Microsoft crushed them with a boatload of marketing dollars and a desktop computing monopoly.
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Analysts surmised that this was because of the shift away from desktop computing to wireless devices, on which advertising is cheaper.
By making Windows virtually the only operating-system choice available to computer manufacturers, Microsoft was a principal benefactor of the boom in desktop computing.
Where Bert Danner falters in his analysis is in assuming that the mobile platform battle will play out like desktop computing, where network effects yielded near monopoly-level dominance to Microsoft.
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This April, the desktop computing giant jumped into the game with its own Windows Azure-based IaaS. Microsoft announced that it would price-match Amazon EC2 for storage, compute power and network bandwidth.
It was his interest in the mechanics of wealth creation that drew him to the engineers and entrepreneurs, such as Intel's Andy Grove, who were shaping the revolution in affordable desktop computing.
Alongside the Apple 1 and the Pascaline will be an original Apple Lisa, one of the earliest computers to feature a graphical interface and mouse -- technologies which paved the way for desktop computing as we know it today.
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For while Microsoft still has that desktop, computing itself has moved off the desktop and onto phoines and tablets.
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But the rise of cloud computing and desktop virtualization means more applications run on a server.
With Sledgehammer, AMD may even be way ahead of the rest of the industry when it comes to 64-bit computing on desktop PCs, Brookwood said.
Even apps are tracking that way: Tweetie, one of the most popular Twitter apps, debuted for the iPhone before it was available for Mac OS. Now we need to bring some OS-level innovations back to the PC desktop and take personal computing to the next level as well.
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Since its launch in 2004, it has become the preferred choice for open desktop and scale-out computing, from Fortune 500 companies to hardware makers, content providers, software developers and consumers.
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Business like Server and Tools, which champions cloud computing and wants to move computation to the datacenter, are in competition with Windows, which wants to keep computing on the desktop.
Brown argues it Nvidia can double the size of its addressable workstation GPU market by offering more sophisticated visual computing capabilities on desktop workstations for use in visual effects and video editing, among other applications.
In the long run, consumers may grow to believe that high-end computing tablets with desktop operating systems are worth a higher premium than other tablets, but until then ASPs on Windows 8 and Windows RT devices need to come down to drive higher volumes.
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Intel predicts that 2008 will be the first year that mobile computing devices will outsell desktop computers.
But tying all of these functions together into one unit with the computing power of your desktop PC is still cutting-edge stuff.
Through virtual desktop integration, Cisco Cius offers flexible computing options with cloud-based services, providing dramatically lower capital costs and cost-per-user for desktop maintenance.
In fact, argues Nicholas Carr, the former editor of the Harvard Business Review and author of the new book The Big Switch, those Web applications are signs of a fundamental change, a shift from the desktop to the Web that could redefine computing--and Google's business model.
The AMD Radeon HD 8000 Series desktop graphics cards are designed to make everyday computing entertaining and productive.
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The new ZX4300 Series now includes powerful desktop components, bringing increased performance and no-compromise computing to this elegant design.
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Mr Gates recognises that computing will no longer be confined to the desktop, which he controls thanks to the dominance of Windows.
In early August, Dr Mark Dean, one of the designers of the original IBM PC, declared that the centre of the computing world had shifted away from the humble desktop.
The Seagate Desktop SSHD features up to 2TB of massive capacity and 8GB of NAND Flash making it ideal for accelerating the most commonly used PC applications and delivering extreme desktop performance with all the storage capacity needed for any computing scenario.
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Combine that with more sophisticated endpoint management solutions, which ease the burden of supporting a diverse computing ecosystem, and the need for identical gray desktop boxes goes away.
Late last year, Intel quietly introduced the Next Unit of Computing ( NUC): a miniature, barebones desktop PC that represents a modern take on the traditional beige box.
It was aimed initially at a group of people who for reasons of cost or power requirements still had desktop machines, but wanted access to lightweight and limited mobile computing.
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