ASUS Says Wintel PC Era Is Over

This means that Asus is going to close down their division that makes PC motherboards, right?

Wow asus has some pretty big cojones to say that. Hopefully its the truth.

Well, he meant it to be the trend and not something the company will do immediately. In a theoretical world, even if they stopped making Intel mohterboards, there is a company called AMD. You may google it. [sarcasm]

I wouldn't necessarily say that Apple takes a lot of risks. No matter what they make, the cult of Jobs will buy it by the truckload.

Oh Boi, let's see where this goes...

The PC is still going strong, now the BS has not picked up so much.

They appear on some "news" BS will.... BS blah blah blah, but at the end I still prefer PC over BS.

I don't get it why are people who use their computers only at home are buying laptops. Like these kids who play Crysis on $2000 gaming laptops that they never took out of the hose. Can someone explain the logic of this?

Yeah ok...when W8 for tablets comes out and Apple gets it's MacOS on one too kiss Android tablets good-bye. Last time I checked we were in a capitalist society. Don't like what MS and intel are doing put out a better product.

If that Windows 8 garbage is anything like the actual interface... that is the beginning of the end. You can't flop 2 out of 3 OS over 7 years. MS better be making something like Windows 7 but with a recompiled kernel, new file system, more native drivers (we still don't even have a native USB 3.0 driver). Oh, and can they make it so my calibrated color profile stays the way I set it? Same for display brightness on my laptop - quit changing plugged in and battery settings for no reason. Tweak and enhance don't jack everything up and turn my desktop into an m$pad.

Exactly what market has Apple created???? Portable, digital music players existed before the ipod. The tablet market existed more than a decade before the ipad....the laptop market existed before the macbook.... So, what exactly what market has Apple ever created???

Did that article just say that Microsoft has a "tradition" of bringing "new ideas" to the PC market? lolwut?

^^ +1. Apple never created any markets, just brainwashed people into believing they did.

As long as Intel dominates desktop/laptop hi-end processor market (not this useless ARM crap), I really don't care how "unfriendly" they are towards other companies. Business is business. I doubt AMD can't best Sandy Bridge because Intel is being "unfriendly".

Didn't expect Asus to spread such BS, seeing them marketing their ROG products. Asus learning from Apple and Sony? Oh God, the end is near... it should be other way around. What, are Asus laptops now also gonna be priced double their actual cost, like Apple and Sony?

I normally support AMD (though don't use their products), because they're a good competition in the CPU market and are totally kicking ass in the GPU market, but at this point it would be really good to see Intel to buy up every other more or less significant processor manufacturer out there - AMD, ARM, you name it - and shut these idiotic rumors up once and for all. I truly don't believe these statements that "since Intel dominates the market, they are slowing as down, because there's no competition".

And just so you know, "exploiting" any market is only possible if the customers allow it. People may curse Microsoft all they want, but they didn't end up on the top for nothing.

I know this may sound like a stupid answer but I think it comes down to people THINKING that if something is smaller it's better. It seems like when people think of desktops they think of old, slow, and virus-ridden. You see with all of Apple's products that they make them look as unobtrusive and thin as possible- the exact opposite of desktops. I think people also like the minimized cords and the ability to put it on their laps (when they're not gaming). Part of it's beyond me too, I can't always understand people either.

Totally puzzled also by folks choosing a laptop solely for home use. Considering you get so much more for the money when you buy a decent PC tower, not to mention that it will last more than twice as long and usually have plenty of room for modest upgrades to keep it current for many years to come.

I agree the age of the PC is not anywhere near dead.

I think the darn marketing folks are the ones leading ignorant consumers by the nose to only considering a laptop.

bcos the number of the computer noob on the planet are way too much than the number of computer pro , the noob thought that laptop is better than a desktop when they are still a noob , when the noob become a pro (after toying with the laptop that can't play the game so well for sometimes , especially the laptop with intel IGP crap) then they will start to look for a gaming desktop for the next buy .

Asus may need new management soon if this is the type of commentary that comes out of the company!
Sounds like they have been taking cues from "other companies" on how to run business, just complain and the government will slap Intel and Microsoft with fines for doing nothing but smart business.

Well I can understand not wanting a huge tower in your study or bedroom or wherever (I'm currently putting together a MiniITX i5 gaming machine). What I don't get is how they can think a small screen is just as good as a big screen. They don't get excited about watching movies on 21" TVs or mobile phones with 2" screens, why is then there a market for an 11" gaming laptop like Alienware M11?

That's why I'll never succeed in business, I can't get my head around the stupidity of the average consumer.

As great as it is in most industries to have healthy competition, I'm not too sure that's what I would want for the OS industry. The good thing about one OS dominating the market is that everybody creates their software for that OS. If you have 5 OSes with 20% market share each, you're likely only going to be able to use a limited amount of the software you would like to use. Of course this could be resolved by enforcing some universal protocols in software development and execution, but in all likelihood, the OS manufacturers would fight to use their exclusive ability to run a specific piece of software as a competitive advantage.

amd fanbois think this means down with intel... it means down with windows and x86

No. Read the article please.

Asus says the era where the only viable option was an Intel/Windows PC is over. Tablets and smartphones are becoming secondary computers rather than just communication devices. ARM is moving up in the world and will power a significant number of PC's in the nearby future.

Of course Asus will cater to the Wintel platform for as long as it exists. They just want to do more and damn right they are.

Tablets with mobile-phone processors + purpose made touch-screen operating systems were non existent before the iPad. Now there are dozens of the things from dozens of companies.

Same is true for the iPhone. Smartphones with capacitive touchscreens basically didn't exist before the iPhone and smartphones were rarely seen in the hands of consumers. Now almost everybody either wants or has a touchscreen smartphone.

Wrong. Go buy another apple product. While i sit here with double the amount of hardware for the same price of your "white" cool looking laptop.

Ok then: Name one phone with a capacitive touchscreen and a smartphone OS before the iPhone.
Also: Name one tablet before the iPad that didn't cost $1000, run out of battery after 3hours or use a desktop operating system.

All I saw when I read that is "our laptop is the thinnest in the world, if you exclude 90% of the competition"

I can think of the LG Prada for a smart phone with a touch screen before the iPhone because LG tried to sue Apple for stealing its design as the Prada launched over half a year earlier. I also had a friend that had a Archos 7 inch tablet in 2008 and it got like 12 hours of battery life. I think he paid like 500 dollars for it at the time so not a bad deal.

Absolutely no clue. I was wondering the same thing, actually. I do all of my actual computer work and gaming at home, hence the reason I bought myself a massive full tower case and ten tons of hardware to stuff in it. This rig definitely isnt packing light, and I wont be lugging it around a whole lot. I keep a good old netbook for things like vacation when I need a map or to check store hours or something like that. That's all you really need. No, you dont need a gaming laptop to take on a trip with you. Get out and do something.

I actually had a Mini-ITX mobo in a SG06 from Silverstone and thing ran really hot doing nothing- I think the onboard GPU (which I wasn't even using) failed and the thing just went downhill. I also had one of my RAM sticks die on me in the thing. All the heat which just wasn't dissipated very well I think just killed it. Yeah, I don't understand consumers going out and buying $600 tablets that do less than $300 netbooks.

This is BS! There was plenty of PDAs based on Windows Mobile 2003/2005, and there were ones that could call. And they were better than the iPhone 1, too. It's just that these were targeting a very specific market and didn't advertise themselves so much. So once iPhone and other touch-screens arrived, PDAs queitly vanished. And it's very sad, because I'd love to have a device in such a form-factor (NOT A BIG STUPID TABLET), which is not meant for communication other than Internet (i.e. no phone function necessary, though wouldn't mind). That's a good thing about new big touchphones like SGS II, they're slowly coming back to the good size =)

In other words, you're damn wrong. Once again, Apple is successful in convincing people that they were the first to do something.

The real problem I have with a fragmented computing sector is cross platform support for developers. Those nice shiny new toys are useless without software. Unless an easy api solution can be made, I can't see developers creating 5 different flavors of one app to support all the different OS's. This is not a good thing that Asus wants.

All hail for open source and freeware...

Seriously, I own W7 only for playing games...

If I was having a workstation only, I would pass entirely to freeware.

When it comes to tablets and smartphones I believe he is right. But as far as the PC goes there isn't a OS that threatens Windows dominance. With OS X being the second and still far
extremely far behind when it comes to actual users. Also just look at how many Mac and Macbook users end up installing Windows.

As for Intel the fact is Intel is a powerhouse. There is a reason why they have so much pull and there is a reason why. There are no signs within the PC market that Intel will lose this grip
as Intel to this day grows stronger and has showed no real signs of decline.

I would say that they imagine themselves going out and playing new games on higher details
everywhere they go. But when they purchase it they likely end up only using it around the house for two reasons. Reason #1 being that they have become paranoid of something happening to it, and Reason #2 battery life is very short when gaming.

In the end their purchase is pretty much a waste and illogical but they likely didn't plan on confining it to their home.