Wintel defined the PC for 2 decades…were we all wrong?

Image by: http://www.flickr.com/photos/antmcneill/5712892342/

All this talk about the post PC era (which I don’t necessarily agree with when it comes to those that say the PC is dead) garners a lot of attention in the storage space – especially for hard drive suppliers.  Yes, I have covered the topic in the past…

• The PC is dead. No alive. I mean dead. No sorry, alive. What do you believe?
• When it comes to forecasts, who do you believe?
• The death of the hard drive? C’mon people…

Instead of appearing on the defensive about the subject, I thought I would attempt to embrace the post PC era and look at it from another angle:  The PC in pieces.

We all remember the traditional personal computer (PC)…a beige colored tower or desktop equipped with a motherboard, processor, memory, OS, and hard drives – all in one nice neat package. Over the years, the PC got more feature rich, faster, and with more mass storage. It even changed color from beige to black, but as we sought to break away from the office, the traditional PC lacked mobility, and the notebook or laptop was born. But still, it was simply a smaller lighter version of a motherboard, processor, memory, OS, and hard drive. Then wireless came along, thanks to Intel’s Centrino (remember that?) and our minds were opened to the opportunities of accessing content from more than our desks, from the coffee shop, the airport…and mobile hotspots were born. Our infatuation with the web, combined with our hunger for even faster and more widely available access to the internet gave birth to mobile broadband and the smartphone was born. The smartphone carved the path for tablets, and here we are today.

Yes, we still have desktops and notebooks. But, more and more people have smartphones, and tablets (thanks to Apple). Such rapid adoption of  smartphones and tablets has given some level of credence to the thought of a Post PC era. No doubt, desktop sales have been on the decline, as are notebook sales (as of late).  Of course, Intel hopes to resurrect the notebook in the form of the Ultrabook and they are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars to make it happen. Yet, Ultrabooks, even smartphones and tablets are still motherboard, processor, memory, and OS. Sure, they all have storage, but not mass storage…flash storage.

But – some argue that Ultrabook manufacturers will be forced to adopt Solid State Hybrid Drives (Flash combined with spinning disk) to make the platform cost competitive and attractive to consumers. 

Needless to say, the hard drive has been yanked from a majority of the devices shipping today.  Begging the question – is the hard drive the defining factor of a PC?  Go with me on this one…

If “experts” say we are in the Post PC Era, and the traditional PC was defined as motherboard, processor, memory, OS, and hard drive, yet today’s devices still have motherboard, processor, memory, and OS, then the hard drive must be what ultimately defines a PC….Right? And, here I thought Intel processors and Microsoft OS defined the PC for the last 2 decades.

Oh yeah, but I almost forgot … all those smart phones and tablets do still use mass storage (more hard drives than ever)! It’s in the cloud.

Related Posts:

The PC is dead. No alive. I mean dead. No sorry, alive. What do you believe?

When it comes to forecasts, who do you believe?

The death of the hard drive? C’mon people…