Recall how the PC made computing available to small businesses and department managers, previously available only to corporations that could afford mainframes.
The Mac-PC dialectic elevated computing to stunning levels of accessibility and ubiquity in just a quarter century.
The optional ThinkPad Tablet 2 keyboard and dock can be paired with the tablet for more PC-like computing in the office.
This versatile tablet lets users work the way they want to with multi-finger touch support, pen input or the ability to connect to the optional ThinkPad Tablet 2 keyboard and dock for a PC-like computing experience.
Note: Canalys defines a client PC as a computing device designed to be operated by an individual and positioned to serve a broad range of purposes, achieved by running third-party applications, some of which can work independently of a network connection.
Dell shares have continued to rally Tuesday after Bloomberg and then the Wall Street Journal reported that the company has been in talks with TPG, Silver Lake and other private equity investors about the potential for what would be an enormous leveraged buyout of the PC and enterprise computing company.
Second, while the Asus Eee PC may have been closer to a computing appliance or companion than a PC, the deluge of netbooks from large PC companies such as HP, Acer and Dell that have followed have overwhelmingly run Windows and have been embraced by consumers as small and cheap, if underpowered, laptops.
For much of my professional career (IBM PC, Dell, Power Computing) I competed against Apple.
Even the best documentation for the firewalls we tested is scarcely adequate, especially since hacking remains a mysterious aspect of computing for most PC users.
At the IBM Lotusphere conference on Monday in Orlando, IBM Collaboration Solutions General Manager Alistair Rennie described major shifts in how technology has transformed business over the decades: the Mainframe, Departmental computing, the PC, and the Internet.
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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Sam Palmisano then shifted the company even more to high-end computing by selling the PC business and enlarging its software portfolio.
But tying all of these functions together into one unit with the computing power of your desktop PC is still cutting-edge stuff.
Growth in computing is moving away from the PC and more toward wireless, mobile and connected devices: Motorola's turf, not Intel's.
SSDs offer users an overall PC performance boost accelerating productivity applications and other computing activities, such as Web surfing, movie watching, video chatting and content creation.
Even OS X, the Mac's newest operating system, is based on a Unix computing approach only now hitting mainstream PC users through the migration of Linux to the desktop.
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.
But PC prices dropped, and the economics of network computing collapsed.
The price was that for decades, as Microsoft took command of the world of business and workplace computing that was the foundation of the PC industry, most people saw Apple as a maker of overpriced, prettified luxury goods that lacked some of the core functionality of PCs and PC-based devices.
Traditional PC gamers are used to paying a premium for computing power and the ability to constantly update and modify their hardware while consoles have historically attracted people looking for a cheaper, simpler and more stable platform on which to play games (the current generation of consoles have been around for six to seven years).
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The combination of applications and flexible computing options provides a compelling alternative to todays PC-on-every-desktop paradigm.
Many have also claimed that the rise of the web, mobile computing and tablets spells the end of the PC era.
Between 1950 and 1980, when the IPOs finally took off, we had national economies, followed by international business overlapping with the PC wave and globalized business in line with the networked computing wave.
And if you're among those who have to run a few Windows-only applications at home--where you're a dedicated Mac-lover--in many cases Virtual PC offers a way to keep your feet in two computing worlds.
In fact, in what was perhaps most interesting is the remark by CEO Steve Jobs that they are moving the Cloud to the center of the computing experience, and turning the Mac and PC into just another device.
The deal would improve HP's position in key markets such as storage and high-end computing, as well as the economics of its PC business.
The tablet PC, which Brass calls the "continuous Holy Grail of computing, " will also become more of a reality once immersive reading technologies such as ClearType take off.
Greater portability, better mobile connectivity and expanded cloud storage are helping define the post-PC dominated world, and we are starting to see actual computing itself shift to the Cloud and only the user interface is needed to operate.
The ability to integrate computing and communications functions will be vital as the PC industry stagnates and the market for smartphones and tablets is turning into a battle royale that has sucked in everyone from PC software titan Microsoft and online bookseller Amazon to search advertising titan Google, Korean tech conglomerate Samsung, and, of course, Apple.
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PC's one-size-fits-all approach to computing cannot satisfy the requirements of business on the Internet.
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