[Discuss] Future of Personal Computers

[Jerry Feldman]

On 03/13/2012 12:13 AM, Shirley Márquez Dúlcey wrote:
> On 3/12/2012 10:07 PM, markw at mohawksoft.com wrote:
>> My friends and I were arguing about what the future holds for
>> computers. I
>> think we all agree that the desktop is dead, but there is some
>> disagreement as to the fate of the laptop. Does anyone think that
>> this is
>> an interesting discussion?
>>
>> Here are my assertions:
>>
>> The desktop if largely dead like cobol. It will linger, but never
>> return.
>
> I don't think the desktop is dead. It will remain as a choice for
> high-end users like professional developers, graphic artists, and
> serious gamers - people who need the maximum amount of processing and
> graphics power and/or lots of screen real estate. Hooking up two or
> three 20" or larger displays is never going to be be a convenient
> thing to do with a laptop, and if your computer use includes
> non-portable input devices like scanners the advantage of laptops goes
> away. It is likely to fade away (though not die) as a mainstream
> device. I suppose it might get largely replaced by desktop-replacement
> laptops, but I don't think of any system weighing over 7 pounds as a
> true laptop anyway.
>
> The laptop certainly won't die for a while, if ever. Many tasks work
> so much better with real keyboards; for example, I can't see
> professional writers ever adopting tablets as their primary writing
> device. We might see hybrid devices like the EeePad Transformer make
> some inroads, we might see tablet-like OSes like Windows 8 or
> Ubuntu/Unity or actual tablet OSes like iOS find their way onto them,
> but the basic laptop form factor will endure and gradually become
> mostly smaller/lighter systems like the MacBook Air and ultrabooks.
I was on my way out at my last post.
First, I don't think that laptops and desktops will be going away
anytime soon. But what I am seeing is the desktop disappearing from
businesses in favor of the laptop. But, the desktop does have some
advantages such as can support more storage and can be used as a local
server. And, for high end users, they can be much faster. So, I
certainly agree with Shirley's first paragraph.

I think the first casualty of the tablet market is the netbooks. The
higher end tablets like the iPad can certainly fill in the netbook niche.

The tablets will most likely cut into the laptop market. But, Laptops
have more connectivity such as USB, network, VGA (although VGA will
probably be replaced by HDMI eventually). I do think that the higher end
tablets will eventually have these features. Over time, I think that the
tablet will replace the traditional laptop as SSD drives become cheaper
and have a higher density. But, I don't see this happening any time
soon. essentially some laptops will have touch screens with operating
systems that behave like Android and iPad. The traditional keyboard
oriented display will have to change.

But, there is a generational issue. Older people will not want the newer
technology. So there is more of an evolutionary shift. traditional
desktop and laptop systems will remain for years, but the tablet market
will increase


-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
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