Second -
The looming demise of the PC
By Brett Arquette
October 11, 1999 9:00 AM ET
People who purchase a PC with the belief that computer literacy is not necessary are kidding themselves. Still, millions of people, including my grandparents, are buying PCs with the mistaken notion that they're no more difficult to operate than VCRs. Many PC owners don't know how to do the basic tasks, such as installing software and hardware and defragmenting a disk drive. And God help them if they ever have to reinstall the operating system. Making the PC easier to maintain would require the companies that produce the operating systems, software and hardware to work together in harmony. This will never happen.
It's a problem crying out for a solution. And it's not hard to imagine one: What if I told you that I could provide you with a solid-state device a quarter of the size of a PC that had no moving parts to break? You could run 50 software titles such as Word, WordPerfect, Lotus SmartSuite, Quattro Pro and Quicken, as well as games. You would never have to upgrade those applications because they would be upgraded for you. With this device, you could watch more than 175 cable channels and select from thousands of movie titles that you could watch either on the machine or on the TV in your living room.
This device would have a hard drive so large that you could never fill it up. And you never would have to back up files again because they would be backed up for you every night. If lightning hit this device while you were using it out by the pool, you might lose some hair and skin, but you wouldn't lose data—and I could overnight you another machine. There would be no problems with an operating system, hardware drivers or other software. You would simply plug it into your cable box, and you're ready to go.
Services for the masses
In the near future, services such as these will replace the PC for millions of people who were never cut out to be PC administrators. Thin-client operating systems, such as Citrix MetaFrame running on MS Terminal Server, combined with ISDN, ADSL or cable modem Internet access, will inevitably be the basis of a virtual PC service that will revolutionize the industry.
Instead of buying a PC, you would pay the company a monthly fee, and the company would send you a Winterm device that plugs into your new high-bandwidth Internet connection, which links to its service. After powering it on, you would simply hit "connect" and your personalized GUI desktop would pop up on the screen. You could instantly run hundreds of applications without installing anything. Any time you saved files, they'd actually be saved to a server's hard drives, which would be backed up every night. Combine these services with an e-mail account, and watch PC sales plummet. After all, who would want to buy a PC with software that had to be upgraded every year, if you could hire a service to take care of the mess? Many corporations, tired of the cost and IS staff required to manage hundreds of PCs, would jump on it.
The technology to build a virtual PC service is here today. Other technologies, such as movies on demand, are probably a few years out. The advent of virtual computing will shift the entire PC infrastructure with such momentum that the PC as we know it today will be used only by a group of oddballs: "computer" people.
Brett Arquette is chief technology officer for the 9th Judicial Circuit Court, Orange and Osceola counties, in Florida. He can be reached at barq@iag.net.
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