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Microsoft and Windows go back to the very beginning of the PC -- when people couldn't afford them, when networks were defined by terminal emulators and floppy disks, and when many of the Google pioneers were in diapers. Looking back at what Windows initially did and considering what Windows 7 is capable of, you can certainly say a lot has changed. Looking back at Windows Vista, you can add "thank god" to that. Windows 7 comes at an important juncture, but is the whole concept of the PC soon to be obsolete?
I'm sorry Mr. Enderle, but I gotta call Bs. Why? Two words-Bandwidth caps. You might be one of the lucky ones that are living in a major city with multiple ISPs to choose from, but as someone who has crossed this great country I can tell you that most places just aren't like that.
Most places if you are LUCKY is a duopoly, many are a monopoly, and in both situations you have large corps that have NO REASON to bother with upgrades to their backbone, and they certainly aren't gonna give a fudge if OnLive works are not. In my own situation I'm looking at a 36Gb cap(cable) or 50Gb(very slow DSL) and $1.50 per Gb going over, and I am FAR from alone.
So in short Mr. Enderle, while services like OnLive might work in limited markets like NY and L.A., the rest of us need PCs because it is far cheaper to simply walk into a store and by software for hardware we have at home than it is paying for the bandwidth something like OnLive would chew through.
And gaming PCs have never been cheaper, in my own case I paid $650 before rebates for 8Gb of RAM, dual core AMD, 1Tb of HDD, and a 4650 ATI with 1Gb on the card. Add in $50 I paid for a copy of Win7 HP and you have a gaming PC that will keep me quite happy for awhile, and if I ever need more power a simple $80 GPU upgrade will pop me right back into the game.
So while I'm glad you live in a place where "cloud computing" is actually viable, short of nationalizing the last mile for most of us it will remain nothing but smoke.
Most places if you are LUCKY is a duopoly, many are a monopoly, and in both situations you have large corps that have NO REASON to bother with upgrades to their backbone, and they certainly aren't gonna give a fudge if OnLive works are not. In my own situation I'm looking at a 36Gb cap(cable) or 50Gb(very slow DSL) and $1.50 per Gb going over, and I am FAR from alone.
So in short Mr. Enderle, while services like OnLive might work in limited markets like NY and L.A., the rest of us need PCs because it is far cheaper to simply walk into a store and by software for hardware we have at home than it is paying for the bandwidth something like OnLive would chew through.
And gaming PCs have never been cheaper, in my own case I paid $650 before rebates for 8Gb of RAM, dual core AMD, 1Tb of HDD, and a 4650 ATI with 1Gb on the card. Add in $50 I paid for a copy of Win7 HP and you have a gaming PC that will keep me quite happy for awhile, and if I ever need more power a simple $80 GPU upgrade will pop me right back into the game.
So while I'm glad you live in a place where "cloud computing" is actually viable, short of nationalizing the last mile for most of us it will remain nothing but smoke.
