A discussion of the "Death of PC" - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 25, 2018, 05:07:46 pm
content: I was going to post this as a reply to the thread "Bloody Windows". But dead of the concept of a PC would really be off topic from discussing the "good bad and ugly" of Windows.Quote from: james_s on January 22, 2018, 07:57:32 pmI think it will exceed beyond newer tech companies. I think PC's will be a thing of the past in even non-tech companies.With many applications such as SAP and SalesForce now accessible via browser, there is no real need for local processing power apart from the presentation. Why for example would airline check-in clerk needs anything else Windows may offer? They have been running screen-grab 3270 like terminal on the Windows XP terminal then run the same bloody thing for Win7. I'm not sure what they run these days, but I cannot imagine why they may need Microsoft Office or some such while they try to check you in for your flight.Car dealership, investment/bank clerk, insurance clerk, etc., all are already running stuff directly from the web instead of local. The app may be it something their company developed, or cloud based services they purchased, but they are not local.From factory floor to accounting to HR to Sales, I see no reason why there would be any need for local processing beyond presentation.Kids are already sold on the concept of everything on the cloud. Besides their social network, even school work are "cloud-ed". Parent portals and student portals. Students use google to do their "team work" project stuff. Something you might have use PowerPoint and/or Excel to do earlier years can now all be cloud-based. Even photo-edit or video-edit is to some extend cloud based.I see the death of PC here. There is no P (personal) in today's PC anyway. It is now just a platform for Google (chrome book) and Microsoft to send you their ads and collect your data. It is a Trojan in your home/car.A new generation of "returning to root" PC may come for a very small market of enthusiast/gamer(s)/specialized apps. The masses (airline check-in, insurance agents, sales, marketing staff, ...) will be just using terminals or "smart phones". No more PC's on every desktop. No more Windows/Mac, just super-sized "smart phones" (aka tablets) running everything on browsers. For consumers, something like "Echo" to read you the News or to tell you the weather. But no more "custom Yahoo home page" for your PC with your investment data, stock info, local weather... They are for dinosaurs like us and will be gone in the not too distant future.Your opinion?

author: dmills
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 25, 2018, 05:27:06 pm
content: The terminal connected to a time shared mainframe (Call the 'Cloud' what it is!) works fine for some things, and jobs involving filling in form based front ends to databases would seem to be an ideal use case (Airline check in, banking, insurance, most sales gigs).Consumption of media (in whatever form) works fine on a phone or tablet, and that plus email/facespace/whatever is all many people need or want, arguably the classic PC is a horrible platform in that space, and it is only really the general crapness of "smart" tellies that have kept them from kerb stomping the PC here.However a real desktop is not optional of anyone working with large datasets or any kind of creative occupation, I am not sure the PC is the right thing here, but it is a LOT closer then anything else out there.Regards, Dan.

author: dryjoints
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 25, 2018, 05:29:35 pm
content: This myth has been propagated many times, and is always false. There IS no "death of the PC" - it's still here and still will be.

author: Gribo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 25, 2018, 05:32:59 pm
content: Also, someone on this forum stated it properly: Cloud = Someone else's computer -> Your data is not yours anymore. All of the products you described are different forms of the same concept.

author: Howardlong
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 25, 2018, 05:40:07 pm
content: This was a discussion in the mid to late 90s when NetPCs and Network Computer thin clients were a brief thing, a life shorter than Netbooks. These were low end small form factor PXE booting machines connected to big servers.Then we had Citrix, followed by virtual desktops into the mid 2000s.We still have some niche areas where small form factor low power devices remain a thing, often with VDI behind them.***************There is still a fundamental paradigm difference between consumers and creators. Creating stuff is, and has always been, painful on a browser based front end, not to mention that it’s hard to get away with a single browser that works for all ones’ use cases.Consumers, yes, generally don’t need a full PC. That is why I spend so much time on a tablet, but I spend more time on a PC.My analogy is in the kitchen, where you’ll have a stove an often a microwave. The stove can generally do all, and more, that a microwave can, but the microwave is often more convenient for some less demanding things.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 25, 2018, 05:42:36 pm
content: Interesting thread.I think this is a temporary situation. Local processing will rise again in the future and the computing model will change again. Why?1. There are quite a few large corporate entities bailing on the centralised cloud model at the moment after a few rather high profile incidents. Firstly, it's very difficult to isolate and partition data effectively and this is made incredibly difficult in the cloud. Look a the sheer amount of Amazon S3 leaks recently just through misconfiguration. Then there's the problems with cross-VM access via Xen etc and the risk of VM isolation being broken by things like Meltdown and Spectre. When you have EU GDPR hanging over you with real fine risks, the RA doesn't add up. No one is going to bother with that2. People are starting to realise that "the network" is not quite as reliable and available as is required to provide the services to a business. Even high end redundant connections here in the UK can be down for 2-3 days longer than the best 4 hour SLA on a POTS line. When you've got a 3000 seat insurance company, that downtime is rather expensive and wipes your entire savings out instantly. One eager buckhoe driver and you're down half a million quid plus sales.3. Single large cloud vendors are individually a very huge attack vector. All it takes is one mistake and you and everyone else are up shit creek together.4. global taxation, politics, net neutrality and vendor competence concerns and even international network sabotage are a big issue.5. Turns out that cost wasn't that much better in the end when you rent stuff. Sure you can scale up on demand but scaling down is harder than it looks and incredibly expensive. A lot of the vendors, such as amazon, make a lot of money from laziness and incompetence of cloud admins to the point there are whole products devoted to managing cloud pricing.6. Stuff moves too fast in the cloud and this is expensive. You have to go along with it or die.7. Awareness of surveillance and privacy and control of your data is growing at a large rate. They're even teaching it in schools here in the UK (!).At the end we're going to end up with balkanized partitions at company level again like the 1980s with loosely coupled networks. There is no other commercially viable option in the future. Literally the cloud is going to fall on it's arse. Commercial vendors are slowly ruining trust and ramping standalone prices to force people into the cloud and this isn't washing. You can tell by the amount of companies who have been hanging on until last minute and then skipping the whole cloud migration for another hardware generation.What I see in the future is, at least for businesses:1. Desktop PCs making a comeback. What the form of these will be I don't know, but I doubt they are going to be commercially supported with software. Even laptops are a 50/50 if you ask me. They're a pain for companies and when it comes to cutting costs, the mobile workforce go down the shitter first.2. Companies running branch office services locally again, on top of Linux machines that someone else manages remotely.3. Only public facing stuff being on the internet again like email and web. This will probably be in the cloud and the email will be relayed on-site.4. Slow decline of proprietary communication services.Consumer market will turn into a bladerunner-esque shitfest of gigantic proportions to the point people will be pissing their pants over new emojis added to a £1000 luxury phone that no one needs while their £50 light bulbs flash on and off uncontrollably after being owned by some dudes in North Korea. That is until our glorious rising nationalist governments fuck the pooch and people's concerns shift to food and other essentials and the token black mirror is traded in for fuel money to still drive to the infrastructure above because remote working is banned.Anyway I've just been paid a large amount to write that rant so I'm going to turn it into a report in the future and sell itA ton of 502 errors out of the EEVblog forum trying to post this is a fine example of the problems. If this was my server I'd have fixed that by nowEdit: just to add, one reason I have recently got myself an amateur radio license is that I think free, open and decentralised communication is an important pillar of society. Contracting that out to data miners is a bad moral and ethical decision.

author: Tomorokoshi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 25, 2018, 05:53:17 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on January 25, 2018, 05:42:36 pmI agree that local desktops / laptops are not going away, and this is one big reason. It's just a several orders-of-magnitude variation of one of my user experience complaints: noticeable latency when interacting with web-based pages or applications. A 1/10 second here, a 1/4 second there, soon it becomes noticeably slow to respond.At least when run locally an application will operate responsively. Unless it's backed by that Java rubbish, bogged down by anti-virus software, tethered to cloud data, etc. Which is now unfortunately becoming very common and normalized.One aspect that may drive the inevitability of web-based applications is the training approach along with the talent pool. Schools seem to be migrating to Java, and as more programs become web-attached and web-centric the paradigm of that approach could become entrenched to the point of being the default option.

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 25, 2018, 07:16:20 pm
content: Application virtualization and desktop virtualization are still quite popular, from Citrix and others. We do tons of Citrix work.Desktop virtualization offers some huge advantages in this day and age of pervasive viruses and spyware - when the use rlgos off, the whole machine is gone - every new login is created from a clean image. Of course it requires considerable diligence on the back end to make sure the IMAGE isn't compromised.I have copies of this stuck up all over the place:Of course then all the rah rah yeah cloud! crowd has articles saying how wrong that is - and tries to explain the cloud is much much more by using still MORE terms and acronyms that - mean the same thing as the old words did! Like all this "scrum" crap in programming, and "agile" programming. Reading what that stuff means - it's exactly how the programming team I was part of more than 20 years go worked.I've been in this business far to long to really be bothered by it now, but companies like Gartner in the wrong as often as they are right 'analysis' don't help. And of course their stuff is often rather dumbed down because the target audience is the CIO, more than a minority of whom have as their greatest technical achievement the fact that they were able to turn on their PC without having to call the help desk.

author: Howardlong
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 25, 2018, 07:51:27 pm
content: I have to say I agree, while cloud is indeed fashionable, it is and will be one of the the love children of many a CIO who spends their career going from job to job every two or three years making their mark (skid mark maybe???) before moving on to exerting the next latest fad on the next victim.Cloud is more of an incremental change: for well over a couple of decades before we’ve had managed services in the form of co-lo and outsourced hosting, it often makes a huge a amount of sense when you don’t want the huge expense of enterprise level data centres, including physical & cyber security, plant, resilience and disaster recovery etc. But those tend to be bespoke services with customer led service levels.Cloud is much more about one cap fitting all, and the customer has to live with it. You can go somewhat bespoke, but it’s going to cost. As a result, cloud solutions are always a compromise, and never as cheap as you think they should be. Where cloud can really shine (pun?) is if you have sporadic peaks in requirements and your application or requirement scales well.For SMBs, where technology is not their core business, a generic cloud solution can make a lot of sense, you can to some degree avoid the need for a large in house technology team, particularly in operations and even more so if your business runs around the clock. It also simplifies upgrades, a pretty much continual cost in IT.Where cloud really fails is in several areas, including but not limited to your business dependency, lack of versatility, and control over data security. When the cloud decides to drop or change a service, you have no choice. Maybe the provider hits financial difficulties for example, where does that leave your business?This dependency and lack of contingency are, for me, the biggest risks, and it’s real. Just look at the fly-by-night products in IoT if you need examples of where cloud based services frequently fail permanently.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 25, 2018, 08:05:28 pm
content: The PC is not dead, it has merely been displaced for people who never really needed a PC in the first place, they only had one because at the time it was the only way to do email, surf the web, etc. Despite the fact that the market is heavily saturated and hardware has reached a plateau, this "failing" market is still selling something like 800 Million PCs a year. I would love to have the problem of one of the products I've been involved in selling "only" 800 million of them a year. The PC market today is much larger than it was during the PC boom in the 1980s, the fact that it is shrinking rather than growing doesn't mean it is dead, it has just peaked. That's what a mature product does.Anyone who produces content still has a PC, some of the tools are cloud based but not everything. As someone who relies on a number of cloud/web based tools at work I'll say this, I hate them. They do offer a lot of advantages, but having to work within the constraints of a browser brings with it a lot of problems. Having to scroll around, pages resetting to the top when something refreshes, timeouts and network errors causing lost data, lack of integration with the OS, for example Outlook in Office 365 cannot display a new mail icon in the taskbar or pop up a meeting reminder. I can only imagine how incredibly frustrating it would be to use a web based IDE to write code or edit A/V media.I'm just old enough to have seen the pendulum swing between dumb terminals and personal computers mutliple times. Fashion and fads afflict the tech industry just as it does clothing, home decor and cars.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 25, 2018, 09:31:45 pm
content: Quote from: Rick Law on January 25, 2018, 05:07:46 pmI've been reading/hearing this for the past 25 years. It didn't happen and it is not going to happen. Fun fact: X-Windows was designed for these kind of application.

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 25, 2018, 10:00:49 pm
content: But lets face it, cloud computing is no different then mainframe computing. Users has a terminal and somewhere is the back-end, be it a PDP 11 or an IBM360.Typical users are not like the people here on this forum.The pre-IBM-PC average corporate users would be just using the application they are suppose to do their daily work with, be it on a CICS screen or whatever. In a post-PC world, all that could be replaced by "cloud" connecting to Andiod tablet or iPad or whatever with a browser-based app.The pre-IBM-PC corporate users with a workstation is likely going to be non-average. Folks with a Sun, Silicon Graphics, HP, etc. These users will be the ones that "cloud" would not be suitable today or in the near future. In a post PC work, these are folks who would still be having a workstation of some sort. Many or most of us in the forum probably fall into this group.pre-IBM-PC average consumer users doesn't exist. Any pre-IBM-PC consumer PC users would have been Apple, Commodore, TRS80, plus of course the 8080/z80 machines with s100 bus. So, those are the odd ducks. This group would likely include all of us when we are not at work. We will find something to use, or even make something to use.For the present-day average consumer users of PC, they probably wont need a PC. The "smart phone/tablet" will do the job fine. People in this group call their relative or friends when the machine wont boot and don't know the different between OS vs MS-Office. They using their laptop just for MS-Word to write a report for school or work. They would likely be satisfied with a tablet with a keyboard. For other functions, they would likely buy a black boxes such as the Netflix/Hulu box like devices.While the PC makers may not like it. Many if not most corporations are not fond of wasting money. If a terminal will do, they would not spend the hundreds of dollars for a PC, and then hundreds more for software licenses.The unknown here in my view is, whether those "average corporate users" will exist anymore. A CSR (customer service rep) looking at a PC screen answering customer questions could easily be a robot in the future. A robo-call machine can be in accounting calling about overdue invoices...Brave new world... Not necessarily better, but surely different.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 25, 2018, 10:06:56 pm
content: But those are most people who 30 years ago during the early PC boom would not have had a PC on their desk at work anyway, they would have used a typewriter if not just paper and pens/pencils. PCs got ubiquitous when they got cheap and it became reasonable to have one even if you only used it for rudimentary tasks that did not really take advantage of what it could do. The people who had PCs early on are the same sort who will continue to have PCs. The casual users who just want to get on the web are the ones who can get by with mobile devices.

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 25, 2018, 11:09:30 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on January 25, 2018, 10:06:56 pmI agree with what you've said here. But as you've said "The casual users who just want to get on the web are the ones who can get by with mobile devices." The big question would be "what is left?"I guestimate 90-95% of the consumer users will fall into this category. But say that is smaller, only 80-90% are casual users. That leaves at best 20% of the current consumer PC market intact.Corporate users are gonners, they will go cloud-terminal solution for the most part. Every sales-rep with a PC 10 years ago (just before first iPhone released) would likely already be using just a smart phones today. Lets just say 20% of them will remain as PC instead of just mobile.So, we are talking about 80% of the market gone! With such a lost, the market is bound to change. Even MS may find the market too small to devote resources to write a new OS for it as hardware changes.So "PC" goes back to a boutique market - like it was with Commodore, Atari 400/800, TRS80, PC-Limited (Dell before it was Dell), etc. The PC market we know today would be dead. The PC market we knew 20 years ago would be back... In another 10/15 years, buying PC's would be rather like buying an Oscilloscope today. You are not going to find it in Walmart or Bestbuy. You will have to hunt for the on-line sellers.I'm not sure if I am right, but that is what my crystal-ball is saying to me...

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 25, 2018, 11:55:01 pm
content: Well I suppose time will tell, but here from my little place in the corporate world there is a PC on every desk, and no plans to change that any time soon. I work in engineering though so we use our PCs to do actual work.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2018, 12:09:02 am
content: Quote from: Rick Law on January 25, 2018, 05:07:46 pmA PC with spyware is still a PC ... and you left out Apple. The reason Microsoft is emulating Google is because Apple is eating everything at the high end and are starting to use their volume to put pressure downward. As long as people want to work offline and/or use a decent keyboard there will be PCs.Web apps are just a fix for PCs because PCs lack a half decent app stores. On tablets and phones everything moved back to native.

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2018, 12:22:50 am
content: In the home computing market I can see how the trend of replacing "PCs" with mobile devices is much more evident.However, in the corporate world I see nowadays (and expect to be like that for the foreseeable future), mobile computing only added to the existing infrastructure of "PCs": they enable professionals "on-the-go" to input information directly into the systems, instead of writing everything on a paper form only to copy everything to a computer in the office. However, every single of these professionals tell me how they still need a "PC" at the office to do a great part of their work that a tablet interface is still too cumbersome to use.Also, the installed base is so large and the performance requirements flattened in the last years, which helped grandfather "PCs" across generations of employees, cutting costs that used to be spent in new hardware.

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2018, 12:52:54 am
content: As long there is a need for a decent human interface like big monitor, big keyboard, mouse (or other form of input device), processing power and the basic bandwidth (I mean the one from the GPU to your monitor or other input/output devices locally) and the latency like the one we enjoy at desktop, PC is here to stay.Of course this balance of the cloud vs desktop pendulum will be swinging again once there is a huge revolution say like in massive increased in cloud processing power like millions/billions times compared to current ones, and revolution in internet bandwidth (millions/billions times too) and the mili-second latency thru cloud thingy like we used to enjoy in current desktop.As human's factor is heavily involved here, its clearly not easy to oversimplify these by just saying the cloud will rule, PC is going to extinct, thats what I called lazy thinking.

author: MT
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2018, 02:33:36 am
content: Once upona time the AAA's (Amiga/Atari/Apple) ruled the world and PC's was merely something very expensive and boutichish and few knew about them. Suddenly the 3 dinosaurs was hit by a comet and 2 become extinct and one severely damaged but out of the ashes raised the PC.It was long time ago i stopped think in terms of PC , i merly think of "amount of personal memory".I still do think in terms of MCU's etc and thats the scary shit for the future to arrive, the transition from bulky to neatand wearable under your skinn spying.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2018, 07:43:19 am
content: Amiga, Atari and Apple computers are all PC's in the context of this discussion. PC just means "personal computer", it doesn't automatically imply the IBM PC.

author: technix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2018, 09:29:50 am
content: IMO the cloud is a blessing for startups and small businesses as renting a fraction of a server is a lot cheaper than colocation. But throwing everything on the cloud paints a giant target on your data, attracting hackers.

author: Electro Detective
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2018, 09:47:21 am
content: Watch out for cloudbursts, thunderstormsand massive H@CKS compromising your dataand no one with a real name or address to chase or seek compensation, much less closure on what REALLY happenedPCs and local storage are still KINGenjoy the Cloud BS while it's still in Honeymoon mode

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2018, 09:58:12 am
content: Quote from: technix on January 26, 2018, 09:29:50 amIt can be cheaper. In some cases it's more expensive. It really depends on the user case, but it seems companies are so desperate to get onto that cloud that it's done at all costs. Maintenance also turns out to be less clear-cut than expected.Cloud services can be a wonderful tool in the toolbox, but the current trend of treating it as the only tool isn't productive.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2018, 10:27:08 am
content: If you can't afford your own kit you can't afford to start a business. Almost every cloud-first startup I've seen has gone down the swanny before they even hit MVP because they have no capital.Edit: also, to startups: please keep buying Herman Miller Aeron chairs so I can get them at stock auctions cheap

author: IanMacdonald
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2018, 11:10:40 am
content: I think it's worth remembering that the PC didn't have Windows when it started out.As for browser-based applications they are a dog to write, and often a dog to use.From the coder's POV everything has to be done by proxy. Instead of just saving a file you have to stream the data to the server by Ajax, and include some kind of command to tell the server what filename to save it under. If something goes wrong, eg the file already exists, then the server cannot ask the user directly what to do. Instead it has to send back some kind of response code, the browser has to ask the question on its behalf, and then repeat its request to the server. Writing this kind of app can take a whole day to do what would take ten minutes with a local programming language.That's even before you get into all the problems caused by character set differences, utterly crap security, and so on. When you see that browsers use UTF-8, Javascript UTF-16, Microsoft Office UTF-32, and PHP doesn't understand unicode at all...Who the hell DESIGNED this stuff?From the end user's POV, by far the worst aggro is when the dam thing just goes PHUT! and loses everything you've entered so far. Because, you usually can't save your work partway through either. Or, can save it, but not without losing your place in the document.No. If cloud based apps want to compete with local apps, they need a completely new interface. One designed to work properly from the outset, instead of a gaffertape solution.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2018, 11:36:35 am
content: Ah yes don't get me started on the web. That's a fucking turd from end to end. I actually want Gopher and Usenet back at this point.

author: joeqsmith
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2018, 12:18:13 pm
content: We had a VAX 11/780? with countless dumb terminals attached to it when the IBM PC was first released.I'm not sure how some computers would be classified. I use a tablet for example. It runs Windows and can out pace my old P4. Tablet with a docking station, you have all your normal peripherals.YT provides metrics including devices. My channel is small and directed towards I guess a techish group. 63% use a computer, 23% mobile phones, 10% tablets, 3.2% TV.... Of the computer users, 83% are running Windows, 9.1% Macintosh, 7.3% LINUX ...I don't see the desktop PC with all it's power going away any time soon. I suspect the game players will continue to drive the market and the scientific community will continue to benefit from it.

author: IanMacdonald
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2018, 12:38:21 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on January 26, 2018, 11:36:35 amOK, mags off while I pull the prop through..Basically, HTML wasn't designed to provide interactive services, it was designed only to serve content. What we have as a result is the kind of abomination that results when a product which works perfectly well as originally intended is hammered and bashed into shape to do a job it wasn't supposed to.The same is true of HTTPS, which does the job it was originally intended to (protect banking websites) but is an epic fail as a security measure for general websites, because most of these do not meet the requirements for it to function properly.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2018, 12:45:36 pm
content: Yes indeed exactly that. Today I am actually banging my face on something where trained monkeys who wrote it basically decided to ignore risks like CSRF and XSS. Even found some SQL injection in there for good measure. It’s just a dire mess. The answer isn’t to apply any engineering rigour and fix shit where the problem lies but add more layers of turds on top of the specification. (Not our spec; the “standards” of you can call them that without bursting into laughter)I long for the days of wrangling win32 again. That was fun even when it was misbehaving.

author: Vtile
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2018, 06:50:33 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on January 25, 2018, 05:42:36 pmThat is also a big problem in some industrial environments and use cases, even more so if the factory is somewhere middle of the jungle.

author: nfmax
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2018, 11:05:19 pm
content: Quote from: Rick Law on January 25, 2018, 10:00:49 pmDo you have any evidence to support this remarkable statement?

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2018, 01:03:03 am
content: They may not be fond of it, but that sure doesn't stop them from excelling at it.

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2018, 03:00:09 am
content: Quote from: Vtile on January 26, 2018, 06:50:33 pmEven if you are not cloud-dependent, you would be dependent on your own hardware's reliability to support your own databases and/or server farms.As to making it network-free and use local data only, I think this can be ruled out since it will take a network to replicate the data to you. You are right back to network dependency.So network reliability in my view really is not something that is pros or cons in comparing local PC processing vs terminal-to-server-farm. It is just balancing one cost verses another, and balancing added risk verses added features/capabilities.Quote from: IanMacdonald on January 26, 2018, 12:38:21 pmTypical corporate back office application that I know of, typical business functions doesn't really need much beyond forms. ERPs (or HR systems, or Contact Management, or Sale Force automation ...) are not so interaction heavy any how. A well implemented on-line 1040 tax form filler with context-sensitive help would probably be a good representation of the level of interactiveness required by most on-line business functions.With most of the business systems being browser capable these days, the technology team has to decide: thin client or thick client. Using older (pre cloud-everything days) piece of software for discussion, the question reduces to: "Would I load (name your favorite) ERP client on every PC company wide, and hook them up to the ERP Server, or do I just enable web-services on my ERP and call it a day?" That decision to me is rather a slam-dunk. Heck, the cost of sending tech-support to every corner far exceed the cost of buying a new damn Chrome book for every such corner.Quote from: nfmax on January 26, 2018, 11:05:19 pmThere really isn't so many Yahoos and Googles in the world. Most companies (or business units, or product lines or ...) live or die by not just their revenue (turn-over for some of you), they also live or die by their profit margin. Being over-budget on the cost side too often is not healthy for one's career.Evidence? Hmmm... the many companies that disappeared by acquisition may be considered evidence. The other guys (acquirer) think they can run it more cost efficient than you do, so puff, you are gone.

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2018, 03:22:01 am
content: Quote from: Rick Law on January 25, 2018, 05:07:46 pmSo why do we call them PCs? The Personal Computer is a trade mark of the IBM Corporation. And why is the mobile telephone called a mobile phone when the phone is only a small part of its functionality? Why not call a PC a telephone because it has Skype?These are all justInformation Processing Units. OrIPU's. A new acronym about to take on the world, perhaps.We Aussies often incorrectly call an oscilloscope a CRO when there is no cathode ray tube in it. And we celebrate the Queen of England's birthday by taking a public holiday on the wrong day of the year. We are a silly bunch.

author: Electro Detective
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2018, 04:32:47 am
content: Quote from: VK3DRB on January 27, 2018, 03:22:01 amWe'll have to endeavor to call CROs and DSOs'scopes'As long as the beer is cold and flowing on a paid day off attached to a long weekend, happy to celebrate the Queen's Birthday twice a yearNo drama at all

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2018, 07:11:16 am
content: Hell I'd be more than happy to celebrate the queen's birthday if it got me a day off work. Actually I'd celebrate just about anyone's birthday under that condition.

author: IanMacdonald
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2018, 08:25:24 am
content: "So why do we call them PCs?"I still think that Windows NT took the wrong approach in turning the PC into a multiuser computer. The whole point of the PC was that it was designed for use by one person (hence the P in the name) and this eliminated a lot of the needless complexity of the multiuser platform.Then of course Windows 7 introduced cyclic junctions in the user profiles...

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2018, 09:45:07 am
content: Are you joking? The multi-user aspect of NT was/is a HUGE improvement over the single user nature of earlier PC operating systems. It's still a personal computer if you have a family with multiple logins or a personal account and a guest account. It can behave like several different computers, one for each family member all in one physical device. That's still more or less the same paradigm as a single user PC, unlike a terminal that has to connect to some remote system to be useful.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2018, 09:47:30 am
content: NT was awesome. It was like a Unix workstation that didn’t punch you in the face with Motif/CDE/OpenWindows

author: nfmax
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2018, 04:13:56 pm
content: NT didn't (doesn't) allow more than one user to be logged in at the same time

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2018, 06:15:07 pm
content: IMO the PCs had to become multi-users given that more and more family members started to use the same "PC". Also, the robustness brought by NT to the home users was absolutely astonishing when compared to the previous horrid "home" OSes from Microsoft.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2018, 07:02:27 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on January 27, 2018, 09:47:30 amUNIX is only like that because the GUI was an afterthought.The downside with NT is the graphical part is integrated into the kernel, so has to be loaded. Try starting Windows with just the command line and like it or not, you still get the full graphical windowing system, just with a command line window loaded, rather than the desktop. It's not possible to start in text mode, as is the case with UNIX.Quote from: rsjsouza on January 27, 2018, 06:15:07 pmYes, NT was a lot more secure, than the other home OSes, which contained a lot of very buggy 16-bit DOS code. MS pretended that Win9x/ME only used DOS as a bootloader, but it was a lie: lots of 16-bit DOS was code still called, after Windows had started. MS did get a lot of stick, when they released XP, because it broke lots of old programs, but it was for the greater good.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2018, 08:29:05 pm
content: I was working at MS when Windows 2000 came out, I was in one of the game groups at the time and getting games to behave in the NT environment was painful. In the end it was worth it though, Win2k was hugely more stable and secure than WinMe and 9x. XP further refined this and once the kinks were ironed out it matured into a very solid multipurpose OS.I never could understand the default color scheme of XP though, that Fisher Price look was horrid, virtually everyone I knew set it to classic scheme immediately.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2018, 09:12:15 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on January 27, 2018, 08:29:05 pmI agree. The silver theme wasn't as bad though. The good thing about Windows XP is the theme could be changed, so it looked totally different. My favourite was Royale Noir, although there were some excellent third party skins available. I don't know why MS didn't include a wider selection of skins.Royale NoirCrystal Thin - the theme I used to use.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2018, 10:34:15 pm
content: Quote from: rsjsouza on January 27, 2018, 06:15:07 pmRemember how Linux was more or less starting to become usable by the average user? XP was Microsoft's way to counter the threat of home users going Linux to escape the ME junk.Quote from: bd139 on January 27, 2018, 09:47:30 amI remember KDE 2 - the first Linux desktop environment I used - was not that different from NT4 as far as the GUI goes.One simple yet very useful feature that's still missing from Windows is that always on top button. Nvidia users are in luck because Nview adds that functionality.

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2018, 11:33:10 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on January 27, 2018, 10:34:15 pmCertainly. Still, the backlash from ME pushed a lot of folks over the bridge, but soon they returned as Mandriva/Mandrake and RedHat did not deliver in the configurability of printers and the compatibility with the multitude of HW for Windows (Winmodems, Network cards, sound cards, etc.)Quote from: NiHaoMike on January 27, 2018, 10:34:15 pmThe much earlier Fvwm95 was quite close to the Windows environment, but I recall it was quite slow due to (I suspect) the terrible video drivers.This pushed people towards simpler GUIs (this in 1997, 1998)

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 27, 2018, 11:54:47 pm
content: Quote from: IanMacdonald on January 27, 2018, 08:25:24 amQuote from: james_s on January 27, 2018, 09:45:07 amAround the time when NT Server was first introduced, I went to the annual PC Expo at NYC Jacob Javits center. In one of those free tech seminars ran by the vendors, the UNIX crowd was poo-pooing NT Server for "NT" stands for "NotThere (yet)". Eventually, NT (as we now know) very successfully displaced Unix as departmental and later corporate level servers. MS had the bulk and persistence to nibble everyone else to death.With multi-users on the same machine, remote access is the next logical step and Citrix filled that niche. Of course, Citrix was the technology that microsoft purchased and transformed into Remote Desktop. With that we had window based pc-as-terminal connecting to app-on-server. With app-on-server now morphed into browser based, I can see that there is no reason for even remote desktop. Here comes Chrome book / smart phones running browsers. Corporate market starts to evaporate and eventually only a tiny amount of specialized business functions needing a PC.Hence my thought "PC's being ubiquitous is over..." PC's as we know it today is dying. Back to PC's being a small boutique market for, well, a much small crowd.Actually, I rather like that idea. Using a PC is kind of a privilege. You have to earn that privilege by learning how to keep it running. The rest of the masses can just tab on their "smart" phones and take it back to the phone store at the mall whenever it needs work. Kind of makes me feel superior owning a PC when it is no longer ubiquitous.

author: GreyWoolfe
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 28, 2018, 03:16:49 am
content: Quote from: rsjsouza on January 27, 2018, 06:15:07 pmI don't share my toys well. I have my 3 computers, laptop and 2 tablets. SWMBO has her computer and tablet and the rest of the family has their toys. I don't like people touching my stuff because then, stoopit stuff tends to happen. I don't even share my printers with the stepdaughter and her husband (don't ask why they are living with us), I gave them their own so I don't have to care for and feed it.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 28, 2018, 03:59:44 am
content: I really can't see how the corporate market will evaporate any time soon. There are fads coming and going, but the fat client seems to come back from the dead every time.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 29, 2018, 07:39:25 am
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on January 27, 2018, 10:34:15 pmLinux was never seen as much of a threat to that market, I was there at the time and anyone who predicted Linux was going to take over the desktop market was pretty much blown off as a crackpot. XP was Microsoft's way of unifying the business and consumer operating systems after it was clear that the corporate targeted Windows 2000 was becoming popular with home users, more so after the WinMe debacle. WinMe had essentially the Win2k UI on top of the old Win98 core.

author: Galenbo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 29, 2018, 04:24:26 pm
content: A smartphone is a PC too, so even if there were a "discussion", that would be a non-discussion.For many activities, I need my 2x 1920x1080 monitors in 24" format, like simulation, 3D drawing, pic/video editing, network programming...and some connection to the outside world like programmer, logic analyser, 2d/3d mouse etc.Maybe some day smartphones will be able to do that, I don't really care, I'll use what works.Personally lately I did a shift from the smartphone back to the PC, the PC is much better in avoiding publicity, multitask youtube to avoid publicity, and to see the full-menu-sites.

author: technix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 30, 2018, 06:19:21 pm
content: Quote from: Galenbo on January 29, 2018, 04:24:26 pmThe big distinction point of "smart devices" and a full-blown "PC" is content creation. Smartphones are indeed technically PC's, but the general form factor, user experience and software library is geared towards content consumption instead of content creation. The intricate inputs required for content creation like mice and pen tablets is discarded in favor of rough but easy to use ones like capacitive touch screen. The blazing fast but power hungry processors is replaced with slower ones consuming extremely low power.Quote from: Galenbo on January 29, 2018, 04:24:26 pmI think that some tablets are already capable of doing all the above thanks to the inclusion of Thunderbolt 3 port. I dropped my tablet (its use was steadily on decline to the point where I only used to to watch YouTube, then I just stopped using it) and now for me it is either my workstation or my iPhone.

author: Vtile
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 30, 2018, 08:29:51 pm
content: Many 'embedded' are almost on the edge of being PCsHeck even that one DSP? chip had an in build interactive basic interpreter in it, which in 80's would be almost could be considered as a micro computer / PC.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 30, 2018, 09:15:55 pm
content: Quote from: Vtile on January 30, 2018, 08:29:51 pmThe ESP32 has Basic on board as an Easter egg.https://hackaday.com/2016/10/27/basic-interpreter-hidden-in-esp32-silicon/