So where is the PC world going, eh? There are some (to me) very disturbing factors.
Obviously, the PC has gone mainstream, and more. I was reading a column the other day in a human resources magazine about the Millennium kids, and how today's generation just can't be separated from their parents, their Web, their cell phones, their iPods, and their computers. Although a recent survey would put me in the high tech elite, I am still marginalized as a "lackluster veteran" as I am stuck in decade old technology.
Perhaps so. I don't blog - a world of mad ranting. I don't YouTube - what a huge pile of trash video. I don't MySpace - no "social networking" for me. No BitTorrent runs through my house. We have two music players, but they are not our constant companions - I don't have ear buds in my ears all the time, and I don't actively belong to any music purchase or sharing websites. Yup, I am marginalized all right!
But except for specialized business use, most PCs these days are in-effect Web appliances. Many applications today are done directly on the Web (examples: greeting cards, photo libraries) and that trend will grow. And even those specialized business applications that I spoke of could, and probably will be, converted to Web applications at some point in the future.
Why? Let's look at some of the underlying problems in PCs today.
First of all, the ability of the average person to install and maintain a full PC system is rapidly fading away. Vista has not made things any easier; the overwhelming barrage of subsystems, options, and "protection" is just beyond the average user. New software is not getting any easier to install and configure.
Couple that with the vast upsurge of "bad stuff" on the Internet; viruses, spam, spyware, rootkits, keyloggers, etc. are making the process of maintaining your PC more of a full time job. I have three active PCs in my home, and it certainly takes a fair amount of my time to maintain them - and (at least theoretically!) I know what I am doing.
In order to sell software upgrades, new software releases have become loaded and bloated, making them more and more difficult to use. And it isn't getting any better. The latest Microsoft Office seems to have shot itself in the foot - intending to make the package easier to use, they completely revamped and changed all the standard menus and options that people were used to. Enter The Ribbon. One slick guy has an add-on that restores the old Word and Excel menu items - I understand that it is selling like hotcakes.
The answer to all this is what is known as the Internet Appliance. It is a stripped down PC for the single purpose of getting on the Internet. It doesn't have to be maintained, and it is too dumb to be a home for viruses. You turn it on, connect to the Internet, and from then on all your work and applications are web-based. Basically, it is letting somebody else do the maintenance for you.
A Web-based environment also has additional advantages. You would probably not be paying up-front for software; monthly subscriptions will be common. But this would allow you to pick and choose from various offerings. It would be no problem to switch from an online MS Word application to an online Corel WordPerfect application if you so desire. Competition would be keen again, instead of a user community tied to one product and its high price tag.
Efforts in the past to market Internet Appliances have failed, mostly because there was no cost advantage to them - you might as well buy a full PC as a dumb appliance. But when it gets to the point where all the applications are on the Web, the scales will tip. And I will be out of a job!
(Bob Seidel is a local computer consultant in the Southport - Oak Island area. You can visit his Website at www.bobseidel.com or e-mail questions or column ideas to him at bsc@bobseidel.com. For specific inquiries, please call Bob Seidel Consulting, LLC at 278-1007.)