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

To: David Rosenthal who wrote (5524)	5/25/1998 12:43:00 AM
From: shane forbes	Respond to of 10921

David: Re: Some of the proposed Internet technologies, in particular Microsoft's Chrome, trade-off bandwidth versus local processing power. Data is sent over the Internet highly compressed to be processed on your local machine. Give you one guess as to why MSFT likes this. It puts the need for greater computing power on the client and that MSFT loves, INTC loves - WINTEL lovey dubby. ---- Re: Fast CPU's are necessary. Content is the key here. If the Internet content is good enough and you need a PII 400+ to display it in full multimedia glory, then this could be an additional upgrade driver for home PC's. I do agree but let me digress a bit! BUT don't we always need faster processing power later? What is unusual today is that for the first time that I can recall we don't need faster processing power today. Unfortunately, the way current processor innovations and sharp price reductions have progressed the chips needed to process your kind of multimedia content may be down to $50 a chip 2 years from now. OK lets say $100. Maybe a $500 PC could do all the multimedia fun that you describe 2 years from now. So we will have an upgrade cycle but one that INTC won't have a $300-500 CPU in. Today INTC has to convince everyone they need a faster processor. How do they do it? They can't! Thus $1,000 PCs with 56K modems are all the rage. Set top boxes are selling well. Unless MSFT invents yet another "better version" of WORD why do we need a faster processor for the home or office today? I don't think we do. Shane. (agree with basic premise though that as multimedia - voice esp. - gets going the need for CPU increases. But first come the fatter pipes - the longer the fatter pipes take to develop the cheaper, more commodotized the CPUs will become...)