No Need to Upgrade that PC? 502
An anonymous reader writes "The Washington Post (free reg.) has an interesting article about a developing trend in the computer retail business: People aren't buying new PCs. Why? Well, no suprise to those who read this, but grandma and Joe Sixpack don't need a screaming new P4 to surf the net and write letters. Are they just figuring this out?"
depends what you use it for (Score:5, Interesting)
Thankfully that's not where everyone's at. My parents need their email, a little word processing, and that's it. And if console games keep getting better (and offering network play), it may finally come to pass that gamers have their console and their word machine and never the twain shall meet.
Obviously.... (Score:3, Interesting)
They aren't playing ANY of the latest games. Unreal 2k3 stutters on a 2GHZ with 512MB and a GeForce3 card.
NBA 2k3 needs lower resolution to flow smoothly through some of the animations and events occurring on the "floor"
And I just bought 2 1700 AMD XP Athlons to UPGRADE my 1Ghz systems.
Maybe Mom & Pop don't need to upgrade, but they also don't use the computer for the tool it was designed to be.
Re:You know what that means... (Score:2, Interesting)
Swinging the other way (Score:5, Interesting)
Except for my gaming needs, I'd like a small (physically), extensible, *low-noise* little PC, with a comfortable screen and a decent keyboard.
It seems to me like the low-noise requirement is starting to appeal to more and more people. Hell, else the Via C3 would have been laughed at in *every* review it's gotten.
I'm currently thinking of getting an (otherwise worthless) Epia C3 933MHz box for server duties, provided I can hang my harddrives in there and keep those silent a bit.
Oh, where are you, Transmeta, with halfway decent performance low-noise/heat solutions?
Pentium 133 MHz now! (Score:4, Interesting)
People with new, fast computers sometimes end up writing bloated software just because they don't realise that everyone doesn't have the same equipment they do.
I'm not a softeare developer, I'm a GIMP artist, so I'm allowed to use a Celeron-600 powered laptop.
Re:Not good news for MS and Intel (Score:1, Interesting)
"Microsoft Windows XP: $99/yr"
I wouldn't put it past them...
Have not upgraded in three years since I went SMP (Score:2, Interesting)
Duals are just plain awesome! I do plan on upgrading to an Athlon MP system. I will never go single CPU again!
movies are making me upgrade :) (Score:3, Interesting)
I also prefer (not owning a large TV) to watch movies on a computer screen. I think would prefer this even if I *did* own a large TV, which is (drumroll) one reason that I don't. Ahem.
So I have been compressing my movies into DiVX;) using the excellent software dvd:rip [exit1.org] and enjoying the results.
This is a very slow process, and it's the first thing in a while which has specifically made me want to upgrade both processor (a 600MHz Athlon otherwise still feels very fast to me, and I'm in time-machine-based negotiations to lease a fraction of its power to the U.S. Space program circa 1962) and hard drive (because movies are big, even compressed).
timothy
Re:actually (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course, I now run off of a Athlon Thunderbird box, and I wouldn't go back to the PPro. But everything else ('cept the uVAX) is PII, K2/K3 or 486-era technology, which runs Linux and Winders just fine. Pretty much the only reason I could see for really high-end stuff is if you are an ubergamer, hardcore graphic artist or someone working with video.
PCU's are stilling idle (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Obviously.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe Mom & Pop don't need to upgrade, but they also don't use the computer for the tool it was designed to be.
Which brings up another point. I have played the computer toy chase game for years now, and I've gotten sick of it. I am tired of forking over the $2000 every 2 years that it takes to play the latest games. I've therefore decided that Half-Life and Starcraft are as far as I care to go, and will probably go console if I ever want more than that.
Re:Obviously.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Mom and pop are exactly using the computer as the tool it was meant to be, and are quite satisfied. It's up to Apple, Dell, Microsoft, Gateway, and IBM to add new functionality (movie making, DVD burning, etc) that would prompt mom and pop to upgrade.
You sound more like a marketing tool, about 'needing' to upgrade.
Let them enjoy their computers, they'll let you enjoy yours.
Equivilent experience, not just equivilent tasks (Score:3, Interesting)
The key thing is "equivilent experience" -- sure, you can browse the web and send email on a 386 with 16MB of RAM running Linux, Lynx and Pine, but its not the same experience that a person running a newer system with a GUI, new browser, plugins, etc. I'd argue that an absolute bottom of the barrel equivilent experience would to have to be 98SE/ME on a PII450 with 256MB of RAM. Anything below that just isn't the same as P4 running XP.
Sure, there are some Linux trolls out there happy to deal with sluggish old P1s and P2s, but they're not getting the same experience.
I don't really notice a difference with my "old" computer (2.5 yr old dual PIII, WinXP) and brand-new P4s with XP. But had this been 4 years ago and I was trying to run Win2K Pro on a P1 166, it would have been glaringly obvious (yes, I have done this).
I'd attribute most of the comparability between 2-3 year old systems and new systems to the lack of overwhelming mobo throughput increases but mostly to the relative OS stability over the last three years -- the economic slowdown has definitely prompted MS to slow its OS upgrade cycle a little.
It's a catch-22 (Score:5, Interesting)
I also see analogies between the computer industry and the auto industry when it developed. At sometime back in the auto's history, probably the 40's or 50's, cars could already travel as fast as most people would ever want to drive. That didn't stop the industry from improving, and I don't think it will stop the computer industry either. We'll start concentrating on safety(security) and design factors, making software safer, easier, and more fun to drive.
But first, economically we somehow need to get out of this funk. As long as what we make is an extra that people can do without(and it always will be that) people won't buy in economically hard times.
Re:Upgrade my mac? HA! (Score:2, Interesting)
Especially when you consider, as all Mac users seems to, that a 466mhz PowerPC processor is at least as good as an Intel processor at twice the megahertz. Therefore, you are posting using a 900mhz Pentium III laptop, which was hot stuff just last year.
Therefore, your laptop is only 1 year old in the Intel world and your boast is nothing special.
Of course, all of this over a post that could be made from a 8088 machine.
As for Macs being meant to be used for a longer period of time, that is a common myth. If users installed Windows 95 on their old Pentium II 233 and just kept putting security fixes and IE updates on it, they would have something equivalent to a beige G3 getting all the nice little fixes between OS 8 and 8.6. Both would have kept up just fine with the update process and would have been just as zippy four years later and just as useful. If you move up from Photoshop 4 to Photoshop 7 in that time period on either machine, then you would be reaching the limits of the machine (rather your patience with the machine).
My company currently uses Pentium III 450-550 machines with 192MB. I am fighting tooth and nail to prevent the CIO from buying new machines. The company is in a tough financial situation and these machines simply do NOT need to be upgraded. At the same time, our Mac Admin has encouraged the same CIO to upgrade our current stock of G4 towers at 500mhz.
This isn't necessary, he just wants to be able to go to OS X and have it be as fast as possible to make a good impression on everyone. I resisted the upgrade to XP myself in order to keep the OS in spec with the hardware. In fact, if any money is to be spent, I'd rather it be on a couple of servers I could use to run these machines (and older ones too) as thin clients for Linux.
See also: Apple Computer (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:what about macs? (Score:3, Interesting)
Upgraded the RAM, put in a 20GB drive later on, added Firewire/USB card, faster CPU, threw in a new video card twice (damned 3Dfx and Nvidia) and used it until late in August of this year.
When I turned it off, it'd been used every day since April of 1998, it had a 466 G3, Firewire, 20 GB HD, 768 RAM, Radeon.
It'll become a webserver soon.
Re:Not good news for MS and Intel (Score:2, Interesting)
it's a service.
Windows drives this industry (Score:3, Interesting)
Frankly, if you take a person who knows very little about computers and plop any OS in front of them they get scared and will not really know what to do. Mr. Gate's "easier to use, faster internet access" marketing ploy to sell his OS's (which drive the hardware industry) would be meaningless if everyone really knew 2 things. One is that just browing the web will work fine with a 200 - 400 MHZ machine with 64+ MB if ram. The second is that no matter how many features, knobs and gizmo's that Gates packs into his bloated OS the same functionality is really available in older versions of the OS. Plus, a novice will still not be able to use the XP os out of the box very effectively (see below for explanation.)
My bet is that MS is very aware of these dangers and builds some abstraction into their design to purposefully make the OS harder for new users. Note that Win XP has no desktop icons or easy HUD type bar (like KDE, GNOME, Aqua etc.) on the default install. The start menu (possibly the most familiar "PC icon" i the world) is completely different and much harder to navigate IMO. They make these OS's seem better with gadgets but the core functionality is still not in line with the common users needs. MS will then be able to launch a new OS every few years that is "easier to use." To use an analogy, would anyone be interested in a car that doesn't drive very well (hard to steer, accelerates erratically, just "cuts out" while driving.) then keep buing a new car every 2 - 3 years that has only slightly better conditions (or fixes some problems while adding more!)
Re:what about macs? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:You know what that means... (Score:2, Interesting)
Get yourself a decent Window Manager (like IceWM, fluxbox (a little more advanced), qvwm,
Windows has alpha blending, font anti-aliasing, and opaque window dragging (evil of vidoes!) and it runs on slower machines. . .
With Window Blinds I can have the Win2K interface looking like darn near anything I want, have tons of performance, and have all the eye candy, even on a "lower end" machine.
Re:It IS news to the readers (Score:4, Interesting)
I just bought and built a non-linear video editing machine for less than $900.00
Dual-P3 motherboard $29.00 with IDE raid on board.
2 P-3 866 processors $50.00 each
Geforce 2 MX400 video card $29.00
Antec Case with 350 watt power supply $89.00
3 40 gig hard drives - $75.00 each ATA100
512 meg PC133 ram - $100.00
Firewire card $19.00
Mpeg video output card (hardware decode) $19.00
Adobe Premiere 6.0 - $188.00
Windows 2000 - $75.00
keyboard+mouse $10.00
Add the monitor of your choice and Voila.. Everything needed to make professional videos from your DV camera... if you want to capture Analog get a DV bridge for another $188.00
this machine is as capable and as fast as a spanking new NLE machine that costs upwards of $3000.00.... I know as one of the guys at work just bought one for $3400.00 and my old boat is as fast as his... and I can do anything his XP + Premiere 6.5 machine can... hell I can do everything he can with NT4.0 and Premiere 5.1c.. it just requires more plugins and skill.
The AVID we use professionally at work is based on NT4.0 and is a old P-III 500. and it works great! the ice-card does all the rendering faster than any computer any of you can buy or build that can run windows.
There is no reason to buy the new systems.. espically with the large numbers of people finding that the latest games like UT2003 run just fine no their older hardware (P-III with a geforce 2! cranks the frames without a hiccup) from mom-pop to the power home user.. there hasn't been a real reason to buy anything but video cards, ram(because it's dirt cheap) or hard drives..I dont plan on owning a P-4 ever.. by the time I'm ready the P-5 will be well into production or AMD's offering will be there (I dont believe that amd is going to quit... it's rumor and hype)
I have more computing power in this old desktop Pc than we had on this planet when we sent the first man into space... I think it's enough for now.
The coming appliance desktop era (Score:5, Interesting)
-
For most users, the only killer app for a fast desktop machine is games.
- Now that A-title games cost around $20 million to make, good games have to be high-volume products.
- The game industry is moving to consoles for the high-volume products.
Therefore, games won't be driving the PC industry for much longer. The requirement for a PC is levelling off.What this may mean is the beginning of the PC appliance era. About 80% of PCs are never opened once they leave the factory. They could just as well ship as sealed boxes, with the usual "no user serviceable parts inside" marking. It's already possible to build $400 boxes that will do everything needed for 80% of home and business desktops. That's the future of the PC. Expandable boxes will be a niche market, sold by specialty retailers.
Re:It IS news to the readers (Score:1, Interesting)
What kind of computer do the average user _really_ need? The fact that users don't need newer computers with better performance could have been said just as well ten years ago.
I think it's a lie to state that there is some kind of magical performance point right at this point. Performance has doubled every year and has done so for quite some time. Software for computers has followed that trend.
No, forget about that. The real reason witch is quite obvious to anyone with a background in marketing is that all the services is free. The ability to charge for things has dependencies, in closely related markets this dependency us high, in less related markets it's less but it's always there.
Let me give you all an example. If a farmer lowers his price on beef, it will also affect carmakers possibility to charge for their cars to some degree.
If food becomes cheaper compared to cars people will think: I pay this sum of money to be able to eat and I pay this sum to be able to drive. The driving is too expensive compared to the cost of eating.
This is (or was before the stock-market became gambling) the reason why if steel related stocks falls in America cloth related stocks in Europe will fall a bit as well.
Now, in closely related markets ones ability to charge will hugely affect others ability to charge. For example, if you buy a computer and all services you use is more or less free the hardware manufacturers will be unable to sell hardware to higher prices. Most is free on the net, free e-mail, free content on sites and so on. If people buys computers and ALL of the cost lies in the hardware they will think its way to expensive.
Why is it that you as a consultant can charge a lot for consulting related to databases and enterprise OSes? Because they are expensive, that's the reason why related service is highly valued. When you can download and burn a database witch is just as good for $10 there is no way in hell people and companies will pay any significant sums of money for service&support for them.
Most slashdot readers, I suspect, have absolutely no idea how markets work.
Why would anyone say, "I must upgrade"? (Score:2, Interesting)
New software should be designed not to run on existing hardware. The electronics market badly needs a new software direction to keep alive the demand for new hardware. Most software for the mass market, even the huge latest version of MS-Office, is using similar amounts of central processing power to software of a year ago. You guys upgrade your hardware regularly. But for the average user using average software, how could you persuade them they really need to upgrade their PC/settop box/games console or whatever? I think demand cannot grow without fundamentally new types of CPU intensive applications.
What If Moore's Law ... (Score:1, Interesting)
Can you imagine an industry NOT propelled by the mythical speak of a cofounder of Intel?
Engineer Joe to Boss: Hey Boss, I think this processor is actually quite good. Howz about we simply put some faster memory in the cache locations and, well, erm, take out a few bugs? Why reinvent the wheel right now?
Boss: Eh, it's a now win battle. Microsoft is driving the processor curve right now. In fact, they're AHEAD of the curve in terms of producing OSes which require 125% of what's anticipated to be available at the time. It forces US in turn to ramp up production (thusly causing errors, can you say floating poing bug, etc, etc, etc because of the rush to manufacture.) We'll look weak, basically, if we try to set stable, paced goals that work with technology, improving and enhancing existing chips.
Engineer: Damn that Moore! He's causing a great deal of harm here. We're simply pushing immature technology out into the marketplace.
--------------
Not meant to be humorous, this was a poke at the fact that what IF we weren't able to throw bigger and badder hardware at every turn to the programming gods?
What IF -- programmers had to grapple with poorly written code, forcing them to actually patch performance bugs, optimize routines, et cetera?
Linux has been doing this for a decade now
Re:See also: Apple Computer (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:actually (Score:3, Interesting)
My wife runs a K6 233 MHz with KDE 3, OpenOffice, Mozilla, audio apps, lots more, short of fullscreen video. OpenOffice takes 30 seconds or so to start, but once going it's nice and responsive. 2D graphics are rock solid, e.g., fullscreen window moves are accelerated/smooth. While I run a considerably more powerful machine, mainly for compiling, she's perfectly happy with hers for what she does with it. This is a vintage 1996 machine or so, still in full service and likely to remain so for quite some time. I added some memory, bumped the disk space to 95 GB (noticable performance improvement there from faster IDE disks), put in a more quieter fan and added USB ports for scanning, webcam and so on. Besides doing her surfing, word processing etc, it acts as our file server and music jukebox. It's often doing heavy file transfers over the network, and she doesn't even notice. I think I might add in another 120 GB, and make it 7200 rpm for a little more speed. Even on that slow processor, a 5400 rpm disk does 16 MB/sec. With KDE it's super smooth to use and looks slick, and needless to say, it never, ever needs to be rebooted except to add hardware.
Yes, I can go down the street and get her a K7 machine that's 15-20 times more powerful for $600, but why?
Spyware!! Hardware companies rejoyce! (Score:2, Interesting)
Most people remain ignorant of it, and their computer's performance is continually decreasing. Eventually they will upgrade their computer.
Also most people have every single program they install create a quick start, memory-hogging icon in windows.
Here's my two cents. Hardware companies certainly can benefit from the proliferation of spyware etc. Is their a partnership?
oh yeah if you have spyware, get adaware from lavasoft. Again i dont feel like making a link. Its easy enough to find.
All of my computer upgrades follow id releases (Score:4, Interesting)
I first used a 286 with about 1MB of RAM. This ran Wolf3D, but poorly. Wolf3D was copied to my dad's pride and joy 386 w/3MB RAM where it screamed.
Then Doom came out. And it wouldn't run on my 386 (needed 4MB of RAM). Luckily my dad just bought a 486dx2/66 with 8MB of RAM and Doom was good. Doom2 was just as fine, but we bought a sound card to complete the experience.
And then came out Quake. It ran at about 5fps on the 486, so I saved up some cash and transformed the 486 into a P133 powerhouse at 16MB (and it only cost about $1000 to do). Quake played nicely and the world was at peace.
That was until Quake2 came out. Time for a k6-2/300. That was cool, but with a voodoo2 it was even cooler. I bought a companion k6-2/350 and could host h2h deathmatch in my household for the first time.
But what's this? Quake3? This prompted me to put together a powerhouse of the likes that I had never seen before. I built it piecemeal over time, like mechanics might build a hotrod in their garage. Acquiring it piece by finest piece. Finally, my Athlon 700 was complete. It sported 256MB of RAM, a voodoo3, and an SB 512K.
And here I am using it now, waiting for Doom3 to come out so I can no doubt upgrade again. I dare to say id Software is more important to the home computing industry than most vendors realize.
Re:Doesn't this happen every few years? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yet the only real reason I'm thinking about it is to get software DVD decoding and be able to use a peppier mozilla (websites increasingly have poor support for more efficient browsers like dillo).
Re:You know what that means... (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, we've had the pseudo-blended stuff that grabs the root window and alpha-blends it since way before Windows did. But Win2k long ago got real blending (you can see other windows behind the current one), and looking at an XP desktop runnin WinAMP (which alpha-blends into the background when it's not the foreground window), Linux has lost pole position in the flashy-sparklies department. Enlightenment used to put Linux up there, but E17 seems to never be coming out, E16 is old, and no one else wants to do eye candy. Dammit, it was awfully useful to impress potential Linux users...
Furthermore, both GNOME and KDE are fucking bloated and slow. GTK2 has improved a bit, but it's still *far* slower than the blisteringly fast GTK1. Qt has always been slow. My solution is to simply not use either -- gkrellm + sawfish + xbindkeys + a couple of scripts makes for an awfully customizable, flexible environment. But most people don't have that option available when they're moving to Linux. To them, Linux *is* "slower" than Windows from a workstation perspective.
* I'll never willingly give up the remote nature of X, but X is somewhat slower (and has *much* higher latency, thanks to the required context switches during a draw operation) than Windows does.
* Linux may be a tough cookie, but X is quite killable. The other day, I wrote a program that accidently got into a loop and started opening windows like mad. It made the X environment completely unusable and prevented me from using a keyboard/mouse. Fortunately, there was a Windows box nearby and I could log into my machine and kill the offending process remotely, but for certain X tasks, from the point of view of a workstation end user, Linux is significantly more fragile than Windows.
You just described... (Score:3, Interesting)
I wouldn't be surprised the next major form factor for desktop computers is something akin to Shuttle's designs. Why bother with big, monster-sized system cases when you could built a very powerful system with a case that is 1/3 the volume of the average mid-tower system case?
One other reason to upgrade infrequently (Score:3, Interesting)
The "new upgrade" feeling, the rush of excitement when putting the thing together is much better this way. Upgrading every two years means that you notice a bit more snappiness, a bit less paging. No big deal.
But, I still remember upgrading from a Mac Plus to a Power Mac 6100/60. From a monochrome 512x384 8.5 inch or so screen with a wave-synth sound system, 800k floppies, an 68000 chip, no numeric keypad to a system with *16 bit* color, a *14 inch* monitor, a (you may want to sit down for this one) *CD-ROM drive*, a totally different chip architecture, an effectively non-multitasking OS to a cooperatively multitasking one...
Wow. Quite an experience.
Re:And not just computers, but software as well (Score:3, Interesting)
I was working at intel - and all my machines had engineering sample pre-releases of every processor since the introduction of the PII.
I was obsessed with having the fastest machine within five counties.
At the same time I would always say that machines are only going to get so fast - that there will be a point that the user is the bottleneck and that the machine will be doing things just as fast as the user can issue commands - it will be sitting there waiting for the input from the user.
My P3 800 has been great. I no longer need to upgrade - I have a GF2 64mb card - and that is about the only thing that I would *like* to upgrade at this point.
The funny thing is that now that you can get an absolutely awsome machine for about $700.00 I feel less and less compelled to upgrade. I used to salivate over the machines that were so expensive, now I cant find a compelling reason to do anything to my machine at all.
The only upgrading I am doing these days is to Wife v2.0... hopefully this install will be much more stable than the last - and hopefully at a *much* lower TCO.
Re:PC games are obsolete... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: I don't quite agree..... (Score:3, Interesting)
EG. Software synthesizers for computer musicians. Before the newer generations of CPUs, a PC simply didn't have the processor power to accurately simulate a real Hammond B3 organ, or a Steinway piano, or you name it. Sure, you could sample in one as a series of
High-end PC sales won't sell in massive numbers to the general public, perhaps -- but they'll still have customers. (Assuming, of course, that software development doesn't stagnate and resign itself to re-inventing the same old apps year after year.)
Re:You know what that means... (Score:2, Interesting)
Your tone seems to imply that if you'd written an infinite loop that popped up windows in Win**, you wouldn't be up the creek. I wouldn't bet the farm on that, but it'd be interesting to know how Windows would handle that.
Re:The coming appliance desktop era (Score:3, Interesting)
Be careful just how you paint with that broad brush. I would definitely consider myself not to be a "art school dropout type", I have a bachelors in Chemistry with a minor in CompSci, as well as a masters in Computational Chemistry. I do tons of programming which involves developing computer simulations of chemical interactions on a quantum level. I have no desire to build my own system, I simply want my machine to work. That's not to say I can't build my own, I just have no desire to waste my time doing so. I neither want nor need a cheap, no-name computer. I want something solid, reliable, and backed with a hefty warranty so that it gets replaced quickly if something breaks. If it is compact and it looks good, so much the better.
I have many colleges who are also making this kind of choice. Increasingly a lot of computational chemists and biologists that I know are using pre-built systems. Many of the straight programming and network people I work with are also using pre-built systems. In fact, from what I've seen it looks like there are more hobbyists building their own machines than the professionals. Now maybe that is different for you, but it is certain to me that there is a decreased emphasis on building your own computer than there has been in past years.
Re:Swinging the other way (Score:3, Interesting)
Laptop users hate the power usage even more.
This is a VERY valid observation. I was at one time program manager for software for Dell portables. It's a sad testimony that laptop battery life has gone *down* over the past few years despite great improvements in battery and power management technology.
I know one thing: I would *much* rather have a 300-500 MHz laptop with 8-12 hours of continuous use (and yes, that's actually do-able) than a 1+ GHz monster that barely makes 2 hours and will scorch your flesh (literally - see ExtremeTech's recent review of Motion Computing's Tablet PC...)
Seriously, if we applied modern low-power technology, we really could have laptops that run all day, and the healthcare folks really could have point-of-care computers that an entire shift with no chance of battery problems.
Sadly, there are two reasons this probably won't happen: 1) Intel and the OEMs have a huge vested interest in selling only "faster", newer gear - the fact that the market really wants longer battery life in portables means nothing. 2) Like it or not, for most people, Windows is the only OS that matters, and the the bloated obesity of W2K/XP *requires* hardware that fast. (I was stunned recently at the slowness of a 400 MHz Dell machine a friend loaned me. To put this in perspective, my primary laptop is a 233 MHz P2 with Win98SE and Office 97. Her 400 MHz machine was laden with Win2K Pro and Office2000. There is simply no comparison - it's is NOT an exaggeration to say that the older machine is *considerably* more reponsive to the user than the newer, fancier (and of course, much more expensive) one. Battery life for the two is about the same, indicating that applying the technology of the new machine to the performance profile of the old one should easily improve battery life by 2-3x.)
It's also sad that we will not see tablet computers with long battery life, because they too are saddled with the power-sucking fat of XP. (I'm also afraid I don't expect any real OS alternative on Tablet PC hardware for several years at least - this is not an area in which open source has a glowing record.)
Perhaps someone will begint o listen to what customers really want and we'll once again be able to buy a laptop capable of running througout a coast-to-coast flight.