"Desktops sales have slowed because manufacturers have let their designs stagnate, but the need for a comfortable machine you can work on hasn’t gone away. Who will reinvent the PC and reap the rewards?"

"Need more proof that the PC market is in trouble? Bellwether Intel has posted some rather lackluster results, disappointing investors, but still managing to beat analyst forecasts. In Q4 Intel saw its profit fall 27 percent, while revenues fell 3 percent, from $13.5 billion, down from $13.9 billion. The weak PC market is to blame for the weak results and analysts estimate PC shipments declined 3.5 percent in 2012..."

"Steve Jobs piqued consumer curiosity when he unveiled the iPad and declared "the post-PC era has begun." And now with the imminent release of Windows 8 RT tablets—low-powered slates running a touch-friendly version of Office—it might seem that perhaps the world actually can live without desktop computers.

"Security researchers have detected a new malware campaign that attempts to infect Skype users by sending them booby-trapped links from contacts in their address book.

"The beta versions of Mac OS X (code-named Mountain Lion) and Windows 8 are now being tested worldwide, and although they are quite different from one another, they share one characteristic: Both take designs and features built for smartphones and tablets and tack them onto desktops and laptops. Does that mean that Apple and Microsoft believe that your computer is really just a big smartphone? And what do these new upgrades mean for IT?" - Read More

"A look back at two articles from 1995, touting high end computers and 'must haves.' How times have changed... ...'Memory (RAM): We seem to have convinced most manufacturers to adopt eight megabytes as standard, compared with four megabytes in 1994. Don't buy less than eight. The difference in performance between an eight megabyte machine and a four-megabyte machine can be dramatic.'"

"A Finnish analyst has got together some facts and figures which he thinks proves that Android will kill off PCs. Horace Dediu said that iOS and Android devices are considered to be substitutes for personal computers and the PC market is going to collapse. Dediu runs Asymco which sells software development and consulting services for companies interested in deploying mobile applications. However he has come up with a lot of numbers and graphs to prove his point. His rise and fall of personal computing compares PCs to Macs, iOS and Android devices in shipped units and market share.."

"The widespread flooding in Thailand that disrupted operations at hard disk drive factories will lead to significantly declining PC shipments, say market analysts. Thailand accounted for 40 to 45 percent of worldwide HDD production in the first half of 2011, but flooding has impacted more than a dozen factories, according to IDC..."

"Some people treat "PC" as a kind of country club, keeping membership in the group narrow and therefore constraining the definition of a PC. Others would go so far as to say that anything that does real computing, is personal, and is powered by a central processing unit is a PC. And then there's a whole lot of us in between. So that brings us to our poll, and hopefully a great discussion: is the iPad a PC or not?"

"The strongest argument in favor of the personal computer is the iPad. Supposedly, the iPad spells the death of the laptop. Supposedly, we're going to do all of our computing in the cloud. Some folks believe both of these statements, which is a bit like believing in laissez-faire communism."