The Future of Tech: The Desktop PC

"While not entirely the same thing, tablets and smartphones already provide instant access to what is essentially a computer thanks to their power-saving and low-power state features"

Not sure that comparing cold PC startup times to warm sleeping phones makes much sense when you can just as easily put a PC in standby for the same 2s startup times, or watch a smartphone take 60s booting up from cold after the battery runs completely flat. I mean for laptops, sleep is the default action when closing the lid, and it's been easily changeable to the default for the power switch going back to XP...

"Take, for example, Google’s cloud-based Stadia platform. The company says the upcoming service will support 4K HDR streaming at 60 frames per second at launch and plans to offer 8K/120fps support in the future."
Are you sure it isn't 32K at 480fps? Or perhaps 96K at 7680fps? Here's an idea for a future Techspot article - ignore mindless marketing hype and instead do a "When Quality Isn't Quality" article comparing just how badly over-compressed such video has to be and how much worse it looks vs uncompressed local rendering. You know, like those 4K Youtube clips that regularly look worse than most 1080p Blu-Rays, the 1080p Youtube clips that look worse than 720p Blu-Ray rips, the 720p clips that are hardly any better than upscaled 480-576i DVD's, etc... Streamed gaming is to local rendering what 128kb/s MP3 is to FLAC.

Game streaming would also mean you don't own any games you "subscribe" to, can't replay much loved titles in future and are completely at the mercy of the provider altering gameplay to increase micro-transaction engagement on a whim or just permanently pulling the games when player count drops. And the death / lockdown of modding. No thanks on those grounds alone.

"Operating System that repairs itself".
(Puts a picture of W10 - the OS that self-destructs at least twice a year next to it) = LOL.

"As for AIO gaming, might consumers be enjoying their game libraries on 50-inch, 8K displays with 240 Hz refresh rates in the year 2030 without any cumbersome cases and wires getting in the way?"
No, because for many people, monitor screen size (that you sit close to) is a bell shaped curve not a never-ending straight line, often peaking between 27-35" size. Stick someone 2ft away from a 50" screen, and it's just too uncomfortable to use due to basic ergonomics (increased head, neck movements, increased urge to lean back (bad posture), etc). Of course you could sit 6ft away, but then you're reinventing the TV and trying to bundle a second one with some AIO PC instead of doing the more common sense thing and simply plugging in a much cheaper ITX box / console into the existing 50" TV which is where we're already at today.

Perhaps the future will see PCs with smaller capacities but much faster local storage as people store the bulk of their programs and data in the cloud.
^ Comments solely on cloud service speed, but not privacy / security issues or ongoing mass data breaches to the tune of hundreds of millions of accounts at a time. Yep, business as normal...

"users could receive desktop notifications via voice. Rather than an annoying noise followed by a pop up, a hopefully less annoying digital assistant will inform you verbally of a new email invite and a Facebook friend's birthday."
The whole point of the "annoying noise" is it says "There's an e-mail for you", not "let me read that out for everyone within earshot on the train". Seriously, don't be "that guy" who uses text to speech on public transport and ends up getting strangled with their own tie by fellow commuters...
 
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It will be jewelry (or at least, personal adornment). It will get smaller. It may need surgical implant. There will be significantly less privacy. It will become a 'crutch' for many which reduces personal capability (as eyeglasses do not 'improve' our vision).
Chilling thoughts.
 
The basic design of the "desktop" will be around for a while.
A tower, a monitor, a keyboard and a mouse.

It doesn't matter if the "tower" is a mini PC or a smartphone plugged to a monitor...the basics will be around for some time.

There's no other accurate and reliable way to connect user-defined peripherals.
The tablet won't change that and neither will the smartphone.

As long as content production is needed, the desktop will reign supreme.
(A laptop is just a portable desktop)
 
It's simple and it's already here (almost). Smart TV will morph into full blown and powerful desktop computers and gaming consoles, all in one. All you'll need will be the wireless mouse and keyboard
 
I'm almost 40, and feel like I'm screaming at kids to get off my lawn here. I love tech and progress, but Is anyone else worried about moving all these things to the cloud? We're moving towards requiring an always on internet connection for life's necessities, what happens if the internet gets taken out for an extended period (I get it's decentralized and this is unlikely, what about just Google?). We've tossed away all the old infrastructure, what are people going to do?
 
You mention the huge push towards the advantages of the cloud without addressing how the majority of US readers (where a lot of these tech companies are based) have a data cap. Streaming my games will never be a reality, especially at 4k, let alone 8k as long as I have a 1TB cap on total bandwidth for the month.
 
Windows boot time should not be determined by the specific BIOS or UEFI boot speed

Windows boot time can be measured from Win Logo to Desktop speed without adding the BIOS boot speed which changes on every machine

"Windows" boot time on a 35 Watt dualcore Sandy Bridge using a Samsung 840-Pro are as follows using basic tweaks to a fresh install without added software

Windows 10 (1809) About 10-12 seconds (so far) after several boots and it settles down

Windows 8.1 boots in 8 seconds

Windows XP-SP2 boots in 3 seconds

Tweaking the Windows boot speed is much easier if you use the slowest boot drive you have with a slow computer so that the improvements you make can actually be measured

Once you have the best times on slow hardware, switch to a fast system

Slowest (usable) hardware for testing was a dualcore Nehalem with Windows 10 (1809) booting to a $10 Samsung Fit Plus thumb drive on a USB 2.0 port (Boot time - 40 seconds)

A full install of Windows 7 on the same thumb drive / same computer / same port was 1 minute and 40 seconds

I have used Atom computers, 5400RPM laptop drives and compact flash to tweak boot speed in the past before switching to fast hardware

Best Windows XP-SP2 boot time from 4GB compact flash on an IDE port of a 1st gen Atom computer was 12 seconds

Beat that!
 
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One of the most interesting things is how old ideas become new again. Literally, when you think about it, "...It’s easy to envision a future where your desktop PC is a dumb machine with limited capabilities, the heavy processing work being carried out in the cloud and streamed back to the machine...", is a very, very old idea.

Anyone old enough here to remember monochrome "dumb terminals" and mainframes? We went from dumb terminals and mainframes to PCs and now we are evolving back to "dumb machines" connected to "the cloud" (aka powerful servers very similar in concept to mainframes). Serial cables have been swapped out for ethernet/wireless and optical switching hardware through ISPs to the servers in the cloud.

Once again, what is old is new again.
 
I'm almost 40, and feel like I'm screaming at kids to get off my lawn here. I love tech and progress, but Is anyone else worried about moving all these things to the cloud? We're moving towards requiring an always on internet connection for life's necessities, what happens if the internet gets taken out for an extended period (I get it's decentralized and this is unlikely, what about just Google?). We've tossed away all the old infrastructure, what are people going to do?
Read a book
 
"While not entirely the same thing, tablets and smartphones already provide instant access to what is essentially a computer thanks to their power-saving and low-power state features"

Not sure that comparing cold PC startup times to warm sleeping phones makes much sense when you can just as easily put a PC in standby for the same 2s startup times, or watch a smartphone take 60s booting up from cold after the battery runs completely flat. I mean for laptops, sleep is the default action when closing the lid, and it's been easily changeable to the default for the power switch going back to XP...

Pixel boots to login in 15 seconds, possibly a couple seconds less. Then to go from login to full desktop is about 5 seconds, and that's with 2 widgets.

I was thinking the same thing about standby though.

I agree about screen size as well. I tried a 39" 4K and it was too big. I think the sweet spot is 32" 1440p (or 4K if properly scaled). 24" 1080p was just too narrow for two windows side by side.
 
Windows boot time should not be determined by the specific BIOS or UEFI boot speed

Windows boot time can be measured from Win Logo to Desktop speed without adding the BIOS boot speed which changes on every machine

"Windows" boot time on a 35 Watt dualcore Sandy Bridge using a Samsung 840-Pro are as follows using basic tweaks to a fresh install without added software

Windows 10 (1809) About 10-12 seconds (so far) after several boots and it settles down

Windows 8.1 boots in 8 seconds

Windows XP-SP2 boots in 3 seconds

Tweaking the Windows boot speed is much easier if you use the slowest boot drive you have with a slow computer so that the improvements you make can actually be measured

Once you have the best times on slow hardware, switch to a fast system

Slowest (usable) hardware for testing was a dualcore Nehalem with Windows 10 (1809) booting to a $10 Samsung Fit Plus thumb drive on a USB 2.0 port (Boot time - 40 seconds)

A full install of Windows 7 on the same thumb drive / same computer / same port was 1 minute and 40 seconds

I have used Atom computers, 5400RPM laptop drives and compact flash to tweak boot speed in the past before switching to fast hardware

Best Windows XP-SP2 boot time from 4GB compact flash on an IDE port of a 1st gen Atom computer was 12 seconds

Beat that!


They wanted a PC to boot to windows 10 as fast as possible. Motherboard contributes to the PC's total boot time.

I'm sure a user could boot to linux kernel in under 2 seconds. It's somewhere under 200MB. Older or stripped kernels are even smaller (16MB for tiny core linux).
 
My motherboard loading screen takes more time than windows. BUT WAIT! once windows 10 loads, its deceptive because it take another 20 seconds for all the startup programs to load! Mouse software (that Razer software!), Steam, Samsung Magician (SSD software), bittorrent, antivirus...etc etc. So, booting into windows takes seconds, but then u gotta wait for all the software to load cause they're needed for day to day usage. :p

On a side note, I would LOVE to use my Smartphone as an OS with just a bluetooth Monitor, keyboard and mouse. When will Google jump on making that happen? Samsung sucks at software, so their iterations are a headache to use. We need the software prowess of Google (or MS?) to step in and make it smooth as butter.
 
My motherboard loading screen takes more time than windows. BUT WAIT! once windows 10 loads, its deceptive because it take another 20 seconds for all the startup programs to load! Mouse software (that Razer software!), Steam, Samsung Magician (SSD software), bittorrent, antivirus...etc etc. So, booting into windows takes seconds, but then u gotta wait for all the software to load cause they're needed for day to day usage. :p

On a side note, I would LOVE to use my Smartphone as an OS with just a bluetooth Monitor, keyboard and mouse. When will Google jump on making that happen? Samsung sucks at software, so their iterations are a headache to use. We need the software prowess of Google (or MS?) to step in and make it smooth as butter.
That could work. Too bad desktop graphics are a long way before they could fit into a smartphone. Just like smartphone cameras that simply cant compare to dslr or mirrorles. Those heavy things market shrinks because many people didn't need it in a first place, and now people simply go for a cheaper all in one smartphone that can make normal quality photos or play the mobile games they like.
 
My first PC in the early 80's was an Atari 8bit computer. Flip a switch and BOOM it was on. The Basic Programming Language was in ROM. Games and many programs loaded instantly by plugging in a cartridge. (Loading a 16K... or worse, 32K or 48K... program off cassette was agonizing.)

Adding a disk drive slowed things a bit as ADOS loaded, but rival companies ("Sparta" was commercial. "MyDOS" was Shareware) made their own faster loading DOS's with more features. Then Sparta released their DOS on cartridge and BOOM, you were back to having an "instant on" computer once again.

Reading directly from ROM with no need to transfer the OS to ram (an exercise I *still* find incredibly pointless) was what made such speed possible. And every device had built-in firmware, so there was no need to load drivers either.

This continued as I moved up to an AtariST... OS ("TOS") on ROM with no "DOS" to load. Flip a switch and you were good to go. The cartridge slot was still there but rarely used.

A motherboard with fast dedicated onboard NVram that exclusively holds the OS with no need to copy it to RAM could make near "instant-on computing" possible once again. "Updates" would be written to this dedicated "NV Boot RAM" so it is always up-to-date. MS says there will be no "Windows 11", so "drivers" could be stored in "firmware" on the devices themselves without concern for compatibility with future versions of Windows. But honestly, there really is no reason for "drivers" anymore. It's a "compatibility layer" between Windows and the motherboard. This can be standardized the way most all USB devices are.)

The ONLY reason why Desktop PC's still take so long to boot is because we're doing things the way we did 50 years ago (the days of CP/M when your only choices for NV storage were ROM & floppy disks.) The biggest stumbling block to a ROM-based OS today is just how frequently Microsoft updates Windows, making a 100% ROM-based OS impractical. SSD's helped and M.2 drives are even better, but not enough. They *still* copy the OS to ram before usage. THIS STEP MUST GO!
 
"An Operating System That Repairs Itself"???? Not in your lifetime and mine. Not Windows anyway. Definitely an absurd concept. An oxymoron.
 
"An Operating System That Repairs Itself"???? Not in your lifetime and mine. Not Windows anyway. Definitely an absurd concept. An oxymoron.

I have been running Windows XP-SP2 "ONLINE" without any MS security updates for more than 10 years now without a single BSOD

It can repair itself with a simple reboot if malware is ever a problem as the O.S. is Read Only but it hasn't had a malware problem in more than 5 years

An O.S. like XP can be fixed by the end user to prevent problems from ever occurring but Spyware Platform 10 can only be fixed by Microsoft and they will never fix it for the end users

So yes, in MY lifetime, a Windows O.S. has been fixed by an end user to repair itself
 
How future is future? What is the definition? What is meaning of PC in that future? Too much of this is too vague and poorly defined to even make reasonable predictions.

Work stuff being hosted on servers, (I.e. streaming your desktop) is as old as good old xwidows done in the mid 80s. And before that people had dumb terminals connected to mainframes. There is nothing new, or future, just more repackaging, rebranding, and powers that be (commerical, governmental, etc.) trying to gain control, and fooling the people that have no understanding of history.

When people surrender the power and ability to do their own compute fix, repair, upgrade, etc., either out of laziness, greediness, or just plain old stupidity (after all that is well established that is infinite), they will have have volunteered to be part of the oppressed. Confusing network device for PC is just people choosing to be deluded. Just imagine how much easier it would be for the Great Firewall of China with their PLA tech division (helping the lil' kim's north korean geek squad) will have when they can control anyone/everyone connected to their network.

As for UI and IO devices, the laws and physics, and human limitations do not evolve or change nearly that fast. Even getting people's mentality to change is like moving glaciers at best. At most you can do is fool the people into thinking whatever it is the new great thing, but eventuality reality will still assert itself. The latest VR craze is just one more iteration of the VR dream that was.

As for self healing OS, there is no self healing out of corruption in protected sectors of the kernel, bios, boot loaders etc. If software was written correctly with all the proper testing done, instead using users as free guinea pig beta testers, you wouldn't need try to have software fix software. The marketing monkeys chasing dollars will always force crap out and the use PR to fool the *****s and then try to cover up the mess will so called self healing software (a.k.a. patches) after the fact. And with that kind of mentality being made the default expectation, even open source just make use of all the free beta testers (a.k.a. community) and it is got everyone into that "Fail Fast" mode of software development. Whatever happened to actually do real tests, and crafting code that is actually worth a darn?
 
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"It can’t be underestimated" - Wrong. You mean "overestimated."

"This begs the question" - Wrong. You mean "raises the question".

These mistakes are made constantly by tech journos... are you all just reading the other guy's stuff?
 
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