Home PCs are dead?
Monday, 25. February 2008
Reading a couple of articles recently about the growing netbook market and most people expecting this generation of consoles to stick around longer than usual got me to thinking about this as a trend. It seems people are happier with the current generation of hardware than ever before which means there is no great drive to get to the next generation.
Is processing power for home use now growing at a faster rate than we can find uses for? PCs are getting faster but most people (outside of gamers and content creators) are now happy with their PC as long as it can get them online. The 3 main reasons for PC upgrades are now obsolete: Speed, storage and resolution. If all a PC needs to do is go online why would you ever need to upgrade to a faster/bigger machine? Storage of files online makes them more portable and safer from disaster. Screen resolutions are higher than can be seen by the naked eye. How will manufacturers convince people to upgrade? What will be the driving force behind hardware innovation.
I see the future of processing moving, as was predicted in the 90s and failed to come true, server-side. With services in the pipeline such as OnLive videogame streaming, where all the processing is done remotely, we are moving ever closer to a world where the computer in the home is little more than a TV-like device used to access and interact with content from elsewhere.