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Gentle HP 3000 List Members,
I wrote a long answer to Wirt's post, and then opted not to send it.
 Instead, I just make the following two quick points:

Point 1: The current state of affairs.
The low-cost PC's, some approaching $500, doomed the NC before the latter
even got off the ground.  However the PC makers are not making much profit
on these low-end boxes, so they will sell you anything else they can.

The problem for PC makers is that PC's are now too powerful.  The high-end
PC's are running over 1500 MIPS and there is no slackening of the pace of
progress.  We have now reached the point where the vast majority of PC
users do not need the newest, fastest PC's.  They are very satisfied with
the 300, 350 and 400 Pentium II boxes and just cannot justify anything
faster.  We have come a long way from the 486s trying desperately to run
Windows 95 on 8MB.  The latest crop of high-end systems are 450 MHz Pentium
II with 64 or 128 MB of SDRAM on a 100MHz motherboard, 18 GB of UltraDMA
disk drive, a third generation DVD-ROM or a 40X CD-ROM and an AGP video
card with 4 or 8 MB DRAM.  Starting Microsoft Word takes 4 seconds or less.
 How do you justify getting a 500 or 600 MHz box next year?  The
applications that require these systems are just not there. Right now,
about the only things, apart from games, that can draw some benefits from
higher speed machines are voice recognition and graphics packages such as
CAD or imaging.  And this is what has the PC makers worried and this is why
they are looking to other areas to increase their profit margins.

Point 2: The way Larry Ellison wants it to be.
I noticed that in all the articles I read about NC and network-centric
computing, the database mentioned is always Oracle.  Larry Ellison would
dearly love to be the successor to Bill Gates.  He just wants people to
store all their data on large servers running Oracle instances.  SUN would
love to have all these large servers be SUN machines and simply watch the
PC be replaced by the NC.

When the first PC's were introduced in the early 80's, a lot of people had
an oh-hum attitude about them.  Everybody in the business at the time, just
looked on these things as mere toys. No one ever figured they would one day
threaten the dominion of the mainframe and the minis.  That reminded me of
the introduction of the mini-computer over a decade before.  In those days,
the mainframe guys looked on the mini-computers as mere toys.  They never
figured the minis would one day threaten the supremacy of the mainframes.
 The French have a saying about this: "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme
chose."

When the mini really took off, everyone predicted the "inevitable" demise
of the mainframe.  Didn't happen.  When the PC's took off and networking
became fashionable, everyone predicted the "inevitable" demise of the minis
and those dinosaurish mainframe.  Again, didn't happen.  When the NC's
started (but didn't take off), Larry Ellison and his cronies, predicted the
demise of the PC.  Guess what, didn't happen.

We'll talk again in 5 years.

Kind regards,

Denys. . .

Denys Beauchemin
HICOMP America, Inc.
(800) 323-8863  (281) 288-7438         Fax: (281) 355-6879
denys at hicomp.com                             www.hicomp.com


-----Original Message-----
From:   Wirt Atmar [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent:   Friday, 27 November, 1998 2:24 PM
To:     [log in to unmask]
Subject:        The end of the PC

There is another one of these articles on the web that essentially predicts
the end of the PC -- at least as a standalone processor. As I have
mentioned
before, I rather strongly agree with this prediction, and have for some
time.
The best place to process and retrieve data is -- and always has been -- on
the host, particularly so in a commercial environment.

This particular article is at:

     http://www.abcnews.com:80/sections/tech/CNET/cnet_pcnc981125.html

It's worth reading twice, in order to let the weight of what these people
are
saying sink in. A year ago, Michael Dell said that he was absolutely
opposed
to the idea of a PC being used as a terminal. Now, Dell is wholeheartedly
embracing the notion of a network/terminal computer, probably for no other
reason than the handwriting is on the wall, written plainly enough that it
can't be ignored.

The reason that Michael Dell (and others) have been so opposed to the idea
of
PCs being used as simple terminals (whether web-based or not) is that such
a
move puts a greater premium on low cost, where margins are extremely thin
for
the PC manufacturers, than it does on constantly increasing performance in
the
devices themselves. The PC only has to be fast enough to create its various
displays sufficiently quickly.

Wirt Atmar