In the future will the PC have a place in the average home?

[J T]

What do the average home computer family use their home computer for?

Not really all that much in reality.

1. The Internet
2. Email
3. Some gaming
4. Office work (word processing, children's homework)
5. Downloading music
6. Managing music with an MP3 player
7. Simple digital photo editing, printing and saving to disc
8. Single Home camcorder video editing and burning to DVD

And that is probably about it. Can you think of anything else?

- Warez
- Pr0n

Oh, wait, you said average family. I think you are probably right, that the average person will go with whatever is easiest, and the rapid emergence of these sort of convergence devices will really suit the average Joe. So maybe there will be less of the PC (in a traditional sense) in the home as time moves on.

However, do we really want to see consoles go more the way of computers (upgrades, various specs, driver installing, fiddling and tinkering) or do we want to see PCs take on more of a console nature (plug it, it works, little/no scope for messing with the innards or functions)? Personally, I'm not so sure either way. Right now I'm happy to keep things a bit separate - a computer for computery things, and a console for consoley things, etc.

[Demon Cleaner]

a computer for computery things, and a console for consoley things, etc.

That is also my opinion.

I never used consoles until the PSX was very cheap and I discovered RPGs on that platform. Now I prefer playing on consoles and doing all the other stuff on the PC, almost no gaming on PC, which is also due to being more comfortably installed on the couch rather than on a chair to play. I still do like adventures and some other strategy titles which are unplayable (or not released) on consoles, but for the most part, I choose a console.

In the past I never could have imagined to use consoles, as I was a real computer freak using C64 and Amiga most of the time, I never had friends with NES, SNES or other consoles. And I had no money to buy different machines, so I was stuck with the one I had.

[Harrison]

Originally I was exactly the same. I was completely anti console in the 16-bit era and would never even touch a console when an Amiga user, preferring a "real" joystick to the crappy D-Pad console controllers.

That all changed for me with the SNES. Since its launch I wanted one so I could play the games now released on the Amiga. The Megadrive was never of similar interest as most of it's games were poor ports of Amiga games. Since the SNES I've been into console gaming and enjoy playing console games as much, if not more, than PC games.

I also too would prefer to keep the two seperate, with PCs for PC things and consoles for gaming. But we are all in the group of more experienced computer users compared to general home users. I do see the convergence of technology into consoles continuing to increase to a point where the console will be a central entertainment and communication hub and a standalone home computer will not be required in the majority of homes.

This would have one aspect that could be seen as quite harmful to the computer industry, but also of huge benefit to those of us with advanced computer skills. With less true computers in the home less people would have access to the applications and utilities that can be used to edit images, build websites, or code applications and games. It might even put an end to the dire home websites and awful myspace pages created by kids on daddies computer.

[Stephen Coates]

You have all made some very good points there.

I find it unlikely that consoles will completely replace computers in the near future. Because some people don't need computers/consoles at all and some people only want them for basic stuff which the computer they bought in the early 90s still does perfectly. e.g. My Dad's girlfriend only has a computer because one of her friends was getting rid of it (it is an old Pentium system with Win95).

I think having web based office applications can be quite good, but they do have their problems. Personally, I would prefer it if I had full control over what software I use and where my files are. Therefore I would much prefer to just install Office 2000 on my PC and use that as it does everything I want it to (except opening my electronics coursework which I did in Publisher 2002 and forgot to save in Publisher 2000 format). I don't have to worry about the server not working, or the internet connection not working etc.

In schools, Everything is quite central anyway, because all the computer have exactly the same software on them - Microsoft Office and AspexDraw (+ a few other bits and pieces). More specialist software such as PCB Wizard is on the file server and can easily be accessed on any machine in school (although occaisionally when the network is running slowley, you may have to wait several minutes). All our work is saved onto the file server as well so can be accessed anywhere in school, unless we chose to save it onto a floppy or a flash drive instead. This does mean that we can not access work that is on the fileserver at home, but there are several options there. School has provided an email address for everyone which can be used to email work, or you could usea flash drive or a floppy. I think the majority of people have a flash drive, but if you don't have either flash drive or floppy I can't see why the ICT department wouldn't give you a floppy to use.

So really, I don't think web based applications would be that much different in schools.

[Harrison]

This had been true of most larger businesses and academic institutes for quite a few years now as they all tend to use a domain server with centralised shared folders, with each student and teacher given their own access rights and storage space for their personal files and work. We used to have such a setup at university years ago.

But as you say, this is limited to access within the domain servers LAN so these files, resources and applications cannot be used from home or other off site locations. Also currently only select applications or utilities tend to be hosted on the central server and accessed from each PC or terminal, instead requiring most of the actual programs to be installed locally on each PC system.

The idea behind all of the ideas I mentioned above have been in practice for a long time, right back to the first main frames in fact as they used a central main frame linked to from terminals, so all files and applications were on a central system and the terminals just logged into and accessed the resources. This is the core of what is currently being pushed on the internet as Web 2. The browser is the local terminal, and the servers you access on the internet are the central main frame. So in fact we are finally going full circle back to the beginning. Central data and resource storing with remote terminal access. This does work well for the majority of computer based activities when implemented correctly, and so I wouldn't be surprised to see this coming true very soon with many applications being remote browser based applications that we run in our browsers instead of on our desktop.

[Demon Cleaner]

One main aspect of a PC is of course emulation, as you don't need the consoles to play the games, less nostalgic but not less fun.

[Harrison]

This is true, although as consoles continue to increase in power many more emulators do continue to be ported. PCs will always be the best platform for emulation though, but emulation is far from a mainstream area of PC use. I'm always surprised that hardly any average computer users don't even know what emulation is.