I feel the same way. I work for the gov, and we keep our data local. BUT for those datasets that get shared with the public, that goes to the cloud and we do periodic updates of it.
Working on it as I write.
For most corporate use cases, there is almost never a reason to purchase a desktop. Most of the activities you need a computer to do can be virtualized and pushed to the cloud or data centers.
If you need a large monitor, a docking station with one or more monitors will do.
I have a desktop PC at home because the main thing I use it for is gaming.
I’ve felt this as well. I don’t buy/play a ton of videogames, but generally in the past what has always forced me to purchase a new PC was having my current computer suddenly no longer up to the challenge of running some game I wanted to play. But I think it’s been about 4+ years since I’ve purchased a new PC and games still keep running fine, even at the highest graphics setting
Stand alone cameras are useful for people who need a level of professionalism or artistry that can’t be performed by a phone’s camera. What the camera phone replaces is the cheap, disposable or Poleroid camera useful for taking low-quality vacation photos and whatnot.
My prediction is when a cellphone can render a realtime, high resolution, 100% photorealistic game (we’re talking game quality years or even decades away), then maybe PCs will become obsolete.
Until then, there will always be graphics whores that want something better, which only their PC can provide.
This. Desktops will still be around for those who prefer them, but laptops will be considered the standard if they aren’t already. I, too, have had a docked laptop at work for years and years and my kids have no interest in our family desktop. My wife, a nurse, can probably count on a two hands the number of times she uses a desktop in a year - it’s all tablets, phones and the occasional laptop.
And any time you lose your internet connection, you’ll be unable to get at any of your files or records.
No thanks.
My last desktop had a dial up connection.
As a slight tangent / nitpick:
“Photorealistic” is not, and never has been, a good benchmark.
Because we have been able to render some things photorealistically for decades e.g. a flawless chrome cube on a flawless, infinite marble surface.
Meanwhile being able to render any real-world situation well enough to fool a human, might be something we get ever closer to, but don’t actually hit, for a very, very long time.
So I guess we need to say something like “When a cellphone can generate a human face speaking and showing expressions, of a quality that is indistinguishable from a real actor”.
It is longer though…
I have a full-sized keyboard, a mouse and a 27" screen. I could go with a larger screen. Using a mouse on a portable surface is a problem. I love touchscreens but given a choice between touchscreen or mouse, I pick mouse. (And I’d really like to have both.)
I don’t see anything in the near future that has these properties that isn’t something sitting on a desk.
In terms of near-SciFi tech, maybe there’ll be implanted systems so that all the I/O is inside the head. Then I’ll give up my desktop.
Both is best. Actually all three, if you rope in the keyboard. I see so many people who are a slave to their mouse, and it really slows them down. Instead of using a cursor key to scroll down, they’ll mouse over to the scroll bar on a window, take a couple of seconds to line it up, and then drag down. Or they’ll mouse to the start menu to open a copy of Windows Explorer instead of using <WIN>+E. Entering an address? They’ll mouse over and click in each text box, one at a time, instead of using the tab key to move between text boxes.
There are admittedly some situations where a mouse is better than a keyboard - but often there are situations where a touchscreen is better than a mouse. Having all three, and being flexible enough to switch between them depending on the situation, really speeds up interaction with the PC.
Low quality in the sense of composition, etc… Most modern phone cameras have remarkably high technical quality when compared to a lot of point-and-shoot cameras of just a few years ago.
I think ultimately **Ashtura **is right; when serious gaming (or other computationally intensive tasks) is possible on a phone/tablet platform, then desktops will wither away. Until then though, there’ll be a market for desktops for gaming, video/photo editing, simulations (at work), compiling, etc…
Even then, I suspect most people will still hook up keyboards, mice, and monitors to them to make the user experience better.
I still stand by my comment that for the foreseeable future, the proportion of desktops to tablets isn’t going to change too much, because as others have pointed out, processor speed improvements have slowed somewhat, and there are significant challenges to powering and cooling the more powerful processors in use today in a laptop/tablet format. On top of that, all three formats (desktop, laptop, smartphone) have been around for at least a decade, and in the case of laptops and desktops, nearly 3 decades, so those who would have switched, already have. And there’s nothing new driving adoption of tablets over desktops that wasn’t there say… 5 years ago. At best, what we’ll see is some number of desktops crap out due to age and be replaced by tablets for people who couldn’t afford a tablet 9 years ago.
Plus, lower-end desktops are CHEAP- you can get a desktop that has a processor faster than the absolute top of the line 7 years ago, a one terabyte hard drive, 16 gb of ram, and all the usual I/O capability. Plus, it comes with Windows 10 installed and with a mouse and keyboard, all for $200. That’s the sort of price range where there’s no real downside to having both a $200 PC and a smartphone to do what they do best.
A docking station does not require a fixed screen and keyboard. My colleagues who use them just stick their laptops in some cradle and use input/display like I do with my work desktop.
And I’m always surprised at how small that desktop is. It’s smaller and lighter than my laptop. I probably had larger floppy drives in the 90s. A powerhouse it is not.
For a huge number of tasks (CAD, for example), the processor in a phone is more than capable, but using a screen that small would be an exercise in masochism.
So, for that reason alone, until there is VR that is more than a toy, a desktop with a large monitor is going to be necessary.
Or a phone connected to a large monitor?
I’ve used PoweDirector for Android, its practical utility is pretty strictly limited to trimming video that was shot on the phone and stringing clips together. Basically Windows Movie maker level of usability. I would use it, I guess, if I was travelling light and wanted to upload a quick and basic vlog or something.
Hence why I love my 4TB portable hard drives.
One of the things I use it for (after trying and rejecting several other Android options) is stabilizing shaky video. It also does chroma-keying if your hardware supports it. It is both more powerful and useful than you describe and never intended for as a professional production tool.
My colleagues and I all have two 20 inch monitors. GIS (sort of like cad, but map centric.)
Current phone operating systems can’t handle the stuff I do, and would probably overheat anyway.
Some day? Maybe. But as soon as a new operating system - processor speed is developed, someone builds an application that uses all of it.
I simply cannot conceive of a situation where people who need to use computers for professional work - photo editing, audio editing, graphic design layouts, managing anything that requires multiple windows to be open, to name a few definitions of “work” - would be better served with a smaller, rather than larger, screen. For that reason alone, the desktop PC won’t be obsolete.
I can’t imagine full-size monitors or full-size keyboards becoming obsolete, but will the thing that runs them always be a desktop computer as we know it?