Is the desktop computer (finally) dead?

By Peter | June 23rd, 2009

Because they all want to be the first one to share the news, people have been declaring the death of the desktop computer for a few years already. But hindsight has shown those people were a little premature. However, events of the last year or two seem to be pointing to the final demise of this relic of the 20th century. PCs won’t suffer a quick death. It will be more of a slow, gradual dwindling into irrelevance like, say, Bret Favre or Bart Simpson. Between the explosive growth of mobile devices and laptop and netbook computers, it won’t be long before you’ll be stashing your PC in the back closet beside your dusty old Commodore 64.

cowabunga

According to MSN’s Money Blog, not a single desktop computer was listed in Amazon’s top 10 most popular computers last Christmas. But seven laptops were. And with the ridiculous popularity of iPhones and the never ending avalanche of powerful new mobile devices that seem to appear every day now, it seems hard to believe big-ass desk computers will make a comeback any time soon.

And why would they? Mobile devices and junior-sizes laptops are just too powerful and versatile. Sure, there are a few things that still work better on a desktop, like gaming and movie watching, but both of those are more often done on dedicated devices of their own. What will be interesting to see is if the dream of one-box-to-do-it all ever comes true, and we all surf the net, watch on-demand entertainment, play videgames and do our taxes on a single device. And if that dream does come true, with that single device in any way resemble the desktop computer of today?

Tags: desktop computer, iPhone, Technology, trends

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 at 1:30 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Matt

I think you're right. Although the majority of us use laptops here at Thirdi, you can't argue the benefits of desktop workstations. Amazon's list probably doesn't represent the business sector very well.

Boris Popov

If anything, I think we'll see desktop form factor in workstations for a long time, especially in applications that need massive amounts of CPU, RAM and disk space that no laptop can possibly provide. Regardless of compact new components become, it's hard to argue with the fact that you can stuff more of them in a larger box :)