Race to the bottom

As smartphones, computers and internet devices have nearly reached the limits of computing power, measuring transistors in nanometers and packing new processors with multiple cores, a strange though inevitable development has accrued: a race to the bottom.

Transistors are now so small and densely packed they can’t efficiently pack more into an enclosed space without excessive heat interfering with their operations. Research into molecular transistors and quantum computing is hot now, but still years away from replacing the classic computers we use at work and at home. Add to this the competition from wildly popular tablets and smartphones, and we see a paradigm shift.

Moore’s Law stated that the number of transistors manufacturers could place on a single chip roughly doubled in an exponential fashion, and there was a public demand for more power and features expected with both new hardware and software. But both of these truisms seem to no longer apply.

The hidden hand: The marketplace

But the market is fickle and now there is a race on to see who can provide the cheapest computing device without sacrificing too many features offered by the traditional PC.

Surprisingly, it went with little notice that Microsoft’s System 7, upon release, required about the same system resources as its predecessor, the widely reviled Windows Vista.

Now there is a new technology race on, to increase processing power on a new generation of chips, such as the ARM 7 and Intel’s Atom processor, used in portable and convertible devices while consuming as little power as possible, a demand created by the public’s focus toward these devices and away from the desktop PC.

Sales of new PC’s have dropped by from 15 to 25 percent, depending on the source and the manufacturers’ own financials.

So what does this mean for you, the consumer?

For one, hold on to that family PC a while longer, because there are a slew of replacement devices which just might render your PC obsolete in a year or two. And don’t worry about falling behind the power curve; PC’s as we know them are about as fast as we can drive them now and new operating systems and software packages will not continue to demand processing power you don’t already possess.

You might be enticed by falling prices for new PC’s, but I believe this money would be well spent after the new devices, many of which you’ve never heard of, reach the market and carry smaller price tags than computers, but which are just as capable of your daily work as your Old Reliable. And many of these are convertibles, morphing from tablets to laptops, only with longer lasting batteries, portability and a versatility unthought of just a few years ago.

Microsoft discounts?

Proof of this comes directly from Microsoft itself. Microsoft is offering its new Windows 8 and Office licenses at deep discount to makers of devices with smaller displays. In March, Microsoft lowered screen resolution requirements for Windows 8. Its next iteration of Windows 8, code-named Windows Blue, is rumored to include versions for smaller tablets and convertibles, complete with lower prices.

But what’s coming?

Microsoft has become, after long last, a hardware manufacturer as well as an operating system factory. (Side note of no direct relevance. I once tried to open up the operating system of one of my Macs with a text editor. I did indeed find a message: “Help, help. We’re being held prisoner in a system software factory!” I tried it a few years later and got almost the same message: “Help, help, we’re still being held prisoner in a system software factory!”)

Quoting from an especially insightful article from ZDNet: Since 2012, “computing ‘biodiversity’ has bloomed: smartphones, tablets, desktops, eReaders, phablets, and form factors that peaked and fell quickly (like netbooks). In fact, we are living in an era of unprecedented experimentation — a flowering of myriad computing form factors attempting to carve out their own evolutionary pathways.”

Some of these latest devices soon to hit the market include:

• The 27-inch multi-user Lenovo A720 furniture tablet.
• The 23-inch HP Envy Touchsmart all in one PC.
• The 18-inch Dell XPS All-In-One tablet/desktop hybrid.
• The 13-inch Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga convertible (where do they get these names?).
• The 11-inch Asus VivoTab TF810C tablet, stylus, hybrid.
• The 10.6-inch Microsoft Surface Pro tablet/laptop hybrid

This is not to mention an entirely new category of 7 to 8-inch Windows 8/RT hybrids.

All you care to eat

Microsoft is counting on its new line of hybrids, which are essentially tablets which fold into laptops, have a touch screen interface, and to which one attaches a keyboard, to be the next big thing, the next evolutionary step in computing.

One gets, in an all you can eat package, a tablet, a laptop, seamless integration with System 8 starting with its phones through its tablets to its hybrid laptops, and the kitchen sink. Ambitious, yes. Practical? We’ll see. Will it be the device that replaces the PC and renders stand alone tablets obsolete? Doubtful.

So where’s the demand?

I say this for two reasons. One, the RT is ambitious but people now are wedded to their single-purpose devices — they have found ways of being productive and to entertain themselves and to stay in touch with their community of friends and family with their tablets, phones and computers.

This may be a case of Microsoft overreaching, though, with more than 90 percent of office and home PC’s running Windows, overreaching may not be an epic fail for the software giant.

Another con: Microsoft has never been a computer maker itself, and though the forthcoming devices listed above are all designed to run Windows 8, Microsoft is new to the game, an inapt metaphor considering their success with the X-Box.

The race to the bottom, the headline of this column, refers not to computing power itself, but how cheaply a manufacturer can deliver the most diverse line of computing devices to willing buyers, while using new chips that sip battery power as they deliver full PC capabilities to the users.

I find myself to be skeptical that Microsoft can pull it off. If Steve Jobs had been first to announce such a game-changing philosophy, I might more easily have believed it possible. But even Jobs was wrong sometimes: recall the Apple Lisa? The first portable (nicknamed “luggable”) Macintosh?

We live in interesting times. Computing and always-on access to the Internet are now not just for work or hobbyists. They permeate our lives to an extent nobody ever predicted.

Takeaways

Things to take away from this article:

1. The forms our devices are evolving and in flux and nobody can predict what species will survive and take over the reins currently held, tenuously, by the computer.
2. Prices will drop as competition soars, even as the price for CPU’s and other components drop.
3. We as consumers will become even more confused by what to buy to best suit our needs.
4. These are all good things as we are transitioning to new productivity, communication and entertainment connections to the Internet.
5. Don’t buy any new multipurpose device till it has matured and gained a measure of both market share and reasonably wide adoption, especially if it costs more than $200.
6. We’re getting along fine with the devices we already own. Just be kind to them and they should serve you well enough and long enough for the market to decide on the future of computing.

After all, to quote the master screenwriter/director Edward D. Wood, “We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives.”