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Technology Stocks : Semi-Equips - Buy when BLOOD is running in the streets! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ian@SI who wrote (4309)	1/5/1998 10:03:00 PM
From: Investor2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10921

RE: "I suspect they'll be content until they see their neighbour's / friend's / colleague's $3000 - 5000 PC whiz through something in milliseconds that takes them minutes to perform. Then the upgrades and the replacements will start fast and furious." I couldn't have said it better. In fact, I think I'll take this opportunity to vent an opinion that I've been holding back. I'm sick and tired of hearing all of the stories about how a 166 mhz computer is "good enough," since all people use it for is surfing the web and the restriction for this use is bandwidth and download rate. Bul&*%$#t!!! First of all, any Pentium II user knows that surfing the net is much faster on his machine (with the 4 meg video memory, AGP graphics system, 64 meg of fast SDRAM memory, etc., etc.) than a 166 mhz clone with 16 meg ram. Secondly, the presumption is that the only thing computers are used for is surfing the Net. Not true, most people make use of the computer for many other tasks, some of which are very graphics-intensive and require some computer power (games, editing photographs for greeting cards or T-shirts, etc.). Thirdly, the opinion of "Oh, well, this machine is good enough," is just not the American way. We as a people are driven to buy better and better "things." When was the last time you heard someone say: "I think I'll just buy an old clunker, instead of buying that shiny, new luxury sedan. It will get me around just fine." I guess you can tell that I just don't buy into the idea that sub-$1,000 computers will be the product that destroys Moore's Law. The sub-$1,000 computer will not replace the cutting edge systems. Rather, people will buy one or two sub-$1,000 PCs as second and third machines for the wife and kids. We will see more and more two- and three-computer families. And you are right when you say, "we'll see a resulting wave of buying that will dwarf what's seen now." Best wishes, I2

To: Ian@SI who wrote (4309)	1/6/1998 12:02:00 PM
From: geoffrey Wren	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10921

Ian: Do $3,000 machines really surf faster than $1,000 machines? It seems to me that the major impediment to surfing is the inherent low speed of the net through the provider, and/or possibly the limit of the copper wire into the house to carry the full 28k or whatever. I have never seen my USR 28k modem register faster than 14 k or so (and very seldom above 5k), at home or office. And speed for sites like Silicon Investor is not very important. For downloading programs it is, and viewing pictures or video it is. Just to register a somewhat different view of things. However, I would tend to agree with you in a big way when cable modems come on line. Then there will be massive upgrading. My concern is whether initially the underlying net will be able to push bytes as fast as people will want to draw them with their new cable modems. It may lead to more fee internet sites. I caught flack for saying this before, but as the VCR machine got its start from pornography (those crappy first machines were $1,000), I think that many of the first URL's that can push streaming video on cable modems will be adult content. But that will just be the tip of the new surfing opportunities with the cable modem. Just mo. Geoff Wren