YES I think so, it will also affect the gpu crunching as those tablet style pc's do not have gpu's capable of crunching. BUT Businesses etc will ALWAYS but desktop pc's giving that market potentially available. As the current generation of 20 somethings age I DO see the market for desktops diminishing as they are just 'used' to having tablet style pc's instead of desktops. At my old work they were even developing applications for the tablets some people were using as they went 'into the filed' to do their work. I worked for a large local government agency and they had over 30,000 desktops and less than 100 tablet style pc's 2 years ago. They still have over 30,000 desktops but now have over 1,000 tablet style pc's. They still expect their users to use both, one 'in the office' and one 'in the field', but I expect that to change as more and more users, and admins, become more comfortable with the tablet style pc's. I ALSO expect the tablets to become MUCH more powerful so that they CAN replace the desktop on an everyday basis. Right now cloud based storage is still in flux and backing up to it is not reliable. Losing everything is still a possibility and NOT a good thing, making the tablets more powerful and flexible will alleviate that. Currently desktop backup options are much more extensive and more reliable!

BOINC 7 for windows was developed to play nice with W8 Metro, but if you ask me what that means... non lo so. As of 7.0.31 a clean install on a W8 system is apparently without a hitch. "Surface"... think it's the best ever product name MS has developed. The hardware appears [to me] as impressive in a promo I saw... this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEBQ67FQONQ

The problem about office or business is that:

a) Some are moving to could/virtualization. Where you only run things from the terminal.

b) some already focus on the 'mobile' side of thing and provide only laptop. At my last job, I only work on the company laptop.

c) you can only install BOINC if the company lets you (ie: they are WCG parner).

So we are focusing on consumer side. The thing is that tablet allow people to be mobile and active, and Windows tablet allow for the "half serious" work.

Either way it will eat into PC sales. Oh well...

http://www.mysinchew.com/node/78609
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/08/technology/...es-expectations.html?_r=0
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/101112-pc-sales-windows8-263301.html
http://gigaom.com/mobile/of-course-pc-sales-a...e-mobile-is-where-its-at/