Is the Home Desktop Going Away?

fishdan asks: "I recently wrote a lengthy reply to Doug Barney who had written an article saying that Apple and Linux were not trying to compete on the desktop. I saved my reply in my journal, if anyone is interested. However, this got me to thinking. Game makers have said that they are going to be developing for consoles like the Xbox or Playstation, first. Rich web applications like Writely are moving much of the standard functionality of the desktop online. Email is moving rapidly to mobile devices. Given your integrated Web/Media Center/TV that runs through your high resolution screen (that everyone will have in 10 years), what is the future of the home desktop?"

Comments

Not so long as it's so hard to upgrade laptops

[WillAffleckUW]

Man, they keep upping the specs on the video card, processor, memory, etc for all the games.

But maybe by 2020 we'll see the home PC get phased out.

I think we're more likely to see home PCs use more wireless keyboards and run off the HDTV screens, though, and as console game systems improve, we might see fewer people buy home PCs.

How far into the future?

[CrabbMan]

I'm sure we're really not that far off from having every desk come standard with an embedded system built right into its top. Maybe with some sort of holographic projection instead of those old-school LCD flatscreens.

My only real point: it's a total no-brainer that desktop computing systems, as we know them now, are going to disappear. Computer technology gets old, and it gets there fast.

Personal server no doubt

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no question in my mind that a "personal server" will emerge at some point. The key to this will be local data storage where all ajax-type web services will be centralized around an individual's network-aware, server-based, personal data store. It will likely be automatically redundant (as in a "personal grid"), and totally clustered. Many devices will just read from it. Why on earth does voice mail get stored at each wireless carrier's data center? What if you could have your devices just connect in and read from your personal server wirelessly instead of synchronizing? Anyone who has had to mess with any sort of synchronization tech. should recognize its shortcomings. So, if I wanted to get to my contacts from my mobile device, the device would just connect securely over the network into my personal server and show me a "view" of my contacts. Same thing for just about all data, except that certain large data types might have to have "personal" content delivery networking technology to facilitate availability to different edge devices, such as a MP3 player, a car, or a friend's livingroom as you show up for a party and want to have a smaller catalogue of the most recently played tracks available locally at their edge for quick access.

Whatever the conjecture, we have entered the age of the personal server.

a prediction i had once...

[jamesh]

... was that isp's would start offering completely managed hosted desktops for people (rdp, X, vnc, whatever). The idea is that for many many internet users (eg computer illiterate moms and dads keeping in touch with the kids and grandkids), the entire set of applications they use consist of a web browser, an email client, and solitaire.

For a few extra dollars a month, the isp would provide them with a thin client (either a complete hardware and software package or a cd that would boot on an existing pc), and they'd never have to worry about anything like backups and security again. Email and documents would be stored at the ISP (but readily accessible somehow...). If they botch their browser or email config or something, the ISP would be able to fix it with a few button clicks.

Obviously you'd have to place some trust in the ISP to adequately protect your data etc, but if your data consists of emails like 'little johnny took his first steps today, here's a picture', then it's of limited value to anyone anyway.

Hasn't happened yet though.

Define Desktop Computer

[Spock the Baptist]

I'm sitting at home right now typing this post on a G5 PowerMac. Sitting next to me is my cousin's new Mac Mini. I'm waiting on a 20" Apple flat panel display before setting things up at her house. Here's the deal: The Mac Mini will be in placed in my cousin's cupboard, with all the wiring hidden. The flatpanel will be attached to the wall to the side of the cupboard, and a small cantilevered ledge, that has already been built will serve as the home to the keyboard, and optical trackball. This whole set up is very easily to get to, and is situated so that you almost must be able to view the flatpanel if you are in the kitchen. My cousin and her family will use this set up to do most of their online activities, e-mail, web surfing etc.. It will also serve as a bulletin board, family calender etc., and my cousin will have all her recipes stored on the beast. She'll be able to read them from anywhere in the kitchen with out her glasses. (Yes that means large print.) They will also have an nice speaker system in the kitchen and use iTunes for music. If they so choose, they can also view DVDs with their meals. So then where is the desktop? The only 'top' is the small ledge for the keyboard, and trackball, and there's no way that I'd call that a desktop as there's no desk just the small ledge.

What I do on my desktop

[crmartin]

I've got about as many computers as anyone normally does --- I admit there's a guy who works for me who has 20-odd Sun servers at home, but that's certainly an outlier --- and I tend, increasingly, to do the daily basic stuff on web applications: Basecamp, spongecell, gmail, a web-enabled exchange email (ick), Writely, celtx, iJot ....

I program on my local box, I do heavy graphics on my local box, but those are't the usual day to day applications.

Using web apps means my data is accessible from nearly anywhere. If I'm really concerned about privacy, I keep it on a thumb drive, but there's darn little that I worry about.

I'm not sure why an ordinary civilian user needs a desktop.

Re:Big Roadblocks

[evilviper]

1. At least in the U.S., there just isn't a good enough broadband Internet infrastructure to handle the bandwidth required to drive a dumb terminal and provide anything near the current desktop experience with games, movies, etc.

There's more than enough bandwidth for remote desktops. Video is a slightly more difficult issue, but that could be EASILY handled by on-the-fly MPEG-2 compression at the datacenter, and a dirt-cheap MPEG-2 decoding chip in the thin clients. Games are a non-starter, but other than that, I think we're ready to go.

2. Even if point 1 wasn't an issue, it'd still be a gradual process to get people to switch to something like that,

Actually, I think you could get a very large number of people to switch right away. Offer them an "internet computer" (read thin client) for free, and only slightly higher broadband fees to cover the ISP's costs. Advertise it to the people that don't know which end of a computer is up, as something they can't possibly make a mistake on (and "low power" and "all the software you'll ever need, built-in"), and you'd have a good-sized market, almost instantly.

plus it would take time for various service providers to come up with the hardware and software infrastructure to do it, and finally there'd be a big market war.

When there's money to be made, believe me, the service providers can do it at record-breaking speeds. 99% of the software already exists, they'd just have to expand their datacenters, wire them up in a cluster for failover, reasonable back-ups, etc. I really can't see any reason they couldn't put this all together, and start signing customers within 6 months.

I know I'd never sign-up for anything like that, but I know a lot of people that would fit into this model perfectly, provide there are good terms in place, and getting copies of your own data (eg. on DVD-Rs) isn't too expensive.

Re:That may be sooner rather than later.

[Voltageaav]

I could see laptops replacing docking stations. The Battery point is mute as you can use it while it's charging. Guess what, you can hook a laptop up to almost anything you can hook a desktop up to. Desktops do see high end tech before laptops, but they aren't far behind. My laptop may be considered a big boat of a space heater by some of you, but it does what I want it too. I can do anything I use my desktop for on my laptop and I can toss it in my backpack and take it anywhere I want. As for smaller devices, I think it will be a while before they can really replace a desktop or laptop. Perhapse once we have holoscreens or they can interface directly with our brains.

Not if we keep shopping at Ikea

[epaulson]

I don't know what the device will be in 10 years, but I know I'll use it in my home office. I've got my house set up for a place to work - and I'll want a computing device in there. 10 years isn't going to change that, I like my desk too much.

Will it be the same device that I play video games with in my living room? Maybe, but I know I'm not going to email in my home theater room.

The device might converge, but my life isn't going to.

I don't have a desktop

[eechuah]

I don't have a desktop anymore. Both myself and my wife use laptops, and the living room contains a heavy duty Linux box with Mythtv on it. When I need to do something heavy duty, I ssh/vnc to that box. Otherwise, the laptop is great. The only drawback is games... but I'm only pretty much playing MAME nowadays.

Re:That may be sooner rather than later.

[kisrael]

You're thinking of your own needs and priorities.

People don't buy shiny tech for tax purposes.

To address your points:

[a] inherently more expensive due to their monolithic construction
[b] underpowered as compared to desktops (cpuwise, gpuwise, whether comparing strongest models of each or same-costing models of each, you name it)

Web and multimedia capable PCs have been pretty cheap for quite a while now...and laptops aren't much more expensive. The "underpowered" aspect just doesn't matter except for gamers and hard core multimedia users. Plus you can lounge in bed, the living room, or look impressive in the coffee shop.

[c] much-more-expensive-to-fix (tried replacing the fan on your laptop CPU lately?)
[d] mechanically expire much sooner (from the keyboard to the optical drive to the plastic shell)
[e] more limited in storage capacity (you can stick in less drives, which are also smaller (and more expensive) due to form factor)
[f] unupgradeable in some avenues (CPU, in most cases GPU, etc).

Dude, you're talking like it's a decade ago. For many people, computers are closed boxes. Use it 'til it gets too annoying or breaks, then get a new one.

If you're time isn't free, than ultimately it's cheaper that way for many people.

Right now I have an embaressment of riches in terms of laptops...an ugly but super powerful windows box from work, a cheap iBook, and a cheap windows laptop I got before the iBook. And I have no idea what all those people in the airport were doing with their laptops out, but they seemed to be happy with 'em...I prefered a paperback myself....