But one of my points is that the cost saving is not really that large. There is a big watershed here in the choice of display device.
Down in what I am calling the Internet Appliance end of things, no doubt people will settle for the TV as a display, but until we get a large volume of the HDTV out in the market, that's going to be *really* basic. Think how many of the exciting things on the net require resolution to be exciting. Would Pathfinder pictures be compelling if you could only see a quarter at a time or you had to fuzz out the details? Once you get away from the TV as display, the monitor is the same PC or NC and is a significant part of the price.
Nearly 1GB disks are under $100 these days quantity one. Want to guess just how little that 2GB disk really costs the manufacturer?
NCs are likely to require as much or more RAM as low end PCs because they need to store everything locally with no option to swap to disk.
Given their low cost, I'll bet a CD is a standard feature because it is hard to beat their ability to provide rapid access to a large amount of data very cheaply. Playing a multi-person, role-playing game over the Internet is probably quite feasible with local images for the scenery, but otherwise unlikely.
Whatever the modem or Internet connection is, that is the same in both.
Etc. 50% might be achievable, but it looks like a real stretch to me, especially if one is going to use any proprietary parts like a special CPU where there is an issue of recovering R&D costs.
And, one of the problems facing NCs is like several other interesting technologies in the history of computing that were big news, but never amounted to much in reality like bubble memory and plasma panels. The new technology might be cheaper and better if it had the market which the older technology already has, but until it gets that market it is the technology which is suffering from economy of scale issues and the need to pay back R&D. The older technology, meanwhile, keeps being enhanced and getting cheaper so the target keeps moving. We are already to the point where I am seeing older model 75-100MHz Pentiums with reasonable disk, CD, modem, etc. down into the $600-$750 range without monitor. So, not only does the NC need to compete against new leading model PCs, it needs to compete against this kind of Honda Civic PC, and against used equipment. |
