Is the PC dead?

[digibucc]

So, we might be starting another holywar here, but the statistics is not lying.

well PC's market share diminishing is to be expected. no logical person would expect them to ALWAYS be at the top. this has been talked about before, and one often overlooked reason mentioned is that: you don't need to buy a new computer as often as those other devices if you want to stay up to date. you have to entirely replace your phone every few years whereas a pc can just get upgraded. and when the current pc's hardware handles EVERYTHING they need, why upgrade it when you can get a new toy for the same price?

my point is, just because people aren't buying new PCs as often doesn't mean they're dying. imo they are settling to a more sensible market share.

 

[Aithos]

I don't think he's trollling. Ok, the title should have been "Should I build a new PC or get a tablet?" but if you read the post is pretty obvious what is he talking about.

Look at how he phrased his post. He comes in here, trashes Apple, calls the PC worthless and a waste of money, says PC gaming is dead and calls consoles the real gaming platform...how exactly is that NOT troll? His post in intentionally inflammatory, completely false and meant to inspire an arguement on a forum devoted to PCs and PC gaming. That is the very definition of troll. Now please stop posting in the thread and close it, it's ignorant and the OP hasn't posted recently either.

 

[L|NK|N]

Your PC may dead, however mine isn't. It's a contantly living, evolving, and breathing creation of my design that will do basically whatever I need it to do. Anything else is just child's play and the reason I discovered this hobby, always interesting.

 

[BiggieShady]

Tablets are nifty and all but holy fuck does my neck hurt when I use them? It does. You essentially have to be curled on couch to use it without injury.

 

[Steevo]

I checked mine and while it doesn't respond to verbal questioning I did turn off voice features......but no its not dead.


There are still so many things a PC does that tablets, laptops, and phones don't, and while they may slowly catch up it falls back to the "we will never need more than 640kb" argument, as things get faster its the ones who push the envelope that pave the way for the followers. The PC is and will be the leading hardware machine, fastest CPU's, GPU's, memory, highest capacity for change, evolution, revolution, and sets the bar for the other devices.


I use a laptop for work, and its OK, I have tried some tablets at work, my phones are nice, but I still use my compy.

 

[lilhasselhoffer]

Wow, is this question poorly structured. There are two problems here, which lead me to my answer of no.

1) What do you define as a personal computer? Is a tablet, a desktop, or a laptop the PC; perhaps all three and more are PCs.
2) Death really never comes to hardware. Terminology changes, and that which once existed is evolved to fit our current needs.


Let's strip the first statement down. A PC can be defined in a multitude of ways, but none of which is power consumption. A tablet, desktop, laptop, smartphone, and console video game system all process data via a CPU and GPU. They each output their data to a screen, and interpret user inputs to influence what they output. By that definition, the PC is alive and well. There are more smart devices out there than ever before, meaning that more PCs are available than ever before. I see no way that this would lead people to conclude the death or death knell of the PC.

The cloud is basically a series of servers. Servers were an evolution of the mainframe. The mainframe was a beefy computer designed for interaction with multiple PCs. Likewise, the tablet is the successor to the laptop, which was a portable version of the PC. Smartphones are a tangential evolution of the tablet, and therefor share a common ancestor. You might say that no computer hardware ever dies, it evolves into something better suited to whatever niche it is currently occupying.


Now, the point that new PC sales are down is interesting. This can be attributed to two main factors, no regular OS updates and immensely powerful PCs without the need for upgrades. Assuming that we can not start a flame war, I would posit that windows 8 is not gaining traction. It has its place one touch interface devices, but the PC is not generally touch screen. Arguably, this means the an upgrade to windows 8 isn't a reasonable expense for most users. That lack of a worthwhile (in people's opinion) upgrade on the OS side is crippling upgrade PC sales. Sandy Bridge is a surprisingly awesome set of silicon. It has been over three years, and SB is still where the overclocking (for raw numbers) is at. Most general users could still theoretically be on a Core2 quad, without appreciable dips in office applications. Though the high end is pushing forward, the average user isn't seeing a need to go out and buy a new PC when the one they've got still runs everything fine.


You can say that the PC is dead in the same way that cellular phones killed the wired phone. It has just about as much relevance, and every single big box retailer that I've been to still has a section dedicated to wired phones and prefabbed desktops.