Future Computing

This is going to be a what if kind of entry, a brief statement of what I think may happen in the future of computers. The iPad has ushered in a post PC era of computing, what this actually means I don’t know because you still need a full computer to manage your media library. But it does allow you to managed your life, produce documents, print documents and almost everything else you can do on a laptop or PC.

Microsoft have also just released the developer version of Windows 8, which was demo’d on a Samsung Tablet PC. Although the Samsung model was based on traditional PC hardware there were other tablets on display at the Build Conference with Arm chipsets in them. This is obviously Microsoft’s way of trying to expand Windows in to other markets. The interesting part is that the new Start Screen is very similar to the one on Windows Phone 7, which I have used and is a very good system with its live tiles and putting the user in touch with their data first and applications second.

I did have a Windows Phone 7 mobile last year in December, it was the Samsung Omnia 7, apart from definitely being a version 1.0 release it did show a lot of promise. I didn’t keep it long enough to get the NoDo update for it and therefor only experienced the slightly slow user experience. I may, with the release of Mango and new mobiles, actually get a Windows Phone 7 device. But it would have to have a minimum of 16Gb of storage not the 8Gb that the Omnia 7 had, that being said the Super Amoled screen that the Omnia 7 had was very good and didn’t seem to suffer from the bad pixelisation that some Android phones suffer from with the same screen.

Also, with my MacBook Pro committing suicide, I have swapped back to a Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit PC. Although it only has a 2.9Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 6Gb Ram, a Radeon HD graphics card, a SSD boot drive and 5Tb of other storage. This machine is connected to two monitors, one 22inch and one 19inch model. It has let me see that Windows 7 is still a very good machine and still holds its own against Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, in fact I would say that Windows 7 is better. However, Apple hardware is a lot better designed than anything by MS partners.

Anyway, I digress, back to the point. I believe that the future of home computing, by this I mean the standard user, is going towards tablet based machines. They will probably be accompanied by a laptop style dock so that you can sit it on your lap and provide it with an extra power source. Examples of this are already being released, a couple of Android 3.1 based devices by Asus, Acer and Lenovo. I think that the Samsung Galaxy 10.1 has a lap dock as well.

This is definitely a shift in thinking, smaller screens with multitouch are more useful that fixed sized laptop screens. What they miss is a high enough resolution, this would allow you to be able to see a full web page and zoom in with no loss of quality. Obviously hardware would have to catch up in order to power these high resolution screens (in Apple speak that would be a Retina display). In fact I am typing this on an iPad 2, despite the fact that the on screen keyboard lacks any tactile feedback it is still easy to type on.

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