Paul - I think I can respond as someone who has bought a fair amount of home software (let alone the stuff I've been getting in my day job to help me do my job) in the past six months. I'll list my purchases -
1. Microsoft Publisher 97
2. Scanner and (effectively scanning software)
3. Kai's PhotoSoap
4. Family TreeMaker 4.0 from Broderbund
5. Microsoft Office Professional 97
6. Cleansweep 3.0 by QuarterDeck
7. Norton Utilities 3.0
Each piece of SW is great - loaded with spiffy features, usually a lot more than I can use until I really study how to exploit all the functionality to get what I am trying to do done better or to inspire completely new applications. What they all have in common is this.
1. All load slower than can be imagined (Dell Dimension 90MHz Pentium)
2. All take up much more disk space than you would guess.
3. If the sw is an upgrade, the new features are really useful
4. I have gotten used to - but not happy with - waiting a surprisingly long time for things to get done.
Result: I am going to be in the market for a new machine, probably a 300 Mhz Pentium II, about 6 months from now. Do I absolutely need a new machine - no (I did need an additional drive and additional memory to keep going though). Is my old machine sufficient to do the jobs I try to do - yes. But it's getting to be less fun.
So even though I could keep going with my current machine, I'm gonna upgrade, keep the second machine as a backup (maybe experiment with a low cost network between the two machines).
For the same reason that most people don't drive their cars 180,000 miles, trying to ring the last possible miles out of the old clunker, people trade up because they want the safety, convenience and sometimes the implied status of a new (or recent vintage previously owned) car. We could probably all get by driving our cars way out to the edge, but most folks decide at some point that they want (for good reasons and bad) a "new" car. Some folks nowadays, including my cousin who is an SI participant, never even buy a car but simply continually lease new cars every 3 years. And cars are an order of magnitude more costly than a PC. So I'm hardly concerned about whether there will be sales of high-end PCs to the home market. There will be.
Same story in the business world. My (large) organization just got through installing for everyone in the company 133 MHz Pentium machines from Dell with 32 Meg of RAM, CD ROMS, Windows NT and a hatfull of networked applications. Only problem is that the 133 MHz Pentium slows down intolerably on big schedules with Project 98 and other common programs. CAD programs that are being ported over to NT-based PCs also are pretty slow. So there is a groundswell of screaming at my company to replace-upgrade the PCs that were just put in. So I'm hardly concerned about whether there will be sales of high-end PCs to the business market. There will be.
What about the 1K processor? Paul, here I disagree with you. I think these are a steal in terms of the technology and capability you are buying for the money and they are perfect for the newbie. I am looking into getting one for my in-laws so they can have email capabilities with their grandchildren and for some fun. Microsoft Works and Internet Explorer is more than they need. They don't need anything more and they never will. What has happened is that there is a brand new market - the technophobe who sort of knows that it might be useful or fun to have a PC around but isn't motivated to spend 2 or 3 big ones for the experiment. Great market - lots of those folks. Undemanding about features and upgradability. Some will upgrade, most won't. So as I see it, the old markets are healthy and growing and the new low-end market is ripe for some Intel innovation to lower the cost still further.
Also, I believe the Asian mess is real but has become a diversion that has mesmerized the investment community, in part because any company with any bad news can now say Asia and get away with it (See Kodak and their explanation that the quarter was weak because of poor sales in that hotbed of snapshot film buying, Malaysia - not the red hot competition from Fuji). I would say that Intel is now a long term screaming buy.
Good investing and a happy holiday season,
Burt |
