With the craze of tablet computers and consumers abandoning desktop and laptops by the droves, do you think that spells the end, or near end, of distributed computing? As difficult a time as laptop users have running any D.C. tasks because of the heat issues, I cannot see anyone ever seriously considering using a tablet to run any D.C. programs. Lets be honest, the tablet craze is happening because 90% of people who own computers would have no use for one were it not for the internet. And a tablet lets them all do the only things most of them do... surf, chat and check Facebook, in a small convenient package. How many people even buy or use an actual image editing program for their photos when they can have Instagram do it for them? Even these new "Ultrabooks" and the slimmest Apple laptop do not have any physical optical drives since "everyone" now gets all their programs, music, movies and t.v.s shows from the internet. The changes to the computer world at the consumer end are drastic and I am wondering what percentage of contributors to D.C. are consumers. And if the P.C. is really dead, can imagine a college computer lab full of iPads?

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With the craze of tablet computers and consumers abandoning desktop and laptops by the droves, do you think that spells the end, or near end, of distributed computing? As difficult a time as laptop users have running any D.C. tasks because of the heat issues, I cannot see anyone ever seriously considering using a tablet to run any D.C. programs. Lets be honest, the tablet craze is happening because 90% of people who own computers would have no use for one were it not for the internet. And a tablet lets them all do the only things most of them do... surf, chat and check Facebook, in a small convenient package. How many people even buy or use an actual image editing program for their photos when they can have Instagram do it for them? Even these new "Ultrabooks" and the slimmest Apple laptop do not have any physical optical drives since "everyone" now gets all their programs, music, movies and t.v.s shows from the internet. The changes to the computer world at the consumer end are drastic and I am wondering what percentage of contributors to D.C. are consumers. And if the P.C. is really dead, can imagine a college computer lab full of iPads?

There is already an app for the Droid to crunch so I am guessing there will also be an app for the tablets too as it becomes more of an issue. I personally only know of a few people that have ditched their pc and gone tablet only. The storage capabilities are just not there yet for tablets and the Cloud has a nasty habit of 'losing' data, or going down just when you want the data!

As far as laptops running DC software it works just fine as long as people take the necessary precautions to remove the heat. Personally I use a 'laptop cooler' a small piece of plastic I bought with 3 fans that run off a single usb connection. It cost me $5(US) each. I personally have been running Boinc on a laptop for over 6 years, I m on my 3rd laptop now and the newest is an i7 quad core with HT enabled giving me a total of 8 cores. I use 4 cores for Boinc and the pc has NO lag whatsoever. I am running 64bit Win7 with 8gb of ram and it works just fine. It is an Ivy Bridge cpu but I have not tried to use it for gpu crunching yet.

I think it will be quite some time before desktops and laptops will be considered dead. Can you really imagine people going to work, and working on tablets? Drafting CAD designs on a tablet? Writing code or designing a database on a tablet? But I can see a good chunk of the general population transitioning to a tablet. I use to work in technical support for an ISP and there were a few people who said that their PC hadn't been on in months, and they rely solely on a tablet. So it is happening. My girlfriend's laptop has been sitting under her coffee table for about 6 months, and she just uses her iPad.
You are going yo have your hold outs. I think I am likely going to be one. You will also have enthusiasts, programmers, designers, DBA's, among other disciplines who will still have a use for the traditional desktop/workstation/laptop format for years to come.

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Victory is the ONLY option!

I think it will be quite some time before desktops and laptops will be considered dead. Can you really imagine people going to work, and working on tablets? Drafting CAD designs on a tablet? Writing code or designing a database on a tablet? But I can see a good chunk of the general population transitioning to a tablet. I use to work in technical support for an ISP and there were a few people who said that their PC hadn't been on in months, and they rely solely on a tablet. So it is happening. My girlfriend's laptop has been sitting under her coffee table for about 6 months, and she just uses her iPad.
You are going yo have your hold outs. I think I am likely going to be one. You will also have enthusiasts, programmers, designers, DBA's, among other disciplines who will still have a use for the traditional desktop/workstation/laptop format for years to come.

I too will be a holdout, I got an ipad for Christmas and took it back and bought a new laptop instead. I do lots of things and even though I got a bluetooth keyboard I still found myself going back and forth to the screen and keyboard all the time. I am more of a mouse and keyboard guy and having to touch and tap the screen all the time just isn't my thing. My laptop is in my family room on a small table that can swing in front of you while you are watching tv, meaning you can interact with both at the same time. Yes my laptop crunches, it is an i7 quad that thru HT thinks it is an 8 core machine. I have it set to only crunch using 50% of the cpu though, so there is NO lag or strain on the pc.

The conventional desktops and laptops aren't going anywhere for a long time, if ever. There's just too much work that can't be feasibly done on a tablet - they don't have much computing power, they don't have a UI that's conducive to large amounts of text or data entry, the pointing device (your finger) is very imprecise, etc, etc.

What has happened is that a lot of people who never really needed a computer in the first place are finding their needs better served by tablets and smartphones. Plus, computer hardware is lasting much longer than it used too - people don't buy new PCs every 2-3 years anymore, it's more like every 5-10. So the market is contracting, but it won't go away completely - it'll level off at some point and that will be the new normal.

I think Steve Jobs said it best when he likened PCs to trucks - they'll still be around and people will still use them, but it'll be more like a 1 out of every X people.

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