Hi Lizzie and Thread, RE: Centrino
This seems to be the first product, in awhile, that's beginning to generate some interest in the engineering community around here. Anytime I've seen that happen, it eventually spreads to the overall community a few months later. I think the Centrino will do very well.
On the business front, this weekend, I have heard some people talking about wanting to replace their own systems - small talk I haven't heard in awhile. The 2000 products are getting old (equipment failures, rebootings, OS/security, slow systems for a few in eng or mktg though not acct'g). But wanting to replace a system is different than actually spending money to replace it.
At our startup, in 2000, aside from a few notebooks, we mainly bought PCs because they were so much cheaper than notebooks (such is how frugal startups are), or people bought their own notebooks or they shared the few we had which is now nearly impossible to do. This time around though, we'll eventually replace systems with notebooks, except in acct'g. Engineering is mixed with both systems and notebooks, but mainly systems.
At home, I'm hoping my system will last a few more months, it's showing a lot of issues over the past month.
At work, a couple of us will purchase a Centrino after a few months - q1 is not good so purchases will be pushed out.
Once this war situation blows clear, I think the industry demand will generate quite nicely. This has to be as low as it gets in terms of demand - war, terrorism, high gas prices, pneumonia, in-between a buying cycle, and bad economy.
I bet we see healthy demand for wireless notebooks and upgrades by year-end, based upon the number of people I know that are talking about upgrading their systems.
I haven't asked how other startups are doing these days, but our business is going to have an unhappy quarter. That wonderful breaze we all felt in Dec, isn't with us in this quarter. It's as if capital spending is frozen like a deer in the headlights of an oncoming war. We've had to put customers on a schedule.
RE: The health threat (atypical Pneumonia)
It doesn't seem to be as serious as what the initial reports claimed - while it appears to be spreading incredibly fast, only <2% died from it in an outbreak last Nov. Though, other reports say it has not been confirmed to be the same bug.
Regards,
Amy J |
