Every so often, something truly magical appears and changes the universe forever. Recent marvels like wireless and digital content are just two examples that come to mind. Each changed our expectations of what’s possible.
Every so often, something truly magical appears and changes the universe forever. Recent marvels like wireless and digital content are just two examples that come to mind. Each changed our expectations of what’s possible.
I think the personal computer is a marvel as well. However, the PC’s pixie dust is starting to lose its luster. Sure, the personal computer is indispensable, but it’s getting a little… well… old.
For most users, the difference between one gigahertz and two is largely irrelevant, and it seems as if the only reason to buy a new computer is to keep up with the innovations being made in separate, albeit related technologies, such as graphics acceleration, wireless networking, and high-density, high-performance storage.
For example, if you want to play Doom 3, you’ll need the requisite gear to push all of those pixels. Otherwise, last year’s beige box is just as good as this year’s beige box. (I think Bill Gates famously said, “You can have any color you want, so long as it’s beige.”) Even if you own a Mac — which is decidedly not beige, thanks to Apple’s Jonathan Ive — its purpose, like its Wintel cousins, remains the same as it ever was.
In fact, over the last few years, even as clock speeds and memory capacities have exploded, the application of the personal computer has ironically become less varied. More and more, the PC is simply a window into that other modern marvel, the Internet (and its more…
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