The Future of the P.C.

scarcrowman writes "This is an interesting article on the projected future of what we call the 'P.C.' It is becoming more 'Personal' than ever."

Comments

Life Recorder

[kryogen1x]

I recently spoke to Microsoft research chief Rick Rashid, who noted, with appropriate awe, that a terabyte of storage now costs about $500. That's enough space to hold every conversation you will ever have from birth to death, or 2000 photographs taken every day of that life, Rashid said. He admitted nobody really knows what such newfound capabilities really mean. Get ready for the life recorder, probably coming soon. It would contain every event from your entire life--probably in video if you want it.

Almost like the Truman Show. But when he says "every conversation," does he mean in audio or in text?

I guess this will be good for biographies. But who would want their life recorded?

Re:Life Recorder

[jbfaninmo]

A Slashdotter with a girlfriend. We are going to need the video evidence to prove that!

Storage space

[BabyJaysus]

I recently spoke to Microsoft research chief Rick Rashid, who noted, with appropriate awe, that a terabyte of storage now costs about $500. That's enough space to hold every conversation you will ever have from birth to death, ...

Maybe, but certainly not in MS Word format!

Rambling?

[Blapto]

Is it just me who finds the article to be a tad strange? Perhaps it's the mulled wine but all it does is mumble about how we have technology that stores data, and we can buy things that store lots of data. What would be interesting is an analysis of what computer businesses are actually aiming at. I mean, we can see Apple are going for the digital lifestyle (iPod photo, iTunes, AirTunes etc.) but where are we actually going in terms of technology coming to the average user? I for one think that the bottleneck has to be our internet connections. Roll on household OC 48.

ahem...

[eobanb]

Before we get into a holy war over operating systems, set-top boxes, and other things that most of us probably don't want to argue about tonight, and for those of you who didn't RTFA, it basically looks at the possibilities of decentralising, if you will, certain functions of a PC.

I still believe, however, that the PC itself lacks a certain combination of features that other devices lack. A Tivo or XBox may be simpler to operate, but a PC is expandable and upgradable, simply does much more, and does those things better. A PC is more flexible, and that's what I believe counts. You can word-process or play games, browse the internet, whatever. But if you buy a bunch of 'appliances' to do those things, it really makes life MORE complicated, not less. I yield the floor.

The PC evolving into a dataserver

[CestusGW]

I think the "PC" as we know it is bound for a destiny as little more than a file server. I mean, let's look at some common uses of Joe six-pack's PC:

Playing songs and movies
Chatting with an IM, checking e-mail
Writing documents (letters, resumes)
Playing games

Let's start with the first one. Songs sound better through a full stereo set, we can all acknowledge that. Stereos right now are very good at playing audio: they aren't that great at holding the songs they play. Clunky 600 CD changers aren't really the answer. A PC can hold, index, categorize and search more songs in a smaller space than a CD changer ever could. With the advent of set-top boxes, playing and storing movies and videos is now almost practical in a non-PC device. However, a PC is still a more extensible platform for storing and retrieving video data. For display of video, a properly sized television is simply larger than my 17" monitor, and better suited for viewing from a distance. So playing your audio through your stereo and your video through your TV are both better options than just using your PC, but using your PC for storage and retrieval is the best way to look after data.

For chatting/e-mail, the PC is still the premiere platform. However, increasing numbers of people want to take their e-mail with them. Also, people may tend to both chat (IM) with a person they also call on their cell phone. Currently, synchronizing the data between your PDA, cell and computer on who can be contacted where is a pain in the butt. The PC is best suited to storing contact information, but a cell phone is better suited for phoning somebody, a Blackberry can check your e-mail anywhere and hopefully someday will be able to use IM as well (if it doesn't already?).

Although it's a long way off yet, e-paper is still being actively pursued as a better way of entering data. The modern PC, with it's QWERTY keyboard (a design meant to hinder speed, not help it) isn't the premiere choice for entering data. The e-paper with a clipboard could go more places than your PC ever could, but probably won't have the storage capacities that modern *cough*MS Office*cough* document formats require. So having a PC act to save and retrieve all the documents for your e-paper is probably the right combination of technologies.

As for game playing, we all know that both the console and PC games market aren't dying (haven't heard a peep out of Netcraft), but costs for a modern gaming PC are continuing to climb (look back at the pricing for a "budget" GeForce 2 card, now look at the price for a "budget" GeForce 6600 card). At the current rate, the "PC" that you play games on will be a completely different beast than the "PC" that is targeted towards the mass consumer market.

In the end, I'm trying to say that just about the only thing a PC does really well is store stuff. Playback and data entry are done much better by devices specialized for that task. So, in the long run, I think the PC will end up acting as a data server/hub for a variety of devices and server to keep them all in sync with one another. Just my $0.02

Like what happened at turn of the last century?

[Stealth Potato]

If I recall my consumer history correctly, there was once a time when you could buy a general-purpose electric motor with all these doo-dads to hook up to it, like mixers and other household or kitchen tools. As the motors themselves got cheaper, the attachments became small devices with their own motors. I.e., instead of having one larger motor with a lot of attachments, you had an array of smaller motorized tools.

It seems that a similar transformation is occurring (has occurred?) in the computer industry. Instead of having one computer you use for everything, a multitude of small computerized devices now exists for fulfilling specific functions. Of course, a great deal of this is just natural, considering you wouldn't want to lug a desktop PC around with you whenever you wanted some tunes on the go. :-)

With 1000 Gmail accounts...

[SimonShine]

..., you can have 1 Terabyte for free!