Bob: I completely agree with you. I noticed the same thing at CompUSA last weekend in Southern California. I think the PC was just too slow to evolve. They're still building some huge percentage of them with RS232 serial ports, ISA slots, too little memory, and, of course, Microsoft Windows. It basically means the PC user is back in the late 80's having a crappy, confusing, crash-prone, resource-bound user experience, while Apple and these other small appliance gadgets are zooming ahead.
The Wintel Cartel tried all these initiatives, always on, never-open, etc. etc., but they all took so long to come to fruition (if they ever did) and they were so busy keeping up with Intel's weekly processor and chipset changes that they just never got their act together, and progress on hardware stalled. Right up until this most recent 820/Rambus fiasco which I think is the nail in Intel's coffin, though more in the way of a coup de grace than a principal blow.
A PC-building hobbyist can't figure out which motherboard to use these days. 30-40% of PC's are "white boxes" made by small time cloners...not many people realize that. These small shops have to be hurting with all the cost and confusion caused by Intel's foulups and AMD's constrained supply. It's a tortoise and hare story: the PC leader took a nap (or actually got trapped looking at its own reflection in the water) while the trailing appliance technology caught up and passed after many abortive efforts.
Fine by me.
--QS |
