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We are in an age that I still classify as the industrial revolution, and the computer industry is no exception. With all of the current technology today, and amazing visuals and speed, what are computers and games going to be like in five years? It makes me think...

Perhaps this will be the next tehcnology - http://www.blachford.info/computer/Cell/Cell0_v2.html
Who knows???

You never know, I just don't want to know the price of the cell processor !

Holographic storage.

computers will continue to get smaller and cheaper. they are constantly evolving, a path already traversed by the car.

Take a look at this:
http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/07/10/in...ore_processor/

The most unexpected turn in Processor technology was when the aim for high clock speed was discontinued, and the aim for more cores started.

Wow ! 32 Cores? Is there even a need for that?

What about this whole 80 core Teraflop computing processor?

Does anyone remember the first time they got a HD the held a whole gigabyte? I thought that it would be impossible to ever fill my 3 gig HD in my brand new 250mhz Powerbook.

Guess what. I was wrong

In 5 years? Not much is going to be different than it is now. We'll still be using Vista (I know its not looking that likely now, but everyone said they didn't need XP). Processor speeds will likely be a lot faster, but hard drives are still going to be slow.

Hopefully they will start making awesome video cards that don't consume awesome amounts of power.

Strange things can happen, you never know, we may even end up with an operating system that won't bsod all the time!! Lol

(but I very much doubt it)

It already exists.

Ok, i will reword it, a microsoft operating system that won't bsod all the time!!

In five years, we will be getting closer to the end of VISTA and on to something better that is not Windows. Microsoft says there will no more Windows.
Hard drives will be astonishingly faster and larger, based on all new technology.
Budget computers that can do world processing and email will be the norm.
eMail and internet will be where the big differences are.
But we will be more able to see the end of energy as we know it... only another 20 years away. power cost will be high and getting higher.
As Einstein said, Prepare for the future, because it is coming.

What I meant by hard drives being slow is they will still be the limiting factor in how fast your PC feels. Its been that way for a while now, would be nice if they would run at speeds we saw RAM at 5 years ago.

Budget computers doing world processing? not sure what you mean by that unless you just meant word processing. In that case they already exist, and have existed for quite some time. A Pentium II machine running 9x or a light linux will do word processing and email just fine. I remember when I was in elementary school we had a word processor and printer for a Commodore 64, just didn't have email.

How is e-mail going to be much better? It doesn't need to be, simplicity is what makes it so widely used. If you want to improve email and internet I think the best thing would be for ISPs to offer faster upload speeds. Having download speeds be 4x or more faster than you can upload is really crippling the internet's future.

Oh, I forgot: The enemy of "good" is better. Probably the easiest prediction is that a number of people will still be sitting around using an 10 GB 1 GHz computer and Word Perfect 8.
Most corporations with rooms full of secretarial type staff would not agree with you on word processing as it ties into the digital stream... The need for information, search access, and so on will be so much greater... just to meet current demands. Instant translations will be necessary to handle the huge growth in Hispanic and Asian languages that is obvious from any quick look at population growth. If you think word processing is good enough, you have not visited a big office lately. It may be good enough for the individual, but not for industry.
I just acquired my first 700 GB hard drive... The standard can easily be 500 GB in five years. and the new HDD technolgy will be so advanced they won't call the new ones hard drives by then... with the high digital memory interfaces... 1000 GB running at 10,000 rpm or higher with incredibly high transfer rates are already everywhere in the test rooms, seeking only greater reliability and less heat... which I am certain they will have perfected so that access in five years will make current standards into a joke.
Higher speed memory is only now limited by the manufacturing equipment... which will be perfected before this year is out.
The new internet backbone is available and in use. Faster, more secure. We just need to get beyond the corporate infighting and the government's plan to stifle progress.
Go back to any computer magazine of five years ago... see how many name brand computers were still selling 4200 rpm drives of 15 Gb or less... and see how slow and small the memory was.
Anybody who says what we have now is good enough, hasn't looked at the international need to sell more stuff. Selling and profits control technology growth, not an attitude that what we have now is good enough.
I still love Word Perfect 4.1... but try to link it to anything else.

I think that hard drives will be replaced by flash drives. They're a lot better. But maybe that won't happen in 5 years....

Also, like SNGX1275 said, I'd love to see a 8800GTX consuming under 30-60W of power under heavy load.

Make again 350W PSU's more than enough

The thing I would like to see in the future is PC World hiring staff that actually know something about pc's!!(like that's ever gonna happen)

It would be nice to be able to ask the question "What bios does this pc have on it?" without getting the stupid answer of "duh, er, um, er, the latest one!"

agreed. i really like the concept of a hard drive with no moving parts.

already we can see that graphics cards have gotten way more expensive than most processors, draw more power, and produce the most heat. your typical modern graphics card has its own processor, cooling and memory subsystem. i believe that more subsystems will be added over time, until a graphics card will no longer simply be a single add-in card. they will be called graphics systems or something like that and be at least as complex as the main computer itself.

Has anyone seen the projector keyboard thingy? Or am I just behind on the technology? This "projector" show the keyboard on a flat surface. Seen it the other day on TV.

Yeah, maybe those subsystems will include a physics processor. We are already seeing chipsets with support for three PCI-E X16 slots... Also, ATI wants to include a third GPU to process physics.

If they continue like that, we'll need 2kW PSU's...