by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Tower and desktop PC are not dead. In fact, they may be the future.
The death of both the desktop and the tower PC have been announced rather frequently and so-called experts in the field of computing keep insisting that laptops, netbooks, tablets and hand-held devices are the future. I seriously doubt this, however.
The reason for my doubts is the fact that more and more of the smaller devices, such as iPad, tablet computer, hand-held devices and even netbooks rely on the cloud for storage, etc. and are thus dependent on Internet access at all times which also means they have to be on all the time in order to be able to get to one's files, do work, etc. Not a good solution.
The cloud, especially, has issues and, as far as I am concerned will always have those issues and therefore hard storage at location will, once everyone wakes up from the dream, be the thing again soon, despite what those supposed experts claim.
The desktop and the tower PC are much more versatile, especially as sustainability is concerned, as both can be upgraded, even by means of DIY. Something that cannot be done (easily) with the devices such as laptop or netbook and even less so with still smaller devices.
Old desktop and tower PCs which may no longer be able to run MS Windows, because that operating system is so overblown, ca be kept going by making use of Open Source operating systems, such as Linux, and by using other non-proprietary Open Source software for applications.
The cloud, despite be touted as the answer to everything, and including virtual desktops and such like, is not the answer as reliability of it is something that remains a question.
The issue of the cloud, as far as I am, and also, it would appear, experts in the field of computer and computer security are, concerned is security, ownership of contents and accessibility and reliability.
The physical hard disk drive, internal and external, to me are the only way to go. It really freaks me out not to be able to get to my data when I want and need to and that is something that with the cloud could be a possibility.
Even when the Net is down, locally or more than that, I can still do my work, having my stuff on a hard drive accessible here at the machine itself and not some virtual drive somewhere in the “cloud”.
And, as they are much easier to maintain the desktop and the tower PC, as far as I am concerned, are far from dead and we must stop them from dying also. We will regret it in the future is we allow their demise.
© 2013
