<p>By now everyone has heard about the poor revenue earnings at the U.S. tech giants.</p>
<p>Tablets and smartphones are all the rage, but Intel and MS are not significant players (yet) in that market. Google has Motorola Mobility and Intel plans to produce chip sets for a Motorola smartphone soon. What does this all mean for the “traditional” desktop PC and Windowsxxx? Do you plan to abandon your desktop PC?</p>
<p>I abandoned my desktop PC years ago. I don’t know anyone who uses a desktop any more. I gave up my PC laptop this year too so we are now a 2 Mac home. Will be trading my Droid in for an iPhone in the next couple of weeks.</p>
<p>For my work I need a full size keyboard with a wrist rest and hot keys. A big monitor at eye level is essential, too. I guess I don’t care what those two things are plugged into, but a desktop is probably the most cost effective. So far.</p>
<p>
Depending on the context, a Mac is a PC (i.e. personal computer). The Mac uses Intel processors, like a non-Apple PC, people still use browsers and Google with them, and many still use Microsoft apps with them (Office). There’s not that great of a difference between a Mac and non-Mac from the perspective of hardware, software it runs, how people use them, and even the operating system in many respects.</p>
<p>The tablets are no substitute for a lot of the use cases for a laptop/desktop of some kind (whether it’s Apple or non-Apple) but rather, something different. It’s displacing some of the laptops/desktops but they’re better for lightweight browsing, watching movies, greater portability, and running certain other apps. Even then, people still sometimes use Google on them and the upcoming Microsoft tablets will, of course, have Microsoft apps on them.</p>
<p>Tablets and smartphones for me are just basically for browsing and editing short notes. I’ll switch full-time to some version of a tablet if it can handle multiple tasks like editing a Power Point presentation, Word documents, spreadsheets, handling my various Quicken transactions and reports, multiple windows of streaming stock quotes, etc. etc. I don’t use my tablet nor my smartphone to make online purchases.</p>
<p>My home and office setups are pretty close. My office setup is a Core i7 Nehalem quad-core/eight-thread system driving three monitors and it’s connected to a 17 inch MacBook Pro. I also have another Nehalem system running Linux - so a total of five monitors. My home configuration is a Sandy Bridge Core i5 quad-core system driving three monitors and I often have my MacBook Pro connected.</p>
<p>Real work for most people is still done on PCs.</p>
<p>A big change about five - seven years ago, though is that CPUs became a lot more powerful and software stopped growing like crazy. Before that, software got bigger and bigger requiring faster processors and more memory and disk space. Hardware performance caught up and surpassed software demands. So people don’t need to upgrade their hardware anywhere near as often as they did. So your six or seven year old PC may be fine. If you do need to replace your old system, you can buy a computer with a low-end CPU and be fine for the next 8 years - no need to buy faster processors to future-proof your PC.</p>
<p>Interestingly, mobile CPUs are at the place where PC processors used to be. Software continues to get bigger and more demanding making phone processors feel slow after a few years. I expect that to continue for several years.</p>
<p>So PCs aren’t dead. But their growth rate is getting killed because there’s no need to upgrade frequently anymore. We can see something somewhat similar with new cars. Cars today last far longer than they did in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. So we may keep them for ten or fifteen years instead of four or five in the past.</p>
<p>I love my desktop PC. I have a 20" monitor, so I can work with two Word documents up side by side. Then again I don’t even own a smartphone (I work from home and can get all my email and web browsing done right here on this nice big monitor), so I’m a dinosaur. </p>
<p>H has an Ipad, which is fine as far as it goes, but useless for actual work. I have an old netbook that I use when I travel, but will probably get some sort of Android tablet soon. (Anyone have good suggestions?)</p>
<p>I have the Nexus 7 Android tablet with 7 inch screen. It’s excellent for only $200. </p>
<p>Samsung just came out with a Chromebook for $249. It has an 11.6 inch screen and a keyboard. You keep your data on the Google cloud and the risk of downloading a virus is very limited. You access that data using wi-fi.</p>
<p>I think Samsung is also introducing a Chromebook with 3G connection built in in case wi-fi is not available.</p>
<p>Another dinosaur here. I’m typing right now on my first laptop, and like Booklady, don’t have a smart phone or iPad. For my serious writing, I still use a desktop. I can see eventually moving to a wireless keyboard and mouse with my laptop, (my BIL runs a very lucrative PR business that way) but I can’t see me typing on itty keyboards or screens to do high volume writing.</p>
<p>Google’s earnings have little to do with the PC market. Their revenue has been affected by issue like the rising cost of their adwords program. MS and Intel have been directly affected by the shift to tablets. The netbook business is essentially dead. The ultrabook business outside of Apple’s Air line is struggling.</p>
<p>Oh, to get a handle on the issue, here is a quote from an NYT article:</p>
<p>“To date, Apple has sold about 84 million iPads. Amazon’s Kindle Fire, the second-best-selling tablet, has sold about seven million units; Barnes and Noble has sold about five million Nook tablets; and Google has sold about three million Nexus 7 tablets, according to estimates by Forrester.” </p>
<p>I don’t trust the estimates but the number of tablets sold that can be used as actual computers of a sort - meaning for web and email - is 100 million. And about 84% are of the more powerful variety that pose a real threat to traditional computers. </p>
<p>This is why MS is coming out with the Surface. They must do it.</p>
<p>Never have owned a PC that ran Windows exclusively.
last time I owned Word it came on about 11 floppy disks.
;)</p>
<p>When anyone makes a tablet (or laptop :)) that can run the stuff my dual quad Xeon workstation does then I will consider the PC dead. Likewise, my home PC is a Shuttle minicube that packs an amazing punch in a cubic foot of space…</p>
<p>What we need is an iPad sized tablet running Windows 7 or 8 or OS X Lion or other furry animal… The ecosystem of tablets will need some serious consolidation in a year or two.</p>
<p>At home, I still do the majority of my computing on my laptop. At work, I have desktops and multiple monitors. I do have an iPad that I use sometimes and take it places I don’t want to take a laptop.</p>
<p>I do not own a smart phone yet. I’m not as attached to my phone as most people are… it’s not always on me at home, and it isn’t allowed to be in the office at work.</p>
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<p>Our model at work is to use a relatively weak PC to connect to development servers. The servers are multi-CPU rack-mounted systems hooked up to storage arrays and they serve up virtual machines. I can actually run three additional monitors off of my laptop but it’s easier to use a desktop to run most of the monitors as I don’t have to plug and unplug things.</p>
<p>That’s similar to the paradigm of mobile today - basically you have a thin-client application that has a lot of work done for it on the cloud.</p>
<p>The Washington Post story about evolution in the tech business is a bit more detailed than the NY Times article. The Post points out that a problem for Google is that they haven’t figured out a way to increase ad revenue from tablets and smartphones.</p>
<p>I do serious work on my desktop PC - photoshop, spreadsheets, newsletters, official Word documents and we store our photos on it since everything is automatically backed up there. I use my laptop PC most often for surfing the web. I have an Android phone and I love being able to access the web with it, but just to look up stuff quickly not for any serious work. I don’t own any of the e-readers, but I imagine I might some day. I have not lusted after a tablet at all.</p>
<p>I can use my mobile phone to do code reviews, view and answer bug reports, and process email. I can theoretically access my Unix server too but I think that the screen is too small for that to be practical. I am working on getting a remote desktop client to work on my iPad but I haven’t been successful there. The latter would only be useful for doing things like reviewing test results and submitting test runs. I can’t imagine doing anything that requires a lot of typing.</p>
<p>I do almost all my writing on my iPad with an attached keyboard. I love the way you edit text on it: touch the words with your finger. It in some ways recalls the connection between what you write and how you write it that you feel with a pen and paper. Using the iPad is also less distracting because I can’t keep a bunch of other programs open in the same window. Can’t be distracted as easily by what I can’t see. I use virtual desktops on my other computers to isolate work but it’s not as clean as me and the words.</p>
<p>PC’s have a role in the future. Same as very large computers - formerly called mainframes - still have a role though they were “out” well over a decade ago. The issue is growth versus contraction. Intel’s issues are somewhat different because ARM processors are taking off in ways unimaginable only a few years ago. But Intel is also different because it is a premier manufacturing company with leading edge research. That means it can move in different directions and is used to massive shifts in its business. To explain, MS is burdened by legacy in a different way than Intel because Intel has had to creatively destroy its own chips by making better ones that require new fabrication methods each time. It is difficult for MS to change licensing for Office, for example, because so much of the core business is built on Windows license plus Office license and continual upgrade fees. They don’t want to destroy their existing business. That’s a tough thing to sell internally. </p>
<p>BTW, I find it interesting that Apple, MS, Intel and Google all have R&D in Israel. The Israeli facility is Apple’s first outside the US. Intel’s Sandy and Ivy Bridge chips are heavily designed in Israel - and there is a fab plant there too - and Watson’s natural language algorithms were developed substantially there*. MS opened its first R&D outside the US in Israel when one of its senior people moved there. Google has more than one facility in Israel. I don’t know if there’s any connection between that and Brin hailing from Moscow. </p>
<p>*Watson was developed by Intel’s groups in the US, Japan and Israel with each doing part. I understand the Haifa group did the natural language piece.</p>
<p>I have a desktop PC with 20" monitor at work (my secretary has the same with dual monitors). I have a 17" laptop that is almost constantly on my lap at home. It generally goes with me everywhere. If I go on a short trip, I use my “souped up” Nook. I don’t have a smartphone but will probably break down soon and get a Samsung. I do not nor will ever own an Apple product. H has an older PC desktop in his office, a 17" laptop that he uses almost exclusively. He has a Smartphone and a netbook that he uses to “play” on the Internet with. He does not even begin to use the functionality of his Smartphone.</p>