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To: Rob S. who wrote (13961)	10/14/2000 9:06:17 PM
From: crazyoldman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

Rob, Re: There is little question that the evolution of the PC is closer to an end. I don't subscribe to this idea. I see growth and usefulness of some of the new devices just starting to appear, but I don't see the end of the PC or its evolution on the horizon. I'm interested in what you are thinking, would you care to elaborate? Kindest regards, CrazyMan

To: Rob S. who wrote (13961)	10/14/2000 9:45:56 PM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 275872

RE: Death of the PC. These projections have been around for more than a decade, they have always proved to be wrong. Yes, there are other things like cellphones and PDAs that are slurping down chips and tantalum caps like there is no tomorrow, but there are about as likely to displace the PC as the game machines were supposed to do originally (remember the Coleco Adam?). Or the Internet Appliances after them. Whether or not 1GHz+ processors are needed or reasonably, people very well may decide that they want them. If history is any indications, they will. Possibly not in the numbers of the past, but there is no sign they won't. Realistically speaking, does anyone really need anything faster than 200MHz machine? Sure, some games will soak up those cycles, but if the hardware wasn't there, those games wouldn't have been written to use that much power. Do you really need a 600MHz machine with 20 gig, ultrfast hard drives, 17 inch monitors and 128 meg of RAM just so that the OS boots well? What will be needed when all of the icons are real-time raytraced in 24 bit color and 16 bits of transparency with speech recognition and a moderately competant AI controlling everything? Want to lay bets that something like that won't happen if the power is available and cheap enough? No, none of these things really make sense, but there is a substantial market out there. Having called a drop off of interest in faster machines several times, and been wrong every blasted time, I've thrown in the towel. I very well may not live long enough to see these complex, cranky, hard to use things actually die. People complain, but they still buy them. PS, don't believe the Microsoft guff about Win2k not needing more than WinNT4.0. For one, the minimum WinNT4.0 system requirements have been upgraded over time. For another, Win2k runs better with more resources. Remember that Win95 had a recommended hardware list that wasn't a whole lot more than Win3.x required. But it ran so much better with 16 meg than 8 meg, and a faster processor made it so much nicer, and...