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Hardware

The Dawn of the Post-PC era? 260

Posted by michael from the premature-speculation dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The "Post-PC" era may be near at hand, according to the findings of a recently completed market study conducted by eTForecasts. The study projects that Windows CE-based devices may outsell Windows-based PCs within 5 years. According to the report, Microsoft has made "tremendous progress" in positioning its Windows CE and derivative operating systems for use in a broad range of handheld and mobile devices such as PDAs and Smartphones, and only embedded Linux is poised to represent a major long-term across-the-board competitor to Microsoft." The Register has another story about the study.
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The Dawn of the Post-PC era? More

The Dawn of the Post-PC era?

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  • Not until (Score:5, Insightful)

    by yotto ( 590067 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @12:50PM (#5687023) Homepage
    PC's in any form will not be replaced by anything that cannot beat it in gaming quality. Until my palm can play a Quake, a Half Life, or a Freelancer BETTER than my pc, I'm not unplugging.

    • Re:Not until (Score:5, Insightful)

      by secolactico ( 519805 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @01:44PM (#5687289) Journal
      PC's in any form will not be replaced by anything that cannot beat it in gaming quality.

      Ah, but that's what consoles are for.

      All the keyboard/mice combo vs gamepads discussions are merely controller issues that can be solved without too much hassle once a vendor decides to do so.

      The games themselves are the main obstacle. We need better games, not the same gameplay repackaged with new graphics over and over again.

      • I disagree (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Archfeld ( 6757 ) <treboreel@live.com> on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @02:32PM (#5687548) Journal
        The main problem is the proprietary CLOSED nature of console games. The BEST longest lasting most played games, read made the MOST $$$'s are PLAYER supported, designed for MODS and player maps. Until the consoles figure a way around that, and I am sure they will, PC gaming is and will continue to be superior. The grand expirement is EQ adventures, and I predict a slow painful death for that game. Without a keyboard and extensive macro ability it is going to be painful at best. Make a console controller that can compete with a mouse+keyboard in a FPS and you might have something also.
        As to needing new games with more imagnitive gameplay HERE HERE :)

      • The learning curve (Score:5, Insightful)

        by skillet-thief ( 622320 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @02:34PM (#5687558) Homepage Journal

        Every year, people (I mean the teaming masses wallowing in their computer ignorance) are getting slowly smarter about their computers. It is now something of joke, but the grandmother who spends her time sending e-mail and playing bridge is a good example. So basically, the basic users are getting smarter, and more demanding, about computers.

        So my question is: why, oh why, would they suddenly decide to give up this machine that they can communicate with, do their taxes with, play Heart$ or whatever on, "surf" the internet with, etc. and trade it in on a bunch of over specialized little boxes with way less computing power? Doing so would be going against the trend of increasing knowledge and computer familiarity.

        This is a dream by the manufacturers that have worked themselves into a corner because PC's have become a commodity. This is also Bill Gates' network refrigerator and talking house dream. Oddly enough, in these schemes, the PC just disappears. I don't see any trends going in this direction. The whole PDA thing took off because you can hook them up to your PC.

        But I think this is a marketing argument and not even a consumer argument.

        • Re:The learning curve (Score:3, Insightful)

          by TopShelf ( 92521 )
          I see this trend becoming more pervasive on the business side. Look at users like deliverymen, service engineers, salespeople, etc. and you see a huge market that is largely underserved so far. Laptops are somewhat useful, but not quite as portable and practical as a good PDA with wireless internet access could be within the next couple years. I don't see home users abandoning their PC's anytime soon, although they might add a smartphone or two.

        • Re:The learning curve (Score:4, Insightful)

          by crazyphilman ( 609923 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @03:31PM (#5687927) Journal
          The FUNCTION of the PC won't disappear; but the big boxes and monitors probably will. You'll end up using a laptop instead; all the functionality, plus the portability and the convenience and the battery backup built in...

        • Re:The learning curve (Score:3, Interesting)

          by 4of12 ( 97621 )

          why, oh why, would they suddenly decide to give up this machine

          Fair question. For the functions you describe it's perfectly adequate. And if people don't have much discretionary income they'll probably stick with it. But there are still reasons to give it up for something better.

          It's big, noisy and has a medusa of dusty cables festering in the backside of it.

          I can see where new desktops that incorporate all the guts into a fan-less box hidden on the back side of an LCD panel would be appealing.

          Basical

    • From reading the computer press, one might assume that *all* computer users are gamers. I wonder what the percentage really is. Practically none of my close friends or colleagues have anything to do with games.
    • PC's in any form will not be replaced by anything that cannot beat it in gaming quality.

      Fanatical PC gamers are a small minority of PC owners. Once the next round of network aware, HDTV only game consoles hits, then that will be it for most PC game development. Quite possibly it won't take much to turn these consoles into pseudo-PCs that allow for mods and such.

      • Re:Not until (Score:3, Insightful)

        by L7_ ( 645377 )
        'Fanatical PC gamers' are the only ones driving the video card industry.

        I would NOT say they are a small minority, as ATI and nVidia are multi-million dollar businesses.

    • Re:Not until (Score:5, Insightful)

      by helix400 ( 558178 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @01:57PM (#5687365) Journal
      Until my palm can play a Quake, a Half Life, or a Freelancer BETTER than my pc, I'm not unplugging.

      The reason PC's will always win over PDA's is because of 15+ inch display screens.

      Seriously, what are the majority of world PC's used for? Word processing, email, and browsing the web. Try explaining the average joe that PDA's would do this better.

      Average Joe: "So, on Word, I could see the whole page. How come I can't now?"
      You: "You can, you just have to using the scrollers a lot more."
      Average Joe: "And how do I type again?"
      You: "Either buy a fold up keyboard and plug that in, or just write the words out as clearly as you can so the PDA can understand it."
      Average Joe: "Ok, I think I've got it. Wait...how do I turn my font to bold?"
      You: "The bold button is still there, you just have to scroll to the right a bunch to find it."
      Average Joe: "Aaah...ok...I just wrote two paragraphs...but my first paragraph disappeared! Did I delete it?"
      You: *slaps forehead* "No no...it's still there, your PDA can only display roughly one paragraph at a time."

      Unless PDA's can come out with some amazing holographic screens, roll up LED's, or a projection monitor...PDA's will remain mostly as schedulars and note takers.
    • PC's in any form will not be replaced by anything that cannot beat it in gaming quality. Until my palm can play a Quake, a Half Life, or a Freelancer BETTER than my pc, I'm not unplugging.

      Well, not every uses their computers to waste time. It's only a small percentage of...

      *I realize the irony that I am saying this while posting on Slashdot*

      Oh, ummm.. nevermind.. Carry on with your computer gaming.
    • Of course they will. They already are.

      I connect to the internet with an iBook at home, and I'm totally happy with it; it's compact, an all-in-one design, and it can be locked up when I'm not working on it. There are no cables tangling up behind it, and there are no unwieldy separate keyboard and mouse to worry about.

      I have a Mobilon Tripad as a PDA, which I got on Ebay for 200 bucks. It can do web surfing, and handle email. I have a 128MB flash card which I use as a removeable hard disk. On vacations, I b

  • premature-speculation dept. is right (Score:5, Insightful)

    by trmj ( 579410 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @12:51PM (#5687030) Journal
    There will always be a use for wired PCs. This is exactly why Desknotes were made: It's a laptop computer and makes the employees happy because they have a cool little toy, but they still can't leave the desk because there is not battery on the unit, thus forcing you to be (1) tethered to a wall, presumeably in the office while doing work, or (2) carry a small power generator with you.

    Handheld devices are great and all, but people want something that they can do everything on, all at once. When we see a handheld device that runs at 2Ghz (or equivalent speeds at a different frequency) and has a 17" screen on it, then it will be post-pc era. Tablet PCs have come close, and Laptops are there, but none of them are handheld.

    The article talks about market share of embedded vs. oem distributions of operating systems, but I just don't see how the embedded market will span from the business users to the home BF1942 players and Kazaa users.

    • Re:premature-speculation dept. is right (Score:4, Funny)

      by og_sh0x ( 520297 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @01:05PM (#5687105) Homepage
      So how do you propose we make a handheld with a 17" display? Seems mutually exclusive to me, unless you build in a projector and carry around a 17" flat white surface to guarantee you have an acceptable surface to work with. Or maybe you could pull a roll-up OLED display out of the bottom like one of those old style spring-loaded window shades. Perhaps if they can fix the splitting-headache problem with LCD glasses, you could build the handheld into that, as long as you don't mind the hot processor burning "AMD" into your forehead.
    • If you think about the number of mobile phones sold, if Microsoft can get their software installed as the operating system on even of 10% of the new phones sold in the next few years these numbers could be pulled off.

      This will not be a replacement of PC, these will be functional devices that do one operation and you probably won't be able to install any additional software.

      For example I know of Trimble GPS systems, which uses windows CE as the operating system. There is a lot of room for embedded devic
    • We don't need bloated hardware and software to design fast portable computers which run circles around Transmeta in speed and power consumption. We don't need commonly used bloated embedded operating systems either (yes this includes embedded forms of Unix, too). We just use a different approach [ultratechnology.com]. It has been demonstrated to work very well [ultratechnology.com], and perhaps even offend a few people :).
    • When we see a handheld device that ... has a 17" screen on it

      Unless there's some genetic mutations scheduled, I'm not sure how a 17" screen will ever be handheld...
    • Okay, look. You and many of the other posters are missing the point. This isn't about the personal computer at all; this is about the fact that your BMW 7 series, the rollercoasters at Disneyland, and your microwave will all be running an operating system. And, according to the figures calculated by this company, Microsoft's operating system will be the one of choice.

      I don't agree with this company's assessment one bit. Microsoft is NOT skilled at embedded systems, and the problems with the new BMW 7 s

  • Battery life... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by st0rmcold ( 614019 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @12:52PM (#5687042) Homepage

    5 years is optimistic, but I would love to see it happen, the biggest hurdle for PDAs and portable computers is the battery life, power to the machines!

  • Now Way (Score:5, Funny)

    by The_Rippa ( 181699 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @12:52PM (#5687047)
    Just the thought of having a handheld be my primary pc makes me WinCE

  • What about Epoc32 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DOsinga ( 134115 ) <douwe DOT webfeedback AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @12:53PM (#5687052) Homepage Journal
    Epoc seems to be powering quite a lot more phones these days then anything else. With the phone market so much bigger in terms of numbers then the pc market, let alone the handheld market, is epoc not poised to beat Windows CE?

  • Could well be (Score:3, Interesting)

    by targo ( 409974 ) <[targo_t] [at] [hotmail.com]> on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @12:53PM (#5687061) Homepage
    Not that such anecdotal evidence would count but I've personally bought more handhelds than desktops already in the last two years or so.
    This technology is moving faster, so there's more incentive to upgrade. And quite many of my coworkers are showing off their new Pocket PCs as well.

  • Funded by who exactly? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sparkhead ( 589134 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @12:54PM (#5687062)
    One guess as to who funded this study. These "studies for hire" places are almost always questionable.

  • Not enough. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Martigan80 ( 305400 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @12:54PM (#5687066) Journal
    I'm sorry but 1.5-2 years of data is not enough to forcast five years in the future. Kind like those Funds that promise a 10% growth in two years.

  • Happened 7 years ago (Score:5, Funny)

    by asv108 ( 141455 ) <asvNO@SPAMivoss.com> on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @12:54PM (#5687068) Homepage Journal
    Don't you know the post-pc era happened 7 years ago? Isn't everyone running java thin client machines? Heck, I do all of my office work through my web browser using Corel Java Office. [dundee.ac.uk]

    • Re:Happened 7 years ago (Score:4, Interesting)

      by SN74S181 ( 581549 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @01:45PM (#5687299)
      I still have a copy of that Corel Office for Java beta that they came out with. I remember how badly it ran back when it came out, but about a year ago I brought it up on modern equipment. It really wasn't that bad. It was clearly seven years too early to go anywhere.

  • right -- no upgradability (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @12:57PM (#5687069)
    It will be much much easier on everyone when there is essentially no upgradability from machine to machine and we buy a new machine every 3 years.

  • Handheld Crashing rates? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Flamesplash ( 469287 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @12:57PM (#5687070) Homepage Journal
    While I personally have had very few blue screens using w2k for a couple years, I know that some versions of windows are blue screen prone. I'm curious what the average blue screen rate is for a hand held device. Anyone have an idea on this?

    I think it would annoy me more if my hand held crashed than if my desktop did.

    • Re:Handheld Crashing rates? (Score:5, Funny)

      by athakur999 ( 44340 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @01:10PM (#5687138) Journal
      In the past WinCE blue screens were pretty rare, but now that many PDAs have color displays it may be more common.
    • My palm has crashed twice in the last 4 years... once because the battery died.
    • That's a good question. And I have some anecdotal evidence that many Windows based handhelds are more stable. I have only crashed a WinCE device once, and I simply removed the battery, put it back in, and everything worked again.

      That said, there is less propensity to crash in that the hardware driver conflicts that you have on a full size desktop are not as diverse.

      By having some kind of control of what you plug in, and add on to your handheld, I notice a lot less crashes.

      the OS is tweaked a bit by the
      • I've got a brand new Dell Axim X5 Pocket PC running the latest version of Microsoft's WinCE (really called Pocket PC now, at least for this type of handheld). For normal use (non-network stuff) it works great and rarely if ever crashes or messes up. But insert any type of network (wireless) card, and I have to soft reboot the thing just about ever time I use the device. The networking layer in Pocket PC 2002 sucks a lot...it has huge PPTP compatibility issues (if you don't use WEP on your wireless networ
    • I have and develop on a Windows CE device. I have found it to be fairly stable as an OS, but the programs aren't all well-behaved. Windows MediaPlayer can lose its mind sometimes when I boot if I didn't completely stop the app previously before turning the device off. Sometimes action buttons can be unresponsive (a soft reset fixes this).

      There are similar "hardware" related issues particular to each device, which just shows that it mostly is hardware related and the designers are still working out the k
      • I have and develop on a Windows CE device. I have found it to be fairly stable as an OS, but the programs aren't all well-behaved. Windows MediaPlayer can lose its mind sometimes when I boot if I didn't completely stop the app previously before turning the device off. Sometimes action buttons can be unresponsive (a soft reset fixes this). There are similar "hardware" related issues particular to each device, which just shows that it mostly is hardware related and the designers are still working out the kin
    • Someone at work has a WinCE device (this is the flashy looking Compaq iPAQ) The display is excellent, it's backlit and colors are brilliant. However, within 5 minutes of use this device had crashed on me 3 times. Granted, we were attempting to use a wireless network with it, but I think it could recover more gracefully from this.

      In contrast, my Plam 7 continues to operate flawlessly. It may not be as flashy, but it effectively provides wireless access, a phone directory and access to my email. IMHO, Micros
    • Anyone have an idea on this?

      Just count the number of new BMW 7-series sedans stopped on the side of the road.

      Embedded Windows is a joke.
  • not until wireless (802.11 or BlueTooth) is widely deployed will tablet PCs take over. CDMA and GSM technology is a option but from what I understand the transfer rates aren't large enough to be useful.

  • Numbers Misleading? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ErikRed1488 ( 193622 ) <erikdred1488@netscape.net> on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @01:00PM (#5687082) Journal
    My company has purchased about 150 PCs in the last year. We will not be buying any new desktop machines for the next three years. We do however plan to outfit most of the staff with Pocket PC based devices during that three year period. I'd guess that in the next five year period we'll purchase approximately about 125 new PCs. During that same period we'll probably purchase about 250 Pocket PC based PDAs. Mainly this is due to them not being useful as long. It has nothing to do with our plans to switch anyone from a PC to a PDA. Now, if you also count all the Smartphones that may be running a version of CE, our numbers could go from 250 to 500 easily in that same 5 year period. So, IMHO, PCs are going nowhere.

  • "Post-PC" seems rather misleading (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Faramir ( 61801 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @01:00PM (#5687083) Homepage Journal
    "The "Post-PC" era may be near at hand..."

    What does "post-pc" mean? I cannot tell from the articles linked what the original author intended. It would be very easy to interpret these articles as implying that handhelds will dominate the consumer's future over PCs. But this is not what the market data shows. It shows that handheld sales will dominate.

    And what is the difference? The difference is this: I own a PC or two already. They work just fine for me, have plenty of power, and will be that way two years from now (assuming I don't want Longhorn or some other future bloated software). So I won't need to buy a PC. But I don't have a handheld, so I might choose to buy one. So might my wife. Or we might get a notebook. But the PC would still be our dominant mode of computing.

    Perhaps this is obvious to everyone already. But the article is poorly written on this score and could easily lead to confusion, a confusion which then plays itself out in non-geeks running around thinking that geeks are saying PCs are dead. Then when we're still using PCs in a few years, they'll point and laugh at us for our silly predictions. Its happened before...

    • Especially since we haven't even hit the PC era yet.

      After all, my independent studies show that there continue to be more pencils sold worldwide than computers, so we're obviously still in the Pre-PC era.

    • Post-PC was a phrase coined up back in 1999 or so and bandied about a lot by the pundits. Infoworld was particularly guilty of overusing this word.

      It's about as meaningful as predicting we are in the Post-Automobile era due to the invention of passenger airplanes and scooters. The airplane didn't replace, it complemented and allowed for new travel that had not occured as readily before. The same is true of PDAs in comparison to PCs.

      BTW, in 1999 when the Post-PC phrase was coined, desktop sales increase

  • The beige box (Score:5, Interesting)

    by I_redwolf ( 51890 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @01:01PM (#5687085) Homepage Journal
    Will be around for a while longer... What I see in the future is the letting go of legacy and the refinement of the beige box into a hub of sorts. The embedded segment still has poor input devices and no matter how small and useful they could be until headway is made in the usability arena specifically regarding input then they are pretty tough and difficult to use for any long period of time.

    The first manufacturer to start pumping out non-legacy machines that are smaller more aesthetic and can hold current media yet allow for new functionality that is found in stuff like MythTv, Freevo, Tivo, Windows Media OS etc etc etc with ease will be the next big computer manufacturer.. That is till the guys/gals over at the mit media lab find out a way to get better input devices for smaller devices. Whether it be voice operated or whatever etc etc etc.. you get the idea.

  • Great! (Score:4, Funny)

    by blamanj ( 253811 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @01:01PM (#5687090)
    It's going to be great fun watching the marketing guys build their PowerPoint presentations on their cell phones.

    • Re:Great! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by YrWrstNtmr ( 564987 )
      It's going to be great fun watching the marketing guys build their PowerPoint presentations on their cell phones.

      A corporate saleswoman I know has done almost that.

      Her team has given up toting laptops to do presentations. A desktop in the office to build them on, and a handheld out in the field, plugged directly into the projector, to do the presentations and manage client data.

      Even minor updates done on the handheld. Need a different presentation? Log into central files back home and download/modify i

  • Handhelds will become widespread, but not replace (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @01:06PM (#5687112)
    People get way too caught up in "what's going to replace what" these days. Desktop computers will always be around, they will merely be complimented (not replaced) by handhelds. Think of the desktop pc as your house. It's big, takes a lot of space, and expensive, but when you're in and stationary that's what you want. Now your handheld is your car. It's mobile, has lots of things similiar to things in the house (seats you could take a nap in while pulled off. trunk to keep things in. mini stereo system. etc). The car's mobility is a wonderful thing and allows us to live and work in a completely different way, but no time soon are people going to ditch their houses and start living out of their car.

    Laptops are like camper trailers. Bulky and tedious to carry around, but in a pinch they serve quite well as a below average house ;).
    • Laptops are like camper trailers. Bulky and tedious to carry around, but in a pinch they serve quite well as a below average house

      If the gap between desktop and laptop technology continues to decrease (and I don't see it as that big an "if") why would you prefer a desktop over a laptop? Not arguing here - genuinely curious.

      If I could get a camper trailer to store nearly as much as my house, and if it was small enough to take anywhere, well... then I would have a TARDIS and I would prefer to own one of

  • Not replacement, but supplementation (Score:3, Interesting)

    by guido1 ( 108876 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @01:06PM (#5687115)
    These devices aren't taking over an old PC market, they are novel devices filling new niches. PDA? Replaced the paper Franklins. Cell phone? Replaces hard-wired (or even supplements it.) MP3 player -- walkman etc.

    Just because sales of embedded devices are increasing and potentially overtaking PC's, does not mean they're replacing them...

    And taking a different tack...

    What do you think all the people working on all of the embedded devices are going to be working on? Tablets? Handhelds? I don't think so.

    They're going to be doing the same thing they are now, sitting in front of a PC (or unix box, or whatever) and banging out requirements, design, and code...

    Most work will still be done in the same way, 'cause a lot of the time a PDA/handheld/tablet just won't cut it...

  • OK, time to analyze... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Glock27 ( 446276 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @01:09PM (#5687128)
    The study projects that Windows CE-based devices may outsell Windows-based PCs within 5 years.

    So? Does this mean the CE based devices will be performing the same tasks the PCs were?

    Almost certainly not.

    Further, in five years Linux based PCs "may outsell" Windows based PCs. For that matter Macs "may outsell" Windows based PCs in five years. The point being, most pundits crystal balls have been pretty cloudy over the years.

    For myself, I'm pretty sure I'll be buying new PCs at about the same rate I buy new PDAs - every two years or so as the new technology becomes too compelling to pass up. ;-)

    The one trend I think will continue is the intrusion of "desknotes" onto the scene. These will be notebook machines that are powerful enough to completely replace desktops for 99% of computer users. I hope they'll plug into a (Hypertransport?) connection that'll allow external AGP and PCI devices in the docking station, providing upgradeable graphics at least when used in the desktop role. One hopes the processors won't run hot enough to really endanger the users though... ;-)

  • We could be dealing with a phenomenon wherein Wince devices obsolesce faster than desktop boxen, in terms of fashion if not in technology. Sure, you could get by with last year's desktop PC or even one from the year before. But if you're caught with an old HP Jornada or a black-and-white first-gen Palm, you're going to lose face. Yeah, they do all the basic stuff, but Joe just bought a new backlit-screen, Wince-based XScale PDA that he can use to beam his baby's photos all over the planet.

    So it's not that

  • Where's Symbian? (Score:5, Informative)

    by 10Ghz ( 453478 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @01:10PM (#5687139)
    Let's see... Right now Symbian outsells it's MS-rivals. It has all the biggest mobile-phone manufacturers behind it (Nokia, Motorola, SonyEricsson, Samsung, Siemens. And to add insult to injury: the former MS-Smartphone poster-boy, Sendo!). Now, contrast that to MS-offerings: There is one product using it (The Orange smartphone-thingie), it has only Samsung as a licensee (who also has Symbian-license), it's sales are dwarfed by sales of Symbian... And MS-smartphone is supposed to dominate the industry??? I think not!

  • The Home Consumer (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CAIMLAS ( 41445 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @01:11PM (#5687143)
    In my mind, the only things that make people upgrade their PCs at all are games. Most people use their computers for chatting, browsing, email, games, and a -little- word processing - probably in that order. The game, hardware, and OS industry knows this.

    As a result, all three industries work together to an extent. OSes need upgrades when new hardware comes out, new hardware needs new OSes, and games need both. Thus, they end up making colateral income for each other, as one component advances, all the others must. Otherwise, each industry would probably have stagnated without the other.

    Now, portables, however, don't really do the 'game' thing. They're really just fancy web appliances with word processors. For most people, a WinCE device with a couple hundred megs of storage and a decent display/keyboard would be more than sufficient for all that they do (legally): just include solitaire, IE, and a couple chat programs with your basic loadout. I see this working for a large extent, especially with the convention of WiFi. I'm thinking a family of 5 (with, say, 3 internet addicts) would much rather spend 1k$ on 3 portable devices than 1 large desktop device that only one person can use at a time.

    Price would have to be quite competitive, of course, since most people want gaming, too. Personally, I see embedded WinXP (or whatever equivilant product MS comes out with next) being more common than WinCE. WinCE is for low-end stuff.

  • Wrong comparison. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Paul Neubauer ( 86753 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @01:11PM (#5687145)

    ...Windows CE-based devices may outsell Windows-based PCs...

    I bought a computer this year. I didn't buy it with Windows. Is this a case of me not buying a PC?

    If I buy a PDA that doesn't have WinCE, will I not be buying a PDA?

    This might be a useful comparison (Windows vs WinCE) within one company's market, but ignores a two things going on in the market as a whole. Now, maybe my PC purchase and purchases like it are small enough to be written off as statistical noise, but are those PDAs? I rather doubt it.

  • eTforcasts, I think the reg has been had (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bballad ( 663078 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @01:11PM (#5687148)
    Look into the company...it seems to be a one-man shop. If I remember the area its in correctly that's a residential address, I will drive by today to verify. This release is from a conshop.
  • I can't see this happening until handhelds and small form factor PDA's move from their current closed upgrade paths to machines where I can install what hardware I want when I want. I don't know any PDA to which I can connect a satellite TV card and watch TV on my PC.

    One thing would be nice is to have a consitant platform for development on but is it going to be Windows CE? Personally I don't think so but it will be intresting to see how it all plays out

    Rus
    65535.net [65535.net] - hosting and stuff
  • At first glance, did anyone else interpret this as a pro-Apple story?

    Even the Linux zealots are getting on the bandwagon these days.
  • Have you ever tried to effectively work off a WinCe device? They're great for processes where you do the same task over and over, but actually trying to do any real work (translation: work that actually requires thinking in addition to just typing or clicking) is almost painful. The WinCe 2.0 OS is still chock full of bugs. I regularly have to reset my iPAQ because the OS has a memory leak (at least as far as I can tell; no apps running and the memory used count just goes higher and higher...). Don't even g

  • WinCE dominance - my ass (Score:5, Insightful)

    by zulux ( 112259 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @01:18PM (#5687187) Homepage Journal
    Sure there a few commodity hardware vendors that ship pretty much the same WinCE devices as eachother: HP, Dell, Toshiba, Samsung.

    But the market is much larger that that: Palm, Sony, Handspring, Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sharp, IBM, Apple,Sendo, etc that ship innovative produces based on the best OS for their needs: Symbian, Linux, Palm, Homegrown.

    Thes vendors innovative devices keeps filling in the crack in the maeketplace - while the WinCE market is limited to Palm IIIC wanabees and friken-huce 'cell phones' that bing you back to the Motorola 'Brick' days.

    Want a ruged computing device: Telelogix
    Want a server in your pocket: Sharp/IBM
    Want tunes: iPod
    Want the web on you cellphone: Ericsoon 800

    Choic, Choice Choice!

    Where's the WinCE version of these deviced: don't exit.

    • Palm sucks. It's very hard to beat something like the Dell Axim. $300 for 400MHz, color screen, cool software. I don't think the Sharp stuff can approach that, certainly not palm. If you just want a PDA to keep your appointments, a Palm m105 is fine. Otherwise, the WinCE offerings are better.

  • But what do you define a PC as? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jht ( 5006 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @01:24PM (#5687208) Homepage Journal
    Sure, handheld/embedded devices will outsell PC's over time. That falls into the Bleeding Obvious category of statistic. Duh.

    What the key question here turns out to be is this: What is a PC? If, by "PC", you mean monolithic desktop/laptop systems that use X86-compatible processors and run Microsoft Windows, well, then it's a no-brainer. That means Linux desktops will chip away at that, MacOS will chip at that, every Palm sold hits that figure - not to mention the WinCE devices. If a PC is defined as any sort of desktop/laptop general computing device - well, that takes the plot line out a lot farther.

    The other thing to consider is that palmtop operating systems (CE, Palm, etc.) are penetrating ever-farther into the realm of consumer devices. So it's not an outrageous concept - but I don't think CE as an OS will ever pass Windows by itself. No friggin' way.

    Will the combined sales of organizers, MP3 players, cellphones, DVR's, and other devices that can get and benefit from a useful embedded OS pass the sales of traditional X86 "PC's"? I'm sure of it.

    But by the time this comes to pass, your MP3 player may well have more computing firepower than your desktop does today. And then PC's would likely be the niche devices.

  • Numbers Via the Fudge Factory (Score:4, Insightful)

    by zentec ( 204030 ) <zentec@gmai l . com> on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @01:27PM (#5687225)

    The article talks about handheld, consumer and embedded applications tied to WindowsCE. Of COURSE it'll outsell PCs, a PC is a single device whereas handheld and consumer devices cover a huge spectrum of goods. And when they quote a 250% increase in sales of hand held computers, notice they fail to tell you the exact number of sales to date.

    Does it spell the death of the PC? No, wishful thinking at best, preemptive marketing at worst. This piece is spouting someone's paid marketing drivel, and it wouldn't surprise me if the path leads to Redmond.

    Even if that is the case, it again shows that the people in Redmond learned from big old bad tobacco. Diversify! They knew long ago the gravy train from personal computers couldn't go on forever, and they also knew that consumer electronics would be thristy for more powerful embedded operating systems.

    WindowsCE isn't all that bad, but certainly Microsoft is fooling itself if it thinks it's a one-stop-shop for an OS for embedded devices.

  • Make up your minds... (Score:2, Informative)

    by telstar ( 236404 )
    Yesterday we were going towards Legacy Free PCs [slashdot.org], today we're all going to be toting around PocketPCs. What's on deck for tomorrow?
  • Um... what about Symbian? Or Palm? Or even Pixo, for that matter?

    And let us never forget the ever-popular Pom Pilot [homestarrunner.com]...

  • Unlikely end (Score:2, Insightful)

    by wizardmax ( 555747 )
    I keep hearing about this "Dawn of the PC era", but the simple truth still stands. Handheld devices are great at a few simple tasks, calendaring, scheduling and other everyday/office tasks. They are also very good at communication, but they suck as a platform. The advantage the PC has is its multi-purpose orientation. It is possible to do virtually anything with a PC. The functions that a PC can do can be completely different from each other, unlike handheld devices which have very narrow use/ability. (Also
  • Why is it that I can see in my mind who it is that is in favor of all this.

    The things that they hope will be missing in these new non-desktop devices are:
    • Any way to connect a scanner.
    • Any way to connect a video capture card that doesn't route it's output direct to a DRM secured 'vault' of some sort.
    • Any way to plug in a CD Writer that writes generic CDROMs and VCDs and Audio CDs.

    Sorry. We don't want our dumb terminals back, and we don't want little gameboy like devices that tether us to the Man's info

  • Call me nuts, but I must prefer Windows CE to desktop versions of Windows. In my experience, on comparable hardware, WinCE is a lot faster, more stable, and far less bloated. A lot of this has to do with the reduced functionality along with the fact that it was made from scratch (more or less)- but WinCE does what I need from desktop Windows.

    On Handheld PC 2000, based on WinCE 3.0, you even have a full version of IE 4.5. A little dated, yes, but it renders pages well enough for me. It does a lot more tha
  • Yeah, well also according to some other recent statistics I've heard: Drug use is on the decline and will be non-existant in 5 years, the green party will overtake the republican party in popularity in 10 years, and scientology will overtake christianity in the next 10 years as the most popular religion in the western hemisphere. *(source reuters). I wouldn't believe all the statistics you hear, (except these ones of course).

  • Internet Appliances AGAIN? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by snarfer ( 168723 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @01:47PM (#5687306) Homepage
    How many times have we seen this "post-PC" bullshit come and go? I've been around long enough to have seen it come and go several times.

    Do you remember during the Microsoft anti-trust trial when journalists were saying the trial was irrelevant because new technologies were already making PC irrelevant and would soon put Microsoft out of business? Internet appliances, handheld devices, etc.

    Just ignore it. It's crap.

  • N-Gage (Score:2, Insightful)

    by thomasiomichelangelo ( 663504 )
    I know this device isn't quite a PDA, but it's closer to it than the gameboy is - the nokia n-gage is getting closer to uniting a mobile, PDA and portable gaming console (http://www.n-gage.com/n-gage/home.html). But imo the two will exist side by side, just as gamers often have both a console and a gba (for example.
  • This is the dawning of the age of aquarious.... the age of aquarious!!!!!

  • The age of the tractor is over (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kfg ( 145172 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @01:56PM (#5687359)
    And has been for decades. The personal automobile outsells them by quite a large margin.

    Well, unless, of course, you need a tractor instead of a BMW M5.

    Oddly enough they are not interchangable. Go figure.

    Come to think of it sporks outsell handheld devices, so replace your PDA with a spork.

    The article is silly.

    KFG

  • What the "post PC era" means to me. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Demon-Xanth ( 100910 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @01:56PM (#5687363)
    For me, the "post PC era" is when people stop treating thier computers as computers, and start viewing them as appliances. SFF PCs are a gateway into it where the PC becomes a set top box much like a DVD player or VCR. The xBox has the potential to be a major gap bridger, as the people that have modded it have found out. A subset of this would be a decline in "PC" sales as people start using the various "appliances" for tasks that they would have otherwise used a PC for.

    Another definition would be an end to the trend of continued growth in the PC market and a return to predominantly just using appliances.
  • Call me crazy (again), but I can't wait until a PDA can replace my desktop/notebook. It got pretty close with the Newton, and could've within a generation or two (at most) of Newton technology.

    Current PDAs suck, though. Very much so a step backwards. Even so, there are some good things, like the HP Jornada 72x and the Sharp Zaurii. Give me a Sharp Zaurus with a touch-typable keyboard around the size of the Jornada 720's (not just a big thumboard like the C700), a ~600 MHz XScale, some means of using a larger monitor and a larger res, and I'd be happy with all other features being the same with something like the current Zaurus SL-C700- 640x480 screen, 64 MB RAM, 32 MB Flash ROM, SD + CF slots. I'd sell my iBook in a minute if I could get one of those.

    I have actually been using a Jornada 720 with a 206 MHz StrongARM CPU largely as my main machine. Wireless and wired web browsing, writing up reports (with LaTeX), email, SSH, and programming all on the device, never neededing to do anything silly like sync with a desktop. Hell, I probably would have sold my iBook and just used the Jornada 720 as my only machine, but the screen isn't readable at all out of doors- it isn't reflective like the Zaurus or iPAQ screen. Nor is my iBook's, but if I'm going to consolodate all devices into one, I better be able to use it for everything I currently use my PDAs and iBook for.

    And I'm definately a special case in the general computer using population, perhaps more or less so with the nerd/programming community. But I want a computer that I can power off of a relatively small solar panel, and I want it now!
  • Microsoft has enough problems with PCs becoming so cheap that it costs $100 more at Walmart for a Windows OS rather then Linux. That cost differential is going to hurt them even worse on generic handhelds. Right now for $500 handhelds, that price can hide the M$ tax well enough. But a lot more people are on the lookout for cheap handhelds than cheap PCs. It's harder to convince people that it's ok to have expensive handhelds, since they are so much smaller than a PC and have such dinky screens and lousy

  • Assuming too much (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    As far as I can tell, this esimate assumes following:

    1. WinCE will capture a large marketshare in a cell phone market.

    This seems very unlikely, since virtually all big and medium (Nokia, Sony/Ericsson, Motorola, Samsung) cell phone manufacturers have chosen a Symbian instead of WinCE.

    2. Sales of PDAs will rise very quickly.

    According to the other estimate, sales of smartphone will outstip PDA sales in this year. As smartphones will become more advanced, PDAs won't be as attractive as they're today. While

  • Yes, but what about Post-Post-PC? (Score:4, Funny)

    by sjonke ( 457707 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @02:07PM (#5687423) Journal
    The answer is that the "Post-PCs" will be replaced by a brand-name snack cake. This will happen for two simple reasons: 1. WindowsCE devices are easy to throw. 2. While it would be easy to throw a twinkie, they are usually eaten instead.

    A pricey Microsoft-certified pile of smashed up plastic, glass and solder, or a tasty treat in your tummy? You decide.
  • Seriously, power and signal are paramount.

    If the design gets smaller than I can see or handle, then we're out. Thumboards are neat, but not an everyday solution. The subnotebook is still usable enough on its own, wonderful when married to a large display and full peripherals at home, and maintain the groundwork for serious ink and voice interfaces.

    OK and pivot the display so I can have a tablet.

  • Does that mean we will sync our PC with a PDA? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by stretch0611 ( 603238 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @02:22PM (#5687507) Journal
    I don't think that this will happen. I use my PDA as an extension to my computer. Its something that carries the information I want access to when I am away from my computer. A PDA is nothing more than a glorified address book without a PC.

    Here is why it won't work:
    A PDA's screen is terrible for web browsing because of its size.
    It is easier to use a full size keyboard to enter any significant amount of data.
    If you can't charge it when required it is possible to lose data. (this happened to me once when I forgot the charger on vacation)
    Its small size makes it easy to steal and if you don't have a pc you won't have a backup for your data.

    A PDA is best used as an extension for your computer, it is not a replacement for your PC.

  • Bad premise (Score:3, Insightful)

    by John Jorsett ( 171560 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @02:55PM (#5687700)
    Why would CE devices outselling desktops constitute a 'Post PC' era? They have different uses. If popularity is the only measure, then I could argue that we're already in a Post PC Era because calculator sales dwarf those of PCs.

  • This conflicts with previous report. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by NullProg ( 70833 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @03:01PM (#5687736) Homepage Journal
    This story conflicts with this story by the same research company:

    http://www.etforecasts.com/pr/pr0402.htm

    In 2001 the worldwide number of PCs-in-use topped 600M units. In the next six years this number will nearly double to over 1.15B PCs-in-use by year-end 2007-a compound annual growth of 11.4%.

    Trouble with market research firms is that they usually tend to tell the client what they want to hear.

    Enjoy,
  • Honestly I think the PCs time came and went. The truth is that they are starting to get to powerful and large for 21st centrory use. Except for having 1 expensive Computer with software on it. Imbed the software into the hardware and make each hardware designed for a serton task. Game Consoles for Vidio Games. Word Processors for writting papers and stuff. Server Appliances for sharing content. Etc. This would be a much better world then one of a PC.
    First there is less of a software legacy lock. De

  • Embedded HW all going to CE (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dublin ( 31215 ) on Tuesday April 08, 2003 @03:47PM (#5688044) Homepage
    You have to hand it to MS - they have been *very* good at applying pressure to hardware vendors to get them to support CE, in most cases to the exclusion of anythign else. (Take a look at tiqit.com, the people who used to have the tiny little x86 borads for an example where they're about 75% don with the conversion - CE is clearly the emphasis, although they're not yet getting all the MS marketing dollars they can by removing any reference to competing OSes as some others have. Intrynsic is another example of a vendor in the process of switching to CE.)

    Seriously, this is a *real* problem - right now, I'm looking for a very tiny, low-power embedded board that can support either wired Ethernet or 802.11. (Any pointers greatly appreciated!) First, there are far fewer choices than there were a year ago - it's amazing how many hardware platforms have died in this space, many of them casualties of the embedded Linux movement (for instance, Lineo and Metroworks are no longer interested in selling hardware, and their products just died off, leaving a real void.)

    I don't want to use CE for this device, but I may, if only because it's *far* easier to get CE support on the new highly capable hardware. No one wants to own Linux or NetBSD drivers and the like, so it's a quagmire - MS, on the other hand is throwing beaucoup dollars at making sure CE runs (and is supported) on everything that matters. As a result, it's getting hard to avoid making the decision to design CE into new embedded products. Yess, it's a stupidly designed environment, but there's no question it's already far better supported than Linux and BSD for quick time-to-market embedded systems development.

    I don't like that, but it's reality. And I don't think I see any way for it to change real soon, either. They are quite simply, being very successful at buying this market. This is a real shame, as the ELCPS (Embedded Linux Consortium PLatform Specification) should breathe some life into things, but instead, it appears that the hardware vendors are leaving Linux behind so long as Microsoft is waving dollars at them.

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