Give Up The PC? Get Real!

weebling1 said:
"I have two 24-inch screens."

HA!
He 'only' has 2 screens!

....noob...
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lmao, long live the [H]

Different stokes for different folks. There are a lot of casual users who can make do fine with a laptop or even a DTR laptop. However, I just couldn't settle with gaming, photo editing, or drawing on a laptop, even a high-end model, unless I was forced to due to circumstances. Simply put, there's a whole different workstation experience that's on a completely different echelon.
 
If he buys and uses a keyboard, really all he’s doing is trading one PC for another, lesser specced device, and that would be a total cop out.
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That's something some people don't get about their tablets...they buy a keyboard and they just end up with an ARM-based laptop.

Anyhow, lots of people would be fine a tablet replacing a PC. There's nothing wrong with that idea at all, but I don't think that desktops or laptops are going to disappear just because tablets can replace them for lotsa people. I write novels, hafta do occasional 3D rendering, and tinker with images on a per-pixel level and that's just for fun stuff. A tablet with out a keyboard and at least a touchpad wouldn't work very well for that. If I go get a keyboard and touchpad, I may as well have just bought a laptop or desktop to begin with for less monies.

The problem that ends up happening isn't a device or functionality issue; it's a people invented problem. People don't realistically consider their desired usage and get the best device or devices for the stuff they want to accomplish. On top of that, people make it their business to care what someone else is doing or to get upset over their opinions. If everyone was dead, this would not at all be something we would be discussing.
 
Kind of a pointless article. No, tablets don't work for people with hardcore computing needs, the same way this guys vaunted desktop doesn't work for DARPA supercomputing. No one is suggesting people should downgrade to something that won't suit their needs.
 
The only "people" claiming that PC is dying are those who easily get defensive.

An intelligent conversation would conclude that tablets will replace some functionality of the PC, but that for other workloads the PC remains the primary go-to system.
 
bigdogchris said:
The only "people" claiming that PC is dying are those who easily get defensive.

An intelligent conversation would conclude that tablets will replace some functionality of the PC, but that for other workloads the PC remains the primary go-to system.
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As the variety and demand for new screen sizes increases, so will market growth in emerging markets. Having passed EMEA in 2012 to become the second-largest market for tablet PC shipments, China will have 27% of the global tablet market in 2013 with shipments of 65 million units, driven by small local brands. However, North America will remain the largest market with a 35% share (85 million units) in 2013. In both China and North America, tablet PC shipments surpassed notebook PC shipments in 2012.
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The desktop and laptop will become a niche item. That's what people mean by "dying." Not that they'll completely disappear off the face of the earth, but rather will take a back seat and won't be the go-to computing device for the vast majority of the market.
 
pelo said:
The desktop and laptop will become a niche item. That's what people mean by "dying." Not that they'll completely disappear off the face of the earth, but rather will take a back seat and won't be the go-to computing device for the vast majority of the market.
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Yep, most peoples needs just don't include sitting down in one place with a keyboard and mouse and maxing out 32GB of RAM.

I don't know why people get so defensive. If anything they should be welcoming PCs going back to becoming a power user platform. The only thing that's going to suffer is big budget gaming.
 
Apparently the "Industry" thinks we are all pretty stupid. It's like dealing with some guy who has a memory disorder where he forgets everything that ever happened before when he wakes up each morning. Call it "50 First Purchases".

The GPU on my video card can operate 100 tablets simultaneously and it required to run the latest games.... the ones the "Industry" sold me yesterday... and today I should just switch over to a tablet and play solitaire, SLOWLY. Da Fuck. :rolleyes:
 
This website for some odd reason feels a need to defend the "PC," which I find even more hysterical.
 
People forget that the world doesn't operate in absolutes ... for tablets to succeed it is not necessary that PCs die ... if you went back 15 years or so the debate would have been about whether laptops were going to kill desktops (or go back about 30 years and it was about whether desktops were going to kill mainframes) ... now the debate is whether tablets are going to kill laptops ... unlike our violence in media debates, in this instance nothing is killing anything :p

Desktop PCs will continue (but they were already a small niche market and getting smaller, not disappearing, just dropping to a lower steady state level ;) )

Laptops had been growing (at the expense of desktops) but they now will shrink down to a smaller steady state level themselves

Tablets and phones will likely grow for awhile as they are both new enough they haven't reached obsolescence or saturation yet

This is not Highlander: The Personal Computer ... in our environment there can actually be more than one :D
 
I work in the architectural industry, our computers need to be pretty hefty with large/multiple monitors for these huge cad drawings... I don't see this changing anytime soon. We also keep on the bleeding edge, to keep up with competition, including graphics cards for 3d renderings/simulations. Some thing with most of the entertainment & arts industry (movies/games/etc...)

There are a few people here who use tablet but it's mostly in meeting so they can check emails and maybe bring up a pdf, although we have a large pc in each conference room hooked up to a 100' screen for anything serious.
 
Azhar said:
Meh, the author's just another guy who thinks tablets are out to replace PC instead of supplementing it.
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meh, he said: "My iPad works alongside this beast as support -- providing me notification updates for things like new emails."
 
Tablets, and the like are cute. But, at the moment I'm working in two editors, three server consoles, a debug session, and multiple browser tabs. Not to mention miscellaneous desktop apps running. All on 3 x 24" monitors, 1920 x 1200, no 1080 here. :p
 
I could totally see myself giving up a regular PC most of the time for a tablet, but not 100%.

First, a higher clock speed quad core next gen Atom, Ivy Bridge "Y", Haswell "Y" (or whatever AMD's equivalent product will be) in a 1.5lb form factor and decent resolution (1080p) 10-11" screen, running a regular OS version (BYO input devices) would suit many of my purposes.

I don't see the point of giving up an aging desktop with faster GPU and tons more memory to play games or run computationally intensive things like video encoding occasionally. For most things, I could definitely live with a full-function tablet. But who am I kidding, lol, my dream device would never be made at a reasonable price.
 
Youn said:
meh, he said: "My iPad works alongside this beast as support -- providing me notification updates for things like new emails."
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The overall point of the article is that he doesn't want tablets to replace computers. He wants tablets to supplement them (as he explained in your quote).

My point is that he's worried about nothing.
 
Koncrete said:
lol, the only thing I think is absurd about the article is he says "Yes, that’s eight terabytes." like that would impress anyone...

Wasn't is gates who said no one would need more then 350mb? or something like that
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It would impress those who've decided to stick with laptops or smartphone/tablets. Its not meant to impress you or me who are on an enthusiast site like this.

Gates said you wouldn't need more than 640k (Kilobytes) and really that's such an outdated mock at this point , Jobs has said far FAR more boneheaded ideas than Gates ever has.

It's nice to read an article for once where some idiot isn't just barfing out his love for his smartphone or tablet just because he can take a shit while surfing the web and sending email.

PC's aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
 
pelo said:
While that's true of a small portion of the population that tends to congregate here (and on other forums and tech sites), is it true for the vast majority of the market? I doubt that. They're quite fine with buying a shiny new gadget every two years while their desktop sits relegated to closet duties.
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Those people aren't really looking at things realistically. What exactly is the tablet going to replace? Netflix? Book Reading? Playing Angry Birds?

When it comes right down to it, you're forcing yourself to use a tablet. Anyone with a tablet who does something productive will have a laptop nearby. PCs were designed specifically for multi-tasking and productivity. Tablets were made for you to buy crap. iOS wasn't always even capable of multitasking until a few years ago, and Apple just stapled it on there.

Look at Windows 8, you can't even change the size of Metro apps. They're all full screen. Trying to have apps side by side doesn't even let you adjust the size. Great for tablets but awful for productivity.

People who think a tablet is going to replace their laptop/desktop never really did anything productive.

tablet-owner-meme-generator-tablet-does-all-the-important-things-i-do-facebook-netflix-web-my-laptop-is-useless-068f0a.jpg
 
Ashbringer said:
People who think a tablet is going to replace their laptop/desktop never really did anything productive.
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And when was the last time any of these people did anything productive on their PCs?

Most people are content users and content consumers, not content providers and have no need for anything productivity related. For these people, ease of use, lower prices and practicality beats out processing power, GPU power and the ability to configure their OS as they see fit.

And it's not like they don't have PCs. If they need their PC for a specific task (which isn't going to happen very often), they'll use it. The problem for the PC industry is that these same people aren't going to buy PCs like they do tablets and smartphones. In the US we've already gotten to a point where tablets outsell laptops which already outsell desktops 3-to-1.

So you aren't just wrong, you're ignoring the sales figures.
 
I can't believe heatlesssun hasn't shown up yet. Wait...put "Microsoft" in the title.
 
Its not about him, its about the mass market. The mass market does not care about 8 tb of data, they dont care about gaming because they have been sold on consoles, the fact is there is no proponent of the PC anymore because our largest proponent, microsoft cares more about consoles now.

If you do not have a major proponent you cant get mass market acceptance. Take MP3 players, they sat for years with a small space in best buy with companies like rio and archos, they were constantly under fire from CD players and the big dogs trying to push them down. Until apple came in and brought money and ads it never took off.

Tablets have so many market advantages over PCs, an individual company gets to sell you a disposable device so they know you will be back to buy a whole new one in 2 years. its small and cheap to make so they save on shipping etc... When you make everything in China being small so you can fit more in a container is a big advantage for costs, thats part of the reason companies shifted so fast away from CRTs. They will do the same to desktops. Desktops will probably end up being something that you can only build with server parts in 10 years or so.
 
It's also about price. Intel charges $15-$30 for their chipset but for that amount you can buy an entire ARM SoC. At >$200 for an i5 ULV that provides good performance in the x86 legacy environment (minus gaming, which it still stinks at) that's the cost of an entire Google Nexus 7" tablet. And it's got a better display. For the consumer, the Android app store and iOS app stores have more "apps" than does the huge mess of a landscape that is x86 legacy. It's also easier to search and safer as well.

So why does your average Joe need an i5 or a laptop when the tablet can fulfill (nearly) all of his computing needs? He doesn't. When he's collected enough money, which do you think he's likely to upgrade? The PC that gets seldom usage or the tablet he's clutching onto?

We've been saying for years that any processor in the last 5 years has enough power to cut through any task that the average person does on their PC. Well, this is just a reflection of that.
 
I find that tablets have a niche, and they're nice for that small niche but that's it.

They're good for travelling when you need to travel light, I guess. They're fun when you want to check up on a website or email quickly.

But they can't really replace computers, desktops or laptops. Laptops still give you a lot more productivity than a tablet can, and even tablets that have keyboard attachments don't give you the same wealth of options a fully featured laptop can.

Still, I have a 7 inch tablet that I take with me to work and use it for web browsing. Just don't expect any work to come out of it.
 
This is my PC. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My PC is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I master my life. My PC, without me, is useless. Without my PC, I am useless. I must use my PC true......
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Sums it up for me.
 
I know quite a few individuals who can use the tablet for almost everything they do.
I'm with the OP though, there simply is too much work to be done for a tablet.

The majority of individuals don't really need that kind of hardware, and are content to saving things to "the cloud".
 
I seldom use my tablet. I use mostly my desktop, then my laptop, then my phone and the tablet get the least amount of time.

But when I think about getting new shiny stuff, the phone comes first, then the tablet, then the desktop and the laptop is the last. Why? Simple... phones/tablets are evolving fast. I can get a new one and go all woooooooow. My desktop and laptop, on the other hand, won't give me that big of a wow factor, because they're fast enough already. They'll operate faster and all, but it's not noticeable. If I get a sexy Galaxy S3 on the other hand... sweet! A new tablet, not the chinese cheap slow ass I have? Take my money!
 
It will take a loooonnnngg time for tablets to be as powerful as pcs imo. Can you imaging a tablet with an i7 3970, 64gb of ram, 1tb ssd, 690 gtx video card!?
 
I bought a tablet, because i thought it would be cool, and i have the money to spend. Well, i used it for a while, but carrying it plus a laptop made me realize that the tablet did only one thing better than the laptop, and that was to boot faster. Sorry, two things, the tablet had a better battery lifetime, but that's mainly because the laptop is 5 years old and the batteries are the stock batteries that came with the system. Still 1.5 hours on 5 year old rechargeable battery is pretty damn good.

So i ended up giving the tablet to a friend who would actually use it (after it had sat in my house for 4 months unused). Sure, for some people it may fill a need, but for me it was a waste of space and just something else to lug around with me.
 
There will always be a place for a laptop, a tablet, a desktop, etc.. Just like there will always a place for a theather, a tv, a computer, etc..
 
Most people who come to this website probably can't live without their PC, but the average user probably could.
 
It's all what you do with it, I have to be able to run Visual Studio 2012, eclipse and several platform emulators (The android one is a real dog) on the go. As the result my "tablet" is an Alienware m14x R2. It was basically the most portable option I could put up with quad core systems with decent graphics don't really come any smaller.

Tablets are for lite usage, if you never do anything else that's just fine. Some of us need more, this is why I think that laptops will replace desktops and tablets will replace laptops.
 
pelo said:
And when was the last time any of these people did anything productive on their PCs?

Most people are content users and content consumers, not content providers and have no need for anything productivity related. For these people, ease of use, lower prices and practicality beats out processing power, GPU power and the ability to configure their OS as they see fit.

And it's not like they don't have PCs. If they need their PC for a specific task (which isn't going to happen very often), they'll use it. The problem for the PC industry is that these same people aren't going to buy PCs like they do tablets and smartphones. In the US we've already gotten to a point where tablets outsell laptops which already outsell desktops 3-to-1.

So you aren't just wrong, you're ignoring the sales figures.
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Because they outsell means tablets are good enough?

We all know why tablets outsell laptops and desktops, and that's because you don't need that extra power. At least not yet anyway. Even tablets will go through this eventually. Then at that point the eyephone will replace everything, or is that the Google glasses?
Futurama-eyephone_1.jpg


The reasons why any human being would want a PC over a tablet is.

#1 (Keyboard + mouse) > touch screen

Seriously, you can't type documents on touch screens. At least not very big ones. Don't give me that blue-tooth keyboard crap, cause that's a laptop with a crappy OS.

#2 A lot of things you do on the PC for free will cost you. Tablets are designed to suck money from you. There are applications that I enjoy for free on my PC but have to pay for Android or iOS? Or sometimes pay to get all the features. :rolleyes:

#3 GAMES! Cause people from First Person shooters, to farmville, to SIMs will want to play their games, and tablets suck. The only reason why anyone plays a game on them is to kill time. Not to enjoy the game. If you wanted to enjoy the game then you'd get a 3DS or a Vita.

Why you think games like Angry Birds or Fruit Ninja are popular on those devices? These are games you can get in and right out, and made perfectly for the touchscreen controls. But hardly any other games work best on a touch screen.
 
Ashbringer said:
#3 GAMES! Cause people from First Person shooters, to farmville, to SIMs will want to play their games, and tablets suck. The only reason why anyone plays a game on them is to kill time. Not to enjoy the game. If you wanted to enjoy the game then you'd get a 3DS or a Vita.

Why you think games like Angry Birds or Fruit Ninja are popular on those devices? These are games you can get in and right out, and made perfectly for the touchscreen controls. But hardly any other games work best on a touch screen.
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Although I would agree that graphically intensive games are not the Raison d'être for tablets yet, there are actually some very engaging games, especially in the strategy genre:

Tower Defense games - Toy Defense, Plants vs Zombies, Fieldrunners, Defender Chronicles, Anomaly Warzone, etc are all quite good and engaging on a tablet

Card Style games - Solitaire, Cribbage, Samurai Blood Show, Alexandria Blood Show, Assassin's Creed Recollection, Shadow Era, Elder Sign etc are also quite nice

Board games - Settlers of Caton, Monopoly, Yahtzee, and others translate very well

Strategy games - Highborn, Osmos, Wesnoth, Slay, Wasted Land, Total War Battles, and others are also well implemented

There are even some action games like Zombie Gunship that are quite fun. You already mentioned the physics style games which work extremely well on phones and tablets.

I would agree though that if you only play MMOs or FPS type games it will be a several generations of products before they are more competitive in those areas. But for more turn based games that don't require bleeding edge graphics, tablets sometimes work better than a PC since the games can be played more mobile than with a fixed computing device.

I think people get too hung up on one device replacing another when for most people your electronic devices create an ecosystem that supports all your entertainment needs. :cool:
 
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