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

SETI@Home

[SpaceAdmiral]

I can't wait until I don't need to use my desktops for anything, 'cause my SETI@Home Average Credit will shoot through the roof! Soon afterwards, I will get credited for discovering the Tralfamadoreans, who, coincidently, like to give huge sums of gold to people who discover them.

I'll just sit back and wait.

Same old same old

[Siguy]

We've been hearing about the death of the home desktop for the last 15 years it seems, and it never seems to get any closer.

I'm sure that EVENTUALLY with media centers and portable tablet/handhelds getting move advanced it might become a reasonable notion, but until we're all walking around with Star Trek-esque super computers the size of a notepad, I'm not sure I see any obvious reason for the desktop to disappear anytime soon.

Re:Same old same old

[the-amazing-blob]

I personally enjoy my desktop here. It's really nice, and I plan on using it for many more years. I don't like the idea of using mobile devices. I can't sit in my comfy chair while moving. Believe me, I've tried. Stairs and my chair do not agree.

I have noticed this too

[eclectro]

Both the desktop and BSD seem to be under the weather lately, and might be dying.

Physical locations?

[fractalrock]

"Given your integrated Web/Media Center/TV that runs through your high resolution screen (that everyone will have in 10 years)"

An "integrated Web/Media Center" that runs a high resolution screen sounds a lot like a personal computer. Are you simply inquiring as to the physical location of the typical home computer in the future? I'm guessing many people would be happy with only one computer, hooked up to a T.V....but any user who is even *remotely* hardcore will always have a computer at their desk. It's a tool, just like a pen or stapler.

Plus, I doubt LCD TV or Plasma screens will ever be low enough that the average income...such as myself...can afford multiple displays (which I *need*) on their Media Center.

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.

Big Roadblocks

[HunterZ]

I'm somewhat opposed to the home desktop being replaced by a dumb terminal, mostly on the grounds that it will reduce user privacy and artifically limit the scope of possible use. There are a couple of factors to consider, however:

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.

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, 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.

3. There's also the point to be made that Microsoft still maintains its industry presence largely via Windows, and a move to dumb terminals plugged into a server-side experience would cause a dramatic shift in Windows' - and thus Microsoft's - role (if not toss it right out the window, pun intended).

Bottom line: I give desktops at least another 10-20 years before someone vaulted into the future from today would have a hard time recognizing a home computer.

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.

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.

Re:Define Desktop Computer

[Doomstalk]

If they so choose, they can also view DVDs with their meals.

And people say that the family dinner is a dying tradition. Oh wait...

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.

We can only hope.

[aprilsound]

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)

Remember WebTV? It was supposed to be the internet for people too dumb/old/poor for a PC. I remember we got it for my grandmother. It sucked pretty bad, and the fact that it only did the basic things was still too much for her. The problem was that no one else knew how to use it either, since everyone else has a PC.

Now she has a PC that's riddled with spyware. What she should have is a machine with a smallish(5G), noexec hard drive + smaller (1G) HD for swap space, in a $100 box that runs BOOTP or something to her ISP. Every morning, she turns it on and it pulls down the OS image, in fact the same OS image that every client of the ISP gets. Tech support becomes "Reboot the box."

That's all 90% of home PCs need to be. But then those semi-tech literate kids at Best Buy wouldn't have anyone to lecture about spyware anymore. Very sad.

That may be sooner rather than later.

[C10H14N2]

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/20/151424 4

With that, "ubiquitous computing" may morph into personal computers merely being interfaces for The Grid, essentially providing the basis for _all_ applications to scale like Seti@Home. Perhaps that's also why Google is interested in electronic micropayments...and it could all happen very, very quickly.

Re:That may be sooner rather than later.

[yog]

The desktop is not going away any time soon. These amazing handheld all purpose gizmos are not about to replace the desktop until certain technologies are enhanced big time:

- batteries. You can run a heavy, hot laptop for about 2-3 hours before needing a lengthy recharge. You can run a handheld PDA for roughly the same amount of time; current drain scales up proportionately. You are going to need a couple of orders of magnitude better power sources to replace a desktop; 12 hours of continuous use per day for several days, I would guess.

- data input. The desktop/laptop has this amazing invention, the full size keyboard, that lets us enter tons of information more quickly and accurately than any other method. Having used a Palm handheld and mobile phone for years I can safely conclude that the keyboard is in no danger of being replaced. Speech recognition still sucks and that's the one possible alternative.

- display. Desktops have awesome displays; it's not uncommon to have 19" or 24" displays these days, nice crisp LCD screens. Nothing compares to this. Teeny little 3" screens are not going to replace these any time soon.

- storage. Desktops start at 40G of permanent storage and go up to terabytes. Nothing else can compare. What's more, our storage needs are growing, not shrinking. We're not going to switch to Pocket PC/Phone/consoles that have maybe a 10G memory card or a 30G hard disk and give up our 250 giggers.

- connectivity. A desktop is on DSL or Cable or T1 or dial-up and is a reliable way to access the internet. Handheld devices have to be in range of a wireless hub or in network for cellular connections. The widely available connectivity for broadband handheld devices simply doesn't exist yet. My previous apartment was in some kind of Verizon dead zone, in a big suburb next to Boston so it would have been impossible to have handheld broadband or even handheld slow dialup. THere's a tremendous amount of infrastructure to be built, just to displace an existing infrastructure that works pretty well.

As storage is further miniaturized and as voice input and battery technology improve, we will doubtless see a displacement of casual desktop/laptop use with handhelds, such as Blackberry-style email reading and Palm/PPC-style organizer functions, but for heavy lifting, the desktop will remain. When 8 megapixel cameras are the norm and everyone's using digital video cameras with their huge demand for disk space, we're going to want those capacious, fast desktops even more.

Phones will probably get a little smarter but convergence tools such as the Treo can only do so much. People still want phones to act like phones. It's going to take a lot of tech to move us to the next level.

No, but few people need much more than a terminal.

[AEther141]

I bought my current laptop several years ago and can't see myself ever needing anything more powerful. I've recorded an album on it, I've edited high-definition video on it and photoshopped 22 megapixel stills. 99% of the time however, I use it simply because it's convenient and fits in with the rest of my life, it's little more than a marginally intelligent terminal. Anything of any importance comes from somewhere else - most of the time the laptop is just a box with a KVM, a web browser and a terminal emulator and wildly overspecced for that role. The personal file server stashed under my bed holds my record and movie collection, my colocated virtual server holds my work files, runs my mailserver and provides mutt, vim and everything else I really need via SSH. Fingers crossed, 'normal people' will start switching on to the idea that they're better off leaving someone else to run their software and store their files, a glorious return to the mainframe era and a huge leap towards computing that 'just works. Services like Gmail are spreading the meme, I reckon the next IT boom will be in web-based apps.

I have no problem finding public terminals in libraries, friends houses and coffeeshops that I can boot from a USB key or a businesscard CD, so perversely don't take my laptop on the road. I could be rendered homeless tomorrow and my clients wouldn't notice. It's a barely perceptible but immensely powerful change in the world - net access isn't ubiquitous, but it can be found for free or at nominal cost just about anywhere in the developed (or even semi-developed) world, as easily found as a public restroom or a dumpster full of yesterday's bagels. People like the homeless guy are as much a part of the information age as the rest of us. That's world-changing stuff that no-one really notices.

nope

[illuminatedwax]

It's not going to happen, not in America, ever. Maybe the "desktop" will disappear, but the "home computer that contains everything " will not. Why? We don't like not being in control. There are problems with having a computer based on network computing: 1) It requires constant access to use; 2) You don't keep your data. Everyone likes having their Own Stuff, and desktops are not going to disappear for the same reason that people will never completely stop driving and start using public transportation. You want the freedom that desktop computers allow you: privacy, ease of use, and personalization. Who wants to be tethered to the internet all the time? What I do see in the future is an easier way to store data online so that it is retreivable everywhere. Already many people don't use portable storage anymore - they just save it on the net and download it from wherever they are going. If network speed increases faster than our average file size, portable storage will disappear completely. And what's more is that you will probably have a large portion of your hard drive mirrored somewhere, or alternatively, people will learn to run servers (or they will be made easy to use) so they can download files themselves. Although this should be obvious already.