The desktop PC format is fading away - IBM

[erocker]

the next person that compares computers to cars i'm going to tie to a chair and make them watch Street Fighter The Movie for 18 hours straight lol

 

[BumbleBee]

worst movie ever

 

[ShRoOmAlIsTiC]

thats it im selling my pc now. Got to stay ahead of the trends

 

[m4gicfour]

Personally, I love the PC. I don't have a desk, I've got a 55' TV, an Onkyo/Polk 7.1 system, and a couch. With a wireless KB/M (and wired for gaming, really bad RF environment here) all I'd conceivably want in the way of mobility is a tablet with some form of networking fast enough to route the KB/M, video, and sound to it remote desktop style but fast enough for gaming on so I can use the power of my desktop anywhere in the house. It's not likely in the near future, but not impossible.

Oh, and Bumblebee: It's pretty damn hard to feel shackled in this setup, magical wireless tablet or not. If all I wanted to do was surf the web, I'd buy a tablet like all the "Mainstream" consumers

 

[Batou1986]

I Honestly dont care what direction devices go, as long as i can plug a mouse and keyboard into and play games with AA and decent textures with the keyboard and mouse.

 

[ShiBDiB]

For the average consumer/user it most likely is. All in one monitor/pcs, small form factors and other things like that are very appealing to the average user. As long as there is a market for enthusiast stuff, enthusiast stuff will be sold.

The thing is, the enthusiast market really isnt much bigger then say the size of the 3 biggest forums like this one combined.

Everyday users are leaning more towards smart phones and tablets + the usual netbook/notebook.

The only thing that can save the desktop from becoming a select group of people is a big increase in pc gamers imo.. PC games justify the hardware purchases, which right now I have no reason to justify an upgrade to a new socket.

 

[Frick]

The only thing that can save the desktop from becoming a select group of people is a big increase in pc gamers imo.. PC games justify the hardware purchases, which right now I have no reason to justify an upgrade to a new socket.

Aye. I kinda hoped that the future would hold powerful machines in every home, but we're steering away from that (for good reason).

 

[Iceni]

I think the problem is software not hardware.

OS's have been getting more and more power hungry on the desktop market for years now. However hardware has been capable of doing what a tablet does for a long time now.

I know from personal experience, windows 2k will run on a P2 (pentium) 400mhz with 64Mb of ram. It will do word processing, Internet, and pretty much anything a regular user will throw at it in a reasonable time frame. So why did we upgrade from the P2? simple windows started demanding more from our machines. Win XP will not run on that rig without been slow. Windows 7 LMAO!!

I think OS's have hit an apex. There's no longer the ability within an OS to push the hardware and force upgrades. A 939 athlon will run Win 7.. That's 6-8 year old tech that was designed for XP having lasted 2 generations of windows. Something we have never seen before in the history of Win OS.

Without the OS's pushing hardware people have no reason to upgrade there desktops. That means in the longer term lost money for hardware manufacturers. So the solution is to throttle the desktop market, and develop the portable market.

This brings us back to software advancement and OS upgrades. Since a tablet is destined to have a 1GHz chip this year But in 2 years time that tablet will need new ram, and a faster chip to push the OS of choice. Your old tablet just won't cut it.

So in effect it's not the desktop market that is failing or falling short, But it's not where the money is to be made. IBM have moved to tablets to continue to ride the OS upgrade bubble.

 

[Frick]

I think the problem is software not hardware.

OS's have been getting more and more power hungry on the desktop market for years now. However hardware has been capable of doing what a tablet does for a long time now.

I know from personal experience, windows 2k will run on a P2 (pentium) 400mhz with 64Mb of ram. It will do word processing, Internet, and pretty much anything a regular user will throw at it in a reasonable time frame. So why did we upgrade from the P2? simple windows started demanding more from our machines. Win XP will not run on that rig without been slow. Windows 7 LMAO!!

I think OS's have hit an apex. There's no longer the ability within an OS to push the hardware and force upgrades. A 939 athlon will run Win 7.. That's 6-8 year old tech that was designed for XP having lasted 2 generations of windows. Something we have never seen before in the history of Win OS.

Without the OS's pushing hardware people have no reason to upgrade there desktops. That means in the longer term lost money for hardware manufacturers. So the solution is to throttle the desktop market, and develop the portable market.

This brings us back to software advancement and OS upgrades. Since a tablet is destined to have a 1GHz chip this year But in 2 years time that tablet will need new ram, and a faster chip to push the OS of choice. Your old tablet just won't cut it.

So in effect it's not the desktop market that is failing or falling short, But it's not where the money is to be made. IBM have moved to tablets to continue to ride the OS upgrade bubble.

I think this is a wholly good thing when it comes to operating systems. I think it's silly that you would have to spend hundreds of dollars in hardware just to be able to use a system that on it's own doesn't really do anything except basic stuff.

But I think you might have a point here.

 

[KainXS]

I think it is dying right now but not as much as he says it is, in 10 - 15 years when we have better fab processes then I can see what he is saying but at the rate of smartphone hardware development now we need a new advancement in the fab processes.

 

[bostonbuddy]

Consuls are basically subsidized pc's so now pc's aren't dead they've just changed the name.

 

[BumbleBee]

I thought this was pretty interesting...

 

[CDdude55]

I thought this was pretty interesting...

Onlive is old news, it hasn't taken off mainly due to the internet usage requirements(the games get processed on remote servers and the image get's sent to your machine/tablet) and the internet standard isn't high enough for it to sufficiently take off just yet.

 

[BumbleBee]

you buy the controller, download app and create account.

you don't need to buy the $99 set-top box anymore. it's a simple app that is probably going to be available on many devices like televisions, blu-ray players, tablets, phones, etc.

OnLive clearly wants to be the Netflix for Gaming.

 

[1Kurgan1]

I don't agree at all. First off, a tablet is a form factor, not something different, he is just using a PC. Something like phones which can't run comp apps, I would agree those aren't directly PC's. I'm not sure exactly what he means by dieing, it's such a general term, but when you take into account Steam is the 2nd largest game distributor and they only sell to PC, and they don't sell all of the MMO's out(which sell like hot cakes), then the fact that social networking sites are just booming. I have to disagree completely, PC is here to stay, maybe 5 years ago I would have felt how he does, but lately, PC is hitting it's stride.

you buy the controller, download app and create account.

you don't need to buy the $99 set-top box anymore. it's a simple app that is probably going to be available on many devices like televisions, blu-ray players, tablets, phones, etc.

OnLive clearly wants to be the Netflix for Gaming.

Most titles that are decent offer a pre-order and get a console + 2 controllers for free. The reason consoles boom is because people like to sit on their couch and game, I personally like my chair. But even getting a controller, the PC needs to migrate near a couch and to a larger monitor.

 

[CDdude55]

you buy the controller, download app and create account.

you don't need to buy the $99 set-top box anymore. it's a simple app that is probably going to be available on many devices like televisions, blu-ray players, tablets, phones, etc.

OnLive clearly wants to be the Netflix for Gaming.

True, though Onlive is a lot heavier on connections. Also there is a Console gaming box you need to hook it up to TV's but as i said, all content is pushed over the net.

OnLive is a cloud gaming platform: the games are synchronized, rendered, and stored on remote servers and delivered via the Internet.

A low-end computer, as long as it can play video, may be used to play any kind of game since the game is computed on the OnLive server. For that reason, the service is being seen as a competitor for the console market. All games on the service are available in 720p format. OnLive recommends an Internet connection of 5 Mbit/s or faster, and a 2 Mbit/s connection meets the minimum system requirements.The average broadband connection speed in the US at the end of 2008 was 3.9 Mbit/s, while 25% of US broadband connections were rated faster than 5 Mbit/s

 

[Derek12]

I prefer to work on a classic PC than on mobile things (unless I force to, when I have to work outside; that's why I have a netbook), I am a lot more comfortable on a dektop PC than on laptops/tablets,

About tablets. I don't like them (I tried iPads, Androids, and Windows based), they are very mobile and beautiful and blahblahblah but the screens aretiny (compared with my desk 17" monitor) and very uncomfortable for me when writing (I far like a traditional keyboard than tactile screen, and those keyboards that some convertible and dockable ones have are very tiny to me to write correctly).

 

[BumbleBee]

True, though Onlive is a lot heavier on connections. Also there is a Console gaming box you need to hook it up to TV's but as i said, all content is pushed over the net.

I know what OnLive is

maybe their programmers will come up with new compression techniques <shrug>

the multiple screens displaying the same image demo was interesting because the panel on the Wii U controller isn't up to par with a tablet and it's tethered to the console.

 

[BumbleBee]

OnLive CEO presentation at Columbia

http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/29/onlive-ceo-reveals-entirely-new-approach-to-wireless-credits/