Re: Consumer compelling benefits of high performance CPUs
<<IMHO, the last several years have been very slim for new PC applications. Going forward, we will see new compelling apps and software like NT 4.0, Internet phone, Office 97, Internet video, etc. High speed CPU's are really not consumer compelling without the benefits of new and improved applications. >>
I don't see any benefits to Office 97, but NT and Internet phone and video have the potential to drive sales of high performance CPUs. So, why would anyone upgrade? A magazine interviewer asked Marc Andreessen what NT 4.0 means and he replied, "You computer won't crash any more." I think he's right - the benefits aren't that great today for NT workstation.
As for Internet phone and video, that won't go anywhere until the bandwidth problem is solved. Intel needs to address this problem with better silicon, but all I heard from the recent conference is that SW developers should live with the problem and download data during off-hours a la Pointcast.
I don't know if you've ever used Pointcast, but it's not very useful software. Most people download it and use it for a couple of weeks, then uninstall it from their machine. They'll make money selling stock to a gullible IPO market, but not by selling products to consumers. Intel needs to look in another direction to drive CPU demand. Cable modems and/or xDSL would be a better place to spend the research money. |
