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Ever since the industry-quaking news broke that Hewlett-Packard, the world's largest PC manufacturer, is looking to spin off its PC business, there's been a steady drum-beat among analysts and prognosticators heralding the end of one era and the arrival of a new one, in which users have gone "post-PC." HP CEO Leo Apotheker all but blamed the ascendance of more nimble computing devices for his company's big shake-up when he told reporters after the news broke that "The tablet effect is real." But while it's true that tablets and, more commonly at this point, smartphones, have made us all less tethered to large, humming screens and full-sized keyboards, memorial services for the Personal Computer are far too premature.
A recent Nielsen poll showed that only five percent of Americans currently own a tablet, while a Pew study underscores the enduring ubiquity of more traditional computers with 76 percent ownership. Even as tablets and similar devices have experienced a boom in recent years in both popularity and computing power, the smart money says it will be years still, not months, before the PC goes out to pasture. Read on to find out why.
5. Productivity/Creativity
The iPad is a great device. Some say magical. But for all its convenience, apps and ease of use, Apple's tablet and others like it are still mostly just expensive toys. With a focus on gorgeous displays and a size and weight that make them easy to curl up with, the obvious appeal for these devices is consuming media like movies, the Web and eBooks. But it wasn't fun and games that made the PC such a dominant force in modern life-- it was work. Americans are work-obsessed, and when it comes to getting down to business with spreadsheets, word processors, Photoshop and the like, 9 times out of 10 a sturdy laptop or desktop still trumps a sexy tablet. For tablets to replace PCs, they have to go beyond the sofa and the bedside table-- they need to enter the home office, too.
4. Form Factor
Steve Jobs thought he killed physical keyboards on smartphones when he introduced multi-touch with the iPhone in 2007, but four years later, many consumers still can't live without a tactile QWERTY. For PCs, the necessity of a full-sized keyboard is drastically more pronounced: Typing while viewing a full, unobstructed screen is, at this point, a prerequisite for almost any serious computing or communication activity. Since a tablet's slate-like form factor precludes it from including a dedicated keyboard, users looking to recreate a full computing experience have been forced to resort to peripherals... or just use their laptops.
Further, the current standard screen size for tablets of between seven and 10 inches leaves much to be desired. Many PC users either can't or won't trade in their big displays, which often represent an advantage in both content creation and consumption.
3. Raw Power
Because we rely so much on our computers every day, we want them to be superheroes: capable of loading massive files in the blink of an eye. Tablets and smartphones, like any new device category, are getting more powerful all the time. But with physics being what they are, their larger siblings still easily win the day when it comes to performance. The modern multi-tab-browsing, Spotify-streaming, World of Warcraft-playing lifestyle yearns for your PC's quad-core chip.
2. Software
The app universe has achieved small miracles in a short amount of time, but much of the software we rely on daily on our PCs, like Microsoft Word, various media players, and Adobe's Creative Suite, have yet to make it over to mobile devices in a fully featured form, if at all. Before most consumers will be willing to drop their PCs for a tablet, they'll have to be assured that they can still use all their vital programs-- and not in a watered-down version.
1. Ultrabooks
One of the major attractions for tablets is their extreme portability. But in recent years, computers themselves have been getting smaller and lighter with an impressive consistency. Best exemplified by the MacBook Air, a new category of laptops called ultrabooks has taken off by demonstrating to consumers that they don't have to sacrifice any of the critical advantages of a PC in order to have a computing device they can take with them (almost) anywhere.
