Home PCs and laptops are on "death row" - Brown-Martin
In less than four years, home PCs and laptops will be redundant as more users and manufacturers migrate to online storage, according to Handheld Learning MD Graham Brown-Martin.
In less than four years, home PCs and laptops will be redundant as more users and manufacturers migrate to online storage, according to Handheld Learning MD Graham Brown-Martin.
In a bold prediction, he stated: "In 2010 the desktop computer will be dead, and laptops will be on death row.
"I've spent quite a lot of time talking to computer manufacturers and they are seeing more value in selling servers that connect to consumer electronic devices such as the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS. They see this as the food chain, rather than lots of desks with computers on them," said Brown-Martin, during the Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival earlier this week.
"We're seeing a situation with lots of devices - consoles, video cameras, mobile computers, phones, pocket PCs - that are potentially all going to access their content from a data warehouse or server," he continued.
"Today you can get 25 gigabytes of online storage for free. We're seeing an emergence of companies saying, 'Pay us a little bit of money per month and dump all your stuff on our online hard-disks, we'll back it up and we guarantee you that you'll never lose your data'."
"Mobility isn't just about little devices — it's about the user being mobile and having all their stuff in one location, in cyberspace, on a hard-disk farm," Brown-Martin went on.
"Where ever you go - assuming that media is scalable and interoperable - you can access material, anywhere and any place — that's where we are headed."