Why Microsoft Should Fear Bandwidth

Mike writes "Microsoft should fear increasing bandwidth to the consumer more than any other single factor as a threat to their monopoly. The average user has no desire to be the sysadmin of their machine(s), and telcos and cable companies would be glad to take this task from them -- for a nominal fee, of course, as application service providers. The PC as we know it probably only has a decade or so left."

Comments

I call shens

[CdBee]

We've heard this how many times so far? The ideas been spinning around since the early 90s at least.

Repeat after me. As long as there are laptop computers there will be a strong demand for locally-installed software.

Repeat after me #2. Laptop sales have been steadily rising and will probably continue to do so.

Re:I call shens

[Anonymous Coward]

More importantly, people want to have control of their data.

Think of the following scenarious:
1) Company A hosts all the programs and data for Person B. Person B writes a document in Word 95. Now Company A upgrades Word to Word 2007. Person's B's documents look all wonky and he has to learn how to deal with a whole new word processor with dozens of new features that he never wanted. If Person B had his documents on his computer, he (or this "computer guy" he knows) could have upgraded MS Word when he dammed well felt like it (if ever) and learnt MS Word 2007 (and how to turn off it's annoying "features") on his own schedule.

2) Because hosting companies are liable for the stuff they hold on their servers in the same way corporate computers are liable for stuff on their computers, hosting companies will have to monitor what you're doing and check for "illegal content". No-one likes being watched 24/7.

3) If quality of service isn't up to snuff, moving your entire world with the exact same features will be a bitch.

4) Chances are, hosting companies will take advantage of priviledge information and forward information about you to "respectable companies" "so that they may serve you better". You can expect targetted ads to start trickling into programs. This isn't paranoia. Ad sponsorships are already embedded in movies that you pay for, on buses that are paid for with public tax money, and pay tv channels that you've paid for.

Re:I call shens

[danila]

I don't think there is any sane user, who would be willing to accept that every time the WiFi LED on his laptop dims the laptop stops responding as well. Not to mention the fact this would place further tax the laptop battery.

No, this is a silly idea even for desktops and it will never fly, because local computing can be made just as good as remote and it doesn't have so many limitations.

With Linux ...

[at2000]

we can boot the whole OS from the net with ease.

web based apps becoming very very popular/Active X

[acomj]

The popularity of web based apps (I've sold a couple for small offices) is astounding. Install one place and go. LAMP (Linux Apache Mysql Php) or java (JBOSS) makes this very convienient. Only one machine to maintain vs many installs across multiple computers. Of course if the one server fails....
At my company more and more things are moving to web based colabrative apps (Notes/ Bug tracking/ timecards..).

Active X was MS attempt to control this market by making web apps work only with internet explorer. Fortunetly it didn't catch.

Web mail is another web app that is astoundingly usefull and has driven this trend.

The main thing holding it back is web browsers are cludgy to develop real slick apps with. Javascript helps but.. Gmail is pretty decent.

Most people don't care what OS they are running if the web works and they can get what they want. Computer purchasers are very unloyal to brand names. It remains to be seen if they remain loyal to MS windows.

I can't wait

[Reality Master 101]

I have a wireless laptop that follows me around my house. It's only purpose is RDP into my home-office Win/XP machine. If the bandwidth was there, I'd love to eliminate the home-office machine and be able to get my desktop anywhere in the world from a "PC service provider". It totally makes sense -- let them worry about backups, hardware upgrades, etc.

Related to this, when is Linux going to get something like RDP? No, X11 isn't it. When you disconnect from X11, it blows away your desktop. VNC is closer, but boy does VNC suck compared to RDP. It's unbelievably slow. I know why it's slow, but that doesn't excuse the fact that it sucks.

This is a good idea I think

[minairia]

I agree with the idea of a centrally managed environment controlled by ISPs. This would be perfect for older users, average non-tech users and children. If I was a parent, for instance, it would be great if our home PC was as managed in terms of software installs, web-sites that could be visited, etc. as our PCs at work.It would be especially good to have the system alert me if my children were sending e-mails or IMs involving sexual and/or illegal content with strangers on the net. My father virus infects himself about once a month, no matter how many times I warn about going to dodgy sites. I set up Firefox, but, somehow, he (and my mother) always find their way back to Internet Explorer no matter how hard I try and hide it.

Of course, such a system would need an opt out provision. I would not want my own personal use PC to be managed by anyone other than myself. I can imagine that when my kids got to a certain age they'd be allowed to use the "adults computer". I'd also be sure to make sure that, if my son or daughter developed an interest early on in IT and PCs other than just IM or music downloads that I'd give them access to an opt-out machine. Even with the risk of their being exposed to the dark side of the net, I feel it would be more important that they have a fully functional tool available to build their knowledge, if computers were their thing.

Some will say that the best way to control your kids internet access is to watch your kids. I agree, but, realistically, with the schedules we follow today combined with the nefariousness of the average teen boy in terms of finding ways to see naked chicks, dead people, etc., having the IT department of my ISP keep an eye on things would be a real blessing. Having the system prevent them from installing god knows what virus ridden dreck from the internet would save endless time spent in restoring systems, reformatting hard-drives, etc.

With the MPAA/RIAA lawsuites flying everywhere, as a potential parent, the last thing I want to find in my mailbox is a demand for hundreds of thousands of dollars because my daughter downloaded a Britany Spears song or two. (I blackly hate the RIAA but, as one guy on a budget, if they come after me, they win.) I know the risks and no ways to protect myself when using p2p networks, an average 10 year old, or an average 70 year old (my father just loves downloading movies) won't have a clue.

It's mine!!

[nodehopper]

I don't see, even basic computer users, wanting to give up local control of their computers. My IT department is looking to roll out a Terminal Server as a way of saving IT budget. This will run the OS and applications on Thin Clients from a centralized Terminal Server. Many of the users immediately balk at losing control of their local computer. Even those who aren't very computer literate. It is just a normal human reaction to someone taking away control. Into this add the current distrust of anything being done over the internet. How many people do you know who refuse to do "X" over the internet? With "X" being: home banking, shopping with a credit card, give out personal info, etc. I know quite a few and they are mostly the less informed users. I understand what an SSL encrypted connection is and basic internet security where as average users don't. This entire concept just goes against too many facets of basic human nature to take off. In my opinion people would rather have a spyware infested mess of a computer of their own that allow some one from outside to take control away from them

Not just APPS, but the OS

[nurb432]

They could start leasing the OS to you as well. And if you dont pay up, ( and stay online .. ) then your pc no longer even boots.. It just sits there, waiting for the TFTP server...

Either he's insightful or he's not.

[billstewart]

Being a respected figure at a reputable industry source does add some credibility, mostly because editors sometimes make sure fact-checking gets done and basic writing skills get used, and a certain amount of Darwinism gets rid of many of the less capable and less insightful writers, but so what? It's an open-source news industry these days, and if some blogger says something insightful and interesting, it makes sense for Slashdot to pick it up, and if some well-respected pundit at a reputable trade rag says something lame and uninteresting, it makes sense for Slashdot to ignore it (unless somebody's writing an article about how lame most of the industry mouthpieces are.)

In this case, I don't think the article has much depth to it - the main concept is appealing, but I don't see enough thought behind it to really win. But even so, I'd mod you -1 Flamebait :-)

Bandwidth is not the issue

[metamatic]

I'm the author the article. The "network is the computer" was a false start because the bandwidth was not there.

No, it was a false start because it was a dumb idea.

People don't want to pay subscription fees for software. If they did, we'd see a ton of software being sold month-by-month, with remote activation via Internet. There's no technical block to doing so, and there hasn't been in over a decade. The problem is that whenever someone tries it, nobody outside of the business world is interested.

People don't want to be at the mercy of the cable company or the phone company. We're talking about the two companies the average person probably hates most, and now you're offering them a way to make their entire computer system totally dependent on the whims of the corporate behemoths they hate?

People don't want ever-increasing prices. Look at how the cable company jacks up subscription rates several times a year. Who wants that for all the software they run?

Network connections aren't reliable enough. Ask DSL users if they want their entire computer to turn into a doorstop every time the DSL is slow or out.

People don't want the upgrade treadmill. If you buy your software by subscription from an ASP, you get upgrades when they decide. And of course, the upgrades may break things, make your PC slower, or even outright fail to run. That's why people don't upgrade their OS, don't install new Windows patches, and don't upgrade their applications. They've been burnt before. If it ain't broke, they don't want it fixed.

Computers aren't fast enough. Thanks to the ever-increasing bloat of software, editing a text file today is slower than it was in 1987, when my 16MHz Atari ST system could smooth-scroll (pixel by pixel) at 64 lines per second running Tempus on a large soft-wrapped text file. My Linux box can't even seem to line-scroll that fast in vim. Hence, there's always a need to make PCs faster, and given a network computer, the easiest way to make it a shitload faster is by adding a hard disk, installing the software locally, and removing the network latency delays.

In short, the minor benefits of Network Computing don't outweigh the enormous costs and liabilities. It isn't going to happen in a free market. It only happens (sometimes) in business because PHBs impose it on everyone regardless of cost/benefit analysis.

Re:I'll believe it....

[tomjen]

Just because you dont understand computers you are not stupid.

That beeing said i am kind of attracted to the idea of a internet for real geeks.

At the very least is should kill email worms.

Kids these days...

[dutky]

Does nobody remember the origins of the personal computer?!? Back in the mid-seventies most computing was done in business and institutions on terminals connected to large, centralized computing systems: time-shared mainframes or mini-computers. To a large degree, personal computing was a backlash against these centrally controlled systems and the managerial structures built up around them: system administrators who decreed what software would and would not be installed, billing systems that accounted for every fractional second of computing time, computer operators who controlled which users jobs would run and when, etc. Inexpensive, single-user computers (starting with mini-computers like the PDP-8 and PDP-11, but continuing with the Apple II and IBM-PC) represented a revolution for end users control of their own systems.

Every decade or so, since the rise of the personal computer, we see some attempt to re-impose the rule of centralized systems, usually under the guise of 'easing the burden on end-users' but always including an increased financial burden on those same end-users. The simple economic facts are that computer power (by any measure: instructions per second per dollar, main-memory bytes per dollar, on-line storage bytes per dollar, etc.) has become so inexpensive that all the old reasons for centralized computing systems no longer apply (and haven't applied for at least 20 years). The only reason these new centralization schemes is to find some way to extract money from existing computer users, whether or not the users actually want the sevice being provided. The idea that people will willingly give up control of their own systems and pay for the privilage may be a wet dream for companies hoping to collect the money, but it doesn't sound like a very good business plan.

The solution to the increasing administrative burden on computer users is not hire someone to do the administration: instead, we need computers that actually reduce amount of administration required or make the task of administration markedly easier. This is what personal computers did 40 years ago, and it can be done again.