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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joe NYC who wrote (43400)	12/30/1997 6:52:00 PM
From: Paul Fiondella	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 186894

CPU at bottom of the list You summarized Intel's problems. They are still offering incremental performance improvements at astronomical price hikes. The market has moved to the perception of CPU being less important that bandwidth. I think Intel is in a real fix. That is why they are obsoleting the MMX series as rapidly as possible --- between the Pentium and the PII Slot Two, its all junk. Why pay for junk? You know my AMD K6-233 running NT is at 5% CPU utilization most of the time.

To: Joe NYC who wrote (43400)	12/30/1997 10:59:00 PM
From: mauser96	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 186894

Good point, but where you would spend your money depends on what you use your computer for, and unless you have cable modem in your area substantial increase in bandwidth isn't available at any reasonable cost/benefit ratio. The phone companies are really not interested in providing better internet access, so it's up to the undercapitilized cable companies. Cable internet isn't cheap- it costs more than twice the usual phone $19.95 per month. A years cable internet service will set you back $500 to $600 per year, not including the initial installation costs. A heavy user of the internet will spend his money on cable, but a CAD engineer will want a faster computer. Most of us will want some combination of computer speed and internet speed. I agree with your premise that microprocessor speed is becoming less important. Intel investors need a breakthrough "must have" ap requiring faster computers. I usually upgrade about once a year but it will probably be 18 to 24 months between upgrades now. My P200 is still fast enough to do almost everything I want done.

To: Joe NYC who wrote (43400)	1/3/1998 4:16:00 PM
From: stak	Respond to of 186894

1997:Year of the cable modem WHAT? Are you joking?!? No,dead serious. Quick what was 1984 the year of? Ans. The MacIntosh. Not many actually bought one that year but there's no forgeting the impact that it has had in the personal computer world. Oh what if Apple had only... 1) The cable modem has excellent bandwidth, pipes that POTS can only dream of. The cable modem makes multimedia reasonably downloadable from web sites. Much better than the long wait that it takes to download on telephone modems. 2)The cable modem doesn't tie up the telephone line. It's totally independent in operation from the cable tv signal too. So you can watch or record any tv program while using the modem. It's possible that many 2nd telephone lines could be given back to the telephone company as cable modems grow in availability. 3)Cable modems are connected all the time to the net so there's no chance of getting a busy signal as with telephone modems. Also the modem handshake screech is eliminated(oh silence is golden). Push technology is also much more feasible because the info downloads could come in as soon as they are received --not when the user finally logs in to check, as is necessary with telephone modems-- 4)The cost of the cable modem is only incrementally more than a telephone line and unlimited ISP plan. A real steal really. Downsides of the cable modem are limited availability and a supposed lack of security due to the LAN nature of cable infrastructure. But consider this, the cable modems have been available to the general public for more than 1 year. I haven't heard of a single major breach of the system. Has anyone heard of one, even small ones? The telcos would gladly give their first born to give the cable companies a little bad press due to security or operational problems. So what does this have to do with Intel-Microsoft? Well Microsoft has already paid $1 billion for 11.5% of Comcast declaring their endorsement of the cable modem as a top choice to bring broadband to PC users.Microsoft has also spent large amounts of money to bring MSNBC and Web TV to end users. Intel does not seem to value content nearly as much as Microsoft and that scares me. After hardware "hits the wall" content is king. Why isn't Intel buying into software and content to a more significant degree? It's beyond me! The edge definitely goes to the Microsoft side. C'mon Intel, come out to play. Don't be chicken shit. This is where the battle will be fought for the next 2-3years(bandwidth and content)The microprocessor will take a backseat for the first time ever in PC history. The ''fat'' pipes will fundamentally change the look and feel of the web. Look for @Home to draw the blueprint of what future web browsing will be like with its high speed parallel internet network.Analogy: It's like the building of the Interstate Superhighways years ago. Finally the roads caught up with the speed capabilities of the car. --Bandwidth,bandwidth,bandwidth and content.-- Maybe SUN computers is right "the network is the computer";-). To put it a bit crudely, using POTS to surf the web will be like sucking hindtit at the local pigpen(website). No doubt cable modems will be intergral in the evolution of computer use. A quantum leap away from cpu centric computing. Speed Kills: DON'T BE ROADKILL ON THE DIGITAL HIGHWAY*