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Technology Stocks : IDTI - an IC Play on Growth Markets -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Harold Engstrom who wrote (4627)	11/5/1997 10:00:00 PM
From: David Tesorero	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 11555

Harold, Idt can and will sell at LEAST 3% by 1998 year end. The sub 1000 PC is now a fact of life. It's a huge market and Idt only wants a TINY TINY crumb of INTC's business. At this point, I think it would be hard not to capture 3% of the market. I know that lots of people on this thread think Idt's management is weak. IMHO, Idt is a VERY well run and managed company. Idti has a very good chance of being the rags to riches story of 1998. Go IDTI

To: Harold Engstrom who wrote (4627)	11/6/1997 12:25:00 AM
From: Rob S.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 11555

Take a look at these benchmarks - they make a point that Intel is no sacred cow. The performance of all processors, including the Pentium II, are not that far apart - not nearly as far apart as the price differential would indicate. Again the question to keep in mind is "What does the Pentium II or other MPU enable the user to do that the C6 doesn't? The current swarm of MPUs are so close together in performance characterisitcs that everyone in the industry is in the stupid habit of using contracted benchmark scaling. Does it matter to most users of Microsoft Office Suite, Lotus Notes, ACT Contact manager, or other most often used software that they can get 30% faster processor performance by paying three times the price? For that matter, equip one sub $1000 PC system with a C6 and 32 MB of RAM (<$90 memory cost), and another system using the Pentium 233 MMX or Pentium II and only 16 MB of memory, open a few applications like most people tend to do, and then judge the wonderful performance advantages of the more expensive Pentium systems. For that matter, you could afford to load the C6 system with 128 MB of memory and still be under the price of the Intel based systems! Unless you need to run graphics editing, CAD or other FPU intensive applications, their is not much advantage, if any, in paying for the Pentium II. "Yea but games may not run as well". I know more people who don't care about running the latest game software than who do. Gamers make up less than 12% of the overall PC marketplace. When the C6+ comes out it should be competitive in that camp as well. I'll say it again, MPU perfromance has reached an I/O bottleneck that causes performance differences are being throttled back from improvements seen historically from one generation to the next. Where is the 5X or 20X performance advancement that we say in moving from the 286 to the 386 to the 486 and then to the Pentium? Despite all the hype, the Pentium was not as great of a leap in performance from latter versions of 486s than were previous generation of MPUs. Windows software evolved to require higher performance parts but that is not the case today. Windows 98 is expected to tout higher refinement, greater stability and greater support for new features, susch as 3-D audio and video, bettermemory management and file system support, USB, IEEE394, etc. It is expected to run even faster and better on current genration systems than WIN 95. Ditto for WIN NT 5.0 which is said to be more scaleable across various platforms. If anything, the next generation of software will take better advantage of increased memory to provide gains in performance. When Windows 95 was introduced, the user of 486s slower than 100 MHz and Pentium 75s and 90s, quickly learned that their systems bogged down on this bloated new OS platform. The software forced a new generation of hardware to be needed. Microsoft is no fool; after briefings by Intel, they designed the software knowing full well what hardware would become available. Now they know that the convergence of the broadcast TV and the PC will eventually come about whether the PC industry wants it to or not. That means either learn to compete against consumer oriented (lower cost point, leaner and simpler) products or relagate yourself to higher-end market nitches. Now Microsoft is being constantly bombarded by customers, competitors and critics for the flakiness of Windows software. This has gone far beyond the point where Microsoft can arrogantly ignore it. Ask anyone who has attended one of MS's large invitation only product roll-outs that had a question and answer period or demonstration of new MS software. After Windows crashes for about the third time, and the speaker asks what people want, the number one answer is stability, and refinement, not globs and globs of new features, no matter how neat they appear to be. One of the biggest selling software categories is the WIN 95 crash protection, cleanup and debugging utilities from Symantec, Helix, Quarterdeck, etc. IBM is introducing its new Lotus office suite that is based on Java and does not require an OS to run on X86 systems. The biggest argument for Java is that it is easier to administer and requires less capable hardware platforms. The PC market is going through significant changes in which paying a large premium for what amounts to as marginal perfromance gains is often done more out of Pavlovian habit than solid thinking. Even dumb 'ol nobody consumers have confounded the industry experts who until recently evangelized that no-one with any sense would buy a sub $1000 system. Guess what, that category is now 35% of the industry total and is growing more rapidly than all others. That dumb 'ol consumer figured out that he/she can run their software just fine, thank you Intel. And pocket about a $600 difference (or load up on more memory, software and peripherals). There is a thriving market for low cost capable systems. Believe it or not, some people don't care much (or maybe never even know) that some other system is 25% faster. We computer centric types need to realize that not everyone is exactly like us. pctoday.com

To: Harold Engstrom who wrote (4627)	11/6/1997 1:46:00 AM
From: Charlie Tuna	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 11555

Harold,The PII is not the big threat....The slot 1 Mother Board is. Intel will start by pushing AGP then comes the increase to a 100 Mhz bus which is needed to feed a 300+ Mhz cpu.This will be the big play in 98.By the end of the first half of 98 Intel will be starting the big push to slot 1 for the low end and the 3 dwarfs (AMD,NSM,IDT) had better have a viable super socket 7 answer.This may well happen as AGP is allready coming out for socket 7. The 100 Mhz bus speed is also needed.If the dwarfs can offer these MB improvements along with advanced MMX and the 3D support for the MS 3D extensions then Intel will have a very hard time FUDDING the WORLD with there slot 1 BS. Still the odds are Intel makes it a slot 1 world and by 99 socket 7 is obsolete..... At least IDT has other major product lines besides the WinChip. By June of 98 the future prospects for the WinChip should be clear. Between now and then IDT should do very well. Charlie