The rise of Web-based apps, virtualization, and a crop of powerful mobile devices have the traditional PC desktop on the run.

Well, is it? If all the buzzwords about cloud computing, Web apps, software as a service (SaaS), the free desktop, and the rise of netbooks and tablet PCs, are to be believed, it may well be.

The truth, I suspect, is more modest. What looms for the desktop as we know it is not the end, but rather death and then transfiguration. The desktop PC is set to go through a grand mutation of the form that will expand its reach rather than kill its current incarnation(s) outright. It may be the end of the desktop as we know it, but also the birth of many more desktops. As Roger Ebert said about the James Bond archetype during the post-Soviet era, the sun hasn’t set on England yet — but it’s getting mighty dark out.

Full Story Via InformationWeek

No related posts.