The PC era is coming to an end....

[Dos_Box]

According to an IBM engineer who worked on the origional PC in this BBC article: BBC News - Era of the PC 'coming to a close'

To be honest he has a 'slight' point IMHO, but I think there will always be a place for a higher powered machine on a desktop for number/graphic crunching and other tasks that require a bit more power than mobile devices have to offer.

[jinnantonnixx]

More a case of 'horses for courses'. Personally, I reach for my phone if I need to look up something quickly, or just want to browse the news. I'd probably choose to use an instant-on slate, if I owned one. If I want to mess about with my music DAW (Ubuntu + Qtractor) I need my PC or laptop. One thing I have noticed; few people care about the technology behind (what I call) 'Internet Terminals'. Android, Mac, Windows, Linux, TVoIP - it's just a device to talk to the internet. The end technology is becoming irrelevant as far as the user is concerned.

[NikChillin]

I rarely use my phone for the internet as I can't read the screen, the smallest handheld device I have used is a 10 inch android which was comfortable to read.

I think you can't replace a pc for work, I certainly think mobile devices are limited to internet or entertainment use.

[gshaw]

I've lost count of the amount of times that headline has been used over the last 10 years or so... tablets etc are fine for casual use but if you made me write an essay, complex report etc on one I think it would end up being thrown out the window. My Android phone is great for browsing but as soon as I want to post on forums etc it becomes a very frustrating experience as the input boxes bounce around the screen as the phone scrolls sideways, then slows down and guess all my words wrong

 

Definitely not the end of the PC for me... next month I'll be buying another beast

 

There's more of a case for arguing that we're coming to the end of the era of the OS being a major product in its own right... we're almost going back to the old 1980s Spectrum \ C64 dynamic of multiple platforms all mutually incompatible with multiple versions of applications, only difference being that you have the Internet as the universal gateway that's consistent across all the devices

Edited August 11, 2011 by gshaw

[dhicks]

I think there will always be a place for a higher powered machine on a desktop for number/graphic crunching

 

It rather depends how you define a "PC" these days. If you mean a boxy floor-standing case sized to take standardised components with a separate screen, keyboard and mouse attached and used as the main, dedicated computer then I think that type of machine is slowly going away. In the next few years I expect the average home router to start taking over more storage / printing / networking / bulk processing roles - Apple's AirPort devices are already storage, backup and print servers as well as doing wireless networking. I can see graphics processing for things like photo editing moving to that central server, while real-time graphics for gaming will move to dedicated games consoles. Your home TV will handle DVD playing and streaming stuff off your storage server and/or Internet-based services. Most people will use a laptop for traditional PC-type computing, and I can see those being around for several years to come, and although obviously those don't have interchangeable parts inside you can now add keyboards / storage / etc via USB, FireWire, eSATA, Thunderblot, etc.