Your predictions for the next decade in computing.

Here's my predictions. Make fun of me, but we'll see.

1) Desktops (except gaming desktops) will go the way of the dinosaurs. Those annoying little netbooks will become commonplace.
2) SSD technology will become common, especially in laptops.
3) 500 gig HDDs will become "only medium-sized," and the HDD sizes will reach at least several terabytes.
4) Linux will get a larger market share. Several people will attempt to release Linux viruses but it doesn't quite work right
5) Laser printers will become smaller, and also be able to print color. This way, they become more suitable for home users.
6) It won't be unusual to stuff 16 or 32 gigs of RAM into one machine.

 

1. Maybe for the average consumer, but workstations are going to stay as desktops for the forseeable future. Proper workstations have dual 24" monitors, or similar, and a full keyboard/mouse setup anyway, even if the computer itself gets smaller, it doesn't really make the system portable.

2. Probably.

3. 500 GB drives are already medium-sized, 1TB drives provide optimal $/GB, and 2TB drives are available. In the next decade, I'd expect hard drive sizes over 100TB.

4. I'd expect Linux market share to rise somewhat, mostly because it can't really drop at all. Windows wil remain dominant. Viruses for any OS aren't really a problem for people who know what they're doing, or companies with a competent IT departments.

5. Laser printers are already suitable for home use. I bought a laser printer for $80 four or five years ago, it works great, and I'll never use an inkjet again.

6. I expect high-end computer to reach the 128GB and 192GB RAM limits of Windows Vista and 7, respectively, before MS ends support for either operating system.

 

Doubtful on the desktops. There will always be a market for them.
500gb isn't really a large hard drive anymore, when you can get 2tbs at a reasonable price.
Laser printers already are small and do color. We have several at work that do this.
I have Win2k3 servers at work with 28gbs of memory.

Welcome to the future Aimee!

Looking back at the last ten years...

I had a hard drive with 4gb, and it seemed like a lot.
64mb of RAM - livable.

Now we have hard drives that are 500 times the size of that measly little 4gb...I have flash drives bigger than that. So I'm guessing we'll have multi-petabyte drives. Maybe even approaching on exabyte drives.

Linux may have a bigger share, but it's going to take a company pushing it hard the way Microsoft did Windows in order for it to make a serious attempt at dethroning Windows. Keep in mind, when Windows came out, it was a dos shell. Maybe Google has the clout to start the push. Most probably it'll be some company that comes out of nowhere with the proper mix of beginner-user-friendly Linux distro and decent business support. And while there may already be such a distro (I'll be the first to admit I don't know even 5% of the linux distros out there), it's going to need to be more popular with the end users and not just the IT departments.

I think we'll see the rise of the handhelds. Blackberry's, Treos, and the like. This won't supplant the business or home machine, but certainly supplement it. It's already doing it really. But it has room to be more affordable and easier access.

I'd really like to see enhanced reality come out. I saw a demo from this year, and I think it's a lot closer than it looks.

I also predict that I'm going to be way off base with the above.

 

Wow, I'm a bit behind.

 

A few more predictions:
6) Computing will become more accessible for those with disabilities. Can't really think of how, but I get the idea it will.
7) If the Google OS becomes common, Microsoft will at least consider doing an OS based on Linux.
8) More people will speak out against DRM, and eventually some game publishers will realize its not worth it.
9) The U.S. (at least) will require education boards to give more computing courses.
10) Components will be made so that if it breaks somehow, it turns a strange color from special dye so it's easy to tell what's doing it.

 

I see a big trend moving toward "cloud computing".
With faster network connections, more scalable server technology, and increased execute-ability of web-based code the borders between online and offline will be increasingly burred.
Already a growing number of applications are moving online (see google with email, word processors, speradsheet, etc.) together with a large chunk of our content (flickr, youtube, etc).

Some applications will no more reside on our machine but the calculations will be executed server side.
As well a large part of our files will move online for easier access from multiple devices, multiple locations, and sharing with co-workers and community.

In 10 years, maybe, we will not buy software but "rent" execution time and storage space.

Web based applications will be available on multiple devices, not only PC, laptops, and similar.
Mobile-phones, settop-boxes, TV, game consoles, car navigation systems, etc. will be all nodes in an interconnected network of devices.
People will access all their data and their applications online from whichever device or location they prefer.

 

Maybe, but devices are still designed for the mass market.
People with disabilities influencing usability of consumer electronic devices (like blindness, missing hands/arms, etc.) are not yet a sizable enough market to justify a huge investment into it.
On the other hand a simplification of user interfaces and proper marketing will push the creation of a large number of devices tailored for the elderly.
Some initiatives from Orange in France and, especially, NTT DoCoMo (with their Raku-raku phones) are really moving forward in that direction.
Especially in the west world elderly will be a huge and rather wealthy market to tap into.

There are so many "flavours" of Linux out there that just using one of them does not mean at all easy portability of applications.
Actually Google is saying: OS are not relevant anymore.
We may not agree with them, but that's what they aim to.

Already going in that direction.
Lots of companies had to tailback on DRM and in the future they'll be redundant.
New business models will make DRM irrelevant.

I agree that countries should provide computer literacy together with traditional education.
Today to be able to read and write is not enough: Today if you are not able to use a computer you are like an illiterate 30 years ago.

 

They will take over the world and destroy humanity.

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I'm not sure how pervasive cloud computing will become. While network speeds will increase, so will hard drive capacity and CPU performance. I'm certain that it will play an important part in the future, especially for storing documents to access on other devices or allow others to read/edit them. Beyond that, I'm not sure that applications will take off that well.

That's absurd. If Microsoft wanted an OS with a fast boot up time they could just use Windows CE.

First one no, because the second is already happening.

 

Ok

Biogentic computing will leave the lab and enter the home increasing compulational power 10,000 fold also replaces all your hardware, intel has been working on this for sometime

Magnetic disks will be gone away with

PC MEmory demands increase the system bus from 64 to 128bit per chanel.

Opitical storage will dissapear as fiber optic and downloaded content takes over the market

system memory will increase but it will also make sense in 10yrs i would expect to see about 64gb given the standard of 2gb today with an average doubleing of memory demands increasing the standard every 2 years.

Traditional PCs will see the advent of 16 cores for the home PC as programs are all built to use multiple threads

The GPU and CPU merge to create the GPGPU.

 

Desktops will continue to exist as long as individual components are made; Desktops might become smaller with miniaturization though.

I do agree that netbooks may become more common as miniaturization continues though. There's always been a drive for the tiny computer app that does everything an average person would want for school/business, so it might be that the mininotebook is the first device to really get it right beyond being a toy.

Terabyte hard-drives already are the rule pretty much.

Smaller printers would be awesome, but I don't see that happening soon. Would be a good companion to a ubiquitous netbook though.

IDK about 32 GB Ram coming soon. Most ram is in 2GB sticks these days. 8GB RAM might be the norm pretty soon, depending on Windows 7. And if mini-notebooks become the norm, I think 4-6 GB would be the norm.

No opinion about Linux, but it'll need a lot of support from the market. Probably conditional to the behavior of Microsoft and the other OS makers.


I think the focus will continue to be on improving CPUs by multi-cores and making smaller CPU processes. It'd be cool if someone figures a better cooling system for labtops, like some sythetic liquid cooling that's safe and lets them field more powerful CPUs. Low heat alternatives to ram would be neat. Maybe OSes that are chip-based as well?

I doubt DRM, in the broadest sense of the word, will ever completely go away. I think there'll be an international attempt to eliminate piracy before DRM completely goes away.

Computing pretty much is more accessible to disabled people, but it probably needs to become cheaper to field. But I think eventually it'll be the opposite scenario: digital augmentation of people may eliminate some disabilities.

What brand?

I'm mostly an HP (obvious inkjet mafia) person, but I've not seen the kind of slim sub-$100 laserjet of my dreams anywhere.

 

HP laserjet 1020, maybe somewhat less than 5 years, ago, but more than 3.

I think it was actually over $100 at the time, but I negotiated the price down.

I never said it was slim, but it is reasonably small for a laser printer.

 

I have an HP combo, it's pretty reliable (except for the annoying "misaligned cartridges" message every time I boot up)

 

10 years ago, I spent £500 on a computer (no monitor) that had 64MB RAM, 8GB hard disk.

A quick glance today suggests that for the same amount, I could get something like 4GB RAM, 640GB hard disk.

So if things continue at the same pace, in 2019 £500 will buy you a machine with 256GB RAM, 50TB hard disk. (I also suspect that £500 will be considered high end by then, with most people spending much less on netbooks or laptops that are still more than powerful enough.) I'd say that 500GB drives will be as commonplace as 8GB drives now are today - i.e., not at all.

Going back further, 1989 at that price would have got you about 1MB RAM, so the factor of 64 over 10 years seems consistent. A hard drive wouldn't have been available at all for that price. Dividing by a factor of 80 again gives about 100MB - such drives would have been very expensive in 1989, and I think something like 20MB was more common. So according to these rough numbers, the hard disk growth rate has slowed?

Wikimedia OTOH has this interesting graph, showing a continual exponential growth: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hard_drive_capacity_over_time.png

But this is the easy stuff to predict really (and of course a similar thing applies with Moore's law to CPUs).

 

* Low cost netbooks will outsell laptops and desktops, with most people using them to dock to full size keyboard and their HDTV when at home (perhaps wirelessly). I think desktops will still exist - professional applications that need high performance will still exist, and many companies have no incentive to replace desktops with laptops/netbooks. I'd hope that small sized desktops will become the norm (and maybe it will finally be standard to have the graphics back on the motherboard again).

* Internet access almost everyone, either via publically accessible wireless, or mobile broadband contracts being included with ordinary broadband deals.

* Low cost phones as powerful as today's desktop computers. Voice calls will be made through the Internet, meaning people can cheaply call anywhere in the world without having to pay by the minute (something that phone network companies are resisting today, as it loses them money, but it's only a matter of time - phone networks will have to transform themselves into being mobile Internet providers, or die). Increasing numbers will do without landlines. Ideally they'll also fulfill the need for mp3/video player and camera - but unless battery life improves, I think people will want separate dedicated devices.

* Watching TV through the Internet will be commonplace (with companies like the BBC already offering this) - what will be interesting if instead of satellite/cable, we get companies offering settop boxes delivering the TV through the Internet, making it transparent to the user. Downloading HDTV quality movies will also be possible - whether the movie companies finally take advantage of this, or instead whine that people pirate rather than rebuying all their content again on Super-Blu-Ray, is another matter.

 

I'm hoping quantum computing makes a breakthrough. It probably will take some time to make mainstream after that, and the first applications will be databases. But still in time it will make an impact on everyday computing.

The trend toward parallelism will probably mean that although Moore's law is set to continue for another 20 years, programs will have to overcome a performance hump.

I agree that cloud computing will get bigger.

I expect that within 10 years you'll be able to buy a toaster that could run linux.

 

"The first fifty years of general computation, which roughly spanned the second half of the twentieth century, were characterized by etravagant swings between giddy overstatement and embarrasing near-paralysis" - j. lanier, smart person

It shall continue for the next 10 years.

 

I did some googling and found this. It's actually Unix (or NetBSD) but still...
http://www.mediabum.com/pictures/This-Toaster-Runs-Unix.html

 

Guess it depends on how long Moore's law does.

 

Maybe running linux in a toaster is rather pointless.
But running a simple services-server and connecting it to an IP network is something that will come pretty soon.