‘The PC is dead’

Self-described ‘fair and balanced’ publisher Fox News has posted an opinion peice declaring that "as of 2011 the era of the desktop computer is officially over."

Declaring "the PC is dead" in the headline, veteran US-based technology journalist John R Quain said that the message of the CES show in Las Vegas was that the "desktop computer is no longer relevant."

"In this iPhone-crazed, connected-TV obsessed, high-speed Internet world, the desktop computer is no longer relevant," wrote Quain.

"All those reams of desk-bound e-mail have given way to terse texts from Blackberries. Those zippy, graphics-intensive games are now the domain of consoles like the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3." 

Quain claimed that the trend away from desktops was ‘palpable’ at CES and that there was just ‘a handful’ of computer companies building PCs, suggesting that most companies were ‘focused on smartphones and tablets’.

Only users who "need to run complex formulas on massive spread sheets, crunch numbers, program databases, fold proteins, animated movies and write lengthy critques," apparently need a desktop or a notebook computer according to the Fox journalist.

"But for everyone else — and for nearly every other use — the computer has moved on," he said.

Image: Consumer Electronics Society.