Is the Desktop Becoming Legacy?

“A few years ago I wrote on OSNews several articles (1,2) about
workstations. After three years I had to stop, because there were
no workstations left on the market, they became legacy and were not
sold any more. Now with the rise of mobile devices with touchscreen
and wireless network connectivity virtually everywhere, the
question becomes valid, what will happen with the desktop
computers, are they still needed, or will they follow the
workstations on their way to computer museums?

“First we have to understand why the iPhone, iPad, and so on are
better suited for the avarage user than desktop systems. Why has
Microsoft’s strategy of propagating the PC as the “digital hub”
mostly failed? For years, especially Microsoft (but also Linux and
Mac evangelists) told us to use a PC or a Mac for sharing media and
devices, for creating content and consuming media, for storing
selfmade videos and photos. But this strategy has two weak
points.

“First, to be able to accomplish most of these tasks a PC must
be switched on 24/7. Only very few heavy users are really using
their PC as a server. It is expensive, a PC can be noisy, the
hardware is not really optmized to run round the clock and because
of lot of security updates there is still lot of administration
required. So the idea of having a home server is not really
catchy.”

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