The Glade 4.0

Apple is close to taking over, becoming the top "personal computer" maker in the world IF the iPad is considered a "PC". They're already top of the heap for profits.

So, what do you consider a personal computer? Does it need a monitor or a keyboard? Does it need a user manipulable filesystem? Or, does it just need a CPU and a way to interact at a personal level?



http://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/2 ... ws-battle/

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Desktop, laptop, and conditionally tablets, that condition being based on their OS, an Samsung Series 7 Slate running Windows 7 sure, a Samsung Galaxy tab 10.1 or iPad running mobile OS not really IMO.

Maybe if mobile OS based tablets hardware reached desktop/laptop level performance and could do anything either of those can do I might change my opinion, but at the moment they really can't.

PC is that muscle that you flex when you want to control your orgasms.

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Ron Paul 2012

A PC is a computer with an x86 architecture.

PC is, to my mind, the genericized trademark that originated from the IBM Personal Computer (PC). It got genericized to include PC-compatible systems, which means x86 architectures.

It should not be considered generic for all personal computing devices, as that's simply not the way it's been used for decades, now. "I'm a Mac" and "I'm a PC." This means that Macs are not PCs. Macs are obviously personal computing devices, but their own advertising indicates that they are not included in the genericized trademark's domain (the move away from Power PC notwithstanding).

So, yeah. PCs are most desktops today, whether they run Windows or not. They're many servers. They're most laptops. They're maybe a small fraction of the tablet market. I wouldn't consider TVs with DVRs PCs, but most PVR systems would be. They're not phones. They're not iPads. Etc.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I consider desktops (of which servers are glorified versions) and laptops to be 'personal computers,' regardless of the OS used. Nothing else is a 'personal computer' to me. Smartphones and tablets are 'mobile devices.' DVRs/PVRs can't be considered, IMO.

All of this is largely irrelevant, I'd say; they're just colloquial names given to these devices as marketing.

What Kaffis said, word for word.

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What Farsky said, word for word.

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Tablets aren't yet PCs, but could become them with Windows 8 and docking into a monitor and keyboard (very hypothetically).

Plenty of existing Tablets have exactly that, just with windows 7, my UMPC has that as well actually, while it's a small hand held computer with a 4.5" screen it runs windows 7 and has a docking cradle with additional USB ports and VGA out and is usable just like any old desktop when docked, that's why I think tablets are provided they are running a full blown windows OS.

As tech changes our definition of "PC" will change. It used to mean Windows computer in any form. Now we have a heavy bias towards desktops. While I voted for desktop, I like to think of any computing device as a "Personal Computer" because they all are. My phone is a PC. My iMac and Macbook Pro are PC's too. I still defer to the preferred nomenclature for each product, though.

I really think Windows 8 on tablets is going to bridge the gap for a lot of people.

Windows 8 will certainly blur the lines, as it will be the first OS used for things that could legitimately be intimated comprise a "personal computing platform" (as opposed to NT products and Itanium hardware, or *nix) that will span x86 and other architectures.

However, we'll just have to see whether we broaden the use of PC then, or whether we just allow the antiquated PC terminology to become obsolete and replaced with something more useful.

I cringe at saying "anything targetted to the consumer market with a CPU is a PC, because it does personal computing" -- I don't consider my calculator a PC, even though, it's certainly a personal device, and it certainly computes things.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Desktops and laptops. Anything else is not a PC.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Personal Computer is everything from an abacus to the largest cpu driven machine you can fit in a house. As long as it cann fiddle with bits it qualifies.

Technically, IBM made PCs, and they haven't made them for awhile. Is anyone actually making anything called a PC anymore? Or is this a generic term we give to our desktops and laptops without any regard to copyright, much as a Kleenex or Xerox appellation? A Kodak moment?

The term these day seems to be ill defined, or at the very least loosely defined. What exactly do you mean when you say PC (politically correct) and why should anyone else have to abide by your definition?

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Trademark, not copyright...

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A "PC" as in personal computer, means a full-blown computer, not a "computing device". A Tablet is not a personal computer; it may blur the line but it doesn't qualify. At a bare minimum, a computer needs to have a discrete monitor, CPU, keyboard, and pointing device in at least 2 physical portions. If the pointing device is the screen or is the keyboard or both, it's not a "PC". It can have a touchscreen in addition to the keyboard/pointing device, but that can't be the only one.

Laptops qualify because the keyboard and touchpad, while integrated into the CPU case, are discrete objects on top of it. The monitor is a discrete object in the form of the lid.

My definition is based on ergonomics. You can "compute" quite a bit on a tablet but I would find it utterly impractical to try to, say, type a paper on such an object. The screen just isn't big enough and a touchscreen does not have the same tactile feedback for typing. People are always pointing out that they're posting from a phone and can't type lengthy posts; perfect example.

There's also the fact that no matter how advanced a tablet or phone gets, a laptop or a desktop will always have a greater power, size and weight budget, and be more powerful if built with comparable technology. A phone from today can have more computing power than a desktop from 20 years ago or whatever, but a desktop today will still always have more power than the phone because you can jsut cram a lot more of the same technology into a 16" or 21" high case with a separate screen and continuous wall power than you can into a palm-sized object with a screen built in and a battery.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

What about this then?



It meets all the reasons why you gave for a laptop being a PC, it has a pointing device aside from the touch screen and it has a keyboard as well, and it runs a full windows OS with x86 hardware faster than basically all the Netbooks out there, or from my earlier example, but if anything I would call it a tablet over a laptop, plus I can and do dock it to use a full keyboard, mouse and external monitor.

Or this...



A Samsung Series 7 tablet, it's an 11.6" tablet, running windows 7, it has a sandybridge i5 processor, for all intents all it is is an extremely compact full blown desktop box that just happens to have a touchscreen on it's case and a battery built in, you can plug it into it's dock and use it with a full keyboard and mouse just like a desktop, the only real difference is you have the option to use the touchscreen as well.

Heheh, old man.

I don't disagree, but I wonder if our kids will feel the same way.

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Keyboard Case for iPad 2



I also own "Pages", a $9.99 iOS word processor, so I think the lines are blurred sufficiently to at least argue that there are similarities. With the new capabilities of iOS to update without access to another computer, it's a pretty powerful stand-alone system.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Michael's answer is the technically correct one, but the whole discussion rather pointless. Some time ago PCs mention desktop workstations that aren't macs, but that definition has and continues to grow.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Both of those are absurdly small PCs. They are not tablets.

I could argue that they fail the "typing a document test" but ultimately any categorization is going to have loopholes that is going to result in a few rather silly classifications. It would be a bit like classifying Germany's "pocket battleships" as battleships or battle cruisers. They're really heavy cruisers with absurdly oversized guns, but they defy classification because classifications are generally based on the interwar naval treaties. This results in them either being in a class of their own, battlecruisers, or battleships, when in reality they're heavy cruisers with a rather silly armament.

I should have specified by "keyboard" I mean something large enough to type on in the traditional fashion, not he keyboard on some cell phones. If it's not big enough for your hands, it isn't a "keyboard" in that sense.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

**** them. I guarantee no amount of generational difference will be able to overcome the value of tactile feedback. That's why rumble packs or whatever they are exist for game controllers.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I could see saying that my Sony UMPC is not a tablet because it's not really, it's in it's own niche category, however the Samsung Series 7 Slate is a tablet, there is nothing at all about it that is not a tablet, hell it's even in the same ballpack for thickness and weight as mobile OS tablets, for example it's only .01" thicker than an iPad1 and only .38 pounds heavier than the 3G iPad1, and the rest of the dimensions are only larger due to it having a larger screen.

That's interesting. However, I don't see why weight and size would classify them as tablets when their properties are those of PCs. Ridiculously small PCs, perhaps, but PCs nonetheless.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Well I was pointing that out because I can't see a single reason why you would say the Samsung Series 7 Slate is not a tablet because the definition of a tablet when it comes to an electronic computer device is a slab device that uses and touch screen possibly with a stylus as it's only means of input, which is exactly what the Samsung Series 7 Slate is, it's a thin portable slab device that relies on a touchscreen for it's method of input. The only real difference between it an iPad or Android tablet really is it has a different OS and higher performance hardware, and having a full blow desktop OS and a faster CPU doesn't make it not a tablet as a tablet is a physical form factor, not an OS and internal hardware spec.

The Sony UMPC however technically isn't a tablet since while it has a touchscreen and stylus it also has a keyboard and a mouse alternative intput device with it's "mouse" nub and left/right mouse buttons built onto the device itself.

Well, in that case, it's a tablet. I misunderstood your original description of it, and thought it had an actual keyboard as part of it, not just a docking station.

However, I also gave my definition of what makes something a PC versus a tablet, pointing out that someone else has a different definition isn't all that convincing. Any definition is going to have borderline cases.



That's interesting.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."