say whaaaaaaat?

[CntdwnToExtn]

Hies Everybodies! *waves like Dr. Nick*

glad to see this place is still running
haven't been around for a loooong time. though, no one probably remembers me anyway hahah

been working pretty hard for the past....5 years or so. I have a big ol' network to tend to so that takes up a lot of my time. almost 100 sites, 350+ servers and counting with 1200+ workstations and 1500 users. lots of things to do!!! haha

I tell ya....it's tones of fun though!

I intend to keep signin' in here again. my desktop game is a bit rusty though since I've been tending to business needs instead of enthusiast needs, but hey...i'll catch up

my PII 940 is STILL rockin' haha. my XFX 8800 died a couple years ago...and thanks to the WONDERFUL people at XFX they gave me a reverb 9550 to keep me going!!!...so ya. I don't get the best of FPS anymore, but man I'm still running and i'm still playin' thanks to XFX. just got done playing some Batman Arkham Origins @ 1920x1200 so...hey, i'm happy.

totally looking for a new system in the new year though. gonna get some VR!. hopefully AMD picks up it's game! common! we need to keep Intel in check! PC is hurting...besides gaming rigs I guess. no one buys the desktops anymore but businesses....

So, out of all of this. Here's my question. What do you think "Desktop" needs to do in order to get people excited again about it?

What should Microsoft do?
What should vendors do?
What should hardware companies do? AMD/Intel/Nvidia...

no response to this is bad! we're brainstorming right now!

glad to be back. glad this place is still going. this was my home through collage and a lot of my first job.

 

[PP Mguire]

A lot of things are happening but the desktop will largely remain the same for a while.

AMD isn't going to pick up, and I have no hope for Zen. Fortunately, that 940 still kicks it. I put a Titan X in my old 940BE setup I loaned to a friend years ago and got back and it actually plays fine.

 

[Trotter]

Great to see you back around, mate.

 

[Lexluethar]

Welcome back man!

I think it would be ignorant for us all to think the desktop game is ever going to be the same. The two big shifts i've seen in my short time:
1. Prices for products keep dropping (IE cheaper to buy a new laptop then repair the motherboard on a broken one)
2. A computer is no longer required to be on the internet. Now people have tablets, smart phones, netbooks, ect.

With these two cold hard facts you aren't going to see big players IMO putting forth a ton of effort in the desktop world for one simple reason - there isn't much money to be made. The exception to that (again just my opinion) is the corporate world but even that is changing. You still see large corporations (say 100 or more users) having to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars for equipment keeping larger manufactures in business (HP, Dell).

You are starting to see a shift now more towards BYOD (bring your own device). A company can save hundreds of thousands of dollars by just having people bring in their own devices. Citrix, vmware horizon all have products which allow you to access a 'work desktop' from a web portal from any device - and it's all secure.

Long rant sorry - but as i see it the desktop world has changed forever. I believe pretty soon the largest customers for desktop will be the gaming industry for people like you and me to run newer games.

1. I think MS is on the right track - making their OS more tablet friendly, moving away from the desktop world into a thinner more elegant device (their new laptop / netbook looks boss). It will still continue to service Enterprise level desktop OS's for the masses but i see in 10 years or so that shifting to what i said above (thin clients and virtualized desktops).
2. Which vendors? Citrix and VMware already have desktop alternatives you can purchase - i think MS has one too i'm just not as familiar with Hyper-V
3. Continue doing what they do - i don't see Intel changing much considering the majority of their sales are enterprise level servers.

 

[PP Mguire]

THe huge companies like I work for keep the OEM companies in business and you're forgetting the big money is in servers, not desktops. Mobile still is nowhere near the power of a desktop PC and it'll take another decade for them to close the gap in a true standard. That being said, all forms of gaming and real productivity will still be on desktop.

But you went in left field, by "change in desktop" I didn't mean the broad switch to smaller mobile devices. I meant things by way of interaction and usage. I don't see that changing anytime soon either. Especially for enterprise use.

 

[setishock]

Yeah and did you ever try to play halo on a cell phone?

 

[PP Mguire]

Yeah and did you ever try to play halo on a cell phone?

I played Final Fantasy 7 on my celly back in the GS2 days

 

[CntdwnToExtn]

nice thoughts everyone.

I believe the desktop will be around for another good 5-10 years. the traditional desktop anyway. Maybe not so much in homes since tablets are basically replacing them, but for the work force, yes.

I can really see something like the Surface Pro taking off. It seems to be getting better by the release. It's just as powerful but in a compact "tablet" form (even though it's not advertised as one). This device, imo, is what can replace the desktop for users and keep them fully "mobile". Not a iPad, not an iPhone. Those devices cannot act like a desktop. Sure they are great mobile devices, but, when a company needs to purchase a desktop @ $1300 (monitors, kb/mouse, licensing, etc...) and then go again and purchase something that's $500 + more licensing like an iPad. But they also want their iPhone connected too...more costs on your MDM. Don't forget about the bandwidth increase you'll need to have in order to support the now 3 devices per user . Then you have the issue of getting information from a non-domain system like iOS to a domain system like Windows. There's another cost finding that middleware.

Cost, cost, cost. And I think companies will finally realize this and look for a solution that can do it all. As I said, something like the Surface. We're getting ready to deploy ~30 of them for a mobile work force, but also need to sit at their desks and do heavy work too.

Just some thoughts rambling on in this head of mine!

 

[carnageX]

IMO, most companies will go the route of zero/thin clients for "normal" workers (i.e. non-engineers / developers who actually do need a beefy machine). Last company I was at was already starting to do that, and for sales people / normal office workers, they had virtual desktops through a zero client. Saves on hardware cost by a lot, as they only need the zero client box, monitor/mouse & kb. The killer is the network traffic load and the general infrastructure (servers, licensing, etc.) that's the initial killer.

 

[PP Mguire]

nice thoughts everyone.

I believe the desktop will be around for another good 5-10 years. the traditional desktop anyway. Maybe not so much in homes since tablets are basically replacing them, but for the work force, yes.

I can really see something like the Surface Pro taking off. It seems to be getting better by the release. It's just as powerful but in a compact "tablet" form (even though it's not advertised as one). This device, imo, is what can replace the desktop for users and keep them fully "mobile". Not a iPad, not an iPhone. Those devices cannot act like a desktop. Sure they are great mobile devices, but, when a company needs to purchase a desktop @ $1300 (monitors, kb/mouse, licensing, etc...) and then go again and purchase something that's $500 + more licensing like an iPad. But they also want their iPhone connected too...more costs on your MDM. Don't forget about the bandwidth increase you'll need to have in order to support the now 3 devices per user . Then you have the issue of getting information from a non-domain system like iOS to a domain system like Windows. There's another cost finding that middleware.

Cost, cost, cost. And I think companies will finally realize this and look for a solution that can do it all. As I said, something like the Surface. We're getting ready to deploy ~30 of them for a mobile work force, but also need to sit at their desks and do heavy work too.

Just some thoughts rambling on in this head of mine!

Not even close. I have a Surface Pro 3 from work and it's nowhere close to the speed of a real desktop. It also gets hot pretty quickly from regular work. Mobile devices are definitely getting faster but they won't be anywhere near quick enough for regular use for somebody who's used to a decent PC. For companies, below is the deal. We have over 16,000 people who use regular machines, then people with tablets/laptops, engineers with full blown workstations, and then people on the floor with thin clients. They also use iPhones that are connected to our domain. For large companies they typically don't pay what a normal civ would pay. Our machines are a good 200 bucks cheaper than the consumer desktop, and our workstations are 1000-2000 cheaper depending on spec.

IMO, most companies will go the route of zero/thin clients for "normal" workers (i.e. non-engineers / developers who actually do need a beefy machine). Last company I was at was already starting to do that, and for sales people / normal office workers, they had virtual desktops through a zero client. Saves on hardware cost by a lot, as they only need the zero client box, monitor/mouse & kb. The killer is the network traffic load and the general infrastructure (servers, licensing, etc.) that's the initial killer.

I'm actually involved in a project to bring large scale VM to my company for regular users to reduce cost in per-user refresh.