10 reasons why the desktop PC will live forever


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Its a matter of simple access. Two thumb screws or 14 mico-hex ones? Parts are simply easier to replace with less chance of breakage. That is a simple fact. Plus, laptops wear faster which requires more maintenance and care.

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the '10' reasons desktops will live forever:

0) People are stubborn

1) binary

as for the 10 points they state, every one can be equally countered as to why its a post-PC era, and it is if you take retail sales and compare them.. People don't buy desktop systems anymore, business/corp does of course. People now custom-build via components they researched.. If they didn't research it, it don't matter, and they buy the off-the-shelf laptop or tablet all in one small efficient portable device.

Don't get me wrong, desktops are not disappearing by any means. Only pre-made desktop systems. Custom build/order your desktop with parts you want/researched, or walk into best buy/walmart and buy your tablet/laptop same-day.

I can very soon see dummy terminals being everywhere. Just dock your cell phone to them and bam - its your computer. Or dock in car its your music and GPS, to your TV to stream your subscriptions or play games. at the grocery store to make NFC payments, automatically locks/open your car and starts it. Completely portable, take your stuff everywhere as its in the digital cloud. tracking every move, no privacy. Wait - all this already exists, Its a scary world.

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I personally think we need to redefine the term "personal computer." My current phone does much more than my computer from a few years ago could ever think about doing. I am still doing computing on my phone. I think a desktop or a phone or a tablet or a laptop could all be considered a PC since I do basically the same work on all of them. Each has it's advantages and disadvantages.

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This is a bit off topic and more towards gaming but do u know what i would like to see? a pc platform for game, with all the advantages of having a pc upgrading gpu etc but no need to install the game just put the media in and off you go any way off topic but thought i would mention it no doubt some of you have already thought of it.

A console :woot:

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Most of that I can't disagree with. I've got one (or more) of each type of device out there, and by far I use the desktop the most. I don't see that changing in the short-mid future.

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Desktops are going to die in favor of dumb terminals for cell phones.

exactly. I think even more, everything would be 'running' in the cloud (call it, MS, google, amazon, etc). A phone, a tablet or a tv would be linked to the cloud and everything would be there. You are going to play your games from there. The trend is clear and is inevitable.

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As stuff gets smaller; I expect AIO's to become a larger market. Especially when built in to smart TVs and other displays.

I have a tiny HTPC hooked up to my living room's main TV, and that thing gets daily usage from me and my parents.

Good stuff. =)

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350$ for my laptop and stil going after 4 years!. No way i will get a desktop any more. i want something portable and can slide and hide even when at home. And at work I only use laptops. Mobile office.

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So Neowin hates Windows 8 because it's UI isn't really designed for the desktop with keyboard and mouse. More designed for mobile and touch...

I make a thread saying how awesome the desktop is and Neowin then claims they hate desktops and prefer mobile devices...

Oh you!

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You'd be surprised. I have a couple of clients that already use laptops, rather than desktops, almost exclusively.

Maybe - but that only matters for employees who need to move their work around multiple locations.

I also personally find editing 8 hours a day using a laptop keyboard and trackpad to be awkward to the point of painful.

Lastly, all components being equal a laptop cost more - MUCH more if you include a docking station.

So If I've got to hook up a keyboard and mouse to work comfortably, and I don't require mobility from my office, and equivelent laptops cost more than desktops - why get a laptop in the work enviroment?

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I think that its not so much that the desktop will die, its more like people who don't actually need desktops will realize it now that tablets are around, and you have less people using desktops... Which could be a good thing, when all the simple, entry-level, consumer oriented things are shifted onto the tablets and you never have to worry about people downloading malware and viruses and stuff, while desktops start evolving towards becoming more like servers and workstations, particularly on the software side

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Mac's are the future.

Yes and no, the number of Mac's being sold will continue to rise strongly yes but due it's current minimum price point I think there's only so it can go, it'll reach a point where all the more well off users that want a Mac have one.

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Honestly I see the PC eventually dying - or at least becoming a niche product. I do see tablets becoming the norm, with a standard being made which allows users to pair a tablet with a monitor using NFC and bam, super sized screen. No need for a dock or anything, as tablets would have enough USB ports for a keyboard and a mouse anyway, although I see docks being around purely from an aesthetic perspective or a genuine need for a lot of ports. Tablets, while they'll never reach the same power as a desktop PC, I can see a point of diminishing returns eventually coming and the need for the raw grunt a PC could provide simply isn't necessary for 90-95% of tasks. After all, high-end gaming laptops, while expensive, can do the large majority of productivity tasks that PCs can do, only limited by their form-factor. Put this power into a tablet, and you increase portability. Put this tablet into the futuristic environment I described, and the PC becomes irrelevant for almost everyone, where price is the only thing that would keep the PC relevant. Then again, as time moves on, once again tablets will become more powerful and eventually the price factor will become a non-issue.

I love my PC to bits, I'm severely missing it at the moment (it's not in my new home :() and even this laptop isn't cutting the mustard. However the only reason why I'm missing it (apart from the fact that it's tailored to my needs, which this laptop isn't), is because of the horsepower and interfaces my PC has (i.e. full size keyboard, monitor, etc) - if I could shove the power of my computer into a tablet which I could dock whenever I liked for a full computing experience, I'd do it in a heart-beat. My tablet (nexus 7) is used for pretty much the majority of my day-to-day tasks and the laptop is only used when I fancy a slightly bigger screen or go on long typing sessions (which to be fair, I could do on my tablet too with my USB keyboard, but I'm a creature of habit I guess). The only thing my tablet can't do which my PC can, from a simplified day-to-day perspective, is play my massive collection of Steam games (I loooove me some Counter Strike :wub: ) and doing my programming (not being able to do this makes me know that feel that drug addicts have going cold turkey). I do kind of miss not having windowed apps, but I think this is more of an issue with how Android handles multitasking, or once again, my habits from using Windows for last 13-14 years. Typically speaking, Android multi-tasking is almost as good as Windows is from a background processing perspective, and I usually have only one window up at a time when I'm using my computer anyway.

Anyway, I'm divulging from the point - which is that I only miss my PC because of the features it offers me, which could quite easily be supplemented with a tablet and a docking station. Microsoft Surface Pro I definitely think will be the turning point for this, with it's pretty reasonable processing power for a desktop computer (nevermind a tablet) and ability to connect to any HDMI monitor pretty effortlessly. It's got all of the attributes of the future I described, sans truly desktop-capable processing power for all tasks, and the wireless aspect, so yeah, exciting times!

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My desktop and my NAS will always be my private, encrypted and secure cloud, even if I had (and that's highly unlikely) tablets and multiple smartphones with me for doing "stuff" on mobile...

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Completely agree with the article. Laptops have:

- small, uncomfortable keyboards

- slow, imprecise pointing device (as opposed to a mouse)

- small screens

- low resolutions, typically (1366x768 is the norm, 900p if you're lucky, 1080p is rare, higher than that essentially doesn't exist)

- terrible speakers

- are terrible for gaming

- have few or no internal expansion options

- have few external ports

- suffer from more latency as they use wi-fi

Sure, you can plug them to the wall, use Ethernet, external monitors, peripherals, but then they lose their only advantage: mobility! What's the point of a mobile computer that's only good when plugged into large stationary components?

The fact is that laptops compromise on everything for mobility, which is not the main factor for everyone who wants a computer.

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