Betty Ann Poe said: Duncan, what's your take on COMS? Besides "inventory" in the pipeline, do you think there is a real possibility of a "mother board" installed modem in the not too distant future, I've always wondered about the USRX deal....bp -------
To which I interject:
Allow me to answer this too.... a 'motherboard installed' modem is a certainty, but I believe it will be manufactured by Intel as part of a support chip set in the same way that parallel and serial IO is now part of the motherboard, this makes a lot of sense since a modem is just an application of a serial IO port and it makes a lot of sense to bundle a driver that can be recognized and used by built-in Windows applications such as a Explorer and hyperterminal.
Think of the built in modem as a very cheap way to implement dial up networking. No need to use third party stuff, it should be part of the computer just as the mouse has become a part of the built in interfaces (remember bus mice???).
Also, look for video, USB and ethernet to be incorporated by Intel. I'm not quite so sure about EIDE, SCSI and Firewire.
Note too the tie up recently between cable modems using USB and Cisco, Intel, Sony, etc....
USXR modems will soon go the way of the add on IO boards and memory expansion cards. Only speciality items such as RS422, ISDN, Digicards, and the like will continue as they are niche markets for specialized users.
Tony |