Article on PLC's vs PC's

Plant Engineering magazine this month has an article discussing PLC's and PC's plus a new combo of the 2 known as PAC. I thought many of you may be interested in the article. Also note that you can subscribe to this magazine online and may be free.
http://www.manufacturing.net/ple/

In reference to another thread there is one section of this article that I thought very relevant to automation and the economy.

ARC also reports that the PLC market will revive, despite the global economic slowdown. Users need automation to improve productivity, reduce costs, and increase flexibility to meet varying manufacturing demands. Signs of revival are also present in the high pace of technological change as fears of obsolescence drive upgrade plans. In addition, the potential of reduced total cost of ownership with open connectivity and programming platforms stimulates demand for higher levels of automation

Click to expand...

FYI: About ARC Advisory Group http://www.arcweb.com/

There was everything what have been in my mind. Thanks rsdoran!
My vision is, PLC-manufacturers will destroyed their market themself for bad connectivity between everything.

If those guys would just print their magazines on more absorbent paper, then they'd be of more use.

Needs to be a little softer, too. I have a delicate constitution.

There was a great dilbert about managers making all their decisions based on magazine articles.

PAC, sounds similar to a dcs. In my opinion PLC's will stay mainstream opposed the pac

One thing that one must keep in mind when reading articles in technical magazines: A very large part of the articles (if not all) are not written by journalist but by vendors that want to promote their products. The articles are sent to the publishers who almost uncritically publish them with little or no editing.
These articles seems to be neutral, but are indirectly promoting the vendors product.

The article in question have at least two questionable assumptions:
1. That PC's or PAC's have better networking capabilities (this does not hold true with todays PLC's, but it is a very common myth amongst non-industrial people).
2. That it is advantage to be able to write automation projects in "common" languages like C++ or visual basic (an advantage for the programmer who likes to poke around with these wonderful languages I bet, an advantage for the reliability and maintainability of the project - I think not).

Interestingly, the source is quoted as "Rockwell Automation" (!?).