The post-PC era is when we stop having PCs because we move to something else. You may think that’s unlikely and unrealistic but look at the evidence. At one time we had desktop computers and laptops started to appear. They were just toys for people with lots of money, then they became the second computer of people that spent a lot of time on the go, today most people own a laptop instead of a desktop computer.
The exodus from the PC is not going to be that easy, because the mobile devices are more different to a laptop than laptops were to desktop computers. But it’s not only leaving PCs for smart phones, also for netbooks. I believe it’s going to happen. Probably not as extreme as the PC to laptop but it’s going to happen. We’ll be using our phones as our primarly way to access data and communicate. And when we come home we’ll plug it in a dock station -that already exists-, so that it can use our nice big speakers -that also exists- and so that we use an external keyboard -that exists in many cases- and a big external screen -that exists, at least in the netbook market-.
What doesn’t exist yet, I believe, is external processing. When I’m at a bar I won’t play Halo and I’m OK if switching between applications is slow, but when I come home I want my device to become faster. I have seen absolutely no progress at all in being able to add processing power to a machine, to a portable machine. The closer I’ve seen were docking stations, probably IBM, which added better sound and video cards. Sharing processing power is hard, but I think we need it to go mobile.
Reviewed by Daniel Magliola. Thank you!
