I do not disagree, engineers need CAD tools or simulators, architects the same. Take all the professional people and put them in the category "Need a computer for their job." Now create another group called "Don't need a computer for their job." Compare the sizes of the two groups.

I don't think anyone expects that general purpose personal computers are ever going away, but there is a pretty compelling argument that the bulk of computational assets will fall into the 'appliance' category rather than the 'general purpose' category.

As Atwood points out, Microsoft strove to have a PC in every house, and they succeeded! PCs have higher penetration in homes than TVs. However, given tablets and their capabilities, it is looking more and more likely that this trend will stop and that the number of homes without a PC in them will begin to rise again. its an open question how many homes that will be but it seems likely it will happen.

They do, but they don't have to. Some careers are notoriously averse to evolving technology - I still see HP-12C calculators around the office because many of its users refuse to learn anything newer - and business and accounting are two of them.

There is little stopping them from using newer tools but inertia.

That's because they're exactly what a competent finance person needs for conversational analysis. Spreadsheets have their place but if you cannot talk without a keyboard you are way too deep in the numbers. And the batteries never die, at 3am on day 3 of due diligence in Toledo your phone and its finance app will be dead but that 12C will still be cranking out present values, amort schedules, target return rates and IRR. Those calculators are maybe the most fit-for-purpose white collar tool I've ever seen.

EDIT: I don't care for MSFT, I loathe Word. But Excel on Windows is a genuinely fine tool -- overused by a lot of people b/c the Windows anti-pattern keeps them from proper tools, but still a really useful piece of work. You can't do detailed modern financial analysis without it. The alternatives -- Linux, Google Docs, even Excel on Mac -- aren't even close.

I'm OK with pocket calculators. What I find weird is that inertia has kept the 12c being produced long after it became a relic. There are many other business-oriented pocket calculators out there with much nicer and efficient interfaces than the 12C.

What some courses teach is not financial math - it's "how to get numbers out of a 12C". This is just perverse.

What would be the alternatives for the group of people I mentioned above?

For writing, almost anything. For spreadsheets, unless you need Excel plugins, again, almost anything. For project management? There are a good couple tools around.

They don't need Office. They are just used to it, much like accountants are used to their 12C's

The problem here you see is that people don't want to spend time learning computers if they can avoid it except for browsing.

Now most students are being trained to use Office at school.

I use to see the world from an "Open Source" programmer's point of view: "You have the choice to use OpenOffice". But then after I saw the reality for a while, things start to sink in and it becomes obvious that people don't want to be liberated the way I thought they ought to be.

People are OK with MS Office. It becomes a piece of software that, no matter how hard geeks want to argue about the Pareto Principle or not, will stood the test because people were being trained regardless its complexity.

So yeah, from "feature/functionality" perspective, there are alternative. But from skill-wise, willing-to-learn aspect, there aren't until Universities and/or schools start teaching young people to use something else.

OTOH another argument is: you don't need the other alternatives if you have Office.

Well... Tablets are kind of changing that. We'll see in a couple years if students will insist on carrying their notebooks running Windows.

Even if they won't do that, they'll go to their lab to do the must-do assignments using MS Office for certain type of assignments.

A person close to me is currently taking Accounting courses and calculator + paper do not cut it. You need Excel.

No. You need a spreadsheet. Excel is just the most popular one, much like the 12C is the most popular business-oriented pocket calculator.