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Hardware

1 Billion PCs by End of 2008 175

Posted by CmdrTaco from the most-in-landfills-by-2012 dept.
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."
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1 Billion PCs by End of 2008 More

1 Billion PCs by End of 2008

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  • In other news (Score:5, Funny)

    by Yetihehe ( 971185 ) on Monday June 11, 2007 @10:40AM (#19466081)
    By the end of next year there will be 900.000.000 infected computers.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by neoform ( 551705 )
      I for one welcome our future zombie overlords..

      (yeah, it's a tired joke, i know)

    • In still other news (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      In still other news, both Lunix and OSX will still capture the hearts and minds of an insignificant number of PC users.

  • IPv6 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11, 2007 @10:41AM (#19466083)
    Good thing IPv6 is just around the corner, what with two billion PCs in 5 years.
    • IPv6 won't be around on anywhere near the scale needed for worldwide deployment in the next five years. Reason being that it will take ~20 more years for all the current patents on IPv6 to expire. No private company is going to run the risk of litigation before then.

      The USPTO, will truly, break the network.
      • Was that exaggeration/rant, or are there actually patents on IPv6? That would seem strange given it's an open protocol. On what technology in particular?

  • That will be it then (Score:5, Funny)

    by Silver Sloth ( 770927 ) on Monday June 11, 2007 @10:41AM (#19466087)

    The reason: the emerging markets of countries such as Brazil, China, India or Russia, which will be responsible of 775 new PCs and laptop computers.
    Seven hundred and seventy five computers!!!!! Wow, now that's what I call an emerging market

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by nganju ( 821034 )
      No, they will be responsible of 775 new computers. When you're responsible of something, I guess you multiply it by one million.

    • Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by spellraiser ( 764337 )

      You're forgetting that substituting 'of' for 'for' means 'multiply the following by 10,000'.

      I know, grammar is complicated ...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tehshen ( 794722 )
      77% perhaps?
    • I'm pretty sure they meant 775.000. I mean, that's the same number, but accurate to three places beyond the decimal, so you know there are no fractional computers. Or at least, that the fractional computers sum to an integer.

      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?
  • [quote]The reason: the emerging markets of countries such as Brazil, China, India or Russia, which will be responsible of 775 new PCs and laptop computers.[/quote]

    So there are 999,999,225 PCs right now?

  • Whaaa???? (Score:5, Funny)

    by $RANDOMLUSER ( 804576 ) on Monday June 11, 2007 @10:42AM (#19466125)

    which will be responsible of 775 new PCs and laptop computers. Part of them, of course, coming from projects like the OLPC's one."
    "Asparagus. Fireplace. Ladder. Mosquito." makes as much sense.

    • Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by The MAZZTer ( 911996 )

      "Asparagus. Fireplace. Ladder. Mosquito." makes as much sense.
      That explains a lot, actually...

    • Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by mcvos ( 645701 )

      which will be responsible of 775 new PCs and laptop computers. Part of them, of course, coming from projects like the OLPC's one."
      "Asparagus. Fireplace. Ladder. Mosquito." makes as much sense.

      Really? You're making perfect sense to me, unlike the summary.

    • Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by Himring ( 646324 )
      "Asparagus. Fireplace. Ladder. Mosquito."

      I know! A vegetarian house fire in the Caribbean! ... in winter!...

      Anyone else remember 10,000 Pyramid game show?

    • 77% maybe... missed the shift key?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mnmn ( 145599 )
      Hopefully the additional PCs will improve written or typed English worldwide.

      On the flip side of the coin, the English will be "OMG, emerging markets! LOL!".
    • Purple dog dishwasher liquify? Raging clip-art!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by NSIM ( 953498 )
      perhaps his shift key was broke and he intended to write 77% of new PCs and laptops, and that's figure I'll believe when I see it
    • "Asparagus. Fireplace. Ladder. Mosquito." makes as much sense.

      Sounds like a solution to a Monkey's Island puzzle....

  • ok, so which joke do we go for here... (Score:4, Funny)

    by jollyreaper ( 513215 ) on Monday June 11, 2007 @10:44AM (#19466143)
    Do we go with "billions and billions of" or the pinky held up to the mouth? Sagan or Evil? Maybe Evil Sagan? Yeah, Evil Sagan. I'm imagining passages from Demon-Haunted World read with a Dr. Evil accent. That's the ticket.

  • My that's one big botnet (Score:4, Interesting)

    by the_humeister ( 922869 ) on Monday June 11, 2007 @10:45AM (#19466157)
    Perhaps we should start making environmentally friendly computers? I certainly don't want any of those toxins in my ground water.

  • Skew (Score:1)

    by Kyont ( 145761 )
    > 1.000.000.000 computers all around the world, a number that will double itself in just five more years

    > 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.

  • psychological? (Score:4, Funny)

    by uofitorn ( 804157 ) on Monday June 11, 2007 @10:47AM (#19466181)
    "...2008 will be the year in which a psychological barrier will be surpassed."

    If Bill Cosby ever decides to do a "Nerds say the dumbest things" show, it won't be hard to find good material here.
    • Everyone just considered PC's a passing fad. Like electrical pet rocks. With a billion of them, pc's might just be here to stay.
      • Everyone just considered PC's a passing fad. Like electrical pet rocks.

        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)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 11, 2007 @10:48AM (#19466205)
    And almost all of those billion PCs will eventually find their way into tips and landfils, or crude pollutive 'recycling' pots in third world countries.

    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)

      by jshriverWVU ( 810740 ) on Monday June 11, 2007 @10:57AM (#19466359)
      Windows 95 only needed 4mb of RAM

      Flashback, wow... actually by todays standards what would qualify as an embedded system.

    • How many gigabytes of RAM will you need to check your email in 2020?

      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)

      by Dan Ost ( 415913 ) on Monday June 11, 2007 @11:27AM (#19466707)
      Now that computer technology has roughly plateaued, this replacement cycle will lengthen. We no longer live in a day where you need to upgrade your computer every couple of years just to handle software requirements. Computers are fast enough now that you're only forced to upgrade when your old computer dies.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Windows 95 only needed 4mb of RAM

      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.

      • Well, you have to keep in mind that, even considering swap, hard drives by the time didn't have that much space, although they occupied a lot of it. Take a look at this comparison [wikimedia.org], a 5.25" 111 MB MFM drive against a 2.5" 6495 MB IDE drive. I remember running Windows 95 on a Pentium MMX 133MHz with a 256 MB HD and 8 MB RAM. I even managed to install Windows 98 on it, but it was a big mistake, as Win 98 SE hadn't been released yet and the first version (as most O.S. that come out Redmond since ever) was miser

    • Re:A Waste (Score:5, Informative)

      by moranar ( 632206 ) on Monday June 11, 2007 @12:17PM (#19467371) Homepage Journal
      Ahem. I was there, and I remember Windows 95 did jack shit with 4 mb of RAM. Maybe you're thinking of Windows 3.11?

      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."

      • Windows 95 only needed 4mb of RAM.
        Windows 95 did jack shit with 4 mb of RAM.
        "... . To achieve optimal performance, Microsoft recommends an Intel 80486 or compatible microprocessor with at least 8 MB of RAM."

        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!!

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by moranar ( 632206 )
          I know, I know. The difference between 4 and 8 or 16 MB is nothing compared to what we use nowadays. Still, if you're gonna mention numbers, be precise. Otherwise, why point numbers? Mac OS 7 used 1 MB for a graphical desktop, then. I'm sure other projects had small footprints, too.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by guruevi ( 827432 )
        Ahem... I was there even earlier (I think). Windows 95 didn't do jack shit on a 486 with 8MB of RAM. I had a 486DX @ 100MHz, 16MB of RAM and 300MB disk and it still was slow compared to OS/2 Warp on the same machine. It started working decent with 16-32MB of RAM and a Pentium processor at 75 or 133MHz.

      • Ahem. I was there, and I remember Windows 95 did jack shit with 4 mb of RAM. Maybe you're thinking of Windows 3.11?

        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.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by moranar ( 632206 )
          I didn't mean it didn't boot: I meant it could do nothing useful, except give you a smug feeling of achievement once you got it to boot on 2 MB. It's an important distinction.
  • Imagine a botnet of these!

  • prize (Score:4, Funny)

    by freeasinrealale ( 928218 ) on Monday June 11, 2007 @10:53AM (#19466287)
    I think billionth should get a prize. A share in M$... a chair from chairman Ballmer... a big Mac... The mind boggles.

  • Handcranks... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by blankoboy ( 719577 )
    Better get some hand-cranks on those suckers because in 5 years times electricity (along with gas) will no longer be the take for granted utility that it is now.

    • Better get some hand-cranks on those suckers because in 5 years times electricity (along with gas) will no longer be the take for granted utility that it is now.

      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

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by inviolet ( 797804 )

        having temperatures and weather patterns that permit production of food, et cetera.

        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?

        • 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?

          There's more to arable land than temperature.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Dzimas ( 547818 )
          The word tundra comes from the Finnish word for barren or treeless land. You're not going to be growing much in a tundra rock field that's capable of supporting little more than lichen in the sparse soil. Personally, I'm going to buy a few acres somewhere in Sussex and wait for the polar ice caps to melt so I can flood my rice paddies. ;)

  • Worst summary...EVER (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by Uthic ( 931553 )
    Does ANYONE proof-read these things ? *boggle*
  • To computers, the more important year is 2009 when we'll have 1000000000000000000000000000000 PC's!
  • I suspect this is a classic typo error. A bit like this one: http://www.ntk.net/2003/01/10/dohmus.gif [ntk.net] or even this one: http://www.ntk.net/2004/05/28/doh2e.gif [ntk.net]
  • The reason: the emerging markets of countries such as Brazil, China, India or Russia, which will be responsible of 775 new PCs and laptop computers. Part of them, of course, coming from projects like the OLPC's one."

    Brazil, China, India OR Russia, make up your minds. ("responsible of 775" and "OLPC's one" already adequately mocked above)

  • Cool (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by rodney dill ( 631059 )
    BSOD^9
  • And my first thought at seeing the title of this was the song 1,000,000 Lawyers by Tom Paxton.

  • vs 2B cellphones today (Score:5, Informative)

    by blackdefiance ( 142579 ) on Monday June 11, 2007 @11:27AM (#19466699) Homepage
    There are already over 2B active cellphones in the world, and there will be more by the end of 2008... an interesting comparison of market penetration.
  • "Acording"? Kumpooters dune us good!
  • We already have over 1 billion computers on the face of the planet (working, non-working, and retired.)

    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)

    by jez9999 ( 618189 ) on Monday June 11, 2007 @12:44PM (#19467623) Homepage Journal
    "there is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home"

  • 1 billion PCs-- the real facts (Score:3, Funny)

    by rocjoe71 ( 545053 ) on Monday June 11, 2007 @01:20PM (#19468055) Homepage
    Sold: 1 billion computers:
    • Computers rotting in landfills leeching heavy metal into water table: 400 million.
    • Computers connected to the Internet: 650 million.
    • Computers that have never downloaded spam: 37.
    • Computers without pr0n on them: 5.
    • Let's see ... 400 million in landfills, 650 million connected to the internet. 1 billion sold.

      Are there 50 million computers in landfills still connected to the internet? Might explain the proliferation of .rm files...

      *rimshot*
  • IIRC (If I Recall Correctly) that means there is one PC for every six people in the world. So what do people like me who own six computers do to that logic? Am I skewing the numbers or a statistical anomaly?

    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
    • IIRC (If I Recall Correctly) that means there is one PC for every six people in the world. So what do people like me who own six computers do to that logic? Am I skewing the numbers or a statistical anomaly?

      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
  • A lot is about the price

    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
  • WTF? Like the person buying the 1 billionth computer will hem and haw and say "Gee I don't know if I should...I mean this will push us up to 1 billion..."
  • Disclaimer: i couldn't get to the story at work.

    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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