BBC: Does the PC have a future?

[SenseOfTumour]

I think the main 'problem' is people have finally woken up and realised, you don't NEED to spend $2000 to play minesweeper any more.

Buy a cheap to mid range office PC for the CPU and memory, and then add a mid range video card, and bam you have a great gamer pc.

'Gamer' PCs sold by companies like Dell and other large PC vendors are generally stupidly overpriced and overpowered for what you need, yet manage to still skimp on hard drive space and memory, really? you've put a $200 video card in there but can't give me 4GB of memory? Screw you.

Honestly, buy a reasonably cheap machine with at least 500gb HDD and 4GB of memory and quad core or i3 or up, and then just add a video card. IF the vendor has any self respect at all, adding a video card after purchase will not void your warranty. I always check beforehand, and then tell them that's why I'm not buying from them, if they consider a small, easy upgrade enough reason to strip me of my warranty.

Personally, I went with Novatech, in the UK, they sell both motherboard bundles, which you can just put in an old case if you have a decent PSU left over, or barebones bundles, which you just add a HDD, DVD Drive, and video card to. I ordered one, 10 minutes later I'd added my bits and was installing windows.

Sounds like a bit of an ad, but they've been good to me and supplied decent gear at fair prices, and when my parents PC had problems under warranty, they've sorted it out quickly.

 

[The Good Doctor]

"In these tight times, people appear unwilling to spend cash on something they already have. Evidence suggests they are using it to buy the gadgets they do not own - such as tablets and smartphones."

...what? It makes sense, but at the same time it just... doesn't.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

Well I own a desktop and a laptop and I vastly prefer my desktop for pretty much everything. Despite being as much of a techhead as I am, I really can't get into mobile technology. Maybe if I were some kind of hipster living in the city or some high powered business man trying to juggle 50,000 things at once.
I will always enjoy my PC!

 

[The Lugz]

the pc will only die out when a tablet can super-compute
until then it will just loose some market share to people that like to dream the dream of being independent from the wall socket

as to when, how or why exactly i cant comment, i don't have a crystal ball but i imagine it's quite a few years off yet

even if a pc is considered an old design i'll probably keep using it until something out-specs it
i'm a performance kinda guy i don't really care about mobility because if i'm not at home i'm busy so carrying around a mobile gaming device really isn't viable for me personally

ive been keeping a close eye on the tegra systems, and i think they have promise if they can be scaled up and die shrunk for more power and efficiency

but even then, i don't see how i can fit optical drives, array of usb ports, gaming pads, full keyboards, powered hd sound-cards supporting hd audio devices or phantom powered microphones
( you just try plugging a 600ohm headset into your ipad :S )
also, where do i store my 4 terrabytes of pictures, podcasts and assorted other media?
that's before you do anything outlandish and plug an xbox controller or simulator or flight-stick controls into it
and honestly, none of that is 'portable'

the pc has a place, and it's for enthusiasts who like immersion in games, want to multi-task programs
encode podcasts or home videos, record sound and have beyond hd quality audio and video, rediculus display sizes, and or design with programs, upgrade nearly endlessly with platform designed components so you never go out of date
run the latest games at the most intensive possible settings, with more mods than original content

everyone else is happy with their basic audio, touch screen inputs and apps and that's fine for it's purpose
but they have a long way to go before they can dominate the atx platform on any technical level

and this has been mulled over so many times it's unreal, anyone that starts these arguments isn't looking at the whole picture
yes, you can do ALOT of cool stuff with very little resources, great.
but it isn't replacing the atx platform, also most people have never experienced what a decent pc is capable of to comment on it in the first place, partly because the news is printing crap like this making your average consumer more likely to believe it, which drives pc manufacturers to produce ever cheaper pc's to try and entice customers
back, which in turn makes this whole mess a self-forfilling prophecy..
ever hear of a bank run?

protip:
news corporations have been reporting half truths and complete lies since their conception and have VERY LITTLE actual practical knowledge of the millions of topics they report on
protip2
allot of those mobile devices are being bought by people that also have pc's already, but no mobile device thus
'mobile devices are outselling pc's so they're biting the dust'
is hardly surprising, and a terrible misinterpretation of the data

 

[SyphonX]

Yea, it has a very bright future, actually.

The same type of articles/people harp on magazines, saying it's "dead", when it's not. It seems there are more and more people trying to justify their nearly $1000 a year "I" Device habit, on top of other "mobile devices".

I'm a PC gamer, I get a nice rig that lasts me about, 3-4 years, maybe more. Every few years I get a new fancy video card, maybe a new CPU. Yet, with all the harassment that I "waste my money", that I'm 'just a nerd' etc, at least my PC does everything. I can't justify that with iPhones and iPads, or what have you, which I do not buy at all. I also subscribe to magazines, imagine that. Most of my hobby money is split between books, of the comic and literature kind, and gaming.

Almost always (always), it seems PC attackers have a nasty mobile device habit, clinging to the next new fad. They spend so so much money on this stuff, and they are always the people trying to insult PC'ers.

It's just a big 'conspiracy' (if you want to call it that) to get everyone onto mobile. Misery loves company, in my opinion.

If PCs were "dying", then why are all the hardware sites still flourishing and growing?

 

[arrapippol]

One thing that I know PC's do a lot better than consoles, Real Time Strategy. Although I hear that they're on the slide down hill as well, so i don't know. Technology is just getting smaller, computers used to be the size of a room, now they're the size of a pocket. And they'll probably keep getting smaller.

 

[EternalFacepalm]

"Given that consoles are less technologically sophisticated than PCs they will be programmed for the lowest common denominator which, from a commercial point of view, makes sense," he said. "However, it means they are not pushing modern PC hardware."

Then I stopped reading.
Battlefield 3? Anyone?

Honestly, of course it does. That shouldn't even be a question. Just because you can play Fruit Ninja on a tablet doesn't mean the PC is useless.
[sub]these analysts are fucking stupid >.>"[/sub]

 

[twistedheat15]

1: This isn't gaming related. It's not talking about the future of PC Gaming.

2: It's not PCs in general. It's the desktop. That's what's being talked about.

3: I agree. With everything going portable, and laptops becoming more and more powerful, desktop PCs are becoming less and less practical, in terms of not-gaming related things. Ironically, PC Gaming is probably the biggest thing keeping people on desktops as opposed to laptops and tablets.

4: I look forward to hoards of PC Gamers coming in, foaming at the mouth and getting their raging responses ready, trying to defend ze glorious Master Race to come storming in with knee-jerk responses without actually reading the article, thinking "desktop" and "PC" are synonymous and cannot tell the difference.

The way everyone started listing what systems they owned, and their thoughts on gaming with it, I thought I was the only one who noticed that the report wasn't nothing about PC gaming and it's future among consoles and smart phones.

As far as the article, aside from gaming, and strong video editing/graphic design ect, ya can pretty much use a laptop to do everything most normal ppl would need it for, so I can see desktops taking a major drop as laptops, smart phones and tablets get stronger and stronger over the years.

 

[Gamblerjoe]

The PC will always be there for intelligent people who want a quality gaming machine that will last. The reason I like my PC over all other gaming mediums is that I got a lot of bang for the buck building it myself, and with a huge Coolermaster case, it runs at a nice low temp. Its just simple thermodynamics that when you cram your components into a smaller space, your CPU will run much hotter. The cooler it runs, the less wear and tear it takes.

Also, consoles can not produce the same visual quality and fidelity that a decent gaming PC can. I understand why people would prefer a gaming laptop to a PC, but to me portability is not a good enough reason to pay a premium for a machine that gets hotter than hell.

 

[Risingblade]

Yup at least until laptops get better batteries and stop becoming raging infernos! Man those things love to overheat :/

 

[Gamblerjoe]

"Given that consoles are less technologically sophisticated than PCs they will be programmed for the lowest common denominator which, from a commercial point of view, makes sense," he said. "However, it means they are not pushing modern PC hardware."

Then I stopped reading.
Battlefield 3? Anyone?

Honestly, of course it does. That shouldn't even be a question. Just because you can play Fruit Ninja on a tablet doesn't mean the PC is useless.
[sub]these analysts are fucking stupid >.>"[/sub]

Yeah, I pretty much just skimmed it after that point. A lot of their logic is flawed. First of all, the industry has not stopped pushing hardware. Thats ridiculous. If they stopped pushing hardware, my graphics card would have cost so much more, but it was only $120 since newer models keep coming out every year. Also, hardware is way ahead of software right now. We are actually at a bottleneck where across the board software cant even make full use of the insanely sophisticated hardware that exists. If you want to talk about the death of the PC, hardware is by far the wrong topic.

 

[Twilight_guy]

Becuse everyone knows that PC are only used to make games... AND NOTHING ELSE!

Desktops aren't going to die out. So long as their are companies that hire people to make software there will be desktops in some form. You might have a neato like tablet but it sure as hell is not going to do the kind of number crunching necessary for scientific computing or the rending necessary for modern CGI.

 

[CAPTCHA]

Ages of Computing

1st age: The Age of the Valve Switch - Old number crunchers like the Collosus and Enigma machines are invented.

2nd age: The Age of the Transistor Switch - Mainframe computing where large centeral machines were hooked up to multiple access terminals.

3rd age: The Age of the Intergrate Circuit (silicon chip) - self contained machines built into cabinates.

4th age: The Age of the Microprocessor - Desktop PC and the beginings of ubiquitous computing.

5th age: The Age of Mobile Computing - Sophisticated communication networks allow for devices to act as a whole while remaining seperate entities.

6th age: The (theoretical) Age of Calm Computing - computes fade into the background preforming the task we desire without the need to interact whith them.

 

[ckam]

I think the PC would find a place for the serious people who want to get the most state-of-the-art materials that would be too big, at that time, for laptops and tablets to use.

 

[nyysjan]

Yup at least until laptops get better batteries and stop becoming raging infernos! Man those things love to overheat :/

I think the PC would find a place for the serious people who want to get the most state-of-the-art materials that would be too big, at that time, for laptops and tablets to use.

Laptops are PC's.

 

[samuraiweasel]

I want to argue against this, but I'm really struggling to think of anything I do on my PC that I couldn't do with something else. Play a specific few games maybe, that's about it.

Yes that is true, but the question is which would you rather do it on...

 

[Vivi22]

Perosnal Computing is here to stay. However with Laptop's now being capable of what they are, plus other gadgets like my smartphone and with what the Xbox 360 and PS3 are capable of I don't see a future for the desktop. Hell with the extra space I've added a small snooker table to my house.

Honestly, while other options (laptops and tablets) may be more suited to your casual PC user, I don't see desktops going anywhere anytime soon. Particularly in professions such as game development where you need a lot of power under the hood, and where using a laptop would be fairly ridiculous if only because battery life would be non-existent, and you could just about buy two desktops for the price of some of those high end laptops. You could possibly argue that cloud computing could replace it, but we certainly aren't there yet.

In the future, as things like battery life and the actual hardware itself improves we may be able to move completely away from desktops, but the PC will not be going anywhere any time soon.

The one thing my system has had upgraded several times (lemme count...on it's 5th) is the graphics card, and thats only because i buy midranged cards so i don't go spending £200+ on a card.

PC's will always be around and for one simple reason, a desktop has a hell lot more horsepower than a laptop or smartphone. That and a desktop doesn't go an overheat every few hours unlike alot of laptops i've owned.

You know, and this may be getting slightly off topic but, I understand the reasoning behind buying mid-ranged cards and just upgrading every few years, though I'm not sure it really saves a lot in the long run. Until last week I was using a GeForce 8800 GTS 512 MB card that I got four and a half years ago or so. It was basically top of the line at the time, bought for about $250 Canadian and was still running just about everything not named Metro 2033 on high settings. I think that's pretty good for a card that was that long in the tooth, though it's certainly not cheap each time you replace your cards, but you can get a bit more mileage out of them if you go fairly high-end. Mind you, I would probably never go as batshit crazy as getting two (or more of the highest end cards) and running them in SLI or something. That's a bit silly to be honest.

And I have to agree with you on laptops overheating. While I've never had one actually totally overheat and shut down, they do get a lot hotter simply from the smaller case and worse air flow. They also have a nasty tendency to clog with dust and hair, especially if you have pets which makes things worse. My sisters aluminum Macbook will actually get so hot you can't hold it in your lap if it's on too long.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Yes this makes total sense, everyone is going to do their work, CAD, Office, programming, video/photo-Editing and so on on mobile phones and tablets in the future

I feel my eyes starting to strain just thinking of trying to set up a full 3D scene for rendering on some pissy tiny screened portable device.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

In the future, as things like battery life and the actual hardware itself improves we may be able to move completely away from desktops

Well, no, not going to happen.

Fact is that no matter how good you make the hardware for portable devices the hardware for stationary computers will always be better. Miniaturisation always has it's costs, usually in capabilities, thermal retention and power supply...

oh yeah, there's also the fact you can just cram more hardware into a desktop sized case.

 

[Dexiro]

PC's might phase out a little but it's unlikely that they'll ever completely disappear. At the moment they're more reliable, more flexible (easy to upgrade) and having a keyboard and mouse that you can move around a desk will always be unbeaten.

If PC's are to disappear then laptops would be the alternative, but they've got a long way to go to match up. And they'd have to effectively turn into a PC once you place it on a desk.