Paul - Absolutely. PentiumII will suffer because it's getting
harder for HW/SW to stay in lock-step. There's no guarantee that
the gap won't widen at times likely hurting HW the most. The advancements are quasi-cooperative planned and incremental
Wintel moves however.
The killer apps for engineering (DELL workstations) are already here, moving from Unix to Wintel I might add, and there doesn't appear to be enough MIPS on the planet for those, so there's one HW driver. The financial community(DELL workstations) is another example of a market segment that can benefit from xtra horsepower applied to todays apps. Video-teleconferencing and 3D will move to the mainstream soon. There's literally thousands of examples, differeng user requirements, HW/SW lead/lag in each segment etc.
As for consumers, your'e right, the killer apps have not arrived
and one of the main drivers behind the 1KPC. One of the real
dissapointments in this sector continues to be internet
bandwith to the home. If they ever get it figured out and
can deliver 10/100baseT performance to the curb, look out!
The average corporate citizen, users of email and MSoffice,
once again no real compelling apps. There is a strong HW driver
with the NetPC initiative (DELL) however. Companies are quickly
figuring out the associated productivity/TCO benifits.
They will be big replacement vehicles very soon.
There is a large installed base of NC's as well, for instance
the kind you see checkout clerks using at HEB (a supermarket
for you non texans) or Hertz rent a car etc. No upgrades
here except for the back room servers (DELL).
Notice, Dell is targeting the high margin stuff with the exception of the NetPC (it still has desktop like margins). Contrary
to what some would have you believe, there is still tremendous
growth going on in these segments.
Key takeaways:
Lots of MIPS hungry apps at the high end.. Dell is positioned
with leading edge Wintel Workstation initiative
NetPC will cannabilize mainstream Desktops in a large Corp America
replacement wave, yet margins will still be healthy due to managability and serviceability enhancements. Dell has led
the charge in defining the NetPC standards.
Servers. Lots and lots of upside potential.
Notebooks? I obviously don't know much about that...
MEATHEAD |
