The end of the desktop?

[poltergeisty]

...Extra cores don't help – parallel code is really hard to write, and not everything can be parallelised - see Bootnote. So instead, more of the system is moving on-chip - GPUs are just the latest major component to be integrated. RAM will follow in time, as will nonvolatile storage if memristors deliver on their promise. Future computers will be marked "no user-serviceable parts inside", and they'll mean it - you can't upgrade or repair a single-chip device.

What this means is that Koomey's Law has taken over: instead of getting faster, processors are getting smaller, cooler-running, more power-efficient - and cheaper. Only a few niche customers will still want specialist graphics cards or petabytes of spinning rust. The clock's ticking for the beige fan-heater market, and the speed-freaks will have to run deskside servers instead - that's where the big fat hot chips are going.

Inside Steve Ballmer

 

[Darth_vader]

"Why? Because the PC is dying. The next disruptive innovation is here. As a result, the decline of the PC market is accelerating - it's pushing 15 per cent a year and laptops have joined in too."

Yawn. I've been hearing reports like that since about... what, 1997--you know, back when laptops were first really starting to become "in" and the PDA was the latest thing (remember those?) If you want to take it a step further, the PC market has been "dying" at least since Apple foisted its point-and-drool Macintrash upon the world almost 30 years ago (1984). Even today, that abomination remains the minority and has failled to reach the point where it would have a displacing effect upon the installed base of millions of lowly, versatile, easily-upgradeable non-proprietary PCs.

And television killed radio, movies killed the stage, E-mail killed the post office, air transit killed roads and rails, etc., etc. Same old garbage; different decade.

I wonder how much Micro$haft had to spend to have that fluff piece written?

 

[Thayne]

I think there is some truth to PC's dying--mostly because of smartphones.
The average Jane or Joe seems to get what they want out of them, (phone, texting, camera, GPS, internet access and enough so called "apps" to choke a horse)--and also let the Govt spy on them.

The problems for Jane and Joe will arise when and if their smartphones are infested by rogue or malicious software or if the infrastructure that supports it suddenly disappears.
Then it might be a good time to have an old PC that you can type letters on to complain to the government--If the post office still exists

 

[KC4RAF]

No, the PC isn't gonna die.

It's going to last a few more years. Not everybody likes carrying around a laptop or other system. And the price doesn't do laptop justice; way over priced for the same thing a PC does.