efficiently. Of course, people such as the "Leave britney alone" guy, the star wars kid, or "Numa Numa" guy may disagree with me there.

 

I would argue that ideas are much more (*)(*)(*)(*)ing dangerous than cars.

[video=youtube;B8ofWFx525s]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ofWFx525s[/video]

 

That is absolutely true. The difference is, cars seem more likely to harm people when they are not being controlled. Ideas seem like they would hurt more people when they are being controlled.

 

From what I've been reading, most prefer PCs for working, tablets for play. I think something like the surface or a tablet dock would be useful.

 

What's a tablet?

 

It depends on what you play. If the most challenging game you play (hardware wise) is "Angry Chickens", then yea, a tablet is fine.

I don't see the tablet taking any of the "hardcore gamer" segment away for at least another decade or two. It is not like you can play WoW from a tablet.