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Gates: Hardware, Not Software, Will Be Free

Posted by timothy on from the gas-and-chocolate-will-be-free-too dept.

orthogonal writes "That's small-'f', not capital-'F' free: according to Bill Gates, "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 --...." Gates expects this almost free hardware to support two of the longest awaited breakthroughs in computing: real speech and handwriting recognition. He further predicts -- ugh! -- that software will not be written but visually designed."

5 of 993 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Visual design by 1781 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ah, yes. Jest about it, but the UML-people has been working on visual programming for years. Perhaps there is a mutual interest... UMSL?

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    We never stop running. But while running, we're looking for weapons
  2. Re:Another Quote by e6003 · · Score: 5, Informative

    To be fair, it seems the (in)famous Gates 640K quote is an urban legend.

  3. Too Cheap To Meter by handy_vandal · · Score: 4, Informative

    Is this kind of like in the 50s when some expert said that nuclear power was going to make electricity free?

    Not "free": the exact phrase, from Lewis Strauss, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, was:

    "Our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter."

    ... which turned out to be overly optimistic.

    -kgj

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    -kgj
  4. Re:Hrmmmm.... by gkuz · · Score: 4, Informative
    At current list prices, the software is already more expensive than the hardware in the server space. Microsoft Windows 2003 Enterprise Server lists for $4k with 25 Client Access Licenses (CALs). Each additional 20 CALS costs $799. So an approximately 100-user server will run you over $7k (at list) for MS software licensing. Dell or HP will sell you quite a nice server for less than $7k.

    Spare me the obligatory replies about how much cheaper you can do all this with white-box hardware and Linux -- I'm not talking about that, I'm trying to add context to BillG's pronunciamento.

  5. Re:Yeah, right by MacJedi · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually the Soviet Union did use nukes for mining and creating canals... Check out this link (scroll down to the bottom.)

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