The Future of Desktops: Complicated Questions, Simple Answers

If anyone can tell you, or thinks they can tell you, how we will be definitively using “desktops” in three to five years, especially in education, they most likely have a bridge to sell you too.  Sure, we all have hunches, educated opinions, experience, hopes, and dreams of how “desktops” will be used and look. But the future of how we will be using “desktops” is still unclear, unsettled, and uncertain. You may be thinking that this is dismal, but it’s not – it’s quite the opposite! We are in an exciting time right now.  And before you settle into one solution or think you have the perfect solution, please read on.

For most of “modern” personal computer history (post Commodore 64 and TRS-80 era), desktop decisions were binary: PC or MAC. With a PC, you got a Microsoft Windows Desktop or an Apple Desktop.  When boiled down, preference usually ran along personal preference or utilitarian lines.  One did something that the other didn’t, was better, or the end-user just liked it more. For those of you around then using computers, you know what you preferred.

Apple for one revolutionized the “desktop” in the 1980’s because it offered a graphical version to Windows DOS. Instead of slugging through command line syntax, users saw the desktop graphically. Windows 3.1 brought the Windows desktop GUI (Graphical User Interface) to being. Overtime, both the Apple and Microsoft desktops grew up offering sleeker revisions and enhancements. One thing that remained, long after we ditched our telephone modems and mice with balls, for most users is a burned-in image of a “desktop”. If you needed to surf the internet, check email, pay a bill, make a bake sale flyer, see the game’s score, or whatever, you had to be at your “desktop” to do it.  Ctrl-Alt-Delete was (and still may be) as natural as using a fork.

Smartphones and Tablets, namely Apple, turned this burned-in image of the desktop on it’s head. Now, we can do all of these things and sometimes more (my MacBook isn’t a good flashlight or GPS) with an iPad or iPhone. All we need is an “app”.  Add into the mix “cloud computing” which can store lots of data and do lots of processing at good rates of speed and the “desktop” isn’t needed.  No more Start | Run | Programs.  No more desktop shortcuts. No more dock. Just click on the app.

So it shouldn’t come as a big surprise, the desktop decision is not so binary right now.  By my count, there’s 5 viable “desktop” solutions.  It’s really a quinary (base-5) decision.

1. Traditional PC/Laptops (Apple or Microsoft)
2. Hosted VDI (virtual desktops)
3. Onsite VDI (virtual desktops)
4. Smartphones
5. Tablets

Each of these five options has advantages, disadvantages, limitations, use cases, purchase cost discrepancies, and differences in costs to operate. That’s what makes this all so fun and intriguing!  It’s like solving a cool puzzle.

Dr. Suess is quoted with saying, “Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple”.  I think this quote aptly applies to making decisions around “desktops” especially in K-12 education. We all want students to learn, to maximize learning, to provide ubiquitous access, to do more with less, to provide a stable technology platform, to save money and to make our jobs easier. Those are the easy answers. The complicated questions emerge (and are needed t0 be asked) to ensure the best solution.  It could save a lot of money, time, rack space, and resources.

In the next post, we will look at complicated questions of economics and use cases for each of the 5 “desktops”.