What percentage of the population is going to be doing that?  The original article I posted showed concern that what was the PC isn't coming back.  Windows 8 failed to give it a boost, and there is talk about smart devices and so on, replacing what people have for computers now.  That is the concern.  Only one of the above is personal finance, but for most people, what is that besides doing taxes and checking one's financial portfolio or bank account?  A lot of this is done using a web.  The big difference would seem to be the keyboard, but tablets get those to.

iOS and the Android OS (and frankly Win8 Metro) lack the multitasking capability and peripheral support to do any serious work. It's not a hardware issue.

It is not yet common to buy a tablet and a keyboard and some way for it to be usable for hours (a stand, or external screen). People still have to use PCs during their jobs. It is far too early to call the death of the PC.

It probably never will, because most people use their personal computers for non-work purposes, and prefer the bigger screen for casual browsing/e-mail/movies/streaming etc.

What I don't get are the weirdos who use their tablet for work purposes. I've heard of lawyers who've replaced their desktop/laptop with a tablet. That sounds horrific to me...

For casual "home" consumer use? Nothing a tablet fills most of the computing requirements most people have (Web, email, social networks, simple text editing, light gaming, basic media management and consumption). That doesn't however mean that PCs are going to go away, there is still going to be a large market for PCs to handle more complex and specialised tasks.

That sounds about right. And since desktops represent around a third  of the PC market, we can probably expect the PC market to contract to about one third of its former size.

As for what kills tablets, it would have to be some kind of even cheaper, lighter, and more ubiquitous computing, perhaps like Glass, but not in it's current $1,500 obtrusive form. I think the necessary display and interface technology is at least a decade away. We'll need truly effective voice, hand tracking, and/or eye tracking interface, and we're only just now getting to the point where the first is starting to be useful.

We'll know when we're there because it'll be completely invisible. You'll never notice it not working.

You can't be serious right?

Lets be honest, it's a tough pill to swallow for some people these days to spend more on a PC compared to a Tablet when the worlds economy is down the toilet. - With the sole exception of a few nations like Australia.
And to the end users both platforms perform the exact same function which is to check Emails, Facebook and web browse.

The enthusiast hardware market hasn't declined in the PC space at all, although due to nVidia and AMD essentially skipping a year with a graphics refresh, it might this year.
But even stores in Australia have seen boosts in hardware sales, not to the level of the decline in overall PC shipments, but not all segments are depressing.
Steam and Origin has also seen steady growth, which is a good indicator that PC gaming is still on the rise, Dota and league of Legends still continue to dominate with it's unique users each month.

Then  you have Business's.
Allot of business's have had budgets cut due to the economic slump that the entire planet has essentially experienced for the past several years, so they haven't been able to afford to make the jump from Windows XP to Windows 7 or Windows 8, this is a *massive* market in the PC space and with Windows 8 being rather unappealing for business machines, it's just made that upgrade even more unappealing.

Then you have the performance problem, Intel and AMD are probably victims of their own success, but really, how much compute performance does the average person need to check Emails, Facebook and Web Browse? Essentially any 7+ year old PC can do that, if it ain't broke don't fix it.

There are allot of aspects causing the decline in PC sales, it's still not a small market and there are still Billions of PC's out in the wild and the PC still sells 300+ million machines a year, that is still nothing to sneeze at, the massive decline of the current sales certainly has nothing to do with a $10-$20 Disc Drive.

Nothing will tbh. Frankly most users don't need the power of a big PC anymore. Facebook and general PC usage takes relatively little power so unless PC gaming becomes massie (it won't) people can make do with tablets and/or laptops. 

I like PC gaming, but when even a gaming PC can be reduced to the size of a shoe box, then why does a casual user need a PC?

Power users will still use a pc and laptops. Now the non power user have other products to chose from, since they never really did before.

Tbh, I think this has exposed the truth about people that used PC's in the past: they weren't using a PC in a meaningful way. Many love tablets because they can do pretty much everything that they were doing on a PC anyway. PC's were wasted on these people.

That being said, the decline isn't going to stop. OEM's have to adapt. The next key is merging the two into something that is meaningful and useful to more people.

W8 is ahead of it's time and will be remembered as such years from now.