"…Think of Hardware as Being Free" - Bill Gates

[Jonathon Watkins]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=569&ncid=738&e=1&u=/nm/20040329/tc_nm/tech_microsoft_gates_dc' target='_blank'>http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...rosoft_gates_dc</a><br /><br /></div>Yahoo News report Bill Gates as saying: "Ten years out, in terms of actual hardware costs you can almost think of hardware as being free -- I'm not saying it will be absolutely free -- but in terms of the power of the servers, the power of the network will not be a limiting factor," I know he’s talking about networked computers and high speed access, but that’s still quite a statement to make! Can I have some of this almost free hardware then Bill? :wink: <br /><br />"The world's largest software maker is betting that advances in hardware and computing will make it possible for computers to interact with people via speech and that computers which can recognize handwriting will become as ubiquitous as Microsoft's Windows operating system, which runs on more than 90 percent of the world's personal computers." Well, when you spend $6.8 billion on research and development per year like Microsoft do, then you jolly well ought to see some improvements in computing! Are we nearly there yet……..? :? <br /><br />Bill also said: "Many of the holy grails of computing that have been worked on over the last 30 years will be solved within this 10-year period, with speech being in every device and having a device that's like a tablet that you just carry around." Hmmm, just like a tablet or just like a Pocket PC? I’m not convinced about voice recognition for PPCs – or tablets or desktops for that matter. It’s hard to think where you would use voice recognition apart from the quiet and privacy of your own house/car/space. Can you imagine an open plan office full of people interacting with their computers by voice? 8O <br /><br />I like the fact that MS are clearly thinking that the future will involve us carrying our devises round with us, so we’re ahead of the curve here. :way to go: Where do you guys see us going with this kind of thing?

[cgavula]

I think Bill views the future in software and services - hence his remarks. I think he's partially right.

For individual consumers you buy Internet access through an ISP so you have no hardware costs and the costs of personal computing devices (compared to their power) is decreasing for the average consumer. This is not the case for corporate computing environments, however.

Whereas the costs of buying a server are reducing, the costs of providing infrastructure are not. In fact, they are increasing. Nowadays you must have not only an Ethernet infrastructure, but one that also provides power-over-Ethernet. That costs more. You must start considering/providing wireless access in addition to your basic wired structures. That costs more. There are some costs savings in the combined voice/data infrastructures, but they are generally overshadowed by increasing costs of higher security levels and the need for more equipemnt and more powerful equipment necessary to provide the multiple access layers (wireless AND wired, voice AND data).

Servers are getting cheaper, but you generally have to buy more of them - an application server isn't enough - now you need a web front end, and a server to handle the Java cose, and a security server, and now you have to deliver redundancy and fail-over.

The reduced hardware costs per box are being supplanted by a need for more boxes. So wheres we're moving toward a software/services focus, our overall hardware spending isn't and won't decrease anytime soon.

[Robb Bates]

Can you imagine an open plan office full of people interacting with their computers by voice? 8O

I've heard this concern before, but I think if it's done right, an office full of people interacting by voice with their computer wouldn't be any different than an office full of people interacting with their phone or other people by voice.

I have MS Voice Command for my PPC and other than being light on possible features, its voice recognition is quite good. Especially with no training required. I think this is one area that MS has done some pretty good work. A few more advances in this kind of voice recognition and I can see me talking to my computer Star Trek style!

Robb

[Talldog]

I've heard this concern before, but I think if it's done right, an office full of people interacting by voice with their computer wouldn't be any different than an office full of people interacting with their phone or other people by voice.
That's what I need, my computer asking me to repeat myself because it couldn't hear me over the racket.
:)

[Kati Compton]

With respect to hardware being "free"... We're moving in that direction. Not that the hardware doesn't actually cost anything, but I think it'll get to the point where hardware is free with purchase of software.

I mean, with $600 desktops, what % of that price is for the OS and Office?

The HW:SW cost ratio keeps decreasing.

[GoldKey]

Exactly, 6 years ago the average PC was probably $2500. Best Buy has had the low end e-machine for as low as $340 with a monitor and printer. Instead of being the equivilant of a few months mortgage payments, it is now a one month car payment (and a kind of cheap one at that). Who knows how long the trend can continue, but I can remember reading when PC's hit the $1000 mark that most thought they just could not go any lower.

[Robb Bates]

I've heard this concern before, but I think if it's done right, an office full of people interacting by voice with their computer wouldn't be any different than an office full of people interacting with their phone or other people by voice.
That's what I need, my computer asking me to repeat myself because it couldn't hear me over the racket.
:)

hehe, just wait until you start arguing with your computer, and it wins! 8O

Seriously though, I am actually quite impressed at the ability of MS Voice Command to understand me with lots of background noise. They've got a good product here. They just have to give it more features.

Robb

[GoldKey]

I've heard this concern before, but I think if it's done right, an office full of people interacting by voice with their computer wouldn't be any different than an office full of people interacting with their phone or other people by voice.
That's what I need, my computer asking me to repeat myself because it couldn't hear me over the racket.
:)

I read an article a few weeks ago about rearch into prespeach. Basically, it allowed you to just mouth the words you were wanting to say and it detected and read the muscle movements to create the words. This might be the solution to this problem.

[StarkAZ75]

Yahoo News report Bill Gates as saying: “Ten years out, in terms of actual hardware costs you can almost think of hardware as being free -- I'm not saying it will be absolutely free -- but in terms of the power of the servers, the power of the network will not be a limiting factor," I know he’s talking about networked computers and high speed access, but that’s still quite a statement to make! Can I have some of this almost free hardware then Bill? :wink:



Maybe he's saying that he plans on jacking the price of Windows up so high that the cost of a $2500 server will seem free in comparison.

Remember back a while ago when he said, "640k should be more than enough for anybody"

[DarkHelmet]

With respect to hardware being "free"... We're moving in that direction. Not that the hardware doesn't actually cost anything, but I think it'll get to the point where hardware is free with purchase of software.

I mean, with $600 desktops, what % of that price is for the OS and Office?

The HW:SW cost ratio keeps decreasing.

That's a really good point - I spent way too much on my PPC stuff.
So, perhaps we're reaching the point where a company like HP or Toshiba should be selling us a box, without an OS, and then we, each of us, go to the Microsoft well for our OS and updates. I am pretty much done with the current approach of "Device of the Month" marketing.

IMHO, the hardware/software price ratio is not low enough for mobile computing to be pervasive. I hate chasing the technology - that's why I think my next mobile computer will be a TabletPC.

[enemy2k2]

This will make people balk even more at the prices of Windows and Office. MS' squeeze on hardware manufacturers won't last too long at this rate. Hopefully this will give alternatives more of a foothold.

[Jonathon Watkins]

Remember back a while ago when he said, "640k should be more than enough for anybody"

He didn't actually. It's an urban myth.

[szamot]

Well, to be optimistic perhaps in about 10 years or so we will have some sort or unified standard for cell phones on this side of the pond. And perhaps if the handhelds improve even more they could happily do voice recognition. However, I think Bill was implying that perhaps we all will be connected and it will be the servers doing the voice recognition and the PPC will me nothing more than an interactive network appliance. The free part will come when you reflect back on how today you will have to pay $50 for a new PPC but you used to pay $600 for your first IPAQ or $900 for that dual hinged Motorola.
Or/

I think where the PC/PPC/Server market might be heading is the way the cell phones have gone. You buy a network license fee, you buy usage time and you get some free hardware or next to nothing in cost hardware. That I this is what he meant and that I think is where we are heading.

[enemy2k2]

szamot!!!

[Kevin Daly]

I think that PDAs will merge with smartphones at one end of the scale and with small, mobile tablets and notebooks at the other - but those ends of the scale will be so close together than even that distinction may become cloudy.
All personal computers will acquire many PDA-like characteristics (not in terms of low power, but ease of use, and a focus on the user and their contacts and personal information and acting intelligently on this information. Also a shift away from having to know exactly where everything is stored, rather than what it's for).

As for speech, I agree about the office situation, but I'm not sure how many of us will continue to be working in an office environment (that's not so much a change in office structure as business structure...think in terms of loosely connected networks of groups of one, two or three people working from pretty much anywhere - I think that will be the response to outsourcing. Now corporations are eliminating workers - in future workers themselves may dispense with the corporate structure, which is after all often just a middle-man between workers and customers. This was actually beginning to happen before the DotCom crash forced most people back to the apparent safety of the anonymous cubicle).
Anyway, I think that speech will become the major means of interaction with the phone form factor devices, partly because people already talk into their phones so it's not such a big jump to go to talking to their phones, and also because as the phone becomes more of a general computing device the existing input methods become more obviously inadequate. That's why handheld devices in general are I think a much better candidate for being speech-enabled than are desktop PCs (although once again, as the PC merges into an unobtrusive network, it may become more natural to interact with a disembodied voice than a keyboard and monitor, especially if computing services are pervasive, so there is less sense of the computer being here where I sit down and interact with it in a particular place).

[Kevin Daly]

Remember back a while ago when he said, "640k should be more than enough for anybody"

Actually he says he didn't say that. And I can certainly imagine that someone's hypothetical quote ("I bet he said...") could easily have been transformed into a reported actual quote.

But that's all way off-topic so I'm going to shut up now.

Except to say that those low-hardware prices are ultimately dependent on the vendors having some other way to make a profit, which is interesting.

[Kati Compton]

Well, the components have on the whole gotten a lot cheaper, mostly because they're now made overseas with cheaper labor.

I guess I don't *really* care what the HW:SW price ratio is, so long as the result is reasonably low prices.

But I *don't* like the idea of the license on the OS "expiring" (or really, any other software).

I mean, it'd suck if I couldn't hook up a 2600 or C64 once in a while and have a good retro time. So, 25 years from now, I may not be able to play Dungeon Siege 7, because of expired licenses. Sad.

[Aerestis]

hmm yeah, I see too much potential for control over consumers and what they can and do afford. See, it sounds nice, but... Do you really think that things come that easy? I'm happy with the way things are. I don't want to pay more or less, as long as my digital assistant/entertainer so on is mine, the software is mine, and it always will be. I'm really not fond of the idea of a huge corperation suggesting they don't want as much of our money anymore. It's sort of an excellent reminder of how things are never that simple. They could have been a bit more sneaky about it.

I don't know for sure, but I have a feeling that this new trend of more affordable technology will be linked to something else. At any rate, I imagine it would be something to soften the blow of something else. (Lack of privacy, dehumanization?) You can never be too sure. I wouldn't be enthusiastic until I knew the exact terms and conditions.

Now that I think about it, I would be pretty happy if I could go buy that ten inch sony vaio right now for one hundred dollars :lol:

[Rob Alexander]

Remember back a while ago when he said, "640k should be more than enough for anybody"

Actually he says he didn't say that. And I can certainly imagine that someone's hypothetical quote ("I bet he said...") could easily have been transformed into a reported actual quote.

Here's an interview in which he denies it.

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/gatesivu.htm

Q. Did you ever say, as has been widely circulated on the Internet, "640K [of RAM] ought to be enough for anybody?"
No! That makes me so mad I can't believe it! Do you realize the pain the industry went through while the IBM PC was limited to 640K? The machine was going to be 512K at one point, and we kept pushing it up. I never said that statement–I said the opposite of that.