IBM Declares the End of the PC Era

I don't think so, it will probably be similar to how it is now. People have low powered laptops and tablets, but most have a high powered desktop computer to go back to for the heavy duty stuff. Unless they're able to fit full fledged CPUs and GPUs into tablets, and unless they figure out a way to input as well as a keyboard and mouse, the PC isn't dead.
 
I remember many years ago, an article entitled PTOOIGBO in a weekly professional IT publication. It prophesied the end of programming, someone having created a language called TLO - "The Last One". TLO generated code and so it was claimed that no other program would ever need to be written. The title of the article (PTOOIGBO) stood for, "Pull The Other One It's Got Bells On!" Twenty years later people are still writing programs.
 
To paraphrase a famous person, "When I die, they will have to pry my Microsoft Mouse out of my cold dead hand".

I missed the actual "PC" but got on board with my first homemade computer, the "XT Clone" and it's been a love affair ever since.
But like with every love affair, there are good days and some NOT-SO-GOOD days.

I look at the new phones and tablets like they were all made by "Mattel". Toys, not to be taken seriously.

Even laptops (and I own four of them) are seriously lacking in pure "POWER". Their only saving grace is their portability.

:cool:
 
To paraphrase a famous person, "When I die, they will have to pry my Microsoft Mouse out of my cold dead hand".

I missed the actual "PC" but got on board with my first homemade computer, the "XT Clone" and it's been a love affair ever since.
But like with every love affair, there are good days and some NOT-SO-GOOD days.

I look at the new phones and tablets like they were all made by "Mattel". Toys, not to be taken seriously.

Even laptops (and I own four of them) are seriously lacking in pure "POWER". Their only saving grace is their portability.

:cool:

I hear ya! I was thinking of getting an Ipad2, a friend at work has one so I talked to him about his. I found out there is no flash and video has to be quick time, that's a deal breaker for me. I think I'll give one of those Kindle Fire's a try for web surfing and keep my beefy desktop for everything else.
 
IBM had a good run when it came to PC's.
I got my first IBM PC when I was around 3 - 4 years, totally loved it. Still got in the basement :)
 
For portability, a net-book is the nuts, but don't try to watch a DVD movie on one. They don't have DVD drives. But hey, neither do those expensive phones.
But they do have USB ports and think of all the gadgets you can plug in there, like drives, printers, scanners, etc.

I'm not too surprised that IBM dumped their PC. The prices for their parts, compared to the Japanese stuff, were exorbitant.
$900 for a motherboard? Ya gotta be kidding me! As soon as people found out that they could buy the cloned parts so much cheaper and build their own PC's, IBM started a downward spiral.

True, the IBM PC is dead, but the Microsoft Windows compatible personal computer is NOT.

:cool:
 
As our computing lives move onto the cloud, raw computing power becomes less and less important. The intense computing is happening on the server side and not on your home computer.
This is indeed turning our computing world upside down. But in an ever more interconnected society, is it all that surprising?

By no means will people stop using personal computers. Rather, how they use them, and for what purposes, is always evolving and changing. The need to buy a desktop has fallen away for a lot of people, who choose to store their data and do their daily business on laptops -- both at home and in the office environment.

Users of Windows, Mac, and Linux, all still use computers to produce something. The vision that people who declare "the end of the PC" have is a belief that portable, Internet-enabled devices will begin to take up the roles normally associated with a PC. Processor power and RAM have become less important, according to proponents of this idea, because those hardware factors become less and less important the more we rely on downloaded data from the Internet.

However, very few individuals currently have Internet access that exceeds or even reaches 100Mbit/s. This is roughly the connection type that was associated with home networks not too long ago using Cat5 wiring. Home networks can now achieve gigabit access speeds using Cat6 and newer network interface cards or wireless-N routers. However, there is a big difference between 100Mbit/s and DDR3 - 8,500MB/s - lets not even talk about FSB.

It is my belief that people will still need desktop PC's and now, strong laptops with dedicated graphics and a high-end chipset, in order to produce and deliver content to the web, as well as continuing to enjoy high end video streaming, games, and so on. There is no reason to spell out the extinction of the personal computer, other than for marketing purposes.

It is interesting that it was Apple that decided the era of the PC is over, when they are in fact using Intel and IBM-based computers with fancy aesthetics to sell their home consumer line of computers. That is right - MacBooks and nearly every computer not yet powered by ARM-architecture is using the PC model. PowerPC, the design that was used by Apple, was completely abandoned, and you can still see elements of UNIX design in MacOS even though it is proprietary software.

What is interesting, in my view, is how people are going to be using computers over the next decade. Will people continue to rely on the mouse and keyboard? (A seemingly unstoppable human interface device) Or will people be willing to adopt the touch screen mentality that is about to hit the market with the release of Windows 8 and newer operating systems? I have no doubt that people will continue to use Microsoft Windows for their daily business, and it is just a matter of software catching up to a lot of hardware development.

Programmers have found ways to scale back system requirements for nearly everything: powerful games can run with minimal settings and still use DirectX 9, even though they could make use of DX11 for a better experience. You can thank gaming consoles like XBox and Playstation 3 for these limitations in the gaming world. As far as productivity suites go, it is still important to have a lot of memory, CPU power, and graphics: for professional photo editing, video editing, virtual machine testing, programming, and more.

So, as it has always been, it is my opinion that PCs will still be needed by anyone who uses a computer for more purposes than e-mail, browsing the web, or watching videos.
 
In the early 80's, the IBM AT was all the rage, in businesses all across the country. (the USA, anyway)

The homemade computer had not yet made a serious impact on the PC industry, but it was gaining popularity,
especially with the "techno nerds and electronics enthusiasts". The most popular computer of the day was still the
Commodore 64. I created a very successful business, repairing and modifying the lowly little C-64.
Finally I had a growing need for a computer that would run DBase III. So I scrounged around and came up with
enough parts to build myself an IBM XT clone.
I've built my own PC's ever since then. The only PC I ever bought off of the store shelf, was the little Acer Aspire ONE, Netbook.

IBM was always way too high priced and a step behind the Japanese with innovations. So it comes as no surprise to me that they finally threw in the towel, so to speak. It had to be a good move on their part.

Cheers Mates!

:cool:
 
This is a failure to properly analyze...or maybe a failure to analyze at all the relevant market segments. There is a market segment that no longer needs PC computers because there are better alternatives that fill needs but this is not the entire market. Only a segment. Period.
 
I'll believe it when I see it. The PC is not dead, nor will it be anytime in the near future. Notebook/Netboot PC's are great on the go, but at home, the PC is king. When one is bumping 50 years old (w/failing eyesight), it's kinda hard to read on those 7 to 11 inch screens, and forget those smartphones. One who is used to using a 18 to 22 inch monitor (regardless of age) is going to find it hard to adjust to those small screens.

Recently, this month, I bought a ThinkPad T42 to run my older OS's on, it has a 14 inch screen, that's as low as I can tolerate, and not for many hours then.

Plus, a well configured PC can easily plow through what would bog those portable computers down. There are some fairly high powered notebooks (16GB DDR3 RAM, 3GB DDR5 video card, recent i7) but expect to pay a lot for them (at least $1,500, possibly more). Even then, one has the heat factor to consider, a notebook cannot run 24/7 for months on end w/o overheating & possible wear on parts. I know this firsthand, because I bought a MSI FX603, a decent notebook for the money ($750), for the purpose of folding (folding@home members knows what I'm referring to), and after 3 months of non-stop folding, my GPU started overheating, causing the notebook to crash & BSOD in the middle of a job.

The notebook was (& still is) under warranty, so they gave me a new one (not a refurb), after seeing the damage. I was told that they had never seen a GPU in that kind of condition after only 4 months of use, so they assumed that it was the card itself. Actually, I totally wiped the drive and reinstalled the OS to remove any traces of my folding activity.

So there's a fine example of why the PC's going nowhere, portables can't get the job done. Same with cars & trucks, the smaller ones are more fuel efficient, but put a boat or camper behind one, turn the A/C on, and watch your tach nearly red line just to keep up with the flow of traffic. Not to mention that you'll probably use almost as much as fuel as a proper sized car or truck for the job.

The bottom line is, the PC's going nowhere.

Cat
 
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Yup, and in certain parts of the world, it's just now coming into its own.

I know of one Christian organization that's refurbishing old PC's and sending them to Missionaries in Africa, by the semi-trailer load.

I have to work on just about every type of PC made, from the big $5000+ servers to the lowly little Netbooks and I can say with some authority, that my home-built PC will smoke most of them.
It's the last one I built, just before I retired, after being in the PC building business since the early 80's.

This summer, I took out my motherboard and replaced a whole line of bulging 5v capacitors, put new heat-sink grease on my CPU, cleaned and re-oiled all 11 of my cooling fans and put her back together. It's like a brand new PC now, just purring along like a kitten with a full stomach. No "Gadget" will ever replace a good running desktop PC.
And I surely agree about those small screens. I have both a 9" netbook and a 7" Tablet and my eyes begin to water after about ten minutes looking at either of them. They are both fun little toys, but certainly not "Computers".

I'm certainly not a snob about OS's either. Even though I'm on my main PC right now, running XP-Pro-SP3, with a Vista-Look theme, in my shop, I'm running a 2005 vintage Compaq desktop PC with a single core CPU, 2 gigs of ram and a 500gig SATA II hard drive, with Windows 8/DP on it, and it's running just great! I did upgrade that little PC from just 512 megs of ram and an old 80gig IDE hard drive, before installing Win-8. The Win-8/DP version I installed is a 64 bit version, but it's running on that old 32 bit mobo, just fine. Go figure! lol
I just ran a .reg script to shutdown the Metro UI, that looks like a cell phone and it's running now, looking very much like XP Classic.
MyDeskTop.jpg


So far it's been an amazing OS, even installing my Epson Workforce 500 printer from its own driver cache. I'm really enjoying testing it. Cant' wait for the public Beta!

Cheers Mates, from Windows XP

:cool:
PS: So one of two things is going to happen, I'll either die soon still running XP or I'll die a few years later, running Windows 8.
 
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That's one cool looking Windows 8 DP version that you have! I tried it out, but will wait for the beta to do any further testing. Not stable enough for my preferences at this time.

However, the PC will live on!

Cat
 
IBM has gone mad. How can PC dies. out of 100 computers, 90+ are PC's. I don't know how can anyone says that pc is dying and macs are emerging
 
It's all just hype, just like what happened to the gas prices. The PC OEM's just wants to sell more mobile devices, because there's more money in it. So by making blanket statements like "it's the end of the PC era", they're trying to convince the crowd that it's true, so that they'll hop on to the bandwagon, to get "in tune with the times".

Fact is, the PC is going nowhere. Look at the consumer electronic stores, yes, you'll see more mobile devices than ever, but there will be PC's also. Many computer users, including myself, needs a PC (desktop). I do have 2 notebooks, one of which is my best workhorse. But I can do more with my desktop.

And check out Newegg's line of PC's & kits to build them with, they have a massive supply of PC parts. It wouldn't surprise me if Newegg is the #1 distributor of it's kind. Everything that one needs to build a PC is right there, on one site. The separate components may arrive from different locations, as the company has several distribution centers scattered across the US. But one can order them all on one site. And their line of products is normally up to date.

The only negative about Newegg that I have is the way they ship their hard drives (the OEM, "bare" drives). The drives are often placed in a box with a thin later of foam "peanuts", with a loosely wrapped air bag around them, with another thin layer of peanuts on top. I've had 2 HDD's delivered at my front door, one was beat all to hell, another had a hole in the box (peanuts were on the floor). It's a miracle that either ran, but they both did (the WD Caviar Black had to be RMA'd after only 3 or 4 months). At today's HDD prices, I hope that Newegg has changed this practice.

The one that I ordered from Amazon, was carefully packaged, had plastic protectors on each end of the HDD, and was in the proper size box, so that it wouldn't slide around. If I had to order another HDD today, Amazon would be my first place to look for one, for that reason alone.

On the other hand, my notebook that I bought from Newegg was carefully packaged. But that's the difference between OEM or "bare" parts & retail packaging. Customers who buys "retail" packaged HDD's had less RMA's, and were overall more satisfied. The biggest complaint was that many pointed out that there were the same "bare" HDD's for $20 to $50 less.

I'm glad that SSD's are retail packaged, as that will be my next major purchase, and it'll probably come from Newegg. Speaking of which, they sell a lot of them, too. Either to upgrade a notebook or add as a boot drive to a PC.

As far as Mac's emerging, I don't know, as I'm not a fan of their overpriced products. But I do know this, the PC will probably outlive us all. It's going nowhere. Mobile computers are good for many things, but how many multiple 22 inch monitors do you see plugged into them (makeshift desktops)? As my first words in this post were, it's all hype.

Cat
 
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