1 Billion PCs by End of 2008 175
javipas writes "Acording to a study published by Forrester Research, 2008 will be the year in wich a psychological barrier will be surpassed. By the end of next year there will be 1.000.000.000 computers all around the world, a number that will double itself in just five more years. The reason: the emerging markets of countries such as Brazil, China, India or Russia, which will be responsible for 775 million new PCs and laptop computers. Part of them, of course, coming from projects like the OLPC's one."
In other news (Score:5, Funny)
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(yeah, it's a tired joke, i know)
In still other news (Score:2, Funny)
IPv6 (Score:5, Insightful)
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The USPTO, will truly, break the network.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assigned_/8_
That will be it then (Score:5, Funny)
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You're forgetting that substituting 'of' for 'for' means 'multiply the following by 10,000'.
I know, grammar is complicated ...
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What I'd really like to see is for them to patch up the error that says there's going to be *one* computer at the end of '08 (and to ten significant figures, no less!). Perhaps they meant a billion?
775? (Score:1)
So there are 999,999,225 PCs right now?
Whaaa???? (Score:5, Funny)
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Really? You're making perfect sense to me, unlike the summary.
Re:Whaaa???? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Whaaa???? (Score:5, Funny)
I appreciate your joke. I however am concerned with the fact that I now have coffee on my monitor. Please sent $3 and a paper towel to:
Coffee-less Dude
c/o Slashdot
Mod everybody offtopic! (Score:2)
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I know! A vegetarian house fire in the Caribbean!
Anyone else remember 10,000 Pyramid game show?
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On the flip side of the coin, the English will be "OMG, emerging markets! LOL!".
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Sounds like a solution to a Monkey's Island puzzle....
ok, so which joke do we go for here... (Score:4, Funny)
My that's one big botnet (Score:4, Interesting)
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Skew (Score:1)
> Brazil, China, India or Russia, which will be responsible of 775 new PCs and laptop computers
That does it - I'm going to invest in the American and European markets! They will be responsible for nearly 99.9999225% of all growth in the PC market. Statistics don't lie.
I feel sorry for all those developing-world coders, fighting for time on less than a thousand new PCs.
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psychological? (Score:4, Funny)
If Bill Cosby ever decides to do a "Nerds say the dumbest things" show, it won't be hard to find good material here.
Up to this point ... (Score:2)
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But the guy did make a million dollars! Just wait until I release my big invention,... the, "Jump to Conclusions Mat." You see, it would be this mat that you would put on the floor, and it would have different conclusions written on it that you could jump to. ;-)
A Waste (Score:4, Insightful)
The turnover of computers is so fast not because of natural outdating and failure of hardware but because of the bloating of operating systems and applications software. Windows 95 only needed 4mb of RAM. The increase of RAM and CPU requirements vastly outstrips increases of functionality and mostly resembles Moore's Law.
People keep on buying expensive new computers to do the same things at the same speed. How many gigabytes of RAM will you need to check your email in 2020?
Re:A Waste (Score:5, Interesting)
Flashback, wow... actually by todays standards what would qualify as an embedded system.
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Probably a ridiculous amount, judging by the increasing bloat of today's software. And then when you try to show people how ridiculous it's getting, they'll make a remarks like "Well DUH! Shouldn't you think of replacing your old commodore 64!?!?!?!?".
Re:A Waste (Score:4, Insightful)
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I assume that is with swap enabled and it made use of swap during the boot process. I highly doubt that Windows 95 could have actually run on 4MB of ram without swap.
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Re:A Waste (Score:5, Informative)
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_'95 [wikipedia.org] :
"Official system requirements were an Intel 80386 DX CPU of any speed, 4 MB of system RAM, and 50 MB of hard drive space. These minimal claims were made in order to maximize the available market of Windows 3.1 converts. This configuration was distinctly suboptimal for any productive use on anything but single tasking dedicated workstations due to the heavy reliance on virtual memory. Also, in some cases, if any networking or similar components were installed the system would refuse to boot with 4 Megabytes of RAM. It was possible to run Windows 95 on a 386 SX but this led to even less acceptable performance. To achieve optimal performance, Microsoft recommends an Intel 80486 or compatible microprocessor with at least 8 MB of RAM."
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You so opened my eyes to the reality. I almost felt like a blind for a moment! GGP was such an jack-ass, missed the whole point!!
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Nevertheless, it would still run on 4MB of ram. The parent is correct. I seem to remember once installed, you could disable a bunch of crap, pull some ram, and get it to boot up with 2MB if you were a real masochist.
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Imagine a beowolf cluster... (Score:2, Interesting)
prize (Score:4, Funny)
Handcranks... (Score:2, Interesting)
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Next-generation solar panels have three times the output of current models and if we chose we could be putting up nuclear reactors, using breeders to reprocess spent fuel, making nuclear not only profitable but also just about the cleanest thing around short of solar and wind. And given crystalline solar panels, it might be more clean than them, to
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Moving the temperate zones away from the equator and towards the poles will create more agricultural land, not less. Do you have any idea how much tundra there is, just sitting there uselessly frozen?
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There's more to arable land than temperature.
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1 Billion Computers Without Spellcheck (Score:2)
Worst summary...EVER (Score:1, Offtopic)
You think that's a big number... (Score:1)
The missing millions... (Score:2)
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http://www.xcom2002.com/doh/viewer.php?category=m
should you care.
WORST SENTENCE EVAR!11!!!!!! (Score:2, Funny)
Brazil, China, India OR Russia, make up your minds. ("responsible of 775" and "OLPC's one" already adequately mocked above)
Cool (Score:1, Flamebait)
And my first thought at seeing the title of this.. (Score:2)
vs 2B cellphones today (Score:5, Informative)
First freaking word... (Score:1)
Inaccurate... (Score:2)
PERSONAL COMPUTERS, on the other hand....
Well, if two-hundred million geeks alone went through 5 computers, we're already there, yet again! Why wait?
Quoth Ken Olsen... (Score:3, Funny)
1 billion PCs-- the real facts (Score:3, Funny)
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Are there 50 million computers in landfills still connected to the internet? Might explain the proliferation of
*rimshot*
1 computer for every 6 people? (Score:2)
But seriously folks...
If we really do see 200,000 every five years if a large percentage of these developing markets adopt a non-windows OS as their defacto install base it could represent a significant erosion of the Microsoft OS's position world wide. In time that might not affect US software marke
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People with 6 computers are likely a statistical anomoly, but people with 2 computers (one company workstation at work, and a personal computer at home) certainly would not be. I wonder if they were properly counted? Even three computers isn't that odd - just throw a laptop (company or personel) into t
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Price has a lot to do with it. (Score:2, Interesting)
My first PC was over $1,500 with no hard drive and 256K of ram
My second was a loaded 486-33 with a 212 Meg HD and 8 megs of ram at just under $4,000
Last year I bought a 2.4 Ghz P4 desktop system (no monitor) from Dell Outlet for under $200 with shipping
Last month I bought a sub 5 pound used (like new) P3 Compaq Aramada for $130.
Talk on slashdot keeps revolving around a $99 laptop coming soon.
Combine the ever dropping price, with 20+ years of production (i386 and newer) of all
Psycological barrier?? (Score:2)
What defines a computer (Score:2)
What are they calling a 'computer'? If they include embedded devices, im sure we surpassed 1billion long ago. Remember that even a digital watch is technically a computer.
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"Hmmmm.. This new shipment will take us over the 1B mark.."
"Oh really? In that case I'm not sure we can manage it."
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RonB
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But, will those 775 run Linux?
:-P
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Guess you were too busy frist pwnsting to get the actual typo in there, eh?
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Hopefully they'll ship with a spelling and grammar checker:
Acording [spelling] to a study published by Forrester Research, 2008 will be the year in wich [spelling] a psychological barrier will be surpassed. By the end of next year there will be 1.000.000.000 computers all [no computer is big enough to be "all around the world"] around the world [CC], a number that will double itself [superfluous "itself"] in just five more years. The reason: the [punctuation - first word after a full colon should be cap
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Certainly not the case in English English; I don't know if it's true in American English.
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Or were you flaming so subtly I missed it?
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Re:775? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Open Source OSes are going from strength to strength. The only thing Microsoft have anymore is artificial vendor lock-in (which is in breach of EU law). We know about the document formats issue, but there will come a point where the benefit of no longer being tied to Microsoft will outweigh the disadvantage of not being able to o
I don't think so. (Score:2)
While it is great that the use of computers is becoming widespread and accessible to nearly all, what is not great is the fact that most of them will run windows.
They are not going to be buying Dell and other US rip-off brands, they are going to buy direct from the people who make the hardware. The makers are going to ramp up their capacity and sell as cheaply as they can, so long as they are making money. They will continue to do things like this [slashdot.org] to avoid licensing costs.
OLPC is not going to run Wind
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Um, no, predicting that "projects like the OLPC's one" will ship 7,750 computers is not "optimistic". Heck, predicting that OLPC alone will ship less than the
That commitment includes participation in the OLPC project. Perhaps you ought to look at the facts.
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They are only counting the ones sold with a legal copy of Vista.