Do you think PCs will become obsolete in near future ?

[asifnaz]

Well I work on my old style desktop PC and I hear a lot of people saying " wow do you still use this..?" why dont you use tablet ..? . I have a Laptop and a Tablet but when it comes to productivity I always rely on a desktop . IMHO there is still no substitute to a keyboard + mouse combination .

what is your opinion

[GarryRicketson]

My PC's will never become "obsolete".
As for other people, I don't know, I suppose they will or maybe all ready are.
I mean after all, these people that spend all day on "face book" with their little "mobile phone" or tablet, are not likely to spend any time on the PC when they get home, nor in the office.

[Crewp]

Well I work on my old style desktop PC and I hear a lot of people saying " wow do you still use this..?" why dont you use tablet ..? . I have a Laptop and a Tablet but when it comes to productivity I always rely on a desktop . IMHO there is still no substitute to a keyboard + mouse combination .

what is your opinion

I agree, there is nothing better than a keyboard & mouse combo. But I do believe we will soon be the minority. As, the trend seems to be heading away from desktop, to tablet.

[dust hill resident]

I think desktop PCs will always be around for people who need a computer to do actual heavy duty work, such as 3D modelling/rendering or graphic design/digital illustration/etc. I can't see people doing intensive work like that on tablets or laptops.

[thanatos_incarnate]

I have very little experience with touch devices, but from what I've seen
and from the experience of other people who have tried to substitute desktops with
tablets/phablets, it seems that although this would be theoretically possible
(additional keyboards, screen convergence, etc.), the apps just don't cut it when
compared to full blown desktop programmes.

Another aspect that other commercial desktops don't have and where I think
we in the open source shine is the fact that we have unobtrusive "no bullshit"
desktops that don't lock users into cloud technology, adware and premature
obsolescence. I continuously witness how users bemoan programme foo
being deprecated or printer bar suddenly not working anymore and them
having to buy a new one for Windows 10 or whatnot -- and I haven't even
started with the "Windows is too slow on this machine, so I'm buying a new one
3 years into its life cycle." This might be a chance for the Linux desktop, as much
cliché as this statement sounds.

[otyugh]

I see PC/smartpĥones/tablets being obsolete for lambda users in the future if there is a real energy issue, which I think is probable. They will rarify not because they consume too much, but because their cheap production (and therefor their widespread) are bind to the low cost of energy (exportations of material from all the part of the world).

[dasein]

This question strikes me as about as sensible as asking, "Does the existence of fast food make nutritious well-prepared meals 'obsolete'?"

[pylkko]

More and more of what people used to do with personal computers can and is being done by other devices (smart TV's, phones and what not). The computational power and prices of little non-pc devices is going to go down unless some kind of massive crisis of civilization happens. Just today the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced a SBC with a price tag of 5 USD yet 40% more powerful then their previous single core variants. I am not saying that everyone will turn into hackers interested in electronics like some people dabbling with RPI's, but it seems possible to me that a significant proportion of people (in the future) will not need a "general purpose" computer in their house if their television can do youtube, their bluetooth speaker internet radio, their documents and mail in the cloud, and their phone take pictures, surf the net and play music.

Why would anyone in that situation pay something like +1000 USD for a general purpose PC?

[No_windows]

This question strikes me as about as sensible as asking, "Does the existence of fast food make nutritious well-prepared meals 'obsolete'?"

Well in your example, fast food has helped drive "nutritious well-prepared meals" into the highend, assuming we're excluding DIY.

[No_windows]

More and more of what people used to do with personal computers can and is being done by other devices.....

Their interfaces are abysmal from what I've seen. I admit my interaction had been slim, However. Most of it being my Roku and my old Android phone isn't great either.

Why would anyone in that situation pay something like +1000 USD for a general purpose PC?

I thought they were cheaper than that now? I don't keep up with prices on new machines. All of my computers have either been built by me, or have been second hand.

[pylkko]

More and more of what people used to do with personal computers can and is being done by other devices.....

Their interfaces are abysmal from what I've seen. I admit my interaction had been slim, However. Most of it being my Roku and my old Android phone isn't great either.

Why would anyone in that situation pay something like +1000 USD for a general purpose PC?

I thought they were cheaper than that now? I don't keep up with prices on new machines. All of my computers have either been built by me, or have been second hand.

Maybe the interfaces are abysmal, but that isn't stopping this from happening. Electronics used to be rare and expensive, then it got cheaper and more common place so that everything from toys to kitchen appliances have it. I think this same phenomenon will happen with computers. But, of course, I can't claim to know this will happen for sure.

You can probably get a new desktop/laptop for less then 1000 USD, but the ones that are clearly better than what is sufficient for an average user are of course more expensive. Maybe 1000 is too much in such, but I didn't mean for that number to be the point. If you change it to 500 it's still the same argument, or not? I mean give me 10 of those 5 dollar computers and I just maybe I can do everything Average Joe does on his PC with them, and they'd cost what? 50 USD? That is still significantly less than what a PC costs now.

[keithpeter]

This question strikes me as about as sensible as asking, "Does the existence of fast food make nutritious well-prepared meals 'obsolete'?"

Well in your example, fast food has helped drive "nutritious well-prepared meals" into the highend, assuming we're excluding DIY.

I cook from fresh produce. I have just eaten my own take on the Argentinian Huvelos Rancheros[1], my version includes kidney beans or Roman beans and spinach.

I see my X60 laptop as a portable typewriter [2] with graphics and multimedia capability. I actually still have a portable typewriter like [3]. I can see me having a laptop for some time, I have written a couple of reams (double sided) worth of handouts/guides/bookchapters on this laptop in the last couple of years. Lenovo also see a market for a proper Thinkpad [4].

In the far future, before I check in to the Nursing Home for Retired Maths Teachers, I'd quite like an A4 format e-paper device that I could write on with a stylus and that would auto-magically recognise my handwriting, sketch diagrams, graphs, and mathematical notations, and that would typeset these in the style of Edward Tufte's [5] books.

I imagine there will still be a market for laptops - I'm hoping for an open/libre laptop with mechanical switch keyboard and a battery life measured in days within the next five years. Just more expensive due to the loss of volume, but engineered to be open and last a decade or so.

[1] http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/huevos_rancheros/

[2] http://dangerousminds.net/comments/phot ... ypewriters

[3] http://cristianaziraldo.altervista.org/ ... ypewriter/

[4] http://blog.lenovo.com/en/blog/retro-th ... e-machine/

[5] http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/

[Wheelerof4te]

I don't see any real serious substitute for laptops, but home desktop PC might be thing of the past in the near future. As someone mentioned, PC will be probably used in work office environments only.

Computers have been getting smaller and smaller ever since the first ones were developed. But I have yet to see the innovation that will replace the old mouse/touch-pad and keyboard combination. As we can see, Microsoft made a big mistake trying to change this paradigm to more touch-screen feel in Windows 10. The new design is cluttered, weird and outright stupid. New generations who are growing up with smartphones might like it, I don't.

On the other hand, it depends what you call ''obsolete''. This term is usually applied to many different things. For example, something that went out of fashion, something which is unusable now, economically inefficient or is quite ancient, forgotten. When we talk about computers, ''out of fashion'' is commonly the case.
As in: ''Hey, Steve is using the old Intel Celeron Dell crap, his CPU is so obsolete. Mine is sooo much cooler quad-core ''something, something''. And it can run all those shiny new games, haha''.

So, when something is ''obsolete'', it is very much ''out of fashion'' and at such, ''useless''. Only to the naive ones, that is.

[dasein]

This question strikes me as about as sensible as asking, "Does the existence of fast food make nutritious well-prepared meals 'obsolete'?"

Well in your example, fast food has helped drive "nutritious well-prepared meals" into the highend, assuming we're excluding DIY.

I'm not (either in hardware or food). I dunno where some folks in this thread are shopping, but I did a homebuild on a general-purpose desktop machine with a 4-core CPU and 4 GB of RAM for ~$250USD 5 years ago (including the case and PSU). Anyone who spends more than that is spending money for no reason.

(Yes, that's more money than a pi. But it's also way more computer than a pi, which is the point. Not every use-case is low-end. Fast food is fine in a pinch, but it's no substitute for a balanced home-cooked meal.)

[GarryRicketson]

So, when something is ''obsolete'', it is very much ''out of fashion'' and at such, ''useless''. Only to the naive ones, that is.

I guess it is all just a matter of opinion, or how one looks at it, but to me this seems in reverse,.. I find the things that are supposedly "in fashion" , useless .
Anything I can use and that works well for me, is NOT obsolete, it is USE FULL or a use full tool , just because it is "fashionable" does not make it use full to me.
A mule, and harness and plow,...well I suppose most every body would say they are "obsolete", but even the shiniest newest, and most "fashionable" new tractors, are totally use less, when one does not have the "credit" or money to buy them, besides that, if there is no where close by that sells "diesel", (fuel), they are use less.
My neighbor still uses a mule, and harness , to do his plowing, So are Mules, and harnesses, "obsolete" or going to be in the near future ?
I don't think so,... same applies to PCs ,..
So, no PCs will not become "obsolete" in the near future.

Fast food is fine in a pinch, but it's no substitute for a balanced home-cooked meal.)

Besides that, it would take me 4 hours to get to the closest "Taco Bell", or "McDonalds"
In a pinch, with a "sling shot" it just takes a few minuets get a rabbit, or a few doves, we have a lot of them,... and they make great "tacos".

[kolker]

use case most that use tablet and say that only use it for specific things and probably only used there computers for those things too theres lots of people that just use email/lite gaming/social/. try writing a book or programing or anything more involved than a small reply or link. perhaps in the future but as it is now no.

imagine just a screen with beefy specs and a keyboard(or somthing equivilent) that is just light that extends and can tell what is typing. or even neural that can be activated just with the brain and interacted with the same that only you can see the interface.

[pylkko]

Since many think that mobile device without a normal physical keyboard cannot be challenged by, say, a touchscreen, I wonder if anyone has any experience with projection keyboards? Could that make a difference here?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projection_keyboard

[kedaha]

I think that technological progress will result in smaller desktop PCs than the typical Pentium4 with its largish box but, even so, surely there will always be a market for computers designed for home or office use with large screens, dedicated video and sound cards, printers and so forth. I've never used a tablet so may be a bit behind the times, but can mobile devices and the like provide the same audio and video quality as PCs?

[No_windows]

Since many think that mobile device without a normal physical keyboard cannot be challenged by, say, a touchscreen, I wonder if anyone has any experience with projection keyboards? Could that make a difference here?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projection_keyboard

That looks like it would be just as awful as my phone. Sure, it's bigger, but would still provide zero physical feedback.

[Wheelerof4te]

I wonder if anyone has any experience with projection keyboards? Could that make a difference here?

It would take a lot of time getting used to, but I don't see any problems with it. Advantage is clear, but it may be impractical on some surfaces.