Interesting discussion.
I would consider my wife as a ‘typical’ user. She plays games on facebook, sorts and manages our many digital photos using Picasa and the general windows folders, futzes around with Word and Powerpoint when creating flyers for our son’s birthday party etc. etc. Try doing any of this easily and intuitively on an iPhone or a tablet - you can’t. We had a netbook that I got for free - she hated the small screen. We have an iPad and yes it’s convenient for doing email and some web browsing and also playing particular games - especially when we were travelling - but nothing comes close to the flexibility, performance and ubiquitousness of a desktop/laptop.
Is the ‘big’ PC dead? Not by a long shot, they are designed for different purposes. Tablets and smartphones were designed for convenience, and until I can have the same hard drive space (or cloud storage that is as easy to access and has the same price ratio as a big HDD), the same flexibility, the same performance and the same ease of use on a tablet as I can on a desktop then it’s not going to happen.
Why do millions of corporate users around the world still use desktops/laptops? Because of flexibility and low cost - a basic desktop with Win7 for a corporate is roughly the same cost as an iPad - and can be locked down, admin-ed, networked and managed much better than an iPad or other tablet.
Yes there are some business and corporate users that do everything they need to on a tablet. But is the desktop dead just because of a small few who say so? No.