The personal computer is soon history

[kgun]

Here

http://www.dagensit.no/article2355376.ece

is an interesting article in Norwegian about your future It life. These are the five trends that threaten the personal computer: Gartner believes PC's position is threatened as early as 2014. Here are the trends they point out:

1. Employees choose the equipment, also called "consumerisation"
2. Virtualization
3. Appification
4. Self service clouds
5. Mobilization

Norwegians lead the way in which, according to analysts will soon push the PC down from the throne. And no, it's not Ipad that is the future of the center.

...........................

Norway in the front
If data from Microsoft is correct, Norway can be the first country in the world that is said to move out of the computer age and over in the clouds.

- We are the market after Singapore with the most users in the cloud, relative to the number of PCs in the market, says Olav Råen in Microsoft Norway.

Use a translation service to read the article and / or locate the Gartner article.

My question. What about online marketing? Will it be moved from sites to the cloud?

[StanDaMan]

Well, I guess in 2014 I'll be part of history, since the only way anyone is going to get my pc is to pry it out of my dead hands.
Seriously though, it this saying most people will have a dumb terminal of some sort and will need to connect to "the cloud" to be able to do anything?

[merlot105]

There still needs to be some kind of user interface to interact with that "cloud", be it to download information or to upload information. It really depends on what your definition of PC is. The iPad is oftentimes referred to as the first truly meaningful "post-PC" device, but to me it's still a PC. Steve Balmer (CEO of Microsoft) was asked about whether PC's would be defunct in the near future and he said that iPads and other touch screen, portable devices are basically PC's with a different form factor. I'm going to have to agree with him on this one. Even if all the content/data is moved to the "cloud", there still will be some sort of interface connecting this data with the user, don't you think? If anything, the cloud just means that data won't necessarily be stored on the PC anymore, but will be accessible over the internet from anywhere. This lends to creating small, thinner, and faster "PC's" with more space used for better battery and processors rather than hard-drives.

[kgun]

You can buy storage and computer power like you buy electricity today.

I can remember when we were connected to an IBM mainframe via a dumb terminal. So some years into the future you may be connected to the cloud in a similar way, via a dumb terminal or a mobile device. If you need super computing power for a shorter or longer periode, you buy it as service and consume it like you consume electric power today.

Appification is another thread.

[Adrian98]

you have said right, in today's modern era. the Personal computers have gone through lots of changes and advancements and hence because of which the computers are not remained to personal but now they are making a role in cloud computing and information sharing!!!

[dgswilson]

I've been waited for the PC/TV merge. I don't see how this meshing of components isn't inevitable. The money is in home entertainment (ads, consumer shaping etc.) and Hulu etal. are going to get absorbed and integrated into ISP/Network/TV monopoly.

How this aspect plays into what's being discussed I'm not sure but it's in the mix. The other computer of note is the one we use for work.

I guess the question about PC's is really one of connection. Everywhere their are people who want to censor the world by breaking their ability to connect. This isolating tactic is being worked over hard right now. The future depends on how far the collective ideologues are allowed to progress.

[murphypj]

You can buy storage and computer power like you buy electricity today.

I can remember when we were connected to an IBM mainframe via a dumb terminal. So some years into the future you may be connected to the cloud in a similar way, via a dumb terminal or a mobile device. If you need super computing power for a shorter or longer periode, you buy it as service and consume it like you consume electric power today.

Appification is another thread.

Kgun, I also go back to the 'green-screen' days, where I designed 'online applications' which meant that users could enquire and update information via screens, rather than input forms and printouts. Further down the line, after the advent of PCs, there was the 'thin-client' era, where scaled-down PC's had virtual drives on the main server, and the PC was just a processor, with a tiny amount of disk space for bootstrapping. Cloud computing within an organisation, if you like. It worked fine in theory, but - every glitch on the server meant thumb-twiddling, and scary moments for the users.

While I realize that the technology has improved vastly since then, the same principle applies. If you trust all of your sensitive data to the cloud, and operate with a device without enough storage to keep local copies of EVERYTHING, you are at the mercy of the Computer Gods, not to mention the ever-growing cleverness of the hacker community.

It would just take one, well publicized, Cloud data loss story to hit the strategy of reliance on the technology out of the ballpark. Act of God, or human malice, doesn't matter, both are probably already poised for the strike.

Now... give me back my PC!

PJ

[kgun]

Now... give me back my PC!

Every $ spent has an alternative use. Do you think it is the best soloution and most cost efficient?

[murphypj]

I think, for someone as wary (paranoid?) about the security and 100% availability of remote storage, I would probably say "Yes". I use my PC as a 'virtual server' for myself and all the family - it stores my client's website source files, and all of our documents, music, photos etc., all of which are backed up to external drive by Scheduled Tasks.

Apart from the paranoia about a cloud meltdown, simple and quick processes such as ripping music from CD and transferring to my Creative Zen would require a hell of a lot more bandwidth than I currently enjoy to make it practical, even if Creative ( or Apple for other devices ) provided the required software.

I don't have any figures on costings for Cloud services, but The PC cost me about €1000 as a 'specced-up', top of range model 5 years ago, I think at €200 p.a it has supplied good value for the functionality and ease-of-use that I require. I appreciate that the requirements of others might fit with the Cloud model, but I won't be looking skyward for the next few years at least!

[deepsand]

My question. What about online marketing? Will it be moved from sites to the cloud?

Your meaning escapes me, as web sites are in the cloud.