PC sales rebound, up 5.6% in 2014

PCs seem to be making a comeback..read about it here..
http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/gadgets/60900444/pc-sales-rebound-up-56-in-2014.html

 

saw that yesterday... id be surprised if they ever actually die off...

tablets etc are great, but shjthouse for productivity.

 

PC is the alpha and the omega, and shall never die.

 

Are we officially in the post-post pc era? The era when it becomes obvious that pcs aren't going anywhere?

 

Not at all. Lets not let marketing fudge distract us - a "PC" is a "Personal Computer". It's only the form factor that's changing. Just 'cause a tablet uses a touch screen and runs different software doesn't actually make it any less of a PC. PC's are going everywhere, and they're able to do that because the form factor is changing.

And honestly, who ever thought that the chunky things that are bound to a desk are the things that would become ubiquitous? They're awesome for the heavy lifting, but plenty of other stuff is just flat out better suited to other form factors. Why go to the computer when the computer can go with you?

 

Large screen, dedicated graphics card, huge hard-drive, more CPU power, more ram, OS choices, full size keyboard.

 

Technically speaking mobile phones and tablets these days meet most of the qualifications that define a PC

"A personal computer (PC) is a general-purpose computer, whose size, capabilities and original sale price makes it useful for individuals, and is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_computer

So, these days it seems to more a question of what it looks like. Desktops, colloquially speaking most closely equates to a PC.

Desktops will never go away for one single reason - I agree with the poster above me - BIG Screen.

The best candidate for displacing it that I can think of is the head mounted display - like Google Glass etc. I have never tried one but I read of some significant health problems from using these things maybe that is one reason apart from cost being the main, that these things haven't really taken off.

 

If you

need those things, absolutely. But how often are they actually requirements of everyday computing tasks?

Take off your enthusiast hat and think about it from the perspective of an everyday user doing a routine job who has no personal interest in technology. People to whom it's just a tool. Do they care about those things?

 

Haha, you are quite right. Mobile devices are here to stay but then so are Desktops and I doubt that there will be a happy medium because they serve two different functions.

 

"overall, worldwide sales down 3.7 per cent"
From the same article.
The overall trend remains the same. We here love "real" computers, but most people won't need them in the future.
That being said, pc gaming will probably remain strong for a very long time.

 

Yes, that includes third world countries where they seem to prefer mobiles. US, Japan and western Europe is where the sales are noticeably increasing for PC's (I think they mean desktops).

 

Sorry, I'll try to be more specific, now that PC can mean MANY things, unlike 10 years ago.

(Sent from my WORKSTATION)

 

I agree entirely. My point earlier was that in the context of "PCs going everywhere", a "PC" doesn't have to be a traditional desktop machine. I also think there'll be plenty of people who need that kind of thing, so there's no reason for them to go away. But I also think there'll be plenty of people who don't need that kind of thing, and there are already plenty of use cases where portability trumps power, where a desktop PC would be useless despite its computational advantages but a phone, tablet, HMD or other form factor is a natural fit and provides adequate power for the task at hand. All of those things are still "Personal Computers". They're just not the things that IBM/Microsoft/Apple marketing have been calling "PC"s for the last three decades.

 

The reason why PC's are not going anywhere???

Take a look around, walk into any office building around the world, how many of those people spend the day sitting in front of a PC or Mac, or ok yes a laptop docked to a station to serve as a 'PC'. ??

Most of them, in most office blocks around the world.

How will it be different? Will they all sit at their desks using an iPad?
As long as people work in offices and companies and commute to work, PC's will be used.

Case closed.