My tablet has been incredibly useful to me as a Linux user. I use it to read preformatted ebooks, such as those published by O'Reilly.

Voted "No" because I think The Cloud (ie "somebody else's computer") will eventually be seen as the 21st century equivalent of batch processing on a mainframe and the desire for personal control will re-emerge.

I think laptops will replace desktops when they become either cheap enough to be trivial to replace or as easy to upgrade one bit at a time as a deskop. It will happen, just don't know when.

I (unfortunately) need a mobile phone; I use it as a phone, calculator and book reader only (wifi and data always turned off, but I still don't really trust it).

I use a tablet - as a book reader and nothing else (wifi always turned off, but I still don't really trust it). It's so much easier to use than my dedicated book readers (kindle and kobo) that I've stopped using them entirely, though I really like e-ink screens.

I prefer desktops, mostly because of their ease of upgrading, but laptops are more fun to travel with.

And I "Never used the cloud, I like to be in control of my data."

Plus the market is saturated. When everybody has a computer, it's hard to sell more computers (as opposed to replacement computers).

Regarding those who primarily use tablets or smartphones, they are passive consumers, not "computerers." They are not computing, they are watching television.

That's the difference between you and me. I get paranoid if I have to use systems I don't trust.

That's what Windows is for! The manufacturers don't care if the computers they are selling are replacements that nobody really wants, just so long as they can sell them. And Microsoft make sure that replacements will always be needed.

I'm not paranoid, they really are out to get me...

Unfortunately a landline phone doesn't work for me at the moment, so I need a mobile. Which means they get (at the least) location data about me

The only thing the tablet will yield is a large number of public domain books (which still exist, despite attempts to eliminate the public domain) if flight mode isn't as secure as it's supposed to be.

I voted no, mainly because the demise of the PC has been regularly predicted for years now and the predictions have always been false. Laptops dominate the home market but they're still PCs.

The article about Windows Virtual Desktop raises good points and I expect that some enterprises won't swallow the cloud hook line and sinker but will think crticially and realise it's not for them. The Venezuela situation should be a warning to everyone.

Gaming is often held up as a driver of PC sales. I'm not sure how game streaming will affect that. I think latency will always be an issue with game streaming, especially in low-population-density countries including the USA. But the videogame industry does seem to have a way of forcing stuff on players that publishers want but players don't. And every commercial software publisher really wants their users to rent rather than buy. On the other hand publishers are making a killing with lootboxes and so on; if they get their money they won't care whether gamers have a gaming PC at home or use a streaming service.

I do not use the cloud, nor a smartphone, for any of my work.

I intend to continue to use my laptop and desktop.

That's not quite accurate. The very first OpSys that came with all the necessary components (no 3rd party apps required and fully capable, internet ready TCP/IP <no rinky dink Netbui>) was IBM's OS/2 Warp 3, released in late 1994. It even included it's own web browser and links to choose between an IBM ISP and a CompuServe account. Internet access was even possible in some conditions with OS/2 2.11 released in February of 1994. IIRC it wasn't until 98 SE, released midway through 1999 (5 years later), that any Windows version even included a proper modem dialer and a moderately non-PITA TCP/IP stack.

It's of course not widely realized since OS/2's popularity, at least in the US, was never very strong, but let's please give credit where credit is due.

Incidentally re: this thread. "The Cloud" has been called many different names and taken slightly different forms such as "Push Technology" and in each permutation it was "going to kill PCs" but it hasn't and it likely won't even if Smartphones get orders of magnitude more powerful than they already are and people commonly connect at home to extension mice, monitors and keyboards for two important reasons - 1) Upgrade-ability flexibility, and (the Biggie) 2) Autonomy.

It was an example - rather than an exhaustive list of every possible OS in use at the time...

I understand that, cynwulf, and though I quoted you, my post was not directed AT you but at the means by which MS takes credit all the time for things they only "borrowed"... in this case more than 5 years later. I have no problem with admitting that MS has made some impactful contributions to modern technology, but I am not willing to give them an inch they didn't earn. They are living examples of the adage, "Give them an inch and they take a mile".

Funny, I thought Unix & BSD had it first...

When I was at work, back in the nineties, there was a lot of talk about "thin clients". I think this was more a concept, than a reality. A thin client was a computer, probably without a hard drive, that would run software stored and maintained on another machine. I suppose in a sense the cloud is a return to that idea.

If we are talking only about capability restricted to the original "tty" access interface or with with addons and on very specific platforms (not x86) then that is certainly true, but if we are talking, as I mentioned and qualified, about a complete package in one OpSys to browse the internet by default, then it was Warp 3 OS/2.

I can't recall if v2.11 came with Mosaic and Gopher by default but even if it did IIRC while it had terrific LAN support, it was not totally internet ready, especially for the general public in the era of dialup. OS/2 1.1 had primitive networking support by 1988. By 1989 it had Ethernet and TCP/IP. Much of this was due to Unix, which IBM was heavily invested in, and OS/2 was an attempt to make one OpSys that could operate on what was then all four levels of computers, from Mainframes down to Desktops. Until OS2 no OpSys could run on all the existing platforms.

Since I've grown old...I do use my desktop more then anything else while at home. At times I wish I could hook up one of those giant TVs to it! I never use my tablet anymore and rarely use the laptop since I have a phone! I do not think PCs are going anywhere soon.