Tablets of the future: Where do desktops and laptops stand in the next 10 years?

The personal computing is now changing trend and all signs point to a future, not very far, when PCs and Macs will considered museum-articles. The tablet culture has planted its feet in the market and more and more customers are fixated at ultra-portable nature of these devices.

Gone are the days when laptops were considered the ultimate portable devices. That place has been taken by mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. However, its history is not that long. Only five years back, Apple, Inc. introduced a smartphone that changed the whole concept of mobile communication that has since been replaced by mobile computing. The iPhone was only the first step. In 2010, Apple followed up with a slate that not only changed the tablet market trends but had its profound effects on personal computing.

Rest was done by Apple’s counterparts, the likes of HTC, Samsung and Asus. AsusTek unleashed the top-of-the-line tablet with a quad-core processor that might set another trend of faster processors to replace laptops with slates not only in mobile applications but desktop computing as well.

There are now countless iOS and Android-based apps that can easily replace desktop-based applications. As far as interaction is concerned, tablets are more interactive than laptops and desktops; there is no doubt about it.

iPad might have initiated the ripple but recently Asus turned it into a storm. Two things that it did forced desktop operating system developers to think about their future in the market. First one as mentioned above is the faster quad-core processor that is capable of doing things that might relegate desktop-based OS to the depth of abyss.

The second and the most important one might have been a strategy undertaken inadvertently but it has become a big inspiration for technology companies. With Asus Transformer Prime came an optional dock that turns it into an ultra-slim laptop with a track pad.

This innovation has been attracting attention of late as it offers new opportunities to tech companies of making their tablets capable of both tablet work and desktop work. Many software companies are now working on making hybrid software to address both touch screen and mouse oriented work on a single platform, recent examples are Mac OS X Mountain Lion and Windows 8.

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Posted by Usman Khalid on Feb 24 2012. Filed under Sci-Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.