Death of the PC - The Gadget Show

I don't see how the Personal Computer survives when laptops and tablets are reasonably priced and portable.

This isn't to say that computers area dead, enthusiast PCs, workstations in the office etc. But homes not needing a small desk in the corner with a big box, screen, keyboard, sure.

People are getting used to the accessibility and convenience of having things to hand when sat on the sofa, in bed, on the toilet..

I can see in the future shops won't be selling the Personal Computer / Desktop Machines. The high street competitors to OcUK, John Lewis etc. The shop area for them is getting smaller every year.
 
dottty27 said:
Unless its apple the gadget show don't like/rate it
Click to expand...

Exactly right.

I remember a phone review a while back, IIRC it was the iphone 3GS, whichever galaxy S model was out at the time and another phone I forget the model.

They did 4 (very unscientific) tests. The iphone only came 1st in one of those tests (and even that result was subjective bias)

However come to the conclusion and the iphone was selected as the best :rolleyes:
 
I thought of the reactions on this place when I saw the episode... :p
In some respect I think they had a point. Would I recomend a desktop pc for 90% of the people I meet who want either something for the web and emails etc. Not really no. Even for word processing and watching iplayer a desktop pc isn't required. Even for a lot of games like Football Manager/Minecraft etc playing on a laptop in the living room would be more preferential for most.
In fack I think it is quite difficult to justify them to 90% of people 90% of the time.
Am I particuarly worried as a PC enthusiast? No. Are Nvidia gpus in most boggo standard pc world pcs? No they use onboard vga. Its the real gamers who buy the 8800GTX's (a little rusty on my cards atm.. :o).
Who's Mum has a Corsair 760T full tower case with custom watercooling?

..anyway I'm rambling and even boring myself here but hopefully you get my point. Yes pcs are on the decline but I think the bleeding edge kit that I guess most of you use is here to stay for a while yet. :)



...until the steambox....
 
A desktop will always be needed it will never die, hell the modern home PC has been
going since around the 1970`s thats 40 years! The PC has out survived C64,Amiga,Playstation1,2,3,Nintendo etc. ;)

How is a laptop,phone or tablet going to house the computing and graphics power desktop PC`s have? :confused:
 
I find tablets are great for casual browsing and doing emails, and playing games. Other than that give me a PC any day. Doing research and writing reports, and generally being productive etc... on a PC or a full blown computer is easy - being productive on anything else is painful. Tiny screens are not useful or conducive to productivity - I love dual if not more screens, you can have multiple documents/drawings/schematics/information/etc... open whilst editing a document etc... you just can't do that on a tablet or a tiny screened laptop.

What I find absolutely incredible are the prizes they give on that show. I'd sell over 50% of the stuff (if not more) - it's obscene.
 
Fluke? said:
I thought of the reactions on this place when I saw the episode... :p
In some respect I think they had a point. Would I recomend a desktop pc for 90% of the people I meet who want either something for the web and emails etc. Not really no. Even for word processing and watching iplayer a desktop pc isn't required. Even for a lot of games like Football Manager/Minecraft etc playing on a laptop in the living room would be more preferential for most.
In fack I think it is quite difficult to justify them to 90% of people 90% of the time.
Am I particuarly worried as a PC enthusiast? No. Are Nvidia gpus in most boggo standard pc world pcs? No they use onboard vga. Its the real gamers who buy the 8800GTX's (a little rusty on my cards atm.. :o).
Who's Mum has a Corsair 760T full tower case with custom watercooling?

..anyway I'm rambling and even boring myself here but hopefully you get my point. Yes pcs are on the decline but I think the bleeding edge kit that I guess most of you use is here to stay for a while yet. :)



...until the steambox....
Click to expand...

Yup, they're getting marginalised and, maybe, rightfully so. A lot of people I know really only use their PC for Facebook and other social media as well as the odd Flash game. However, due to changes, many of these games work better on swipe/touch actions. A small form tablet/laptop hybrid is ideal for the majority of usage.

This forum (or shop) caters for a minority who are generally interested in the hardware element. The majority of people really don't give a monkey's right nut about upgrading their GPU and are happy to work with what they have.

I can't see myself moving from a desktop as I need to prepare work, record music and edit photographs. However, that doesn't mean a Mac is not an attractive proposition as they just seem so... neat.

Does not stop me wanting for Dark Souls 2 though :D
 
I've got increasingly used to using the internet on a phone. It's got to the point now where I get annoyed if a site forces me to access it on a PC to work properly.

The idea of using a PC for consumption of media is almost dead, but using them to complete tasks that require any kind of actual productivity is a long way off IMO.
 
itchy said:
How is a laptop,phone or tablet going to house the computing and graphics power desktop PC`s have? :confused:
Click to expand...

The argument is that people have (in the past [but not so much now]), used desktop computers because programmers have been able to (or were willing to) use all (or most [nearly all]) of the power it could provide.

However standard tasks (such as office tasks and websites) have (to a large extent [for most users]) not grown more computationally more expensive. This can be evidenced be looking at how much the of general computing function the modern laptop (or tablet [or smartphone {or even smart watch!}]) can perform.

For people who only (mostly) use computers to this extent (i.e. the average consumer). The power that a desktop computer can provide is (probably) unnecessary.


However there will always (or probably [presuming cloud doesn't become a defacto {or near enough} standard]) be a requirement for (very) high powered computers at home.
Examples include:
Music producers (and DJs),
Photography (and Film) enthusiasts;
PC gamers (Because as we all [probably] know PC gaming is not [in all likelihood] dying, in fact [in could {probably} be said that PC gaming is growing {arguably rapidly}])
and a whole host of other cases


So for the intended (naive [or perhaps, "{sub} normal"]) audience of the gadget show, the personal computer is (indeed) redundant. Although (you could say [if you were feeling cynical {or perhaps even paranoid}]) that claiming that PCs are redundant (which as we have established, is not [entirely] true), is a ploy to encourage the ([very] impressionable) audience of the show to upgrade (downsize) their computing hardware.
 
@Judgeneo

Strong Angus Higgins impersonation attempt. Unfortunately some of your sentences don't make sense once you take the brackets away. Must try harder.


Pls don't actually try harder.
 
I can't wait to do all my serious productivity work on a 7" tablet. Oh boy, what fun!

Visual Studio tablet edition anyone? Or AutoCAD Desktop for iPhone?
 
I just loved reading the comments on the page link in the OP.

They are all like us; so its not just US NERDS that thing they are fools, about 50% of their viewers do too. :)
 
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