As Spike Milligan said the reports of my death have been greatly
exaggerated much like the death of the PC. Moving on I have seen a few
interesting articles (some a bit clickbait) about the future of the PC
as we know it. One is less drastic in that it's looking at the demise of
the tower type system in favour of both laptops and more compact
solutions. That seems probably plausible as to me the advantage of my
tower system really rests in the ability to upgrade it. In my social
circle no one does that but instead if the feel they need a new machine
then they buy a new machine.

The second which I'm not so sure about is PC's moving to system on a
chip and less individual components. The reason I'm not sure about that
is I'm unclear as to the technical challenges involved in moving to a
new CPU architecture and problems of compatibility.

So any thoughts keeping in mind that in five years time everyone will
have forgotten about your predictions, well except for Spalls who will
add them to his dossier!

On Wednesday, October 12, 2022 at 4:42:39 AM UTC-7, JAB wrote:
> As Spike Milligan said the reports of my death have been greatly
> exaggerated much like the death of the PC. Moving on I have seen a few
> interesting articles (some a bit clickbait) about the future of the PC
> as we know it. One is less drastic in that it's looking at the demise of
> the tower type system in favour of both laptops and more compact
> solutions. That seems probably plausible as to me the advantage of my
> tower system really rests in the ability to upgrade it. In my social
> circle no one does that but instead if the feel they need a new machine
> then they buy a new machine.
>
> The second which I'm not so sure about is PC's moving to system on a
> chip and less individual components. The reason I'm not sure about that
> is I'm unclear as to the technical challenges involved in moving to a
> new CPU architecture and problems of compatibility.
>
> So any thoughts keeping in mind that in five years time everyone will
> have forgotten about your predictions, well except for Spalls who will
> add them to his dossier!

I'll move to a laptop when it costs similar to a desktop for the same
performance and specs, not 3x as much and suffers from heat, flex,
and dust build up issues.

- Justisaur

On Wed, 12 Oct 2022 12:42:38 +0100, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:

>As Spike Milligan said the reports of my death have been greatly
>exaggerated much like the death of the PC. Moving on I have seen a few
>interesting articles (some a bit clickbait) about the future of the PC
>as we know it. One is less drastic in that it's looking at the demise of
>the tower type system in favour of both laptops and more compact
>solutions. That seems probably plausible as to me the advantage of my
>tower system really rests in the ability to upgrade it. In my social
>circle no one does that but instead if the feel they need a new machine
>then they buy a new machine.

Is the PC dying again?!?? I just unburied my last computer, now I
gotta have another funeral for it?

The biggest threat to PCs isn't changing hardware; it's mobile gaming.
Mobile is huge. I mean, it's really, really big. IIRC, Activision
raked in about $8 billion USD last year and half of that was mobile...
and that number is just going to keep growing. Why do you think
Microsoft is so interested in them? It's not for "Call of Duty".

Big publishers are going to put increased emphasis on mobile gaming in
coming years, even if it means diminishing returns from console and PC
games. They almost have to do that; mobile is where the money is, and
it's their job to (say it with me!) 'maximize shareholder profits'.

So we might see fewer 'big name' games in the future... but does that
mean the PC is dead? Nope. It's more likely the consoles will die
first. But PCs? They have an ace in the hole: they can be used to do
work. Which means if you ever need to do your taxes, or create
anything more complex than a 10-second video, you'll want a PC. And,
hey, since you have a PC, maybe you'll want a game for it too? Can't
be doing your taxes all the time.

Will towers/desktops die off? Not anymore than they already have, I
think. They'll never die away completely, because desktops will always
be cheaper because they don't have integrated displays... and when it
comes to business, cheaper is better (it's harder for employees to
walk off with a company desktop too). Plus, you can hang a lot of
devices off (or in) a desktop.

>The second which I'm not so sure about is PC's moving to system on a
>chip and less individual components. The reason I'm not sure about that
>is I'm unclear as to the technical challenges involved in moving to a
>new CPU architecture and problems of compatibility.

PCs have been increasingly moving towards "system on a chip"; I mean,
in the old days, almost every thing a PC did required a separate
chipset, be it memory management, keyboard access, or disk drive
controllers. But these days, almost everything - sound, network,
serial - is integrated onto the motherboard, and increasingly those
subsystems are being integrated into "single-chip" solutions, which
allow for smaller (and cheaper!) boards. This trend will definitely
continue.

But, given the nature of the PC's use, there's a limit as to how far
you can take it. As a general purpose device, its upgradability is its
greatest strength, and it always takes a while before new features get
embedded into the system. So ethernet might be on the 'board, but
Super-neuro-netlink 3.0 (or whatever future technology gets invented)
will be an add-on card... which means you can't easily shrink the PC
down to handheld size without sacrificing what makes the device so
useful.

TL;DR: is the PC dying? No. Is it - and its market - changing?
Definitely... but that's been par for the course ever since it was
first made.

>So any thoughts keeping in mind that in five years time everyone will
>have forgotten about your predictions, well except for Spalls who will
>add them to his dossier!

It's not a dossier! It's a list of all your old usenet posts that
never get deleted because disk-space is cheap and I'm too lazy to
configure auto-purge ;-)

On 12/10/2022 15:19, Justisaur wrote:
> On Wednesday, October 12, 2022 at 4:42:39 AM UTC-7, JAB wrote:
>> As Spike Milligan said the reports of my death have been greatly
>> exaggerated much like the death of the PC. Moving on I have seen a few
>> interesting articles (some a bit clickbait) about the future of the PC
>> as we know it. One is less drastic in that it's looking at the demise of
>> the tower type system in favour of both laptops and more compact
>> solutions. That seems probably plausible as to me the advantage of my
>> tower system really rests in the ability to upgrade it. In my social
>> circle no one does that but instead if the feel they need a new machine
>> then they buy a new machine.
>>
>> The second which I'm not so sure about is PC's moving to system on a
>> chip and less individual components. The reason I'm not sure about that
>> is I'm unclear as to the technical challenges involved in moving to a
>> new CPU architecture and problems of compatibility.
>>
>> So any thoughts keeping in mind that in five years time everyone will
>> have forgotten about your predictions, well except for Spalls who will
>> add them to his dossier!
>
> I'll move to a laptop when it costs similar to a desktop for the same
> performance and specs, not 3x as much and suffers from heat, flex,
> and dust build up issues.
>

We did buy an early Notebook and it was pretty much rubbish to be honest
even after upgrading the RAM. To say it was underpowered/slow as a lazy
dog that had lost two legs, I'm not sure it even met that low
expectation. Our iPad on the other hand I really like.

On 12/10/2022 16:04, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
> On Wed, 12 Oct 2022 12:42:38 +0100, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:
>
>> As Spike Milligan said the reports of my death have been greatly
>> exaggerated much like the death of the PC. Moving on I have seen a few
>> interesting articles (some a bit clickbait) about the future of the PC
>> as we know it. One is less drastic in that it's looking at the demise of
>> the tower type system in favour of both laptops and more compact
>> solutions. That seems probably plausible as to me the advantage of my
>> tower system really rests in the ability to upgrade it. In my social
>> circle no one does that but instead if the feel they need a new machine
>> then they buy a new machine.
>
> Is the PC dying again?!?? I just unburied my last computer, now I
> gotta have another funeral for it?
>
> The biggest threat to PCs isn't changing hardware; it's mobile gaming.
> Mobile is huge. I mean, it's really, really big. IIRC, Activision
> raked in about $8 billion USD last year and half of that was mobile...
> and that number is just going to keep growing. Why do you think
> Microsoft is so interested in them? It's not for "Call of Duty".
>
> Big publishers are going to put increased emphasis on mobile gaming in
> coming years, even if it means diminishing returns from console and PC
> games. They almost have to do that; mobile is where the money is, and
> it's their job to (say it with me!) 'maximize shareholder profits'.
>
> So we might see fewer 'big name' games in the future... but does that
> mean the PC is dead? Nope. It's more likely the consoles will die
> first. But PCs? They have an ace in the hole: they can be used to do
> work. Which means if you ever need to do your taxes, or create
> anything more complex than a 10-second video, you'll want a PC. And,
> hey, since you have a PC, maybe you'll want a game for it too? Can't
> be doing your taxes all the time.
>

The angle that the sources were going for wasn't that the PC is going to
die but instead what will a PC become.

> Will towers/desktops die off? Not anymore than they already have, I
> think. They'll never die away completely, because desktops will always
> be cheaper because they don't have integrated displays... and when it
> comes to business, cheaper is better (it's harder for employees to
> walk off with a company desktop too). Plus, you can hang a lot of
> devices off (or in) a desktop.
>

This really wasn't that everything would be integrated but instead that
the form factor of a PC will just shrink to a small box which itself
isn't upgradable. Where I used to work it was interesting to see the
office over the corridor as a comparison between what our development
based office used, and needed, compared to the admin office. It really
was a different world as whereas we had almost a hootch-potch of PC's
theirs was just rows of the same Dell desktop and the same Dell monitor.

>> The second which I'm not so sure about is PC's moving to system on a
>> chip and less individual components. The reason I'm not sure about that
>> is I'm unclear as to the technical challenges involved in moving to a
>> new CPU architecture and problems of compatibility.
>
> PCs have been increasingly moving towards "system on a chip"; I mean,
> in the old days, almost every thing a PC did required a separate
> chipset, be it memory management, keyboard access, or disk drive
> controllers. But these days, almost everything - sound, network,
> serial - is integrated onto the motherboard, and increasingly those
> subsystems are being integrated into "single-chip" solutions, which
> allow for smaller (and cheaper!) boards. This trend will definitely
> continue.
>
> But, given the nature of the PC's use, there's a limit as to how far
> you can take it. As a general purpose device, its upgradability is its
> greatest strength, and it always takes a while before new features get
> embedded into the system. So ethernet might be on the 'board, but
> Super-neuro-netlink 3.0 (or whatever future technology gets invented)
> will be an add-on card... which means you can't easily shrink the PC
> down to handheld size without sacrificing what makes the device so
> useful.
>

Although I agree that upgradability is good I'm not convinced it's
something the majority of users particularly care about. If I look at my
social circle the vast majority have laptops and even for those desktop
users an upgrade consists of buying a new machine and then paying a
small fee to have it made into a 'clone' of the old one.

A lot of my friends think I must be some sort of computer wizard as I
know how to 'build' a PC. I have tried to explain that it's really not
that difficult and I'm pretty sure that if I stood over their shoulder
they can do it themselves. Personally I don't think they are convinced
that's true.

> TL;DR: is the PC dying? No. Is it - and its market - changing?
> Definitely... but that's been par for the course ever since it was
> first made.
>
>> So any thoughts keeping in mind that in five years time everyone will
>> have forgotten about your predictions, well except for Spalls who will
>> add them to his dossier!
>
> It's not a dossier! It's a list of all your old usenet posts that
> never get deleted because disk-space is cheap and I'm too lazy to
> configure auto-purge ;-)
>
>