Top 10 technologies in a death spiral
/v3-uk/news/1997805/top-technologies-death-spiral
07 Nov 2009, Shaun Nichols , V3
Earlier this week, people in Mexico and the US celebrated Dia De Muertos (Day of the Dead), a holiday in recognition of friends and loved ones who have recently departed.
So this week we have decided to investigate some technologies that have recently or will soon be leaving the mainstream. Unlike other recent lists, this was fairly easy to construct and there was limited, if occasionally spirited (no pun intended), debate about its order.
Some technologies did not make it onto the list. Dial-up connections were squeezed out because they are still used by the majority of the world to access the internet, and are still a last ditch method for those of us in the West.
Similarly dot-matrix printing also did not make it on here, because it is still widely used in certain key vertical markets. My garage still uses dot-matrix printers because the printing head will punch through three layers of paper at a time and they do not mind the noise because the lathe and buffing machines drown it out.
Still, with so many technologies falling by the wayside, we almost certainly overlooked a few, so feel free to contribute additions in the comment section.
Honourable
mention: Power cables
Iain Thomson: Shaun was a little sceptical about this one, but
I think the power cable is going the way of the dinosaurs thanks to growing
interest in wireless power.
Palm Pre owners will already be familiar with the concept of wireless power. The Pre sits on a power block and recharges wirelessly with no need for a dedicated power supply. It's a great little system in a lot of ways.
And who would really mourn the lack of power cables? Most computer users who go on the road have suffered from forgetting to pack power cables at the last minute and had to either buy a replacement or get the unit shipped to their destination. In the past year I have had to buy a power cable for an iPod (£10) and have a laptop power brick shipped to me ($100 in customs and shipping charges).
However, there are problems with wireless power. It is not terribly efficient, for a start, but manufacturers are recognising that it is the future and are devising common standards so that the power brick could be a thing of the past.
Shaun Nichols: I'm still not completely sold on this one, but there is no doubting that cordless power systems are emerging in a big way, and for certain areas the switch can't come soon enough.
Just about anyone who has ever owned a notebook computer can tell stories about people or pets walking past and tripping over a power cord, often with disastrous consequences.
There is also the convenience factor. Who has not had to wander around an office or public building searching for an outlet to recharge a phone? Wireless power systems can go a long way to relieving the pains of having to charge up electronic devices.
Honourable
Mention: Disk-based storage
Shaun Nichols: One of the most popular new technologies in
recent years has been the solid-state drive (SSD). Once only offered in the
highest of high-end computers and servers, the SSD is increasingly making its
way into everyday consumer PCs and enterprise workstations.
SSDs have a number of advantages over disk-based storage. For starters, Flash memory is much faster, cutting down on start-up and seek times. Additionally, SSDs are becoming as reliable as conventional drives. As a result, the market for the old platter-based hard drive is shrinking.
That does not mean that disk-based drives will disappear entirely. Despite falling prices, Flash memory is still far more expensive than platter storage. For large-scale storage systems, the conventional hard drive has a stable future.
Iain Thomson: Hmm, I am sceptical on this one. Disk storage has one major advantage over Flash – what gets written stays written, barring proximity to a major magnet. Call me a curmudgeon but I don't trust Flash for long-term safe storage.
Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that the SSD is the future. The advantages in speed and power savings are hard to argue with, certainly on desktop and laptop computers. I do not think datacentres are going to buy into Flash in a big way any time soon – the cost would be prohibitive – but storage manufacturers are already bringing out Flash/disk hybrids for use in servers.
But the disk system will survive for the foreseeable future in my opinion, because it provides data security, sometimes a little too much. I got into a conversation with a UK computer police expert about the safest way to wipe data from a disk drive and she said that the technology for retrieving data had now got to the point that the only way to be sure your data was irretrievable was to use a sledgehammer, petrol and matches.
10.
The operating system
Shaun Nichols: No, the OS is not exactly disappearing any time
soon, but it is becoming less relevant by the day. As web-based applications
become more popular, the locally-stored operating system is becoming less of a
factor.
This is also making the OS a much weaker selling point for new systems. While consumers used to be bound to one operating system or another because of the need to run specific applications, web apps are increasingly making that a moot point, much to the delight of the Mac and Linux crowds.
A shining example of this was the release of Windows 7. While Microsoft invested as much money and effort into hyping Windows 7 as any other version of the OS, the response from the general public was not too out of the ordinary.
Iain Thomson: Oddly enough this was the most argued point in the entire list. Shaun makes a good case, but I still maintain that the operating system will be around for as long as there are computers.
That said, Shaun does have a point in that the operating system is becoming less and less important. What I hope we will see is a plethora of operating systems for individual devices and computers. This will not be great for developers, but it will put a considerable roadblock in the way of malware writers.
However, if certain common standards can be worked out, developers will not be hampered too much and we will get a bit more security in the IT world. Unfortunately I suspect malware writers will adapt. They are like the flu virus: they just evolve and make life even more of a pain for all of us.
9.
Landline telephones
Iain Thomson: Landlines are in many ways a 20th century
hangover. Go to any developing nation and suggest they lay down copper cable all
over their countries for phone or internet services and they will look at you
like you are mad.
Wireless technology has the potential to reach a wider pool of people for less cost and with greater efficiency than landlines will ever be able to do. Yes, dedicated fibre links are very useful for high bandwidth needs, but Wi-Fi, and increasingly WiMax, will remove the need for landlines altogether for 90 per cent of the population.
Data cabling was a necessity in the early days of computing and is still required for most broadband connections today. When the move to mass home broadband in the West came it was natural to use the existing copper infrastructure as the conduit.
But technologies such as WiMax are rapidly making the need for dedicated wired connections redundant, and with any luck landlines will be seen as a quaint anachronism in the future.
Shaun Nichols: Like many people my age, I do not have a landline telephone connection in my apartment. In fact, aside from the cable lines running into the living room and a few power cords, my whole dwelling is almost completely cordless.
It is not too crazy to suggest that the landline will completely disappear in the coming decades. And conventional cable might not be too far behind, with fibre-optic lines and wireless systems increasingly finding their way into the greater consumer market.
However, one question that may arise is that of interference. The 802.11n standard is built to automatically reduce its spectrum use when other wireless devices are detected, and as more and more people switch over, similar systems may have to be developed to prevent the vast array of wireless devices out there from interfering with one another.
8.
The portable media player
Shaun Nichols: After less than a decade in the market, it
seems that the portable media player as we know it is beginning to fade from
general public consciousness.
It is not because the products did not have a market, or did not develop, or were just a fad. The problem for the dedicated media player is that it is being pushed out of the market by the smartphone. As handsets become more powerful and Flash memory becomes cheaper, more and more people are choosing to load their music onto their phones and leaving their portable players at home.
The most interesting example of this is Apple. While the iPhone has been wildly successful, the iPod remains a huge cash cow for the company. The increasing sales for the smartphone have to be a little bitter-sweet for the company, as each new iPhone sold increasingly suggests that an iPod will go unsold as a result.
Iain Thomson: Apple really made the media player industry. I used media players from the start and they were uniformly awful. Lousy menu systems, clunky sync software and stunningly poor design were the norm. Creative even brought out a 6GB media player that was the size of a CD player, was considerably heavier and had the battery life equivalent of a snowflake in a blast furnace.
It was the iPod that changed all that. As an avowed Apple sceptic I held off on getting one for a long time but I have to say it is my second most used bit of kit, after my laptop. It was easy enough for anyone to understand, looked fantastic and the initial few versions of iTunes were a joy to use - although that application went rapidly downhill.
But now Flash memory is so cheap that increasingly phones are the new media players. The first attempts, such as the Motorola Rokr, were dire, but things have moved on and the dedicated media player will die out over time.
7.
Tape storage
Iain Thomson: It is remarkable that tape has lasted as long as
it has. The only reason that I can see is that it is very cheap. Other than that
tape has few real advantages.
It is slow to write and retrieve when it comes to data, particularly when you take into account the time needed to physically shift over tapes from storage to the reader and back again. It is also relatively flimsy, as anyone from the age of the video or cassette knows only too well.
Tape is a relic from an earlier age when we had to make do with the technology that was available. This is no longer the case and tape should be consigned to the dustbin of history as soon as possible.
Shaun Nichols: Unlike most other areas of the technology world, the storage market does not progress at a break-neck speed that makes the latest and greatest innovations completely obsolete in under 10 years.
In almost every way, a computer from the early 1980s bears little to no resemblance to modern systems and the technology it uses would be more or less useless today. However, there is one exception. The magnetic tape drives used for storage three decades ago are still in use today, though in far larger capacities.
Tape storage hits a sweet spot of sorts with the storage market. It is cheap and is well established. This makes it ideal for use in very large capacity back-up purposes. Until platter-based storage becomes equally cheap and dense, I suspect that tape storage will continue to have a market in the enterprise space.
6.
FireWire
Shaun Nichols: It is not always the bad technologies that fall
by the wayside. FireWire was a solid system, but it never really got off the
ground.
Originally, Apple developed the IEEE 1394 interface to be a high-speed serial connection to complement the emerging USB specification. The idea was that USB would take over the low-bandwidth connections previously served through the serial port, while FireWire would replace the high-end peripheral market, which was at the time dominated by SCSI.
Then USB 2.0 came along and messed everything up for FireWire. Rather than adopt the new standard, most vendors and consumers opted instead to go with the USB interface. As a result, FireWire did not spread much beyond the high-end digital video market and the Macintosh models of the early and mid 2000s.
Iain Thomson: FireWire built itself a highly profitable sector in the digital video market but has been outpaced by USB and is finally being abandoned by its last allies.
The reasons for this are twofold. First, as Shaun has pointed out, the data capacity of USB 2.0 and now USB 3.0 first matched and has now surpassed that of FireWire. USB really came from behind at FireWire, but has caught up with admirable speed.
Second, IT standards are in many ways a numbers game. There are huge numbers of USB ports out there and they are the de facto standard for device connection. If you wanted FireWire, and you were not an Apple owner, then you had to order it as an extra in most cases and that additional cost was not something many people were willing to stomach.
5.
Peripherals cables
Iain Thomson: When I survey the wreckage of my desk one thing
stands out. Among the half-drunk mugs of tea, crumpled press releases and
semi-consumed lunch is a snakes' nest of cables. I can count eight sets alone,
all of which knot themselves together when no one's around. Doing without these
will be a blessing when it happens. And happen it will, one day.
We thought the nightmare of cabling was going to be over long ago. When Bluetooth was first coming out the manufacturers promised that cables would shortly be a thing of the past. Instead the technology has only worked in the past few years because manufacturers stuck their own software into the stack and ruined compatibility.
Currently it is really only mice and keyboards that are wireless in any large-scale way, but once the standards are worked out we will be able to get much higher speed data communication between devices wirelessly. That day is sorely needed.
Shaun Nichols: As someone who uses a notebook as my primary work PC, I'm a huge fan of wireless peripheral devices. Even when working at a desk, cables can clutter things up and be a nuisance. When covering a convention or having to work in a crowded pressroom, they can be a major problem and even a safety hazard.
The emergence of Bluetooth has, thus far, been a bit of a disappointment in that sense. Though many vendors have been using it for wireless mice, keyboards and printers, there are still too many peripherals that are bound by cable.
However, with new devices come new threats. It used to be that you could protect your computer from outside attack by simply not attaching it to a modem or network. With Wi-Fi any system connected to a wireless network is subject to attack. While Bluetooth is not nearly as unsafe, it still raises a bit of a concern.
4.
Handheld GPS
Shaun Nichols: Much like the portable media player, the
handheld GPS system is a technology being killed by the smartphone.
As the smartphone becomes more powerful and new features are added, we are going to see more and more technologies being pushed out of the market. Fortunately for many of the vendors, the same companies that build many of those GPS handsets also make smartphones.
For the other vendors, there is still the auto market. One place where dedicated GPS hardware still thrives is in cars. Automakers are increasingly embedding GPS systems in their cars, and older models are being outfitted with the dashboard-mounted models.
Anyone who has ever been lost can understand why. GPS systems are one of the most useful and convenient technologies to emerge in the past decade.
Iain Thomson: For about a decade one of the hallmarks of a true geek is that they had a handheld GPS device. A certain journalist on ZDNet even used to give the location of his annual summer picnic via GPS coordinates, so that the geeks could find it while everyone else chased around Hampstead Heath trying to find the party.
But GPS is now a mature market and, like many technologies, is being subsumed into other devices. What got GPS so high on the list was the news that Google is to add GPS functions to Android 2.0. That is going to basically kill the handheld market stone dead and the smart money is already moving out of firms such as TomTom and Garmin, which have massive investments in the market.
And I would say Shaun is wrong on the car front. Given the choice of being charged for a GPS add-on by a car company or just plugging in your phone to the cigarette lighter (now there is a dying technology if ever there was one) it is a simple choice.
3.
Floppy discs
Iain Thomson: You might think that floppy discs are dead
already, but computer manufacturers are still being asked to put them in new
systems.
I nearly spat my drink out when a Dell representative told me that a few years ago more than 10 per cent of PCs were still shipping with floppy drives, but apparently some companies like them. I suspect there are a few procurement staff who really have not moved out of the 1990s. Either that or canny salespeople are better at selling useless add-ons than we thought.
Back when Shaun was just a glint in the milkman's eye, whole desktop systems had floppy discs as the sole method of storage. Even the most 'advanced' 3.5in floppies can only hold 1.44MB, a laughably small amount by today's standards.
However, there is one small problem. I suspect there are millions upon millions of floppies sitting in boxes of junk around the world and the amount of landfill needed to handle them all is going to be huge.
Shaun Nichols: As a Mac user, I've presumed that the floppy disc disappeared from the planet in the late 1990s shortly after the first iMac was shipped.
Joking aside, the floppy disk did hold on a lot longer than some PC vendors may have wished. Not long ago I was a college student working at an on-campus convenience store to make ends meet. Next to the cash register we kept a small rack with floppy disks. It is amazing how many nights we had where a frazzled student would run into the store and gratefully reach for one.
Turns out that when you have spent the past five hours in the computer lab frantically typing up a term paper and you desperately need to save and transfer the document, the lowly floppy disc becomes the most important thing in the world.
Granted, USB thumb drives are a lot cheaper since I graduated, but I like to think that in that little snack shop that small rack of floppy discs is still there, waiting to save someone's semester.
2.
Compact Disc
Shaun Nichols: Really, the CD got a bit of a bum deal. The
record album was the standard for several decades; the cassette tape had a good
two decades. The CD had maybe 10 or 15 good years, only a bit better than the
eight track.
The undoing of the compact disk was twofold. First, there was the emergence of the DVD, which took over much of the data storage and distribution market due to its increased capacity.
Then there was the emergence of the online music market. Just as the CD was settling in as the dominant medium for delivering music, the online services, both legitimate and otherwise, started popping up. When broadband costs dropped and high-bandwidth connections became commonplace, the writing was on the wall for the humble CD format.
Iain Thomson: I am not a huge fan of the CD format for a number of reasons and will be happy to see it go.
When CDs came out they were billed as high quality recording media that would last forever. Instead what we got was an expensive replacement for records that produced lower quality sound and turned out to have a depressingly short shelf life.
This latter part of the equation is most worrying from an IT standpoint. If you have information backed up onto CDs you might want to put it on something more permanent. The format was described by one manufacturer as virtually indestructible on launch, but repeated tests have shown a sharp drop off in readability after a few short years. From my personal experience about 20 per cent of CDs I burnt at the turn of the century no longer work.
While the capacity of the DVD is ultimately what has done for the CD, in data storage terms that format suffers from similar problems and if you are storing mission critical data you will need one, or preferably two, sets of backups.
1.
Desktop PC
Iain Thomson: The desktop PC is a dying breed for most people,
but it has served us well. They are still hanging on in the corporate sphere
because they are cheap and get the job done. But laptops are now outselling them
and I suspect our children will look on them with the same wonder as we do today
at early vacuum cleaners the size of a truck.
Some PCs are still in demand. Really high-end gamers like them because they can get the ultra-fast graphics systems that shave seconds off reaction time, and can handle the massive cooling systems needed to get that kind of performance without setting fire to their bedrooms.
Some corporate verticals also like them, because they are solid and can be physically fastened down to protect the data that they contain. I know more than a few parents who like them too, so that the family computer can be installed in the living room where everyone can see what it being viewed.
The fact is that laptops used to suffer a performance penalty over desktops, but this is no longer the case. You can now do pretty much anything you want with a high-end laptop, with the added bonus that you can take your computer with you.
Shaun Nichols: A part of me misses the day when a geek was judged by the size of his (or her) PC tower. It used to be that having a huge enclosure on top of your desk was something to brag about. During that time notebooks were reserved for road warriors and those who did not need much more than a word processor and a spreadsheet app.
However, since then the notebook has gone from being an underpowered, overpriced machine to the dominant form of personal computer. Everyone from home users to students to professionals now prefers the notebook over the desktop. As battery life improves and components get smaller, I suspect that this will only continue.
However, at least two groups will keep the desktop market alive for quite some time. Gamers, for one, still scoff at notebooks for the most part. First, the screens are too small to deliver the size and resolution to get the most out of the latest titles. There are also the limitations of the small enclosure. Many high-end gaming and hobbyist systems require very large fan or liquid cooling systems that would not come close to fitting in a laptop.
Similarly, graphics professionals are not likely to switch over to notebooks any time soon. They also love the large, accurate monitors that are all but impossible to integrate into a notebook design.
© Incisive Media Investments Limited 2010, Published by Incisive Financial Publishing Limited, Haymarket House, 28-29 Haymarket, London SW1Y 4RX, are companies registered in England and Wales with company registration numbers 04252091 & 04252093
Do you agree?
A different view
OK, take a step back and look at the list from a different angle.
1.) Mobile phones. If you think MP3 players are doomed, than phones are too. All the functions and features we have of all the hand-held devices are coagulating into a single appliance. Therefore, number 2 is ...
2.) Digital cameras Putting aside specialised DSLR jobs, with interchangeable lenses, the "happy snappy" point and shoots will be absorbed into the phone/music/gps/photo/recorder toy.
3.) Televisions. Will stop being dedicated devices that only merely display programmes from TV signals (whether terrestrial or satellite) and will be all-in-one media centres. Receiving the programmes it knows you you want to watch (whatever time they're broadcast - on whichever channel). They will include downloaded content, news that filtered to your situation, and be connected to the "net". Basically put a TV in one end of the Large Hadron Collider and a PC at the other end, then press the button ...
4.) DVD / Blu-Ray players The TV will do all this for you (including a flash memory socket, so you won't need disks)
5.) Remote controls Say "hello" to your TV/media device with spoken commands that will be intelligent enough to pause the playback when they hear your mobile phone ringing - that's if the phone isn't integrated with the unit too, so the sound (and vision?) comes out of it's speakers. Or if it detects no-one is in the room.
6.) Electronic books Even though they're still new, they were doomed from the start (like videophones). Too expensive, too clunky, no flexibility and can't do anything that a laptop can't do.
That's all I have for now. Though as an observation, tapes, disks and floppies are all really the same tech: moving magnetic particles.Your observations about operating systems are spot on. No-one cares anymore, they are effectively transparent as none of them are any better / different than any other. They will become like electric motors: ubiquitous, but unnoticed and really not worth thinking about.
Posted by Pete, 09 Nov 2009
Tape Will be Aroun a Long Time
The author are a bit clueless about why people use tape: backup of data stored on hard drive arrays for archival and data recovery purposes. There is no alternative that comes close to tape in performance and price to serve this need. Simply buying a new RAID array whether it is a spinning magnetic disk or a solid state variety for off-site archive is not cost effective. If the only thing you need to back up is a laptop you might have a different world. Life in the data center is different. I guess the authors can't think beyond their laptop.
Posted by Ralph Daly, 11 Nov 2009
Agree partly
I agree in part of the items, but have difficult doubts on the inclusion of the Power Cable and the Landline phone, and the exclusion of the Dial-up connection and the Dot-Matrix printer. Here are my reasons:
1. Using the same arguments used for the dial-up connection, there are many areas in the world that won't see wireless power for many, many decades. And sorry to say, but people in these areas use power cables and landline phones much more than dial-up connections or dot-matrix printers are used all around the world.
2. Dial-up connections depend on landline phones, so if the second disappears the first will disappear as well.
Posted by Helio Diamant - Editor, Mobilityfreak.co.il & BornMobile.co.il, 07 Nov 2009
Desktop PCs will evolve like the dinosaurs
I agree with the article about the desktop PC being nearly extinct except for high end graphics...but passes that feature off as a niche market - it's not. If you've every held a gosling (baby goose) in your hand and looked closely you'd marvel about how much dino remains alive and well in the present day. Likewise the future of large format video entertainment has its genome strongly based on desktop DNA - strip away the 60 inch screen and high end speaker system and you'll see the next generation desktop PC.
Posted by Consultofactus, 07 Nov 2009
Desktops
To be honest, I don't see the desktop dieing out to the laptop all too soon. Something else that was not mentioned in the article is the custom-ability of a desktop. Technically, if you have a case that will fit the components, you can continually upgrade a desktop (unless some radical designs change in the computer world). Anything that goes out in a desktop can be scrapped and replaced for a lot less money than buying a new unit. Laptops can't (generally) be upgraded. I know my laptop already has the most upgrades I can do to it: another 2GB of RAM and a larger faster hard drive. Wooo...
Also, desktops are a lot cheaper. I know I can build a nice, powerful machine for $1000, whereas trying to buy a laptop for that price is generally going to get me sub-par system, making the desktop the clear choice.
I don't see desktops going out...what I see is mass use of the laptop as a portable solution - and possibly the netbook as well - while the desktop remains the primary component at home.
Anyone who does anything on a computer other than web surfing, e-mail, and word processing will most likely prefer a desktop computer. It certainly would be the smarter choice unless you want to spend a bunch of money every few years to replace the dinosaur on your lap.
Oh, and laptops are more fragile. Some of the hell that I've seen laptops go through...By leaving a desktop on your desk it most likely won't fall over and quit working, but a laptop runs the risk of being dropped on its side every day that it exists for the fact that it is mobile.
Posted by Koji, 08 Nov 2009
Tape Storage
Read your comments with interest and a certain amount of horror. Do you honestly believe that tape should be consigned to the bin and that hard disk and other forms of storage offer a better answer for data storage? Have you tested LTO4? Have you attempted to recover data from a damaged hard disk or memory device?
Whilst I can see some drawbacks with tape, the durability of the medium makes it still a good bet for long term data storage for serious business applications.
Posted by Mark Sear, 09 Nov 2009
The Desktop PC?
The desktop PC has many advantages over the laptop which are not going to be solved any time soon.
With a desktop machine, you can specify the machine yourself from the components that you need or want. You can do this yourself or allow someone else to do it. Gamers have machines that are optimised for high speed video processing. I have one optimised for lower power consumption. If you try to do this with a laptop you find your options limited to what the manufacturer wants to offer. You don't get a choice, and even if you did, how long would a laptop with an overclocked video card/processor last before it melted?
The desktop also has ergonomics on its side. I find many of today's PC keyboards horrid, but the ones on laptops are even worse. Once again with the laptop, you do not get a choice of which keyboard you want. Similarly, the arrangement of the screen on a laptop means poor adjustability, and the smaller screen sizes do not necessarily benefit those who have problems with their eyesight. With a desktop you can have a much bigger screen and move it somewhere that it is comfortable to look at.
The laptop is also more prone to damage, and can more easily be stolen or lost (as government in this country appears keen to demonstrate). Their limited size also means that you cannot load them up with 1Tb disks, at least not without causing a back injury.
And one other thing I prefer about the desktop and the reason why I have not bothered upgrading my laptop... I do not have to pay Microsoft for their crappy software. Try buying a laptop without it and you will quickly find that the only way is to buy second hand whereas if I build a desktop myself, I can load what I want on it.
Right now, I cannot see the point of having a laptop. If I had a need to move around, then maybe, but it is a poor quality substitute for a desktop system and not something that I would want to use continuously for any length of time.
Posted by Ian, 09 Nov 2009
Laptop vs Desktop
'Everyone prefers a laptop to a desktop'????
NOT me, thank you very much!!!
Posted by Steve, 10 Nov 2009
Graphics professionals,
who happen to do video also enjoys multiple terabytes of ultrafast storage. Show me a laptop that is comfortable editing uncompressed HD and I'll show you how that money is much better spent on new Porche. I don't foresee *ever* using a laptop for what I do. By the time a laptop comes around that is comfy with 2 megapixel HD the japanese will have already moved to 30(33? was it? can't remember) megapixel TV. I do get your point though, you can browse the web and run office applications on a laptop and for most of the population that will suffice. For professionals who utilize enormous datasets that take a huge amount of processing power to deal with the laptop will never amount to more than a mail-client.
Posted by b, 10 Nov 2009
landlines & desktop dying out? I don't think so.
Landlines won't die out. Wireless may be good enough for mobile access where you don't need high throughput, but try to download the next 40GB bl movie rip through it. See what happens if 10 people try it. See what happens if someone "misconfigures" his wireless access. And scaling ethernet is much easier than wireless. Add another bunch of cables and some routers/switches and done. And while it seems that we already reach the maximum speed for wireless and fight over the available ranges, 10gbit ethernet is in coming for home and 100gbit is possible (and it won't end there).
Desktop PCs won't go away either, they will become invisible, but the main difference between mobile and desktop is just that - mobile helps you to work in not prepared environments, even if it is not as comfortable, healthy or even awkward to work with (and thus slower), while a desktop helps you to get stuff done at a prepared place. Why would you pain yourself with a laptop at home if you can enjoy a good monitor, keyboard, mouse and sound boxes? (Except you think that paying a doctor is cheaper than buying a good set of peripherals)
And there is a reason why traditional desktops won't disappear in the near future: we don't have simple network/location aware OSs who can communicate with each other without problems at a high enough level nor the hardware for them. The nearest we got are NAS for filesharing at home. We can't just access all our systems at home with a single command (except for geeks) from our TV, then go to the toilet, switch on our hologram projector and accept the incoming phone call through our home network, then save the record of that voice call with a single command in the kitchen.
Also, chances will be high that the moment computing is possible everywhere at all times *laptops* will go away, not desktops. We will all use small gadgets/'smart phones' and have our invisible servers/network at home. Only people who work in field service or need better security will need them.
Cables also won't go away. Cables/Protocols exist for all kinds of peripherals and are built into every system. And as long as wireless peripherals have the problems they have yet (energy and connection) cables will be a good choice for people who don't want to optimize their rooms for wireless throughput all day. If they are that worried about cables they can eliminate most of them with an USB hub. Cables also have the added benefit that on a place with 100s of computers in an open space you won't need to setup the peripherals/computers to always listen to the correct end.
Posted by c, 11 Nov 2009
Desktops and Portable Media Players
Desktop PCs are here to stay. They will evolve by leaps and bounds in a few years and will never die away into oblivion. They do have a lot of advantages over portable laptops which will keep them alive. They might become less popular, but will never completely die.
As long as smart-phones don't provide a sufficiently efficient and long battery life, portable media players are here to stay, specially among travelers and the population that listens to a lot of music.
Posted by Manasa Malipeddi, 11 Nov 2009
No way...
- Power cables - how does the power block get the power? - By cable
- SSD - maybe, but not in the next 10 years. There are still Win98 systems out there, think about it...
- OS - how do those web applications run? How many GB of traffic each month? And why Win95 was on floppy-disks and now we need a DVD ?
- landlines - are here to stay, don't worry. How much concrete do you think that wireless connection can penetrate ?
- floppy-disk - think about the times when you have to submit (give) a small document, and you have to make it cost-effective (like tax income each month, no disk return)
Posted by Mihai, 11 Nov 2009
Desktops and Internet Connections
I'm writing this on my desktop PC, it's an Acer 18.4" laptop. I suppose the desktop/laptop argument is down to how big a "Laptop" can be before it is in effect a "Desktop." I wouldn't consider having this sat on my lap, I have the 16" version for that, but it does all I want from a PC including playing games and the way I see the up-gradability argument is, that rather then upgrade components every year or two, I will just replace my laptop every three or years, the latest version of this one now has a Quad-Core processor, a blu-ray writer and failrly decent integrated graphics.
Cant agree the land line argument, where I live in Wales, there are places still suffering 512 Dial-Up, my mobile signal disappears as soon as I pull into my car park, and Virgin and Sky don't even realize we exist.
Posted by Mar, 11 Nov 2009
Desktops
Even far into the future, desktops will be around - they'll change shape slightly, but more and more people will need a server at home to centralise all their information, can't afford a server and may find that devices such as Synology insufficient for their needs. Desktops will probably have a different name, but in one form or another they will still be there are laptops are screen-tied and cannot operate 24/7.
Posted by Shao, 11 Nov 2009
No More Cables?
I am fairly sure that it is the case that "loose" electricity is a health hazard - certainly has been cited for high voltage wiring - and so the thought of having a house with electric current zooming about is worrying. Then again it may be that I don't understand the technology.
In my opimion, desktops are infinately preferable to any laptop - for the reasons stated by the other detractors.
Finally - and this might just put me in the same category as Luddites - not everyone either has, or wants a mobile 'phone. I might eventually purchase one, but if I do, I want it to be just a 'phone. A jack of all trades can rarely better, let alone equal, the genuine article - a stand alone camera can not be bettered by a 'mobile talking device'!
Posted by Michael Abbiss, 11 Nov 2009
upgradeable they are not
apparently, the major argument on laptops vs desktops is ignored. laptops, with all their parts being integrated, are not upgradeable. show me a way to build a laptop from scratch by myself, and then maybe I will be less prejudiced against laptops, but only then.
Posted by hale holden, 11 Nov 2009
Landlines
It's all very well for journalists who live in cities with decent mobile coverage to predict the death of landlines: but what about the rest of us?
Posted by Nick, 11 Nov 2009
Voice from the grave
Don't bury me before I'm dead!!
Laptops have a long way to go to supplant desktops. Laptops are throwaway, Desktops are fixable. Laptops are lower quality, Desktops can be upgraded and have multi-screens and are just generally better. Admittedly they might be better with longer cables so they could go out of sight. Mac all-in-ones are nice but suffer from laptop unfixability.
CDs - great idea, don't live up to hype and copy protection makes them suspect (can't put some music on your ipods etc).
Also, has anyone noticed how expensive they are (music etc) - they deserve to die.
Landlines will have a future I'm sure, and how can we lose the OS now we've macos and linux? Perhaps the only one we will really lose is Windows, which like many technologies has served its purpose and is now going to wither. I'm sure when windows finally goes men (and women, let's not be sexist) will have more hair and the world will be a calmer place at 9 on a Monday morning.
Posted by Phil Cox, 12 Nov 2009
Not in the real world
Maybe your top 10 is right in your world, and in the world of the toy computers people have at home, but in the big world where the IT grown-ups live, hard disks, tape storage and power cords are far from dying.
Posted by john, 11 Nov 2009
Tape and TV
Tape is still the preffered form for studio recording by people who know what they are doing. Music masters need to be in analogue format to be their best.
I would say a safe bet for a soon to be dead technology is the CRT. I am still holding on to mine and I am hoping it lasts until OLED screens are big enough and cheap enough to be a replacement.
Posted by Stuart F, 11 Nov 2009
the smart phone
All the functions in handhold devices will be accessed via wireless technology embedded in clothing as printable electronics costs becomes a commodity product, and wireless dust becomes ubiquitous - even snappy cameras, activated by a wink
Posted by Ged Parker, 11 Nov 2009
CD and DVD quality
I've been burning CDs since 1998. I have not had a single one
go bad. Maybe most people aren't taking care of their storage.
You kept your LPs in the jacket and cover and you didn't leave one in a hot car. I see people throw CDs around like they are frisbees and store them in the worst conditions (worst thing is not using the jewel case). What, it's better to keep all my music
as inferior compressed mp3s? I guess that's okay if you listen to everything on earbuds (gag).
Posted by Sean, 12 Nov 2009
Desktops will not die any time soon
Desktops will not die any time soon! Why? Because Moore's law will die instead.
Clock speed which use to grow exponentially - has long since topped out (we might add a gig - big deal). Transistor density (which is what Moore's law is about) will also top out. We'll probably hit 22nm. A miracle might get us to 11nm. Certainly we can't go below the 0.5 nm of for example a Si atom. This means that we will get to the point where you make computers faster not just by adding more cores per chip but by adding more chips. Holding all these chips and the need to cool them all means we will return to the past where a computer's physical dimensions reflect its processing power. There will always be people wanting the greater computing power, that even now comes with greater size, at the expense of less portability.
Posted by Rodney, 12 Nov 2009
Your back and neck won't thank you for ditching your desktop
Laptops are great for portability and they let corporations control what machines are able to access their VPNs but that is about it. Unless you use your laptop with a proper keyboard, mouse and monitor (on a stand) whenever you use it for more than an hour, you will end up regretting it, suffering lots of pain and make your chiropractor rich. So if you have to write a quick report on the train or at a conference, fire up that laptop but as soon as you get to the office or home, dock it with some peripherals designed to prevent RSI not cause it like most laptop ones.
Posted by George Young, 14 Nov 2009
satnavs? Nope, phones can't cut it.
There are many places where there is a lack of phone coverage but a satnav is still required. ferinstance, outback australia and similar places in the world. Even in the UK, I venture to say there are many places where phone coverage is non-existent.
Posted by jack strangio, 14 Nov 2009
Wwireless Power?
You obviously don't understand basic physics. The simlpe devices that are mentioned use induction for power, which is very limited in range and distance (if safety is a factor) and only provide a few milliamps of power to the device. Geeze.
Posted by Tired of Hype, 14 Nov 2009
CDs are great
You're missing the point on CDs.
1. They are high quality. anyone who has ever had to use LPs for any amount of time will tell you that they are prone to scratches, dust, movement, and generally provide a medium-fidelity recording. Self-professed audiophiles who claim LPs to have superior fidelity to CDs have no idea how audio actually works and are hanging on to the trendiness of LPs as a fashion statement.
2) Advancements in technology were bound to make the CD obsolete, no matter how great a technology it was; thus, the longevity argument doesn't hold. DVDs themselves are great tech but will likely not have the same longevity as CDs due to replacement technologies (like broadband)
3) The CD was a critical step in the adoption of a superior technological format by the masses. There had always been superior technologies available (e.g. Beta vs. VHS) but here was a case where the CD was actually technologically superior to its predecessors and was adopted highly by the consumer. We seem to be in a period of regression, where the consumer prefers lower-quality compressed music to high-fidelity renditions (thus, mp3 and other compression formats). Still, for anybody who enjoys the nuance of their music, CD is still the way to go.
Posted by Nagarjunary, 14 Nov 2009
Dìa de los mertos is for all loved ones who have passed away.
Dìa de los muertos is for all loved ones who have passed away not just "recent". Who told you that one?
Posted by Christopher, 18 Nov 2009
I wouldn't give up neither on CD nor on PC
CD will always be in use among, say, classical music lovers, who usually don't treat music more as a background. (And those recordings are often really beautifully edited.) The PDF and portable readers won't replace the printed book as well.
Laptops won't replace desktops anytime soon. It's not about performance and the price/speed ratio, it's about size and quality of the screen (users of S-IPS know what I'm talking about), size and ergonomics of the keyboard (I use Microsoft Natural 4000) and noise (my desktop - after some extensive work, I admit - is virtually silent and I don't keep it right under my nose). And, which is equally important, I keep my keyboard on a pull-out extension, so I can put a book or a sheet of paper on my desk between the keyboard and the LCD. Docking station? Well, what's the point? If you are really mobile - maybe...
Posted by voyteck, 15 Nov 2009
Here's a better prediction
1. Laptops
A powerful desktop + truly portable netbook combo is already preferred by most people - and it's actually way cheaper than a so-called "high-end" laptop. Laptop sales are already going down, netbook sales soar, there's absolutely nothing that would indicate this trend is ever going to reverse.
2. Smartphones
There's one basic problem with smartphones - they're too big and clunky for making actual... you know... phone calls. And since it's only a matter of time until netbooks get even slicker and easier to carry and use - smartphones, with their poor input mechanism and dumbed down operating systems, are going away.
Posted by Anonymous, 15 Nov 2009
Here's a better prediction
1. Laptops
A powerful desktop + truly portable netbook combo is already preferred by most people - and it's actually way cheaper than a so-called "high-end" laptop. Laptop sales are already going down, netbook sales soar, there's absolutely nothing that would indicate this trend is ever going to reverse.
2. Smartphones
There's one basic problem with smartphones - they're too big and clunky for making actual... you know... phone calls. And since it's only a matter of time until netbooks get even slicker and easier to carry and use - smartphones, with their poor input mechanism and dumbed down operating systems, are going away.
Posted by Anonymous, 15 Nov 2009
Floppy disks
I believe that some IBM PS/2's had 2.88Mb floppy disks, wow where's my 8GB SD card.
Posted by Steve Long, 15 Nov 2009