Public Discussions > General Discussion
Future death of the personal computer?
Hakuchi:
Personal computers are not going to die. Sure there are new concepts arriving every now and then. Purism for example has very interesting bundle thingie with their Librem 5 phone. Which seems to be quite nice Open Source gadget. They have monitor, keyboard and mouse bundles. Bit pricey they are, but if you don't like being tracked and being part of data sucking beast it might be a choice. Of course there are others also.
These solutions works for many and are very "convenient". But will not replace good ole personal computers.
The fact that I have had only laptops for past 10 years or so is the fact that I have been living in such places that it has been only way. And for my use hardware I have had has been efficient. Since I don't game or need latest and greatest there has been very good laptops to choose from.
But even though I have had laptops I count them more or less "personal computers" and desktops. External monitor, keyboard and pointer device of the choice makes them more or less personal computers when I haven't been carrying my main one ever. I have my dedicated travel laptop that I take with me when on the road.
What comes to could stuffs there has been moving away from those thingies lately. People like to keep their stuff private. This is not the mainstream by any means. most of the people don't really care about anything of their privacy when it comes to computers and networks. I wonder why those people keep their homes and cars locked but I'll never even want to know.
Oldschool decentralised things like Gopher and BBS' have seen more and more interest lately. And I'm not surprised that there will be somekind of separation between "the web" and "the net" at some point when people who don't like all the tracking and ads we see brought to our face via HTTP protocol. Decentralised services are growing more and more every day.
But we see what happens in the future ... we are living interesting times anyway.
David Kiley:
--- Quote from: Neil Waldhauer on February 19, 2020, 03:45:41 pm ---I mean the cloud is slowly removing my personal need for OS/2. However, the cloud has already replaced Windows, Linux and Mac on the desktop. All of these companies make far more profit on their cloud service than on their PC hardware and software.
--- End quote ---
Just wondering what specifically about the cloud replaces your need for os/2? What are you doing with it that you would have previously used your computer for?
Personally I can't imagine life without a PC - It's interesting to me that you can.
Martin Vieregg:
In my opinion, the Personal Computer goes back to the way of usage he had in the late 80s and beginning 90s, before the WWW has been invented. It was a working tool for brain-workers and a toy for nerds. The "consumers" prefer tablet and smartphone. But I wonder that all the people accept the small screens. A big screen and overlapping windows alre an important advantage of Personal Computers.
Hakuchi:
--- Quote from: Martin Vieregg on February 20, 2020, 10:42:26 am ---In my opinion, the Personal Computer goes back to the way of usage he had in the late 80s and beginning 90s, before the WWW has been invented. It was a working tool for brain-workers and a toy for nerds. The "consumers" prefer tablet and smartphone. But I wonder that all the people accept the small screens. A big screen and overlapping windows alre an important advantage of Personal Computers.
--- End quote ---
Exactly the separation I was referring to. Shiny-swipey-thingies keep consumers consuming and interwebs keep bombarding them with the stiuff they "defititely need to buy" while those who value the information and content more that bling-and-whatnot will eventually gravitate to decentralised ways to get info/data/whatnot. If you ask me, HTTP protocol is FUBAR already and will never be same again. There is no going back to good old days of RFC 1945 ... but RFC 1436 cannot experience the same faith. Same goes to good old BBS'
Also we will see that only consumers are going to be online all the time and doers will eventually go back to the good old ways of 80's and 90's when we weren't online but just couple hours a day or so.
Or at least this has been the path I have seen many to take in last 10 or so years and more and more within last couple years. And I think it's good path.
Neil Waldhauer:
--- Quote from: David Kiley on February 20, 2020, 03:37:17 am ---
--- Quote from: Neil Waldhauer on February 19, 2020, 03:45:41 pm ---I mean the cloud is slowly removing my personal need for OS/2. However, the cloud has already replaced Windows, Linux and Mac on the desktop. All of these companies make far more profit on their cloud service than on their PC hardware and software.
--- End quote ---
Just wondering what specifically about the cloud replaces your need for os/2? What are you doing with it that you would have previously used your computer for?
Personally I can't imagine life without a PC - It's interesting to me that you can.
--- End quote ---
Well, OS/2 provides storage and applications.
Many of our applications are out of date, and better handled by more modern software. All the latest versions are cloud-based and eventually trickle back down to the PC. But I'm used to the OS/2 apps, so I only change when I have to.
Browser - Firefox is increasingly incompatible with websites I use. I often have to go to an alternative, and the phone is conveniently close by.
Storage is nice on OS/2, up to 2 TB, which is OK for now. I can see where backup to cloud may be coming. I'm concerned about privacy, but it's not like OS/2 has any protection against snooping.
I run an OS/2-based business. I need access to my business assets at all times. It's a lot more convenient to have this on the phone. Yes, of course I'm running the OS/2 desktop on my phone via VNC. I still see cloud services taking over as I move to a hybrid OS/2, iOS environment.
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