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Topic: Desktops become obsolete? (Read 87 times)
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Terraji
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Re:Desktops become obsolete?
« Reply #1 on: February 10, 2005, 10:32:38 AM »
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Yes, cerntainly. People have been talking about this for years.
1) networks are quite fast, and we ain't seen nothing yet.
2) mobile computing is huge, and batteries cannot keep up with the power requirments of the faster and faster processors that are coming out. It would be much easier to do all that processing elsewhere where the computer can be plugged into the wall.
3) processors are already way too fast for productivity things.
Whats working against it:
1) Microsoft. They have a HUGE interest in selling you $300 operating sytems and $500 office suites. Thats what makes them all their profits and they will do everything they can to preserve that market. Microsoft at this point basically owns HTML and has crafted it to be hostile towards web-apps (programs you run through a browser, like gmail) by making their browser crappy and they like it that way. Hopefully the open source community will be successful in fixing this.
2) People like having big displays. Mobile devices like laptops, pdas and cell phones arent good at surround sound either.
3) Games cannont be done easily over a network. To much processing and fancy graphical things in real time. Maybe eventually, but not in the next decade. I think we are going to see the consoles take over the home gaming market which do all their processing locally. Those, you can plug into your surround sound and 52" DLP widescreen.
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| « Last Edit: February 10, 2005, 10:33:59 AM by Terraji » |
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Porter
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Re:Desktops become obsolete?
« Reply #2 on: February 10, 2005, 11:13:17 AM »
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I highly agree with all of Terraji's points. This is how computing was done 25 years ago after all. Every "terminal" you sat down at was just a keyboard an monitor connected over the network to a mainframe, which did all the actual work. The trend has been to move away from that, and I can't see enough market motivation to reverse that trend. I think desktop computers will continue to shrink in size while growing in capacity, but they won't disappear. Even though it might be nice for an ultra-poweruser like me to have a central server that houses my home account, accessible anywhere, the average user doesn't care. The tendency in the personal computer industry has always been towards simplicity (despite Microsoft's best efforts), not added complexity. Nobody wants to have to invest in separate machines for processing and for interacting with the computer, and then have to hook them together correctly. Especially not when PCs are so darned cheap now.
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[Wumpa] Porter
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slightcrazed
-TWB-
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Re:Desktops become obsolete?
« Reply #3 on: February 10, 2005, 04:50:11 PM »
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I have to agree with Porter - there is no incentive in the market to switch everyone over to a dummy terminal - there are too many companies wrapped up in hardware alone to allow any drastic change like this. It may be a great thought from a technology standpoint - but I believe that there is a signifigant portion of power users who enjoy having 3ghz of computing power right at their fingertips.
Besides - central computing would only work (in theory) if you could TRUST the company or organization that you are leasing the terminal from - take google for example - lets say 10 years down the road they offer you the ability to buy a laptop-like dummy terminal to do all of your day to day computing. All you have to do is plug it into a phone jack and your instantly hooked into THEIR gigantic cluster, after you sign a trusty licenseing agreement and hand over 29.95 a month. All you files, you music, your pictures, your resume, your PORN are stored on that cluster. Point being? You don't own your own files. Google owns them. That was part of the lease agreement that you signed. Anything you store on their machine belongs to them.
See what I'm getting at?
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Skip
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Re:Desktops become obsolete?
« Reply #4 on: February 10, 2005, 09:09:56 PM »
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Slight that's what I was thinking too from a business standpoint it might make sense but for individuals not so much.
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