The march of technology

It seems that PC sales in Europe are depressed and may be declining. Tablets, like the iPad and its clones are doing okay.

By and large this doesn’t worry me; I am still some time off being able to afford (or particularly want) a new PC – though I may well buy some more memory for the machine I have. At some point in the future though, I shall want or need a new machine and although I confess to being quite taken with tablets, I think that for most things other than browsing the intarwebs, sending emails or watching iPlayer and the ilk, I should still prefer a monitor/mouse/keyboard set up and room to expand the processor, memory and hard drive as the situation demands.

Now, if the price of the tablets would come down to something acceptable and decent docking ports that allowed them to plug in to various desktop peripherals were more freely available, I’d be even more interested. Maybe they already are and tablets are taking on the functions of old lap tops. To a certain extent they look as though they are, but they seem to be moving off in another direction and anyway, a portable device means a size-limited device, so the few games I like to play wouldn’t work on a tablet to my satisfaction. They are only just playable on a laptop, if you either have to give up half an already small screen to game controls in lieu of a keyboard and mouse, there doesn’t seem to be much point.

I think my computing needs are slowly becoming a backwater that may eventually silt up…