Death of Desktop PCs are Greatly Exaggerated

Michael Gartenberg | April 13, 2005, 06:51 PM

Mark Cuban goes on a rant about the death of the desktop PC and how mobile gadgets will replace it. I think mark's a little off here. While he correctly notes the overlapping nature of his various devices, he ignores the secondary functions are often mediocre. My phone is a poor camera, my camera a poor mp3 player and my mp3 player a poor PIM. The key is context. When walking in SF on Tuesday and struck by a moment, I was able to snap a pic on my cameraphone but when I go on vacation you better believe my digital rebel will be along. Its not convergence, its context. Likewise, on the plane I needed to create a presentation, respond to  a few hundred emails and write a several reports. In theory I could have used my Treo for that but it wouldn't have been productive or pleasant.

As for the desktop? death Well my "desktop" at home has half a terabyte of disk space, serves up content to three rooms in my home as well as my mobile devices. The pc isn't gone... It just morphed into a new role and still handles the other stuff it did in the 80s and 90s better than any other device. My laptop has only a fraction of that capacity or horsepower.

The desktop dead? Surely as Dewey beat Truman.