The Ghost In The Machine <ewill@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
> In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Roy Schestowitz
><newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> wrote
> on Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:42:06 +0100
><1486215.kpNNbkZDHz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
>>
>> ____/ Subway steel on Wednesday 18 June 2008 19:40 : \____
>>
>>>
>>>>"bluefin" <desertcamel.chen@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>>>>news:e8e94bb0-81df-44a6-9dd4-ed00fb251864@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>>>Take note his last two paragraphs at the end of the article written
>>>>as:
>>>>
>>>>'So on balance, we?re not going to see the end of the desktop
>>>>computer, but we are going to see portables become more common. ...
>>>>
>>>>The desktop computer is going to remain the tool of choice for many
>>>>knowledge workers because that?s what meets our needs and that?s the
>>>>whole point of technology; to use the tool that best gets the job
>>>>done.'
>>>>
>>>>So, desktop still stays, but is getting smaller in size, e.g. Asus
>>>>eeePC, HP MiniNote etc. Like the magnetic tape, it will never be
>>>>replaced with the most modern archival blu-ray media yet.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>On Jun 19, 2:09 am, "Subway steel" <f...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>>> I saw several posts debating the "death of the desktop"
>>>>> which reminded me of this article that came out yesterday.
>>>>> I think the author hits the nail right on the head with
>>>>> this one.
>>>>>
>>>>> - ss
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.smartcompany.com.au/Blog/Paul-Wallbank/20080616-Death-of-t...
>>>
>>>
>>> My opinion is that a healthy market for both will exist for the foreseeable
>>> future. There will always be a set of users who either need or want a highly
>>> portable device. But there will always be a large set of users such as
>>> office workers who don't need portability and will continue to use desktops.
>>> There are several benefits of having a desktop over a laptop. The only real
>>> benefit of a laptop device is portability but not everybody needs or wants
>>> portability. If portability isn't important to someone then why would they
>>> give up all of the other benefits of a desktop for a one single feature
>>> (portability) that they don't need.
>>
>> If you look at emerging markets (esp. countries where poverty prevails),
>> there's no much of a desk, as in Ethernet+electricity+room, so things like
>> batteries, meshes and portable devices are a natural fit.
>
> True, though that only goes so far; one also needs
> connectivity. In Vietnam, for example, they went all
> wireless (dunno if they need to retrofit for WiFi); that
> would probably work reasonably well in most of Africa (the
> only exceptions might be the extreme north parts such as
> Egypt, which might already be wired; I'd have to look).
>
> Rural parts of the US still have to depend on 56k dialup.
> As a technological tour de force, 56k had its day more
> than a decade ago, if not two -- I have a fair number of
> old modems, one as slow as 1200, packed somewhere, most
> of them now useless, especially since many hotels offer
> Internet connectivity and will probably start offering
> WiFi as well, if they're not already.
It's also about next generation technology, though. I posted some
stats very recently about Manchester, 3rd largest city in England.
28% of people do not have a landline, instead, they just have a mobile.
Although mobiles are more expensive than landlines, they prefer to have
the mobility.
Once people have moved, no amount of trying to get them back onto the
1980s style of desktop is going to work. Personal data is now scattered
across multiple devices, servers and locations, including some desktop
machines. They key functionality for most people is being able to
synchronise that information across multiple devices without needing to
have an "authority" machine, like a desktop. Microsoft were trying to
position the desktop PC in this space, but it's just not the right tool
for most people.
>
> On a slightly more local note: my "desktop" these days
> is my old HP nx9010 laptop; it sits on my desk and can
> connect to my switch at home, or my work network at work,
> using Cat5 cabling. It also has WiFi capability and
> presumably can be retrofitted with an EDGE or GPRS modem
> were I really interested therein (EDGE makes PSTN 56k
> modems look speedy).
>
> I submit *that* is a modern desktop (more or less), if one
> needs a bigger form factor than, say, RiM's BlackBerry or
> Apple's iPhone.
Spot on. The 1980s view of the desktop is dated and over, it's no
longer economically significant (which is what I mean by dead). There
will, naturally, be people who continue to use desktop machines, but as
a significant economic force, it's as dead as the shortwave radio, the
vinyl record player, the cassette player, the elcassette player, the
1/4" reel to reel tape deck, the commodore pet, amiga etc. etc.
>
> And then there's the then-rather fanciful but nevertheless
> now-very possible "Newspad" hypothesized by Arthur
> C. Clarke in _2001_; nowadays this is easily doable
> using something along the lines of Apple's MacBook Air
> or Amazon's Kindle, though one might have to remove the
> keyboard and install a touch-sensitive screen a la the
> iPhone to get it exactly right, and then one has to develop
> a visual news mashup service.
There are lots of machines which are more or less doing that now. The
iPhone has some of that capability, but so has the Nokia N800/810 (RSS
and web, touch-screen), the new Archos 605 has GPS built-in, as well as
wifi and bluetooth, so equally can serve this function.
Google did try a news mashup, but it didn't seem all that satisfactory
to me, maybe because it wasn't really tailored to small devices.
Oh yeah, whilst I'm considering it, the successor to the "home
computer", the media appliance, can also do this, at least in the form
of the mythtv box, which has an rss reader, although this is most
certainly nailed to the television display!
> But we're very close.
>
> [.sigsnip -- dash dash space newline error]
>
--
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