Page 1 of 2
When Apple launched its iPad earlier this year, there was some clamoring over whether it would mark the slow death of the PC platform.
That clamoring grew even louder when reports came in that sales of processors for PCs unexpectedly slumped earlier this year. The iPad's success has skyrocketed in part because of its insanely long battery life, ultralight form factor, multitouch screen capabilities and integration with Apple's iTunes App Store.
But as well received as the iPad has been, it's also served to highlight continued strengths of the industry-standard PC. In fact, management and integration of the iPad is still dependent on either a PC or an Apple Mac. As this magazine was going to press, the market-research firm iSuppli had just reported PC sales in the third quarter grew more than 10 percent over the year-ago quarter.
Rather than a slow death, the PC is now seeing its umpteenth renaissance, and there are five key reasons for this. Here's why you'll be able to take advantage moving into 2011.
1. As noted, new devices like the iPad, as well as the iPhone, are dependent on PCs for easy management, backup of content and data, and more. It's just more practical to dock-and-sync handhelds to PCs-- just as it's been practical to connect a PC to a server. The PC, now more than ever, serves as a powerful, personal command center.
2. This generation of processors hasn't gotten the Hollywood treatment we've seen from earlier generations like the Pentium or (don't laugh) Itanium. However, the Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 now provide enough compute power to run video rendering, computer-assisted design (CAD) applications and VoIP that you once would have had to call Silicon Graphics to get.
3. Flash-memory-based technology has not exactly grown up in a flash, but it has officially come of age over the past 12 months. That has led to major increases in the breadth and depth of solid state drive technology--with greater pricing, capacity and sourcing options than ever. Even better, it has led to manufacturers of hard disk drives becoming more competitive than ever. A terabyte internal hard drive can now be had for less than $40; 2 TB can be had for less than $100.
1
|
2
|
Next >>
SHARE THIS ARTICLE
