Forbes says that desktops will stick around for 10% of computer users

Guess I'm a 10% er :) .  I much prefer my desktop in the studio.

Jonbouy

Teds_Studio


Guess I'm a 10% er :) .  I much prefer my desktop in the studio.

I'm thinking that a large portion of that 10% will be guys and gals like us.
 
I'm keeping mine if for no other reason than I tend to lose anything smaller than the size of a tower.

Oh my. I hope Gabriel grows quickly.

That 10% also includes laptops!

I certainly see myself as being one of the 10%. Of course the big problem will be with a smaller user base the costs will rise accordingly and we may be priced out of future hardware and software advances.

10 per center here, and probably will be for the foreseeable future.

Problem is, when you get to my age, that "foreseeable" is getting shorter.

I prefer desktop (do towers count as "desktops").  I build my own PCs and hand-pick most of the components that are appropriate for the job I want to do with the PC.  There's also more flexibility in configuring a desktop.  

Laptops, etc. are certainly convenient.  I don't have one, but I'm not against getting one.  I just haven't needed one.  I'm not a fan of touch pads and trackballs.  If I'm going to connect a mouse and keyboard, I might as well have a desktop.  

bitflipper


You have to wonder how such predictions are made. Does someone take a ruler and extend a chart of some existing trend? By that method, you'd have confidently predicted in 1973 that by now every person on the planet would be listening to 8-tracks.

I do not own a smart phone, but my wife does. I hate her phone, but she loves it and is as attached to it as any toddler to a teddy bear. Diff'rent strokes.

For me, the promise of all the computing power you need in your shirt pocket is being oversold. Does anybody really watch football on a 3.5" screen like they show in the TV commercials?

I like my iPad ....but I looooooooooove my DAW






The only comment I have about the whole forbes predicting the future and all that of who will own what and when is .....




When I walk into the local best buy the Desktop sections computers is smaller than it used to be 




Not that that tid bit can predict anything or means anything ....just an observation 

I've been clinging on to my two nice 3x4 aspect monitors dreading the day I'll have to get one made only for widescreen movies

Been shopping for a CRT monitor lately? Tried calibrating a less-than-unaffordable LCD monitor for color and brightness for use in photo work? When the market moves it really doesn't give a s**t about what it leaves behind. 


Finding the perfect parts to assemble your own desktop may well become an exercise in futility before long.

I think this is absolute bull. Go back in history and look at every "this is the future of technology" type article/book and it's a complete joke. I think I still have a "Future TV" book from the 70's at home, which predicts what people's homes will look like in the year 2000. Of course everyone's wearing a silver one-piece jump suit with a diagonal stripe, and all TV's have a printer built in so that mom can press a button and have the recipe printed out when she's watching her cookery shows. 

The fact is that people like to sit at desks and look at vertical screens. If I sit looking down at a tablet for any longer than 20 minutes I get a stiff neck. So people will still, by and large, have monitors like we do now for their extended computer sessions. But of course the prediction is that everything will be touch screen. Except that reaching over a desk to touch a screen is a pain in the arse when you can just move a pointer around with a mouse, with far more accuracy and finesse. 

The future popularity of tablets will be curtailed by several inescapable physical facts:

1) People prefer to look straight ahead rather than up or down
2) People prefer a little distance between eye and screen, which means text can only be so small, etc. 
3) Most everyone prefers typing on a real keyboard to a touch screen
4) Fingers are a certain size, which means all-touch software will be constrained by the necessity of having to keep icons and buttons over a certain size, which coupled with the fact that tablet screens are much smaller, means tablet software will always be limited when compared to desktop software
5) Photography is a major part of everyone's lives now. Any kind of visual/design activities are better on a larger screen


I wouldn't mind if they just said that tablets are going to become more and more popular as alternative devices. Or even that there will be a considerable number of people who ditch computers for them. But 90%....it just seems like such a ridiculous figure. Not buying it at all.

slartabartfast

Many laptop users plug in to a full size screen and keyboard at the office,  

My situation at this very second, except my laptop is driving two moitors, a 24" and a 22", but I had failed to consider a mobile device in such a docking station, given sufficient power in the mobile device (we are no where near that point yet but...), add some external disk storage and you could end up with a viable system. Roland's new Duo-Capture audio interface is iPad compatable.
 
Without the docking station I find the laptop awkward, I would hate to have to do anything much on a tablet. I cringe when I here people in my company saying it would be great to replace laptops with iPads.

craigb


I made the mistake of getting a tablet instead of a laptop.  When it's not being constantly cleaned of finger marks, it's somewhat good for reading PDF files and viewing training videos.  I've played a few games on it, but they're all far below what's available for a normal PC, and mine is destined to be a cool remote for my music manager (I'm testing this app for the programmer in Norway right now).  I might use it for a photo slide show too, except that the screen is relatively small...

come on, tablets are not meant to replace laptops. They serve different purpose in the band. Do keyboards replaces guitars for instance? no!
they complements them. Same with tablets which I have a few different sizes. They are perfect for airline travels for instance or as go to bed 
computer when you're lonely etc etc. 

Regarding article they have a point, let face it (non pan intended), most people's activities these days are within browsers.
Advanced users like programmer, designers, musicians use desktops apps in addition to browsers.  As a software architect and manager
I see this trend since few years. Less and less desktop development projects each year are approved. Common User Interface slowly becomes 
internet browser hosting different apps. You may not like the truth but service oriented architecture in cloud computing is inevitable.
To be honest personally I still prefer old fashion desktop apps.
   

sharke


I almost got a tablet but then I realized that virtually everything I need to do on the go, I can do on my iPhone. The dot pitch is small enough that everything is sharp and clear and doesn't strain my eyes. I almost bought a Kindle too, before realizing that reading books on the iPhone Kindle app is perfectly satisfactory. 

FYI, iPhone is a small tablet.

Remember when voice activation and talking computers were touted as the Next Big Thing? 

Some geek in my office set it up so he could open programs and stuff by voice commands, and the computer would respond with "yes, master". That lasted less than a day, until everyone else in the office threatened to stomp on his microphone headset if he didn't shut his computer the f*ck up.

I've been working in the software industry for a long time, and it's made me cynical. Software is a marketer's dream, because it's a product that a) you can sell with with known defects and not be sued, b) is basically a consumable because it's guaranteed to quickly become obsolete, and c) is intangible and therefore lends itself to vague emotion-driven marketing methods.

Case in point: 99% of computer users do not need 64-bit computing. In fact, most of what users do on a computer (email, web surfing, games) don't even need a 32-bit instruction set. But here we are, good consumers that we've been trained to be, tossing out perfectly functional products and re-purchasing new equivalents, only to repeat the process again in a year or two. The brainwashing works so well that some indoctrinees have been known to endlessly parrot the great need for 64-bit this and that, using very large fonts to stress the urgency.

I am the 10%!!

They can have my desktop when they pry it, and my optical mouse, from my cold dead hands....

bitflipper

Case in point: 99% of computer users do not need 64-bit computing.
 
 

OMG!!!! Don't let Freddie see this comment. 

I was at best buy the other day and they were selling a refrigerator that connects to the internet.

Very handy to have your refrigerator connected. You never know when your refrigerator might need to get hold of you.


Just be sure that if you get a text that says, "I need to be defrosted," it is not from your girlfriend.