35 www.managedITmag.co.uk PCS human interaction? Today, we are all used to interacting with a chatbot, but AI will take this to the next level where you could have something you think is a human being talking to you in any language you want. Interactions in our day to day lives will change as a result of AI solutions powered by AI PCs.” e AI is the ‘killer reason’ to buy a PC the market has been waiting for “It's been a while since there's been a killer reason to replace PCs and now there are two big things coming together. You have AI PCs and the benefits of AI. At the same time, Windows 10 is going end of life next year. I’ve seen estimates that 67% of the hundreds of millions of devices out there are still not running Windows 11. “There is an opportunity to merge those conversations. You have to move to Windows 11 for future-proofing and there are also compelling reasons to move to AI PCs. Those two things will really elevate the industry starting in the second half of this year and put some turbos on it as we go into 2025.” Lieberthal expects PC growth to return to the levels last seen during COVID, but this time driven by technological progress rather than the need to work remotely. “If you look at the growth projections, the numbers I hear bandied about are that this year a maximum of 15% of machines will be new AI devices. Then, when we get into 2027, people talk about 60%, 65%, maybe 70%. “You'll probably see a higher turnover of equipment as demand increases and new use cases and new applications emerge. We'll see churn driven by use cases and applications and the need for more computing speed – ‘I'm going to need TOPS of greater than 100 and the machine I bought a year ago only has 40’. That churn will be different to what we've experienced in the past 20 or 30 years.” Prices will start to increase because of technological advancement, but also because many partners will be able to charge for more consultancy and services than they might have been able to in the past. “The use case is defined by the application and the application costs will be there, whether it's CoPilot, whether it's a Google application, whether it's Adobe. Where you need the hardware plus the app, costs will go up.” r Security will become more proactive “When people ask me about the advantages of an AI PC, the first thing I mention is greater efficiency. Number two on my list is security. “Today we tend to think about lock and key security – you might say my machine already has a software application on it managing security. AI PC will take security to another level. For example, threat detection will become managed on a machine and react more quickly than traditional security software which needs to see potential threats, see what’s turning into a real threat and then put patches out onto machines. “AI will learn and start to detect patterns. It will respond in real time to what it thinks is a threat and can probably identify unusual behaviour a lot faster because it's now personalised to your machine. In addition, cloud AI will be looking at network traffic and unusual behaviour there. “More importantly, it will be able to take preventative actions. Many companies run simulations on a weekly or monthly basis, sending out emails to check the compliance of employees, and compliance is not always great because there's a human interaction. Mention something everybody's talking about, like Taylor Swift tickets, and your brain automatically lowers its defences. This machine will likely recognise that's not what normally happens on this network and take a preventative action. Phishing is getting smarter and AI will be able to start challenging it and matching it in terms of speed of identification and resolution. “Another benefit of an AI PC is that the new processors and the new devices coming out are less power intensive, with better power management. One unique selling feature might simply be that your fleet of 20,000, 30,000 or 40,000 power-hungry PC devices will offer better power efficiency in the future. That may be the use case. It may be as simple as saying ‘All I want an AI PC for is better power management and longer battery life’. For many, a 20-hour or 22-hour battery life will be a game-changer.” Acer’s new line of TravelMate Business AI Laptops are powered by the latest processors with built-in NPUs and come with a dedicated hotkey for accessing Copilot
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