Doug, you may have just said it all, i.e., that both your lap top and your desk top are "good enough" with current processors and that there is no present "compelling need to upgrade". If we assume that most folks on SI are pretty heavy duty PC users and that you can be considered representative, that is a fairly dim outlook for the current state of the state. It also answers why Andy Grove and Bill Gates have been frantically running around doing all sorts of seemingly strange things: battle for the eyeballs, investing in cable and web tv companies, introducing low end chips, and all that. MSFT hasn't even begun a PR campaign on win 98 telling us all why life on this planet as we know it will stop unless and until we upgrade! And as for the non-SI PC user world, well those sub-$1000 PC's seem to be working very nicely for word processing and sending e-mail, and. . . . .what else was I supposed to be doing with this box?
That in fact is precisely why my portfolio is bandwidth and communications oriented vis a vis DELL, for example, oriented.
My only remaining thesis for the semi guys is that lower average selling prices will force the chip makers to invest in the equipment that will permit them to squeeze more chips out of each silicon wafer and therefore it is INTC that will have to upgrade! This should be good news for AMAT, CYMI, and DPMI to take a few of my favorites but I have to admit that it's a gutsy call just now as we seem to be in a real market shift. To show you what a Luddite I am, my home PC is a 486 that I've been sticking more RAM into every year or so and the old girl seems to keep on ticking.
I am now considering a new machine since she's faltering a bit but it's not like I feel an emergency coming on. I am as techno clutz as they come and am just trying to figure out what portable PC will work with a home PC --do people even do the docking station trick any more? Strange times! Mike Doyle |
