Have we reached peak PC?

Those who have only begun to use computers on a daily basis during the past decade are almost certainly unaware of what things were like back in the 1990s. It was a time when a £2,000 computer bought in 1994 would be entirely obsolete in under three years, and upgrading was often an unrealistic proposition. A person could pick up a first PC in the early 90s, such as a 486DX4 at 90Mhz with 8MB of RAM and a 420Mb hard disc, then a little over three years later replace it with a Pentium II at 350mhz with 128MB of RAM and an 8GB hard disk for half the price of the 486.

People still use their computers every day, just like they did back then, but the things they do with them have changed dramatically. They’re on the web for most of the day, rather than dialling a few bulletin boards in evenings; Users rarely play the kind of games they used to anymore (unless you count the best slots sites that some frequent two or three times a week) but the computer is now most people’s main entertainment centre, replacing the television, DVD player and digibox that were previously used to consume media.

Fast-forward: The present day

For all the changes over the past decade, one thing has stayed noticeably the same: the PC. Often users haven’t upgraded a desktop in over five years, yet it still runs the latest operating system at impressive speed and has no trouble with anything thrown at it. Even “power users” who have significantly above-average needs in terms of computing performance find the average modern machine is more than sufficient for their needs.

All of this begs that question what has changed since the 90s. Have we already seen the best that personal computing has to offer? And could we ever return to the days of needing continuous upgrades of system memory, disk space and clock speed? These are all fascinating questions that deserve investigating, so here’s a deep dive.

Computing in 1990 vs 2020

At the start of the 1990s the so-called “IBM Compatible” personal computer was lagging far behind its contemporary rivals. The Commodore Amiga and Atari ST were every bit as fast as the PC, yet included far better technology in terms of graphics and sound. The PC was seen as a business machine back then, and few games were ported to the platform due to its poor multimedia performance. If Atari and Commodore had their acts together, the PC should never have become the dominant computing platform – so what went wrong?

Both Commodore and Atari refused to make significant investments into research and development, resulting in both their platforms stagnating towards the middle of the 1990s. It wasn’t until the release of Windows 95 that either of them began to take notice, and by then it was far too late. The PC was going from strength to strength as ever-greater processors and upgrade cards were released, but it was an incredibly expensive hobby to take part in.

Trying to keep up with the PC’s hunger for greater performance required continuous investment during this time – processor speeds jumped from 200Mhz to 2,000Mhz in little more than three years, and the 8Mb of RAM considered standard in 1994 wasn’t even capable of booting an operating system two years later. Upgrade cards were constantly being pushed out to provide enhanced graphics, sound, MIDI music, physics performance, 3D capabilities, joystick support and even the ability to run games from other platforms such as the Sega Saturn and 3DO.

Things are very different today – hardware specs are advancing much slower than in the past, and there is rarely a need to upgrade equipment just to run a new piece of software. A major exception to this is with respect to games – one still needs to keep the graphics card up to date to run the latest titles at high resolutions and frame rates, but we are talking about an upgrade every 2-3 years today, compared to every year during the 90s.

How can Modern PCs be improved?

This is a huge question, and one that is difficult to answer! Laptops would certainly benefit from more integration on the CPU itself, as we have seen in the latest M1/M2-based machines released by Apple. These machines are effectively using a smartphone or tablet CPU in place of the Intel chips used in previous generations, and the benefits have been much larger than anybody could have predicted.

Very few people still require a full desktop PC today, but those that do will always appreciate cheaper solid-state storage, faster processors and better displays and graphics hardware. Advances in hardware have always been driven by the software market, and in particular the hardware requirements of the latest version of Windows.

We may see a renewed effort by Microsoft to target the ARM family of processors with a new version of Windows, which would allow PC laptop manufacturers to create M1/M2 style laptops for PC users. This is probably the greatest single improvement that we are yet to see in the PC space, whilst Apple has already made the jump.

The editorial unit