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Originally Posted by Yamcha  I doubt it, I think it only applies to people who only use computers for surfing the web, otherwise, working with documents, designing, or gaming anything work related imo is harder on mobile devices, using word or photoshop would be a horrible experience on a laptop, considering theres that track pad.. |
I never use the track pad on my laptop, and for Photoshop a mouse still is not all that great. A Wacom style tablet is the only way to go if you are serious. I do agree that desktop PCs are on the decline, but will exist for many years to come as the level of performance and storage capacity simply cannot be made portable to the moment. This will change in time though, it just seems that with every new generation of hardware there is less of a requirement to upgrade (outside of professional and enthusiast spaces). Most people with P4 or Athlon based machines who are the typical WAWP (Web and Word Processing) type of users have not had that constant NEED for a faster machine that drove sales since the advent of the PC Market inthe 80's through to about 2005 or so when things really were fast enough to handle WAWP tasks with ease. A modern cheapo laptop with integrated video is still worlds faster than what is needed to perform WAWP tasks. Supply (of available computing power) I believe will really start to outstrip demand (of users) if it has not already started to occur in the mainstream PC market.
I waited five years since my last major update cycle, prior to that I was building a new box every 12 months to keep up. Now I can max out 90% of my games faster than the refresh rate of my displays can show. And even for most modern games the CPU (even most dual cores) are not what limits the frame rate, it's just the video card(s). With smaller and more efficient manufacturing technology it will become possible to put monster GPUs in notebooks, that I believe is inevitable. The only spot I have a real need for more processing power is when encoding HD video or processing thousands of photos, again here's the professional requirement showing up, and it's another area that may be pushed to the GPU for processing thanks to emerging technologies such as CUDA and Open CL.
Anyways to stop myself from continuing this rant; I do believe the desktop PC for the majority of users will become irrelevant. I am pretty sure my current desktops will be amongst my last, as the end is on the horizon...just not yet :)