2006: The Exploding PC
on 12.30.05, 10:08am in embedded • share on facebook • comments (1)
[Scott Hanselman] More and more I’m convinced that a PC in the closet will be feeding a device in the living room.
Bingo. That’s my big prediction for 2006/2007 – "The Exploding PC" will begin to take shape in forms that the ‘average’ consumer will be able to use.
Get those PC’s out of the living room and home offices, and start putting them in the closet. My home ‘media’ server that’s been feeding my Tivo and MCE box since 2004 has become key as part of my digital home.
david (January 2, 2006 @ 10:45 pm)
I disagree that the PC will move from the desktop to the closet. People don’t want to be IT managers and deal with complexity of data management. I think we’ll see the explosion of the laptop and taking everything with you. That is, the PC in the closet will move to a Google-like service that is hosted in the cloud. We’ll then see WiFi being embedded in cable boxes so there will be no need to buy a complicated box from Linksys. Then, your laptop will automatically replicate to the cloud (.Mac does some of this today). Next, we’ll see devices like iPods connect to WiFi networks and have access to that same service where all your music, video, pictures, data, and applications can be streamed or replicated (sync’ed) down to the device.
The server for the home revolution is one that has come and is leaving us. We’ll see people (maybe) with a 500 GB hard disk doing a one-touch back-up just in-case they don’t trust the cloud. But this will also be short-lived.