After the event, after rubbing shoulders with 4,000-odd mostly tech-geeks, after a dose of zen and several cold pints to soothe the swollen brain, a state of contemplation sometimes prevails. I then feel compelled to share these nuggets — of gold or lead, the reader is free to judge.

CULV C2D I can see being very useful. Atom has no interest for me though.

I'm also curious if you ventured across the street, took a limo ride, went upstairs, etcetera to see anything presented "at IDF" by AMD? I don't know who/what was actually there but most years there is a secret or not so secret presentation...

Sorry, no AMD guerrilla tactics this year. No space shuttle support by Intel either.

That mini ITX board is definately gold! Now we just need more gaming oriented mini ITX cases (besides the Silverstone).

it makes me sad that large desktops are phasing out. I love my desktop!

However, the statement doesn't surprise me...it's already looking like I will never own an ATX board after this one.

Thanks for the article...it was interesting. As an engineering student, I was recently lucky enough to have been given a tour of one of IBM's only USA manufacturing facilities. It is STAGGERING to see how processors are made..how long it takes, how much equipment is required, how sensitive they are during production...it makes you wonder how modern processors dont cost 10s of thousands of dollars a piece.

Personally i think it will e a while before desktops are gone. I guess the sales-number doesn't count self-built systems, and laptops are a very poor choice for gaming. If we are unlucky enough the PC gaming-scene might largely die off to consoles though. My main concern with the way yhings are going os the prospect of more cendor-lock-in with all the speicialised units.

AtW

They won't disappear completely, but my guess is that they will be about 10~15% of annual PC sales within 3-4 years.


Games are already released to consoles before being ported for PCs. The economics of consoles vs gaming PCs greatly favors the former. If I was a "serious" gamer, I'd be more inclined to get a gaming console separate from my PC, which could be a slim, light long mobile life notebook w/ SSD. Add a mini-itx based home fileserver/pc for distributed music/photos/movies at home, and that's all the computing I'd really need.

Yeah, it will be intereseting to see what the future brings. On the one hand, consoles are selling better, on the other hand most sucsessful products groups are forced to standarize sooner or later, and consoles are getting more and more like a PC.

Today i use a gaming PC, with the exeption of setup-complexity and initial cost the PC beats the consoles on every front, cost per game, control-options, graphics, modability, noise and so on, and mini-itx is way to small for a fileserver for me. Sadly this may vhange in the future (well, maybe not so sadyl when it comes to the fileserver, cheaper SSD will eventually make them smaller)

AtW

I thought more would post on this subject. I feel I might update a system I already have with a new cpu or even m/b, but for a whole new system I am looking forward to a CULV. Book or desktop I don't know, but if I can run a bigger screen off the netbook. and a better keyboard, then I will bet it is a netbook. I know very few young people who put out the money for a desktop. They give me the same look when I talk about desktops as when I slip up and mention CDs.

Yeah...i agree. The fact is, people really like to be able to move their laptop to where they are..like the living room, or bed. I've never understood that..even when i had a laptop, I've always sat at a desk. It's just natural for me. When I go on campus or something, I just remote desktop in to my home computer...that makes me part of about 1% of computer users my age who do that.

I think a lot of it is, people don't know what they are missing out on. All of my friend's computers take about 5 times longer to do the simplest things (like open firefox). I always try to get people to look something up on my computer, cause i love to hear them go "WOW....i wish my computer was this fast". *que the desktops > laptop speech*

I too like to be able to do some occascional surfing around the house and so on, and i do have a laptop. But i see the laptop as a supplementary machine, not my main rig. (but then again i have 6 computers in use, so i probably don't represent the average user )

AtW

Well, here's one. I'm in my early 20s, and just saying that makes me feel old... I just built a desktop earlier this year.

Notebooks are nice and all, in fact I am typing this on one lying on my bed, but I've yet to find any suitable for more specific or demanding tasks like silently hosting several VMs 24/7 for under $800. Sometimes the specialization and customization really is handy.

I like the thought of it. I built the smallest i could go and that was micro atx in earlier 2000s, the fact the case was 18 inches, and less than 6 inches high was amazing. I could go for the itx in a heartbeat, if prices went with size in materials, and no glamour of proclaming some godgiven evolution worth billions to jack up prices. That would be as crazy as the win2k kernel and its happy giddy extras ... earning billions and billions.

I am glad to have a tower and builders case, the nearly four years of adding evolitions one piece at a time will never have a better dynamics.