4 ms·

Over time, nearly all "essential PC components" become obsolete.

8 points by technologizer 17y ago

cperciva 17y ago
Other PC components which are mostly obsolete: Disk controller card, network card, video card. Sure, there are rare situations where you want more disk/network/video performance than you can get via the support built in to motherboards -- but I'd guess that the vast majority of new computers bought these days have none of the above as separate components.
jsz0 17y ago
Yet despite all this progress we're still somehow stuck with BIOS.
- Zev 17y ago
  There are advancements here, such as EFI. All Intel Mac's use EFI now.
amalcon 17y ago
I agree with most of these, with the big exception being webcams. Not that I see them going away by any means, but I doubt the author's prediction that they will become universal. There will probably always be plenty of places worth bringing your computer where cameras are not allowed.
- froo 17y ago
  See, I don't think you're correct about webcams. Most of these other technologies have been supersceded by something superior - the Webcam is a simple video input device. Unless someone figures a superior method to get your image digitised into a machine (for example, 3D imaging, sort of like how Microsoft is trying to commoditize the 3D camera with project natal) - I really don't see these going anywhere anytime soon. I suspect the author's predictions will ring true in this regard, with webcams becoming more advanced and being included in more devices.
- alexgartrell 17y ago
  How are they different from cell phones in this area?
bemmu 17y ago
Yes, hard disks offer more capacity than solid state drives, but I don't think that this continuing to be so will necessarily mean that people will always prefer hard disks. Almost everything is now on the net, and hard disks are becoming more like a cache. I play games from Steam, stream music and videos and hardly ever keep local copies. It only takes about 15 minutes to download one full CD-ROM of content. Therefore I would currently prefer 80G of space on a solid-state drive if it was a lot faster, more quiet and reliable if it cost the same as a 1TB hard disk. For a laptop it would be a no-brainer if it also used the battery less. Right now we are not quite there yet, as 80G on a good SSD costs the same as a 4T traditional disk, but I think it won't be long until the sweet spot is reached. Of course there are people with legitimate needs for a lot of space, for example editing video. But for most casual users, SSDs will likely start making more sense quite soon. Oh yeah, I would like to also clarify about my previous comment which commented about Joel's SSD purchase. I wrote that maybe he can next get his employees SSDs based on RAM modules. Some people seemed to think that I was being disrespectful and making fun of Joel, but I hope from this comment you can see that I just really like the idea of SSDs.
forinti 17y ago
Now that it makes sense to plug the computer into the TV again, we could go back to the old 8/16bit format for computers, with keyboard and CPU in one case.
- whughes 17y ago
  Our TVs are a lot bigger now, though. It's much more practical to have a wireless keyboard than a wireless display interface.

8 points by technologizer 17y ago

Other PC components which are mostly obsolete: Disk controller card, network card, video card. Sure, there are rare situations where you want more disk/network/video performance than you can get via the support built in to motherboards -- but I'd guess that the vast majority of new computers bought these days have none of the above as separate components.

jsz0 17y ago

Yet despite all this progress we're still somehow stuck with BIOS.

Zev 17y ago
There are advancements here, such as EFI. All Intel Mac's use EFI now.

amalcon 17y ago

I agree with most of these, with the big exception being webcams. Not that I see them going away by any means, but I doubt the author's prediction that they will become universal. There will probably always be plenty of places worth bringing your computer where cameras are not allowed.

froo 17y ago
See, I don't think you're correct about webcams. Most of these other technologies have been supersceded by something superior - the Webcam is a simple video input device. Unless someone figures a superior method to get your image digitised into a machine (for example, 3D imaging, sort of like how Microsoft is trying to commoditize the 3D camera with project natal) - I really don't see these going anywhere anytime soon. I suspect the author's predictions will ring true in this regard, with webcams becoming more advanced and being included in more devices.
alexgartrell 17y ago
How are they different from cell phones in this area?

bemmu 17y ago

Yes, hard disks offer more capacity than solid state drives, but I don't think that this continuing to be so will necessarily mean that people will always prefer hard disks. Almost everything is now on the net, and hard disks are becoming more like a cache. I play games from Steam, stream music and videos and hardly ever keep local copies. It only takes about 15 minutes to download one full CD-ROM of content. Therefore I would currently prefer 80G of space on a solid-state drive if it was a lot faster, more quiet and reliable if it cost the same as a 1TB hard disk. For a laptop it would be a no-brainer if it also used the battery less. Right now we are not quite there yet, as 80G on a good SSD costs the same as a 4T traditional disk, but I think it won't be long until the sweet spot is reached. Of course there are people with legitimate needs for a lot of space, for example editing video. But for most casual users, SSDs will likely start making more sense quite soon. Oh yeah, I would like to also clarify about my previous comment which commented about Joel's SSD purchase. I wrote that maybe he can next get his employees SSDs based on RAM modules. Some people seemed to think that I was being disrespectful and making fun of Joel, but I hope from this comment you can see that I just really like the idea of SSDs.

forinti 17y ago

Now that it makes sense to plug the computer into the TV again, we could go back to the old 8/16bit format for computers, with keyboard and CPU in one case.

whughes 17y ago
Our TVs are a lot bigger now, though. It's much more practical to have a wireless keyboard than a wireless display interface.