Ian Lynch wrote:
On Mon, 2005-11-14 at 14:34 -0700, Robin Laing wrote:
I would hate to be that student working on my term paper that needs to
be handed in tomorrow when the network connection goes down due to a
problem with one of the many hops that I have to work through.
What do you do if there is a power cut?
It is easier to download OOo and get to work. Heck, I can take my
laptop anyplace and work. Forget about having to find a wireless link.
That is now. In the future it could well be that broadband on all the
time becomes the norm and wireless access is everywhere in urban
locations and free. Here in this office its pretty much like that
already. With VOIP we could save enough on telephone bills to afford a
very fast and reliable network connection.
We don't have any wireless for security reasons. We have looked at
VOIP which would be nice.
Gates is not so worried by what things are like now but what they are
going to be like in 5-10 years. The trend is to networked portable
technologies, to further lowering of hardware costs and free on-line
services paid for by advertising. Where does a fat client dependent high
cost software business model fit in that trend?
Mind in 5 years I guess that a $100 client with solid state storage will
easily hold an operating system and office productivity tools so maybe a
web based office will be used for other reasons such as to minimise the
use of files, to integrate information more closely with the web etc.
Whatever the case, I can't see many people paying more for their office
license or OS license than the whole of the cost of the device. The only
thing that could then save margins would be to compensate for loss in
value by increasing the product volume. If there is free access to web
based office software and desktop computers cost < $100 and have
pre-installed OS and Office software that is 100% compatible with the
on-line office software who is going to pay $300 for Windows and MSO?
If MS drop the price a factor of 10 they might stay in the game but that
means they have to sell 10 times as much stuff to stand still.
Isn't this the same person that stated that 640Mb of ram would be more
than enough? Isn't this the same person that came in late to the
Internet? Isn't this the same person that missed the search engine
boom started by Yahoo and expanded by Google?
I do agree, Gates is worried and he has a right to be. He sees that
the potential for advertising as a revenue source is vast. The issue
is will users be willing to put up with that. What I do see is the
price of hardware is dropping quickly. I received an ad yesterday for
an Athlon 64 system for under C$400.00 +monitor. How can I justify
spending and extra $300 just for productivity software? Especially
software that has some strange or restrictive rule about transferring
it or moving it to another computer.
If some of the trends I see come true, in 5-10 years, I really doubt
that I will be worrying about the cost of my computer much.
What I see is happening is a trend for rental as a revenue source.
Many companies are starting to do this. Instead of selling you the
necessary hardware to access their services, you now rent and the
monthly fee ends up costing you allot more. Of course that headaches
of not having to worry about equipment failures is a benefit.
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