Desktop computers becoming a "thing of the past"

Bug One said:
Because its stored on that server in the first place. I'm not talking about a home setup, I'm talking about business networks when the data will all be stored on a central server. If it wasn't then how would it all be backed up. What happens if your hard drive dies.
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Well I was talking about a home setup since this is where loads of video encoding is done. When you do video encoding you need a powerul cpu, so desktops are far from dead. In a business I can't see it being practical either hence why people use workstations and don't bother with clients in game development, you'd need a huge supercomputer costing hundreds of thousands to do loads of rendering and encoding from all the users in a decent amount of time. In the end it would be more hassle than it's worth.

DRZ said:
Desktops are simply not wanted at all by your average user.
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You must have some strange users then because otherwise dell would be bankrupt along with all the other desktop manufactures, as would component manufactures like nvidia and ati.
 
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Energize said:
In a business I can't see it being practical either hence why people use workstations and don't bother with clients in game development
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Game encoding, 3d modeling, video rendering are all pretty specialist businesses. The majority of businesses dont have any requirements for huge computing power.
Energize said:
You'd need a huge supercomputer costing hundreds of thousands to do loads of rendering and encoding from all the users in a decent amount of time. In the end it would be more hassle than it's worth.
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Yep, something like our two IBM blade centres. 24 dual xeon servers, thats quite a bit of juice. But then it powers 600 users. :p

I can assure you its a lot less hassle having all your main computing power, storage, backup tapes etc in one location and just having dumb terminals at off site locations.
 
Bug One said:
Game encoding, 3d modeling, video rendering are all pretty specialist businesses. The majority of businesses dont have any requirements for huge computing power.
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Exactly why desktops will continue to be used. In companies and homes they will not die out.
 
I was thinking about this last night, as I work for a company that sells desktops to home users (non corporate) and surly the companys going to have to change direction.

This thread is even more relevant now, surly desktops are only for people like us. With laptops getting more powerful I dont see why in the not so far off future that laptops wont replace desktops in offices, because of there portablilty. I know i would have found it useful in the past if i could just pick my computer up to go and discuss somthing with the boss/co-worker or take it home for working from over the weekend.

thinking of it, I cant remember the last time I even saw an advert on TV for a desktop. I hate laptops I dont want this to be our future.


(I know, holy thread revival bananaman or whatever)
 
Although the shift is taking place toward notebooks and thinclients, desktops will be around for years yet. We still ship thousands of desktops every year, and are just about to begin a project for a further few thousand for a large customer. Corporates are still very much refreshing their desktop estates.

Reason? Its a cheap, versatile, tried and tested estate solution.

Docking stations tend to be the choice of solution for higher end staff, but the cost to roll out en masse would be prohibitive. Thin clients are the way estates are going, if anything at all.
 
jwest said:
This thread is even more relevant now, surly desktops are only for people like us. With laptops getting more powerful I dont see why in the not so far off future that laptops wont replace desktops in offices, because of there portablilty. I know i would have found it useful in the past if i could just pick my computer up to go and discuss somthing with the boss/co-worker or take it home for working from over the weekend.
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This is how we work at the company I work for. There's eight of us there and we all use laptops, the company doesn't own any desktops. It's very useful if two people are working on the same project you can just pick your stuff up and move to a spare desk to work together.

And at home there's no way I'm giving up any space to have a desktop setup when I can use my laptop on the sofa. I can't have used a desktopfor more thn 5 minutes for a couple of years now.
 
I still use desktops at work and at home. However, I also have a laptop which gets a LOT of use. They are amazingly useful. As far as students go, bar my friends that are computer enthusiats all but one own laptops exclusivly, and he has a desktop and laptop. In certain situations they are the right answer, but no matter how fast or convienint laptops get I don't think they will replace the power/cost and reliability of desktops.
 
jwest said:
I was thinking about this last night, as I work for a company that sells desktops to home users (non corporate) and surly the companys going to have to change direction.

This thread is even more relevant now, surly desktops are only for people like us. With laptops getting more powerful I dont see why in the not so far off future that laptops wont replace desktops in offices, because of there portablilty. I know i would have found it useful in the past if i could just pick my computer up to go and discuss somthing with the boss/co-worker or take it home for working from over the weekend.

thinking of it, I cant remember the last time I even saw an advert on TV for a desktop. I hate laptops I dont want this to be our future.


(I know, holy thread revival bananaman or whatever)
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After 3 years it's not revival, it's necromancy.
 
I use my laptop far more than my desktop, but there are just some games that will never be available on the 360 (and my laptop isn't powerful enough to run) - mainly sims and RTS. For that reason, I can't see myself ever being without a desktop machine.
 
My family all use laptops now. Let's face it, if you don't game or do high intensity tasks then a desktop isn't required. I changed my parents desktop to a laptop and at first they wondered why, but now they use the laptop all around the house and hardly ever use it in the office!

The place where I work have done away with desktops and everyone uses laptops. Also a lot of clients we see have moved to laptops instead of desktops.

For office work and use at home, a laptop is more convenient than a desktop and can be stored away when finished with doing away the need for a computer desk, etc.

If you game or do high intensity graphics work then a desktop is more powerful and therefore needed.
 
Have thin clients improved in recent years? When I used them at college the responsiveness was shocking. You'd start scrolling through an excel document, then you'd release the mouse button to stop scrolling, but it would continue scrolling for about another 5 seconds. Then you'd have to scroll back up to get where to where you wanted to and it would just do the same in the opposite direction taking you back where you started.
 
No-One said:
Have thin clients improved in recent years? When I used them at college the responsiveness was shocking. You'd start scrolling through an excel document, then you'd release the mouse button to stop scrolling, but it would continue scrolling for about another 5 seconds. Then you'd have to scroll back up to get where to where you wanted to and it would just do the same in the opposite direction taking you back where you started.
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we use thin clients across slow wan links, and they're perfectly usable.

in fact, when the data is stored at the central location, they're better than a PC
 
No-One said:
Have thin clients improved in recent years? When I used them at college the responsiveness was shocking. You'd start scrolling through an excel document, then you'd release the mouse button to stop scrolling, but it would continue scrolling for about another 5 seconds. Then you'd have to scroll back up to get where to where you wanted to and it would just do the same in the opposite direction taking you back where you started.
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Depends what protocol you use really. RDP on thinclients still have that issue as it doesnt have many features

Citrix on the other hand has a feature where the thin client renders the graphics clientside, also when you type in a text box, the actual thin client renders it,rather than the server rendering the character, and then sends it to the thin client. i think the feature is called Speedscreen or something.

Desktops for home use is defenitly dieing fast, I only know one person who has a desktop PC now, the rest have laptops since wireless tech has improved by far. the OP has to be pretty deluded if he thinks that laptops will never replace desktops.

This is also one of the reasons that has effected PC Gaming by a large margin as well in my opinion.
 
daz said:
I think thin clients are going to make a comeback.
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They're testing out virtual desktops at our place already on some pretty beefy server farms at the mo. Wouldn't be surprised if other places are doing the same.
 
I had desktops for the last 15 years, but 3-4 years ago got a small X31 laptop. Pretty handy to sit and watch tv while checking the web etc, but even things like unraring files, flash games, and recently even watching some hi res youtube videos was getting painful.

So I got a i7 17" mac book pro. This is way more powerful then my C2D desktop, takes up less space, is portable, has a better screen, runs macos and windows,, plays latest games .

The main thing is I don't need to dedicate a 1/4 of my room to a desk and monitor and keyboard, chair, tower case etc etc... This is such a huge win.
 
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