During the infancy of computers, various quotes were flung about such as "The world will never need more than six computers," and "No one would ever want a computer at home." I'll file this along with these outlandishly wrong statements, but I'm guessing "end of PC era" will be forgotten much sooner than the others.

People that know how to use a computer to its full potential will continue to do so. Those that use a computer for e-mail and internet might as well use a smart phone. Of course shipments of phones will outnumber PCs. Phones are much cheaper, more available, less complicated and more disposable than a PC. Service providers *want* every person to have a phone so they get cheaper and cheaper. If Microsoft wanted a PC in every house, they'd give away a computer with every copy of Windows sold.

Having worked in IT for 26+ years, I'm pretty tired of computers. I know I'll always be using a computer as a basic tool, but I (hopefully) won't be working ON them for the rest of my life. Still I'd much rather use a PC for anything that a smart phone offers. I just last year upgraded to a phone that can text. I certainly don't want one to surf the internet and cost me extra for such a service when I can get the exact same content with a better interface and experience for much cheaper on a PC, mobile or otherwise.

The PC era will never end. We're doomed to evolve with them.

Those that are smart enough use a PC; the rest will use a smart phone.

You need one more point to your list.

- Avoid avarice when EA suits show up to buy out your studio and ruin your life's work.

Unfortunately probably as many or more people will avoid buying anything from EA, myself included.

I have yet to forgive them for ruining the Ultima series and Ultima Online. I don't care what IP they get, they'd have to give me the game for free before I'd play it.

As they absorb and ruin more independent studios, I think more and more people will start boycotting EA.

I'm 40 and this is the third decade that I've heard it. PC is still going strong and getting stronger.

I chose my TI-99/4A over my Atari 2600 rather quickly. NES (8 bit) came out and distracted me briefly with Zelda, but I went for the PC 286.

I think we're all cursed to tolerate the console fanboys every generation.

Right there with you Dunbal. PC gaming will never die, and IMO is growing again.

Eventually consumers will catch on to the "buy a new console, buy all new games" scheme. If I bought a new PC today I could still play some of my old DOS games and almost everything in between. Add emulation and I can play other computers' games AND console games.

Besides, with internet access and a keyboard, how is a console much different than a PC? Oh, yeah, the PC has much more computing and graphical power.

How far off is it before NELL is LOL'ing and STFU'ing?

Not to detract from DiGioia drastically improving the city's IT infrastructure and delivery, but how is this any different from the jobs thousands of IT managers/admins do every year? We're always looking to improve and re-use existing resources.

I think the real story here is "previous IT manager was a major failure; ignored technology for 10 years." I didn't see anything truly innovative about what DiGioia did. I guess what also must be newsworthy is getting a city to part with that much money for that big of an overhaul. That's the real accomplishment.

TFA nor the website tell what the purpose of the game is either. After reading the "city history" I gathered you can choose to be a cop or a criminal.

You touch on a point of player personalities.

Whether or not the game has staying power, so many players out there now want the instant gratification. They'll burn through a game's content in a few days and expect the developers to create more overnight. I've watched this trend from Ultima Online in 1997 through present day with World of Warcraft. You have the "gimme now, I'm bored, I'm done" crowd and you have others that explore, achieve, socialize and flesh out the depth of the game. The double-edge sword is that the former will be the first ones to try and abandon a new game, and the latter wait until a game has been around for a while to join or they are reluctant to leave their established virtual world.

A free introduction, dynamic systems allowing change, dynamic or large amounts of content, inexpensive development and near 100% uptime are requirements for any MMO coming out today. I had never heard anything about this game until today.

I'd suggest another reason students are avoiding IT classes: IT is a dead-end industry.

As an IT professional of 26 years and a father of two, I am certainly doing my best to steer my children away from IT. I want them to do something that contributes to the world, helps others and provides a rewarding occupation. A computer is a tool, and nothing more. It should be only a small fraction of our job not the central focus of it. My kids can already do more with a computer than 90% of the people I've ever worked with or supported. In one hour I can teach them more about how a computer works than any high school or college course could in a semester. There simply is no reason for IT classes especially if they're more than a year behind.

I have no worries that we'll still have programmers and technologists for the future. Those that have a knack for and enjoy technology will pursue it on their own, take technical courses and find jobs doing what they enjoy. Others will have jobs that utilize a computer in some fashion but have no need to understand why it works. A large percentage of the population gets by just fine with no daily computer usage at all.

Call me a Luddite or a doomsayer, but I think people should learn much more important skills such as communication, hunting and construction. One of these days there will be no more computers as we know them now. Either technology will become so advanced it will be an integral and automatically understood part of our lives or it will disappear all together.

Yes. Replaced everything except CPU. I'm hoping it was just a bad batch or a fluke.

I've been working professionally with computers since 1984. I've been building my own systems since 1994.

This was not a primer or builder's guide. It was more of a "we don't know if our CPU will work on boards other than this or with components other than this." Over the months that I was troubleshooting this issue, I saw that list on AMD's website grow. Components matched, had the right voltages and bus speeds but were not on AMD's compatibility list.

With the number of pieces I switched out, the CPU was the only piece left that could have been faulty.

I am still considering trying AMD again. Surely since the years my problems occurred they would have improved.

Didn't Microsoft do this with their Zune's a year or two ago? I seem to recall a blog from a MS employee of how everyone went back to their iPods. I'm sure this will be the same result.

I forget the specs; I only recall it was an Athlon class. Regardless of video card I installed, nVidia or ATI, the system would randomly crash/reboot after 15 min, 1 hour, 3 hours... Thought it was heat, poor seating or a grounding issue, but all those checked out.

Later I did more research and discovered AMDs compatibility charts: CPU, power supplies, motherboards, GPU. Just the fact that it existed bothered me. Intel has no such document to the best of my knowledge, but then Windows and every hardware and software designed for Windows are designed around Intel.

I may try AMD again due to recent reviews and friend recommendations.