IT Professionals

PC Of The Future

Posted by on Mar 24, 2008 | One Comment

It is difficult to imagine a desktop PC without immediate access to a keyboard and mouse. Yet there is some heavy speculation that in the near future, we will indeed see such changes in user interaction with our computers.

Recently some have even begun pointing to the iPhone as a possibility of what to expect and I must admit, it does nothing for me. I hate touch screens. Working as advertised or not, I have had enough poor experiences with them that I would have a number of personal issues to overcome before putting myself into a position where I am going to begin trusting these interfaces again.

So what say you? Could you bring yourself to use an iPhone-like interface almost exclusively? No longer relying on the “physical” feedback of a keyboard and mouse, is this really something that is practical for the casual user? Or instead, with this idea fail in epic ways? Hit the comments, you be the judge.

  • Mike, Cincinnati OH

    There are a number of user interfaces that have been around for a long long time. Each has it’s own purpose and function. Touch screen devices are handy for quick large mouse like functions, Keyboards are the “quickest” way as of yet to input data into computers. Voice is still not accurate with the way everyone around the globe talks. Just to many variations in everyones dialects, not to mention languages…

    I do think that as the “pc” takes over more and more of the entertainment hardware roles that it will morph into a whole house “pc” a home server if you will, where we all have terminals that display data streaming off of a few Computers that will control many times more the devices in our lives.
    Visual Audio is the next frontier on PC’s to conquer. But more over there are other devices in “The House of Tomorrow” such as hand gesture controlled LCD window displays that darken as you wave your hand over them, the Star Trek doors and lighting is already a reality in some homes (for the right price) so to is temperature control now available via PC monitoring and configuring.

    IMHO it’s not about where can it go, it’s pretty much already there, it’s about how to tie it all together, How to make the PC turn into a Home control Server, that would control your Entertainment, Security, Work, Environmental s, School, data from any “plugged in” device that allows for an interface.

    User Interfaces need to be able to accurately tell the Computer what the heck the user wants entered in. be it a touch screen, be it IR, be it a keyboard / mouse, be it voice command. at the end of the day, you want to have what you want and nothing else matters.