On 22 May 2006 at 8:46, Diane Poremsky wrote:

> I think you underestimate the number of people who use the internet for just
> email and basic web surfing - whose life is not tied to online 24/7... and
> you don't know my sisters. :) 

No, I think you overestimate the significance of your tiny sample set.

> .. hey they don't have cable tv... why would they
> want HDTV streamed over the internet? :)

Right, and you conclude that "folk who don't watch TV' is a significant 
sample set and extrapolate from that, rather than consider that they 
might be very-far-removed outliers.

> .. There are a heck of a lot of people
> like my sister/sister-in-law who don't use a lot of bandwidth but who want
> faster-than-dialup. Yes, devs will create bandwidth hungry apps, but there
> is a large group of people who don't care and will be the last to adopt
> them.

We only disagree on the magnitude of 'large' -- look at how many blogs 
there are, and how many folk flock to myspace and its ilk.  Yes, there 
are the "old generation" who think that checking your email more than 
once a week is excessive and can't imagine why you'd want to carry a cell 
phone with you everywhere or have an internet feed in your car...  But as 
Dylan wrote, "The times they are a-changin" and I think that the 
overwhelming preponderance of the "new face" of the Internet are folk who 
are comfortable with it and have it as a part of their lives.  They're as 
happy emailing a video to their grandparents as a couple of jpgs, etc...  
They use an online whitepages/yellowpages directory, rather than even 
THINK of digging out the dead-tree phone books [and dial '411' -- how 
quaint.. (not to mention expensive for most providers], why buy or use 
maps when Google Earth is so much better than any dead-tree map has ever 
been, etc...  and the bandwidth goes up and up..

And as the app developers come up with newer/clever (and of course, 
bandwidth-hungry) apps, more and more of the holdouts will get sucked in. 
Obviously ourMMV on this, but I think that betting on "large numbers of 
folk being content with low bandwidth connections" is a losing 
proposition.  

  /Bernie\

-- 
Bernie Cosell                     Fantasy Farm Fibers
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]     Pearisburg, VA
    -->  Too many people, too few sheep  <--       

--
                ----------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Is your picture included in the Official Win-Home List Members Profiles Page?
 http://www.besteffort.com/winhome/Profiles.html
If not, write to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Reply via email to