Are the PC’s Days Ending?

From Casey Phillips:

Keyboards? Mice? Disc drives? It may be time to pull the plugs, experts say.

After decades of monopolizing the home computing experience, the desktop PC could be on the way out. Technology experts say the rise of “second screen” devices such as smartphones and tablets represents a fundamental shift toward a “post-PC” or “PC plus” era.

In an entry to his blog Tech Broiler, ZDNet Senior Technology Editor Jason Perlow predicted that, within a decade, less than 10 percent of the current PC-using population will still require a desktop computer.

For the foreseeable future, experts say, some functions will continue to require a traditional computer, but for basic tasks, users increasingly are picking up other devices.

A purely post-PC world has not arrived, but here are five signs it is on the way.

1. The Cloud

2. PC Sales Slump [Or is it just waiting for the surge of tablets to end?]

3. Convergence: “…the line between a desktop PC and other devices is becoming increasingly blurry.”

4. No more disks.

5. Just a touch: “For decades, the only means of navigating a computer was a keyboard and a pointer device such as a mouse or touchpad. With the shift to a post-PC era, however, users now have 10 more options at their disposal: their fingers.”