 | | Stop the Megahertz Race By Kathleen Maher, Editor, Jon Peddie Associates Does a human exist who can feel the difference between a 1.8 GHz machine and a 2 GHz machine? And yet there are hundreds of dollars riding on the difference Stop the megahertz race. AMD, Apple and Intel are all ready to quit. And can you blame them? These companies are churning out chips faster than anyone seems to want them because they want to stay ahead of each other. Even more ironic, Intel and AMD have trained users to ask about the clock speed of the chips and they've been trained to pay more for a few megahertz here and there. Every year about this time, we are required to ask why people should buy new products simply because they're introduced. With Intel's 2 GHz chip the question comes up again, but this time AMD and Apple are asking the question. Even Intel at IDF admitted that the emphasis on megahertz has been misleading and has become counterproductive. The PC including Apple’s and AMDs, has hit a wall in terms of fast paced growth and adoption by consumers and home users. So when we're hit with the news that Intel has a 2 GHz Pentium 4 Processor and a 1 GHz Celeron, we're like a 15 year old with attitude. Our only response is, so? Let's face it, these new processors are designed for a different class of user and that user is not us. The industry is hoping we will need new computers once we fall for Windows XP. The new operating system practically crams new technologies like video editing, image processing, DVD watching, etc. down the user’s throat. (We expect Windows to pop up and ask, want to print a photo now? If you say no, it'll say: okay, when? Do you want to burn a CD?). On the one hand, in all the demos we've seen of Microsoft's new Windows XP we see an operating system that should make our lives easier and has jazzy features that we want. And actually, we rather believe that XP will push new purchases of computers and peripherals. But gosh, we're kind of tired of transferring all our data from one computer to another. It would really be nice to see the rat race slowed. Somehow, there just doesn't ever seem to be a focus on price instead of performance. How come there isn't a drive toward $100 computers? As processors hit a ceiling and apps settle in to a predictable demand, then the focus should be, we would imagine toward ever lower priced computers. It could well be that this will not be the job of Intel because the company simply isn't built that way. Intel is built to build. Likewise, Microsoft is built to assimilate. But some of those companies calling for the megahertz race to end, such as VIA and AMD could well be the ones to drive down the price of computers towards something that makes it more of a consumer device. Let's see, prices come down, applications stabilize, then we get real ease-of-use, and finally, we have something the industry claims to have wanted all along—a computer in every household. But here's the catch, it will cost $100 and not $1,000.  This editorial originally appeared on the JPA website. It is reprinted here with permission.
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