>As has been said here many times, the higher priced pcs just don't
>offer enough to a broad enough audience to stimulate big demand. A
>guy in The Houston Chronicle this morning was claiming faster mpcs,
>buses, and better graphics would make all pcs obsolete by the end of
>the year. Nonsense. The Internet is the main spur for new sales, and
>home office applications for repeat sales. You can't word process
>faster than you can type, unless you are a plagiarist. -g- Extra
>speed will be great for the gamers, but, for the rest of us, it's a
>big yawn until we have an app we need to speed up
Mike, this is true for now & next six months. But it is shortsighted to consider that it will continue.
First, Microsoft has still got a good game going with its upgrade cycle. A new operating system every three years (or oftener) that makes damn sure that you need a new machine. Perpetual upgrades to Office and BackOffice also that must have new machines if you want them to run with any speed. Right now, the business sector is sitting on its hands because both Windows 98 and NT 5.0 have slipped--this is creating the current lull.
Second, Continuous-speech voice dictation was introduced late last year for the PC. This, combined with a voice activated interface, is a killer app for both business and home. It's also computationally intensive.
Third, video is not yet mainstream. But demand for it will rise, especially for video conferences. Once it becomes mainstream, computers without it will be obsolete. This is waiting for improved bandwidth, but also requires big boxes on either end to do fast compression and decompression. |
