Death of the PC - The Gadget Show

PC means personal computer. Everything is a personal computer nowadays. Phones, tablets, ...

The alternatives are centralized computer farms, accessible via mobile or home terminals. In the office environment, there are no other choices yet, although cloud technologies (whether local network or through the internet) make a lot of sense (licensing, costs, security, ...). ATM, all the software and IT are PC oriented.

My mom doesn't need a PC. She just needs a simple, reliable machine to go on the internet and do other things. She doesn't care about how much of a control freak Apple really is. Happens to be a windows 7 laptop, but could easily have been a macbook, or a tablet. That's what people want, appliances.

True cloud computing will become a reality eventually, when the Internet gets up to speed (it's already started, with the growing business of cloud storage and social medias), but I don't see this, or current trends breaking the PC's back.

There'll always be a fairly large portion of the population that will need all the good things a PC (as we understand them today) can offer. Fairly open, powerful, upgradable, self-contained, modular, that can also double as a home entertainment hub and workhorse. In a sense, freedom. They just require a bit more tech-savviness than most people are prepared for.
 
heh every single one of the comments on that article at least a good way down the first page are saying the gadget show is rubbish for making the desktop is dead claim.

edit yep every single comment disagrees with the feature!
 
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Complete abortion of a show compared to what it was when it first started. Not even the stunning angel that is Rachel Riley can make me watch it any more. They should rename it iGadget and be done with it.
 
planty said:
For most people a PC is obselete. The majority of people probably only browse websites, social media and email... all of which can be done more conveniantly on their phone/tablet.
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None of those are more convenient on a phone/tablet. Tiny screens are poor for browsing.
 
Energize said:
None of those are more convenient on a phone/tablet. Tiny screens are poor for browsing.
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When was the last time you used a smartphone or tablet? :P the only thing that doesn't work so well is extended amounts of typing - 5.3" 1280x800 on my phone (and there are plenty of phones with even higher res now) and 10" 1920x1200 on my tablet are both very useable for browsing facebook and the likes.
 
Unfortunately the show is a joke. They regularly spout off such crap, the death of the PC section of the show had me shaking me head so much that my head is no longer attached to my body.
 
Rroff said:
When was the last time you used a smartphone or tablet? :P the only thing that doesn't work so well is extended amounts of typing - 5.3" 1280x800 on my phone (and there are plenty of phones with even higher res now) and 10" 1920x1200 on my tablet are both very useable for browsing facebook and the likes.
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I have a galaxy note and to say it's more convenient than a 24" screen with full keyboard and mouse for web browsing would be absurd. Useable != convenient.
 
My comment was in response to the poor for browsing bit, most modern smartphones and tablets are a long way from poor for general browsing - I often even use the full desktop version of sites on both my phone and tablet.
 
Rroff said:
When was the last time you used a smartphone or tablet? :P the only thing that doesn't work so well is extended amounts of typing - 5.3" 1280x800 on my phone (and there are plenty of phones with even higher res now) and 10" 1920x1200 on my tablet are both very useable for browsing facebook and the likes.
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one can only sit on the toilet for so long.
 
Rroff said:
My comment was in response to the poor for browsing bit, most modern smartphones and tablets are a long way from poor for general browsing - I often even use the full desktop version of sites on both my phone and tablet.
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I don't consider them great. The small screens result in a lot of scrolling or zooming, whereas you can fit everything on screen at once with a large desktop display.
 
I wish PC's were modular, like on industrial PC's where all the I/O sits on separate cards and you just plug in another processor card.
I'm fed up of ripping everything out just to make a faster PC.

In that sense I think PC's days are numbered, they are too big and require too much hardware knowledge to research a new build. Upgrades in the future will be a card containing a Processor, VRM & RAM.
Network speed are comparable to local storage, so hard drives are essentially demountable, and if broadband speeds increase then GPU's could be remote too.
Keyboards only exist because people require quiet data entry in offices, otherwise voice would do.

When I worked in IT I didn't have a PC on my desk, I had a KVM link to a PC located somewhere else. Technically that could PC have been located anywhere sufficient bandwidth existed (4G?)
 
bitslice said:
Network speed are comparable to local storage, so hard drives are essentially demountable, and if broadband speeds increase then GPU's could be remote too.
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Hardly, SSD's have a throughput of around 5Gbit/s and latency of 150 microseconds. Even decent LAN's aren't that fast.
 
Gigabit LAN speeds (assuming max speeds) are comparable to an average mechnical HDD or slow SSD transfer rate wise though can't touch an SSD for access times.

Energize said:
I don't consider them great. The small screens result in a lot of scrolling or zooming, whereas you can fit everything on screen at once with a large desktop display.
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Possibly on a sub 5" smartphone or older tablets with like 1024x768 screens - portrait mode on my Z tablet gives 1920 vertical height and is just as easy to read at similiar scaling to my 2560x1440 monitor let alone 1920x1080.
 
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The throughput of a gigabit LAN is only going to be around 90MB/s realistically. But yes it's latency that matters for many applications, no one wants to use a KVM over a 4G network as suggested above, it would take seconds for the mouse to move at the other end!
 
I've used RDP over 3G or even slower quite a bit - definitely not something you'd want to use as your every day desktop experience.
 
phill1978 said:
sorry, its not techno snobbery its just that the tv is a strangely abstract and uninvolving box in the corner of the room where as the internet and online media is much more engaging and targetted.
I dont need entertaining by tv or telling a tale which is usually skewed, i educated myself thats the power of the internet and why its so sucessful.

tv is obsolete. the only people left watching it are really old people and brain dead xfactor / come dancing tards whilst eating a tv dinner and dribbling ..
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Uninvolving? Obsolete? How do you watch films then? As well as your big brush.
 
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