The PC is emerging as a cheap fixed-price machine that is tending towards $100 or less. As such, there will be computers everywhere and they will be really cheap to upgrade and replace. While this is certainly going to drive the convergence market (IPTV, PVR, gaming console, etc.), it will make consumers think differently about computers.
According to Moore’s Law, the number of transistors on a chip should at least double every 18 months. We have gone in a very brief time from a few thousand transistors to over a billion on a single CPU. This has created some amazing new desktop and server technologies. We can pickup a very capable workstation machine for only a few hundred dollars. This same technology was virtually nonexistant 10 years ago and cost thousands of dollars only a few years ago.