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The Dawn of the Post-PC era?
An anonymous reader writes "The "Post-PC" era may be near at hand, according to the findings of a recently completed market study conducted by eTForecasts. The study projects that Windows CE-based devices may outsell Windows-based PCs within 5 years. According to the report, Microsoft has made "tremendous progress" in positioning its Windows CE and derivative operating systems for use in a broad range of handheld and mobile devices such as PDAs and Smartphones, and only embedded Linux is poised to represent a major long-term across-the-board competitor to Microsoft." The Register has another story about the study.
PC's in any form will not be replaced by anything that cannot beat it in gaming quality. Until my palm can play a Quake, a Half Life, or a Freelancer BETTER than my pc, I'm not unplugging.
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There will always be a use for wired PCs. This is exactly why Desknotes were made: It's a laptop computer and makes the employees happy because they have a cool little toy, but they still can't leave the desk because there is not battery on the unit, thus forcing you to be (1) tethered to a wall, presumeably in the office while doing work, or (2) carry a small power generator with you.
Handheld devices are great and all, but people want something that they can do everything on, all at once. When we see a handheld device that runs at 2Ghz (or equivalent speeds at a different frequency) and has a 17" screen on it, then it will be post-pc era. Tablet PCs have come close, and Laptops are there, but none of them are handheld.
The article talks about market share of embedded vs. oem distributions of operating systems, but I just don't see how the embedded market will span from the business users to the home BF1942 players and Kazaa users.
Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
Epoc seems to be powering quite a lot more phones these days then anything else. With the phone market so much bigger in terms of numbers then the pc market, let alone the handheld market, is epoc not poised to beat Windows CE?
One guess as to who funded this study. These "studies for hire" places are almost always questionable.
It will be much much easier on everyone when there is essentially no upgradability from machine to machine and we buy a new machine every 3 years.
What does "post-pc" mean? I cannot tell from the articles linked what the original author intended. It would be very easy to interpret these articles as implying that handhelds will dominate the consumer's future over PCs. But this is not what the market data shows. It shows that handheld sales will dominate.
And what is the difference? The difference is this: I own a PC or two already. They work just fine for me, have plenty of power, and will be that way two years from now (assuming I don't want Longhorn or some other future bloated software). So I won't need to buy a PC. But I don't have a handheld, so I might choose to buy one. So might my wife. Or we might get a notebook. But the PC would still be our dominant mode of computing.
Perhaps this is obvious to everyone already. But the article is poorly written on this score and could easily lead to confusion, a confusion which then plays itself out in non-geeks running around thinking that geeks are saying PCs are dead. Then when we're still using PCs in a few years, they'll point and laugh at us for our silly predictions. Its happened before...
People get way too caught up in "what's going to replace what" these days. Desktop computers will always be around, they will merely be complimented (not replaced) by handhelds. Think of the desktop pc as your house. It's big, takes a lot of space, and expensive, but when you're in and stationary that's what you want. Now your handheld is your car. It's mobile, has lots of things similiar to things in the house (seats you could take a nap in while pulled off. trunk to keep things in. mini stereo system. etc). The car's mobility is a wonderful thing and allows us to live and work in a completely different way, but no time soon are people going to ditch their houses and start living out of their car.
;).
Laptops are like camper trailers. Bulky and tedious to carry around, but in a pinch they serve quite well as a below average house
So? Does this mean the CE based devices will be performing the same tasks the PCs were?
Almost certainly not.
Further, in five years Linux based PCs "may outsell" Windows based PCs. For that matter Macs "may outsell" Windows based PCs in five years. The point being, most pundits crystal balls have been pretty cloudy over the years.
For myself, I'm pretty sure I'll be buying new PCs at about the same rate I buy new PDAs - every two years or so as the new technology becomes too compelling to pass up. ;-)
The one trend I think will continue is the intrusion of "desknotes" onto the scene. These will be notebook machines that are powerful enough to completely replace desktops for 99% of computer users. I hope they'll plug into a (Hypertransport?) connection that'll allow external AGP and PCI devices in the docking station, providing upgradeable graphics at least when used in the desktop role. One hopes the processors won't run hot enough to really endanger the users though... ;-)
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
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In my mind, the only things that make people upgrade their PCs at all are games. Most people use their computers for chatting, browsing, email, games, and a -little- word processing - probably in that order. The game, hardware, and OS industry knows this.
As a result, all three industries work together to an extent. OSes need upgrades when new hardware comes out, new hardware needs new OSes, and games need both. Thus, they end up making colateral income for each other, as one component advances, all the others must. Otherwise, each industry would probably have stagnated without the other.
Now, portables, however, don't really do the 'game' thing. They're really just fancy web appliances with word processors. For most people, a WinCE device with a couple hundred megs of storage and a decent display/keyboard would be more than sufficient for all that they do (legally): just include solitaire, IE, and a couple chat programs with your basic loadout. I see this working for a large extent, especially with the convention of WiFi. I'm thinking a family of 5 (with, say, 3 internet addicts) would much rather spend 1k$ on 3 portable devices than 1 large desktop device that only one person can use at a time.
Price would have to be quite competitive, of course, since most people want gaming, too. Personally, I see embedded WinXP (or whatever equivilant product MS comes out with next) being more common than WinCE. WinCE is for low-end stuff.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I bought a computer this year. I didn't buy it with Windows. Is this a case of me not buying a PC?
If I buy a PDA that doesn't have WinCE, will I not be buying a PDA?
This might be a useful comparison (Windows vs WinCE) within one company's market, but ignores a two things going on in the market as a whole. Now, maybe my PC purchase and purchases like it are small enough to be written off as statistical noise, but are those PDAs? I rather doubt it.
I don't subscribe to RMS's GNUtopian vision.
Sure there a few commodity hardware vendors that ship pretty much the same WinCE devices as eachother: HP, Dell, Toshiba, Samsung.
But the market is much larger that that: Palm, Sony, Handspring, Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sharp, IBM, Apple,Sendo, etc that ship innovative produces based on the best OS for their needs: Symbian, Linux, Palm, Homegrown.
Thes vendors innovative devices keeps filling in the crack in the maeketplace - while the WinCE market is limited to Palm IIIC wanabees and friken-huce 'cell phones' that bing you back to the Motorola 'Brick' days.
Want a ruged computing device: Telelogix
Want a server in your pocket: Sharp/IBM
Want tunes: iPod
Want the web on you cellphone: Ericsoon 800
Choic, Choice Choice!
Where's the WinCE version of these deviced: don't exit.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
That's a good question. And I have some anecdotal evidence that many Windows based handhelds are more stable. I have only crashed a WinCE device once, and I simply removed the battery, put it back in, and everything worked again.
That said, there is less propensity to crash in that the hardware driver conflicts that you have on a full size desktop are not as diverse.
By having some kind of control of what you plug in, and add on to your handheld, I notice a lot less crashes.
the OS is tweaked a bit by the manufacturer (in my case Compaq) so that the hardware conflicts are minimized. I think this is why you can not "upgrade" your handheld like you can a desktop.
Of course all of this limits my freedom to do what I want with my device, but allows the greater public stability.
One side note, I have never seen a BSOD on Windows CE. However when mine did "crash" I was unable to do anything. In fact the power button did not even work.
what? what I thought we were in the trust tree in the nest, were we not?
The article talks about handheld, consumer and embedded applications tied to WindowsCE. Of COURSE it'll outsell PCs, a PC is a single device whereas handheld and consumer devices cover a huge spectrum of goods. And when they quote a 250% increase in sales of hand held computers, notice they fail to tell you the exact number of sales to date.
Does it spell the death of the PC? No, wishful thinking at best, preemptive marketing at worst. This piece is spouting someone's paid marketing drivel, and it wouldn't surprise me if the path leads to Redmond.
Even if that is the case, it again shows that the people in Redmond learned from big old bad tobacco. Diversify! They knew long ago the gravy train from personal computers couldn't go on forever, and they also knew that consumer electronics would be thristy for more powerful embedded operating systems.
WindowsCE isn't all that bad, but certainly Microsoft is fooling itself if it thinks it's a one-stop-shop for an OS for embedded devices.
And has been for decades. The personal automobile outsells them by quite a large margin.
Well, unless, of course, you need a tractor instead of a BMW M5.
Oddly enough they are not interchangable. Go figure.
Come to think of it sporks outsell handheld devices, so replace your PDA with a spork.
The article is silly.
KFG
Here is why it won't work:
A PDA's screen is terrible for web browsing because of its size.
It is easier to use a full size keyboard to enter any significant amount of data.
If you can't charge it when required it is possible to lose data. (this happened to me once when I forgot the charger on vacation)
Its small size makes it easy to steal and if you don't have a pc you won't have a backup for your data.
A PDA is best used as an extension for your computer, it is not a replacement for your PC.
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DON'T USE TUNAREZ!!!
Every year, people (I mean the teaming masses wallowing in their computer ignorance) are getting slowly smarter about their computers. It is now something of joke, but the grandmother who spends her time sending e-mail and playing bridge is a good example. So basically, the basic users are getting smarter, and more demanding, about computers.
So my question is: why, oh why, would they suddenly decide to give up this machine that they can communicate with, do their taxes with, play Heart$ or whatever on, "surf" the internet with, etc. and trade it in on a bunch of over specialized little boxes with way less computing power? Doing so would be going against the trend of increasing knowledge and computer familiarity.
This is a dream by the manufacturers that have worked themselves into a corner because PC's have become a commodity. This is also Bill Gates' network refrigerator and talking house dream. Oddly enough, in these schemes, the PC just disappears. I don't see any trends going in this direction. The whole PDA thing took off because you can hook them up to your PC.
But I think this is a marketing argument and not even a consumer argument.
Congratulations! Now we are the Evil Empire