From “put a computer on every desk” to “in every desk” or “be every desk”

 

 

 

Once, put a computer on every desk and in every home was a dream of Microsoft, things like Bill Gates said in yesterday’s D5.  But things are changing dramatically, the tablet form-factor Bill mentioned yesterday in a talk with Steve Jobs became real today, the surface computing concept.  Bill Gates might want to revise the motto to "change every desk to be a computer in every home" or office, or bar, casino, everywhere.

 

How would that be, eventually, in several years?  What about the tablet PC Microsoft invented several year ago?  I can hardly remember anyone around me actually uses tablet PC on a daily basis.  There are Palms, pocket PCs, smartphones, or BlackBerrys, but I’ve never seen anyone carries a full-size tablet PC that running on Windows XP tablet version or whatever.  We’re using touch screen almost every day right now, in supermarkets, box offices, GPS’s, PDAs, smartphones…  but those are not full function, "rich" computers, as Steve and Bill defined in D5.  Steve already has his iPhone/iTouch, which is a small limited version of personal computer.  Will this Milan thing be end up like tablet PC, or something even older, maybe none of us even remember, the AST GRiD?

 

If more and more casinos, bars or restaurants start adopt this technology, or even for home entertainment, like the demo on CNet, than business offices do, it would become a machine for proprietary uses, another kind of XBox or DVD or cashier machine, not show the richness of a personal computer.  In D5, neither Bill Gates nor Steve Jobs successfully answered the question about full function, rich client and personal device like iPhone.  But anyway, this is the real concept of desk(top) computing.
 
In Chinese, there’s a word 桌面电脑=desktop computer for decades, but literally 桌=desk, 面=surface, 电脑=computer.  So we should change the translation of desktop computer to 桌上电脑, because 上=top; and use 桌面电脑 for this wonderful new baby – surface computer.  (I was little confused when I read this sentence again, let me make it clearer tomorrow.)