The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones

Part of the reason is because we have gone back to the days of terminals. Chromebook is a good milestone in marking what people do with computers and how much power they need. We are past the point where computer as a consumer device, and computer as a professional equipment have parted their ways. We are also lucky that the people who buy CPUs in bulk for their powerhouses are still using architectures similar to the ones we use in our desktops and laptops. Because with our weak demand for new hardware, the prices cannot stay low for long.

In terms of gaming performance, when you go from mid range machine to high end machine, you are often spending 2-4 times as much without 2-4 times the performance. You hit diminishing returns big time.

I go with generally mid range components with my gaming machine. Even then, I upgrade every 3 generations for CPU and every other generation for video card. CPU performance doesn't impact gaming as much as it used to.

This gives me reasonable performance in most games around high to ultra on a 1920x1080 monitor.

I've felt this way since I built my last desktop in 2008. I was sort-of waiting for the "gee its time to upgrade" mark to roll around in 3 or 4 years, but it hasn't happened yet. Any games I want to play it still runs very well, and it still feels very fast to me even compared to modern off-the-shelf systems.

When my friends ask for laptop-buying advice I tell them if they like the keyboard and screen, then its just plain hard to be disappointed with anything new.

I think I can pinpoint when this happened - It was the SSD. Getting an SSD was the last upgrade I ever needed.

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Above that, PCs aren't necessary for a lot of people, because people do not need $2000 Facebook and email machines. For the median person, if you bought a PC in 2006, then got an iPad (as a gift or for yourself) and started using it a lot, you might find that you stopped turning on your PC. How could you justify the price of a new one then?

Yet if there was a major cultural shift to just tablets (which are great devices in their own right), I would be very worried. It's hard(er) to create new content on a tablet, and I don't really want that becoming the default computer for any generation.

I think its extremely healthy to have the lowest bar possible to go from "Hey I like that" to "Can I do that? Can I make it myself?"

I think its something hackers, especially those with children should ask themselves: Would I still be me, if I had grown up around primarily content consumption computing devices instead of more general purpose laptops and desktops?

Tablets are knocking the sales off of low-end PCs, but we as a society need the cheap PC to remain viable, if we want to turn as many children as possible into creators, engineers, tinkerers, and hackers.

Even with gaming there isn't as much of a push as there used to be to constantly be on the cutting edge. This is mostly do to the fact that the industry as a whole focuses primarily on consoles first now and thus consoles tend to be the gating "LCD" target. If your PC is at least as good or a little bit better than a console released in 2005 or 2007 you're set. Of course, there will soon be a bump forward here with the next gen Xbox and Sony systems coming out in a month.

I fit into a lot of the special cases here: Developer, gamer, amateur photographer with many gigabytes of RAW files and even I don't feel the need to upgrade systems like I used to. Now it is about an every 3-4 year thing whereas previously it was yearly or more.

It’s awesome to do cool, fulfilling things and for some of those things you need a computer. For others you don’t.

I really don’t see why everyone should use a computer, given the wealth of possibilities out there.

Also, I’m pretty sure the death of the PC doesn’t mean any of what you are insinuating. It will be more like the death of horse riding after the advent of the car. (If I want to go horse riding there is a club that offers that not five minutes from where I’m living. Horse riding is dead – but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible or even hard to go horse riding today.) Only that PCs will probably be an order of magnitude more relevant than horses are today and, while not always as relevant as in the past in certain contexts (at home), they will still be relevant in others (some work, academia, …).

I’m still pretty confident in the prediction that the PC at home will die. (Which will not mean that no one will have one at home. Just far less people than today.) I’m also pretty sure that the PC at work and in academia will not die.