Paul, I do think a change is occurring, not only in homes, but in offices, that does not bode so well for intl near/intermediate term. Longer term merced is killer of enterprise computer space, msft will come up w/something that is killer app for losts more power.
To copy what I posted lastnight on another thread:
Forget $1000. Thats a catchy number. Used to get attention for a
real phenomenon. Well, to sell stories, but based on a real
phenomenon.
Which is that Moores law is now driving down price as much or
more than it is adding to power.
From mid 80s when PC's first caught on at corps and in then in
homes beyond the geeks, there was a continuing hunger to
upgrade cause basically we needed more and more power to
move further and further away from geekdom. Power was needed
to make using the thing easier. Power was needed to replace the
dos line with some graphical interface. Power was needed to
make that interface as fast as the geeky dos line used to be.
Power was needed to be able to have a couple of basic things
(word processor, spreadsheet, address list) up and running and
immediately switchable, at the same time. Power was needed to
avoid having to set up each program seperately for your printer,
etc. Power was needed produce more on the sceen at the same
time. (1024x768).
Ok, we got wat we wanted. Now what do we want. To model
chaos equations for global weather prediction on our office or
home pcs? Well, maybe not.
What we want is faster internet access. For that, you need a fairly
fast processor. More important is mega ram. Mega hard disk to
store it all. And even more important is investment by telecoms in
telecom hardware. xdsl. cable modems. Maybe global sat com.
Maybe wireless cdma. Anyway, it ain't the processor or its bus,
etc. For quite a while. Thats not the bottleneck to using the pc
tool for mind expansion.
Right?
Now, let me add that I am most people's idea of a power user. I just purchased the highest performance class notebook available, a Micron 233mmx w/128meg mem, 5gig hard, 20x CD, 5hr battery life, 13.1 1024x768 gorgeous screen...etc. A pretty penny.
But a large part of what was driving the upgrade was to have that screen, 13.1 1024x768. That's what I've always wanted in a laptop. ANd about as big as I want to go. And I kitted out high end to not have to buy for another 4 years or so. This replaces a 2 year old pentium 90 w/a small 9in 640x480 screen. Intel coming out with a 400mhz MMX for laptops isn't gonna get me to upgrade. Until I need it to run Microsofts "dictation assistant" which actually takes high accuracy dicatation w/only a rare correction necessary. Not soon.
Regards, Doug |
