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As long as you didn't have to stare at a shitty small screen like the mobile has in general I wouldn't care about the PC. However, as long as no-one creates a set of modular machines that I can grid for extra processing power when I need it to drive some compute intensive task, gives me the option to use a decent keyboard and screen, I don see my DIM machine leave my desktop any time soon. In fact it direly needs an upgrade on many levels except for the software. Linux certainly covers all my needs and to my experience does a far better job at it these days than any commercial OS I ever used. The case for Open Source and Open Standards is pretty much set for me.

If any manufacturer would ever start building hardware that you can easily extend and upgrade without the hassle of having to pull out wires and unscrew things while at the same time keeping the old stuff useful for cannibals like me, they'd have a winner in at least the self builder market. It would also allow an easier entry for the IoT if all those gadgets could do a tad more than just make coffee, but would add something more to the mix than just pointing out the thing is empty and needs a refill.

The same bloody thing has happened with the smart phone. A machine more powerful than my old Pentium machines ever where and it is limited to do just a few things, is a bitch to upgrade and if you try and run a more useful OS on it runs out of power rather fast. So it will probably need some docking station for power if you want to grid it, but that could make a rather nice new type of rack mount.

And no, I don believe in cloud computing that I see pretty much as the new thin client model with better connections that will still fail regularly leaving you with a blank screen. Nor is large part of the world ready for anything like it. The mobile drive has shown that people want their compute power close to them and easily portable with some measure of possession of their data. Is it really that hard to get a grip on that concept?