The Internet Appliance: I just spent another three hours tearing my hair out of my head fixing my parents computer. Why can’t someone put together an Internet Appliance that connects to a website, offers a full featured office-style product, web browsing, email, and on-line HD storage without the hassle of buying and setting up an entire PC. My parents will never be able to run Windows XP and I can’t afford to be their full time tech support. The 3-D card, 160GB hard drive, DVD drive, CD-RW, and 2.8GHZ processor are complete and utter overkill.
OUTSOURCING: Recently, our IT department had to look for a payroll-processing agent. So we put out a bid received the usual responses from U.S. firms, and of course, a quote from India that was at least 40% cheaper. We all just looked at each other.
Isn’t this what Lou Gerstner called for at Comdex (rip) in 1994? The powers that be really don’t want this any more than the automakers want you to buy a car without power assist everything and performance upgrades on the engine to run it all.