>>"SubTotal $8775.00"
Mary,
At that price, I doubt if Intel will get 1/10%
of the home market!!!
I do have a real situation where I have 4 PC's
in my home. I'll share my experience with
you, not because it is an optimal
installation, but because I think it may
indicate what a typical consumer requirements
are, and what he does today. I also suggests
what Intel must IMPROVE on to sell to a mass
market.
I have:
A. 3 PC's are on the top floor
B. 1 PC is in the basement.
The 3 on the top floor are connected by
Ethernet (at $60 per card and less than $100
of connectors and cables.) I have a scanner,
color inkjet, a laserjet printer, and tape
backup. The 3 connected PC's are used for my
research, games, and my kids' homework.
My wife uses the one in the basement because
she does not like the complexity of the other
PCs. She prefers the simple DOS with only
Wordperfect app loaded, and only 1 printer to
worry about. No hi tech, no environment
problems, nobody messing with HER machine.
Upstairs, I run the coaxial Ethernet cable
along the edge of the carpet to hide it. There
is one spot where I have to route it around a
closet door, and I use some tacks to hold it
down. it is not pretty, but it not too
visible either. It is, however, cheap. I
think home users value "low cost" and "making
it work fast" more than perfection. What is
important to an office (wires hidden in walls)
is not so important for home use .
I do have a problem with simultaneous use of
the Internet between the PC's. Even though
one of my PC's is NT Workstation, I do not
have the time or expertise to set it up to
share a single ISP site between multiple PC's.
I dont want to mess with NT Server. Been
there, done it -- don't wanna do it again (for
home). I do have a friend, however, that has
a simple but powerful setup -- he installed a
$600 Cisco router that talks via a single ISDN
line to his Internet provider.
But what's cool is that router "looks like"
an Ethernet device to the system, and so does
not require special drivers. This is nice,
because ISDN modems usually do not have NT
drivers.
My PC's run as peer to peer, which is much
better than client server. It is simple to
setup. Therefore I do not need to pay for
professional expertise (few home users will
pay for that).
Total cost: $280
I.Q. required : Average
To sell multiple networked PC's in many
households, Intel will have to do the
following:
1. Wireless communications ( to get rid of the
ugly stuff, and the expensive electrician)
2. Built-in LAN in each PC (that means no need
to install extra cards or drivers)
3. Incremental cost per PC must be $50 or
less.
4. Performance of the LAN is not too
important. After all, how often will I need
to share video between PC's??
5. Must be able to share new ADSL Lite
connection to the Internet throughout the
network, but without requiring complicated
setup by users. Preferably (and most
probably), it will be a standard driver in
Windows.
YOU KNOW WHAT ...... I THINK INTEL will MAKE
ALL THE ABOVE HAPPEN. Just a guess. |
