The PC. The last dinosaur?


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What about the HP tablet that has the awesome docking station. That you plop it into and BAM! Monitors keyboard and mouse. When you are ready to leave just lift it out!

Give me a Z1 http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/workstations/z1.html

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Don't know about dead and buried yet, declining, sure, but like all industries it'll ebb and flow.

Be sad to see them die off altogether, (but that's because I enjoy building them as a hobby)

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Don't know about dead and buried yet, declining, sure, but like all industries it'll ebb and flow.

 

See that is the correct assessment.  It is grossly shortsighted for people to say the PC will die.  Until you can do everything you can in things like Office on a mobile device (things like Google Docs do in a pinch but is clearly no replacement) and without a god awful touch interface, it for sure is going absolutely nowhere in the business world.  And in the home sector nothing can beat the price, performance, and longevity of a PC.  When a tablet gets outdated in less than two years you have to replace the whole thing.  With a PC you only need to upgrade your video card.  Plus lets not forget that storage on phones and tablets pale in comparison to the multi-terabyte drives you can cheaply get on a PC for all your needs.

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In the age of the cloud, I don't know why anyone would sacrifice to just have one tool.  I don't need to carry the same device everywhere, so that mantra just doesn't make sense to me when my apps and data are available from all of them.  Isn't that the whole point?  Less reliance on one 'one ring' device?

 

PCs are dinosaurs in the way Hi-Fi is a dinosaur.  Convenience generally trumps quality for the average consumer.  The problem for me is that slates aren't replacements yet except for the most basic of uses.

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In the age of the cloud, I don't know why anyone would sacrifice to just have one tool.  PCs are dinosaurs in the way Hi-Fi is a dinosaur.  Convenience generally trumps quality for the average consumer.  The problem for me is that tablets still aren't replacements by any stretch, but the perception that they are is.

Actually, hi fi's are alive and well, not everyone is into the whole 'digitally downloaded' music, yes it's more convenient, but for the true enthuiasts or audiophiles, cd's and records will always win out

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There?s a lot of moaning about the Pc sales declining both from the market and the public.

What?s wrong with you?

The PC as we know it is dead for the majority except for hardcore gamers and people/companys with special needs ,like heavy duty video conversion and some others.

I myself have been using computers since the mid 80s, just for pleasure not in work.

Yes, I?m that old.

Starting with MSX ,C64,Amiga Atari and the first Imac and all flavours of MS computers.

When the first smartphones and tablets came out, i just thinked about them as overpriced toys.

A while ago i felt for the pressure to test the new Xperia tablet Z.

I?m also a gadget freak. :-)

Thinking that this thing gonna collect some dust after a couple of days like alot of my purchases mostly do.

I was not stunned but not far from.

This tablet does everything i?m needing and thats counts for most of the worlds population.

There?s still need for powerfull PCs but but that?s a minority.

My once expensive Msi gaming laptop is now a humble mediahub and when it dies it?s not gonna be replaced.

Sorry about my bad english.

Greetings to all neowinianns from Sweden.

 

You're absolutely right (pretty much). 

 

What do most people use their PC for:

Email/Chat/Messaging/Social

Searching/Browsing/eCommerce/Videos on YouTube

Storing and viewing pictures and videos, and purchasing music

Games (mostly stuff like Solitaire, Tetris, Angry Birds, etc)

 

You can do all of this on almost any smartphone. For better viewing size, and more comfortable typing (especially with an attachable kb), any tablet also. With an RT tablet or iPad, you can also do all of your work in MS Office too. You can carry them and use them around the house, office, and while mobile quite a bit easier than a laptop as well.

 

The PC is already only of real use to a minority of computer users, but the perception that it's needed is still held by a majority.

 

I think that full box PCs (AT/ATX) will live on as home servers with a number of uses that will make them still very appealing to households, but definitely not as a main use device. Local mass storage, especially as the price of storage keeps falling, is also a plus for the home server PC. I also think that laptops will die out in favor of AIOs/convertibles.

 

BTW, with the rate of progression in processing power, you won't have to wait long for tablets to be just as fast as PCs are today. I also think that virtualized OSes and advancements in remote desktops will be used in the home and office more regularly in the future, making any mobile device just as fast as the PC hardware it's OS is being virtualized on. More like a thin client/server model, with the local os and storage used only for when a Wi-Fi connection isn't available.

 

That said, there will still be many people, even though they're a small minority of computer users, that will still need a dedicated desk, mouse/kb, and at least one large display (I'm one of them). So, PCs as we know them will still be around for a long time, but in far, far fewer numbers.

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I think personal computers will always be a popular addition to every home in a first world country. I mean the entertainment industry needs them and most people need them to produce actual work. People need to do things like make documents and print photos. Artists and video editors need them to produce their serious work. There's just too much the PC can do, to produce today's work and goods, that makes them valuable. The whole advancement slow down (of desktops) is due to the fast CPU speeds and the fact computing is going beyond the desktop; besides AMD and Intel's competition falling apart.

 

I still see desktops having many uses, especially for engineers and artists, or people with any type of skill based career. Until they unify tablets architecture and UI layout more, I don't think they'll have a major impact. Due to the fact that there isn't a full Photoshop suite, or Office utilities, in a standard format only adds to the problem.

 

So long story short, PCs will be here for a while and computing outside of the desktop is still advancing and hasn't matured enough yet. It's not a matter of it being a dinosaur as much as when will society adopt these new platforms.

 

By the way, awesome deal for starting this thread. I appreciate getting the time to share my thoughts.

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Enjoy leaving your desktop behind to play with your phone and tablet? Why not just stay at the computer? 

Because they are mobile. I don't own a laptop but a Chromebook and I do use that quite a bit. But I only turn on my desktop computer when I want to do something serious. The rest of the time I move from place to place on my mobile devices. I actually enjoy going to the park after work and reading my emails there.

 

Since I have Linux on my desktop, I doubt I buy a new one for many years to come. 

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The desktop will never die.
It might become smaller, and hell, it may even get to a point where the desktop power pc becomes a tablet, but the desktop computer will never die.

Myself, I use a iPad for just doing everyday stuff on the train, and play crap games in bed, but for getting any actual work done, or playing any real games, I use my desktop PC or PS3.
 

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I use my PC for everything from gaming to web browsing, I just it it more comfortable to sit in a nice chair, and use a nice keyboard. I hate touch screen keyboards, I don't really like laptop keyboards either. Plus I like how I can simply strip apart and upgrade my PC when necessary, it'll be a LONG time before I let it go. 

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