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Technology Stocks : Dell Technologies Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sig who wrote (162030)	10/11/2000 12:10:00 PM
From: hdl	Respond to of 176387

there is still oil in the strategic reserve

To: Sig who wrote (162030)	10/11/2000 5:43:39 PM
From: calgal	Respond to of 176387

OT Over the next decade, we can expect to see unpredictable changes in the computer industry. Most of these trends will sneak up on users. They'll go slow at first; then they'll soar like rockets. Having any massive change take place in stealth mode is always frightening. Most of us who got involved in personal computing in the mid-1970s knew that computers would be very popular, but nobody could predict just how popular. Even Bill Gates has commented that he knew he was going to build a successful software company, but he didn't know it was going to be quite so big. The Rockets The Internet is a prime example of a trend suddenly rocketing out of control. There was a lot of talk about the Internet in the early 1990s, and I had heard of the Web even before the emergence of the GUI browser. If I had had a clue at the time, I would have bought general domain names like Art.com. But I didn't do that. Even those who actually saw the potential for the Web early on could not have predicted the dot-com mania that would take place years later. I recall early Web sites from when Mosaic was released for the Macintosh. The Web seemed like a cool thing, but how important it would become remained elusive. I love to chide Apple about its failure to capitalize on the emerging Net (the company instead brought out a failed online service), since it had the first browser. But during this early period, nobody was guessing right. The visionaries who spotted the Web early were mostly crackpots or people who saw a blockbuster trend under every bed. To them, everything was the next big thing, so believing them was difficult. One pattern I've noticed over the years regarding important trends is that there is a good long period where the trend can coalesce. You don't have to be on top of the trend at the very moment it begins. Seven years passed before PCs became all the rage. The Internet has actually been around in some form or other since 1969. The Web was invented in 1989. Cell phones were 10 years old before they became popular. So what we want to do is jump into something that is simmering and hope it can last long enough to take off like a rocket. This is tougher than it looks. In fact, this may be impossible. Many of us recall machines from Northstar during the early days of computing. Later came PC clones such as those from Hyperion. All are long gone. An early investment in Dell would have been dandy, but who knew? On the Radar Let's look at the current emerging trends that could easily take off like rockets: Laptop computing. The timing is right for laptop computing to go to a new level. Many of us have been predicting that the laptop will become the desktop over time and that people will no longer use two machines. What changes if that happens? Who wins? Who loses? Hand-held computing. There is no doubt that the little pocket computers led by Palm and Visor, followed by CE machines, will make a monster market. We all laughed when John Sculley predicted that hand-helds would be a trillion-dollar market. They will be for sure, someday. But when? And what company will dominate? Telecommuting. This trend has been slowly evolving over the years but has yet to have huge societal impact. Someday it will, and the repercussions from real estate prices to unionization issues will emerge and change everything. Timing is important here. Is telecommuting sneaking up on us, or will it take forever? Cable/satellite connectivity. This trend has been creeping up slowly, and few have noticed how much has been changed by it. When the first cable TV operators were building an infrastructure, who would have predicted that cable TV networking would become what it has? Cell phones. We think cell phones are already a huge trend. But what about IP-addressable phones and Internet-enabled phones? What will really come of these? This trend is about to break out, and we hear a lot of predictions about the path it will follow, but many are half-baked. zdnet.com