Thursday, March 25, 2010

Death of the desk top . . .

One of the blogs I follow is The Committed Sardine written by Ian Jukes. Ian was our August keynote speaker a few years ago when he shared his thinking on the future of education, new discoveries about how millennials learn, and the influence of technology on teaching and learning.

In this post he shares an article where Google staff are suggesting the end of the desk top is near. According to Google CEO Schmidt:

Our programmers are working on products from a 'Mobile First' perspective. That is in fact a major change. Every recent product announcement we have made - and of course we have a desktop version - is being made from the point of view of it being used on a high-performance mobile phone on all the browsers that are available. Now the programmers want to work on those apps for mobile that you can't get on a desktop - applications that are personal and location-aware.

In this article Europe Director Herlihy gives the desk top three years.

In three years time, desktops will be irrelevant. In Japan, most research is done today on smart phones, not PCs,” he said.

So, how did you vote on the Quick Poll? I agree more with PC World than Google. Of course, remember my score on the millennial quiz was 25 so one would expect me to cling to old technology like a desk top. The funny thing for me is that I don't use a desk top any longer at home or at work. I wonder if the Google folks are lumping desk tops with lap tops and net books.

PC World argues that the 'conventional PC' will 'have a longer, healthier life than Google anticipates. [...] The smartphone is great for many things, but it's no desktop-replacement device, either in the home or office.

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