Deprecating the Datacenter?

m0smithslash writes "The blogging CEO asserts that that datacenters are doomed. Computers are showing up in everything from drill bits, to cargo ships to tracking devices in stuffed animals at Disneyland. With computers becoming so small and easy to distribute over a wireless network, do we really need data centers to house computers or are the computers going to be placed where they are really needed?"

Comments

Missing info

[nizo]

How many drill bits will I need to buy for the company toolbox to run our email service? And does anyone know where I can get a toolbox with redundant power and cooling? Thanks.

Re:Missing info

[Thansal]

First post says it all.

Data centers are there for the things you CAN'T run on-site.

Yes, you could set up your own data center in your building, but there is a point where it is cheaper just to use a Data Center.

Re:Missing info

[CastrTroy]

It's like the myth that computers will create a paperless society. Computers just help us create more stuff to put on the paper. Sure you could bring a computer with you everywhere, and distribute everything on the internet, so we wouldn't need to use paper. It sounds like a nice idea, but in reality, it never ends up happening that way.

Re:Missing info

[El Torico]

What, no paperless society? Where's my flying car? We still have mainframes?

The future isn't what it was predicted to be, and this is just another prediction. I noticed this in the article - "Perhaps a more interesting question should be - why bother with datacenters at all? Surely it's time we all started revisiting some basic assumptions..."

Of course, the author then fails to do that; maybe in his next "blog". This is a throwaway article trying to sound "visionary".

Re:Missing info

[drinkypoo]

No, but there is a Tivoli management add-on, and you can always monitor them with Big Brother :D

Re:Missing info

[DeadChobi]

I don't think the prediction of a paperless society is wrong. I just think the timeframe was wrong. Analysts have a tendancy to severely overestimate the effect a new piece of technology will have on something. As a result, instead of the 15 years needed for something to start taking hold, they'll say "It'll be widespread within 3 years." I do see a paperless society becoming more mainstream, especially with the significant reduction in price of LCDs and especially of pressure-sensing LCDs. There's a guy who sits behind me in Physics class who takes all his notes on a tablet PC. This is just the first step. When eBooks start being widely available, and significantly less expensive than regular textbooks, that will be another step. When we develop screen readers that behave like paper and not like a lightbulb, then a truly paperless society becomes possible.

It's important to note that even if something becomes possible, it doesn't mean that such a thing will immediately become prevalent. It took 50 or more years for electricity to go from a novelty to a commodity. Think about the amount of time between Gutenberg's invention of the movable type printing press and the commoditization of the written word. People have to get used to the way society changes as a result of technology. There will always be some element of a society distrustful or resentful of the changes brought about by technology, but as those elements slowly pass on there will be less resistance.

In the case of the datacenter, I can accept this man's prediction, but I doubt that they will all disappear within the next 10 or even 20 years. Rather, when networks become truly wireless and when computing technology becomes completely integral in our daily lives, we will have little need for data centers, except in major corporations and in areas where the security of the data in question would be compromised by the transmission.

I'd like to point out that computers haven't even become commodity products. When they become so inexpensive that the vast majority of people need no financial assitance to buy one, then they will be a commodity.

Re:Missing info

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

Um.

Ever heard of a NOC? The reason this guy's wrong has nothing to do with computing power, it's got to do with security.

If you RTFA carefully, he's not talking about removing network operations or centralized communications and data spots. He's talking about downgrading datacenters to the level of a fusebox. The fusebox for a house is in one place, but it's in the garage. The datacenter will be in one place, but not the center of downtown.

One could say that this has already happened quite often with IT outsourcing. You don't have a server farm just about anyone could run located in downtown Manhatten. You have it in Hyderabad or Mumbai or some rural spot in central China. Until the forces of market equalization pan out in ten or a hundred years.

The assumptions I disagree with here are:
1. There will never be the requirement for high-end enough services that the regular 'datacenter' with shiny equipment won't be an excessively useful sales tool.
2. Uptime requires little enough on-site time for the people who really know what they're doing to be far enough away from the servers that they can be located in the middle of nowhere. (This is debatable today. Five years, well, it won't be debatable, it will be a fact that they require this little onsite time.)
3. Off-Siting is easy enough to implement organizationally while retaining flexibility. This is going to be especially true for small companies.

Other than that, though, the skills required for good operations center management are not going to be as available in the middle of nowhere as they are in cities for quite a while yet. The real problem is that the people that are willing to learn enough about the stuff are (and this is a broad and unqualified generalization) generally attracted to cities for the availability of stimulation / excess input.

Re:Missing info

[Ucklak]

Todays teens not wanting to own the physical media for music is really the first step to a paperless society.

We're slowly moving away from `gotta have it` to `I can get it anywhere so I don't need it` mentality that the younger generation has.

Re:Missing info

[Duhavid]

No, the datacenter will be alive and well, here is why.

Chips are running faster and faster and hotter and hotter.

Right now, there is not enough heat to produce steam. Soon there
will be.

Soon, we will be using the heat of the chips to produce steam to
generate electricity to produce part of the electricity to run
the datacenter.

This will only work well when the equipment density is high,
therefore, we will continue to have datacenters.

Uh

[Skynet]

So where are they going to put the WoW servers?

Re:Uh

[SuperStretch]

Duh! In the drill!

Re:Uh

[jdray]

How boring is that?

Re:Uh

[drinkypoo]

Your comment is both insightful and penetrating.

Huh?

[yagu]

With more and more embedded computers, and easier and faster networks, datacenters could become more important than ever. Many trends today require expanding and larger datacenters -- how do you think Web 2.0 applications manage their data.

I wouldn't find it terribly surprising to find things like drill bits and their "computers" relaying performance data which eventually ends up in some manufacturers datacenter. What better way to determine the use, reliability, and performance of a product?

I also could imagine the information in datacenters spawning meta-datacenters where data mining and other analysis is performed.

Distributed computers and distributed computing are different animals. Datacenters will go away much like the disappearance of the world of mainframes (which, btw, was predicted and discussed as early as 1983 (by my experience)).

Re: Huh?

[kfg]

With more and more embedded computers, and easier and faster networks, datacenters could become more important than ever.

Bingo! Just as with more and more books being more widely distributed the need for public libraries as a central repository grows, not shrinks.

Now the fact is that most datacenters, as they are spoke, are almost literal clusterfucks, but it is most often because the data technology clueless CEOs make decisions about issues they know nothing about. Even relying on the technologists no longer works in most cases, because most of the technologists are now "trained" at the bequest of . . .CEOs, who belittle "theory" in favor of "pragmatism."

So how clueless is this particular CEO? Let us examine the record:

". . .the feature most requested by buyers in their fastest growing geography (India) was an LED flashlight. Edison would never have guessed (obviously). Nor that electricity would one day be on airplanes, lunar landers or deep sea submarines. "

The fuck he wouldn't have. Edison made flashlight bulbs, batteries and portable generators: a novel was published (perhaps you've heard of it) in 1870, when Edison was only 23 years old, that had an electric submarine as its primary subject. Edison built submarine engines and electric generators for WWI. The First Men in the Moon was published in 1901, the protagonists relaying their situation back to Earth by radio; and it became a commerical movie, using Edison technology, in 1919, more than a decade before Edison's death.

Good Lord, Edison not only guessed these things, he was instrumental in making them happen. That's why we know his name.

I don't care what company Schwartz is the CEO of (how are they doing, by the way?), he's either clueless, selling something . . .or both.

KFG

More then Ever.

[jellomizer]

With more and more small clients communicating wirelessly you really need a datacenter to keep things organized, as well as backed up. So we have lost a Disney Stuffed animal, now we need to find its last location. With it communicating with a data center until it lost communication we can check the datacenter and see were it was last, and then we can check out the last spot and see that it has A. Broke down and still there or B. gone but there is a rouge kid dissecting Mickey's head. C Gone for ever. But now we know that it is gone and we record that it has been stolen and adjust the inventory accordingly. Without the datacenter we see that the mouse is gone but with no central data location finding the data is much more complex. Also in a normal business model it is easier for programmers and the business to connect to a single Database server (Or clustered but they are logically in the same place) vs. having hundreds of separate excel or access files, in which when a program needs the data it needs to hunt for the file and if the persons computer crashes chances are that it hasn't been backed up. Just Peer to Peer communication is a not a robust method because it looses a central point of administration leading to problems in the future.

Data centers evolve and change too

[saboola]

Just like everything under the sun having a processor and a piece of storage space, so too will the data center evolve and get better at what it does. There will always be a need for a centralized place with higher than average processing and storage capacity. Just because todays technology runs well on your cell phone/pda (which for the most part, as an avid mobile user, things are not exactly "great") does not mean the next generation will.

He's right!

[rlp]

As long as you're not concerned about minor issues like physical security, data and communications security, maintainability, scalability, and availability.

Security

[QuietLagoon]

Security requires control and restriction of physical access. Unless and until you can secure those drill bits, security will always be an issue.

Simplistic answer

[The-Bus]

No, data centers aren't doomed. They are only doomed if they fail to see this change and don't adapt to it. Sure, the types of data centers we saw 10 or 20 years ago may be rare relics in 2020; that doesn't mean data center businesses will be gone. Current centers need to focus on security, ease of storage, or whatever else is important to their customers. These values will go beyond the spec sheet of what type of servers you have. In two years or in ten years, the servers and technology will be different. The value you provide, hopefully, will not.

two words

[mls]

Information Security

If you don't care about physical security, then...

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Wireless computer distribution?

[SoTuA]

With computers becoming so small and easy to distribute over a wireless network

I'd love to see how.

Duh

[Archangel Michael]

Archangel Michael Asserts that Blogging CEO should stick to blogging, and not pontificate and prognosticate about computer and data centers.

1)Data centers are not drill bits, and Disneyland Toys.
2)Data Centers are for centering Data (central location).
3)Data Centers are for Centralization of Management.

Herding Cats is fun in the beginning, they are so cute and all, but after a while, you just wish they would bunch up and be like the sheep.

how do we reconcile this with the "thin client"?

[Montecristo6]

It's rather odd that the end of the datacenter is supposed to be brought about by ubiquitous, small computers, since a few years ago everyone was looking forward to "thin clients" - these very same ubiquitous, small computers that would serve as *interfaces* to ... the mighty, on-demand power of the datacenter. The latter vision still makes more sense to me, at least for the foreseeable future.

Exact opposite

[wamatt]

From what I've seen in the datacenter sector is growly rapidly. More and more data is being stored online in server farms. Online apps are more prevalent than ever (eg Gmail).

With ever increasing network capacity data storage on the PC will become redundant.

Distributing computers

[DragonWriter]

With computers becoming so small and easy to distribute over a wireless network

I can see distributing computing over a wireless network, but I've yet to see anyone distribute computers that way. Would surely cut down on shipping costs, though: just download that new laptop...

Stability and reliability

[Travoltus]

Data centers provide both, where mobile solutions do not.

Need I say more?

As for people walking around in MY data center? LOL!!! Please. Everyone in here is wearing monkey suits. Key card on a plastic necklace and nothing in their pockets except maintenance equipment from the internal shed. Cords go under the floor or through protected pipes into the ceiling - if he ran a data center he'd know that. Our procedures for changing out a computer and making sure something is there to stand in its stead in the mean time is far too complex to discuss here, but "breaking something trying to fix it" is NOT a problem here.

Oh, the ignorance. It's so great it has its own gravity field!

And...

[Capt James McCarthy]

So swings the pendulum.

Unintelligent Article

[detain]

This has got to be one of the lamest and most uninformed articles Ive read reacently. We have datacenters because no normal person or small business can afford things like huge internet connections from multiple providers, or afford to have network administrators and noc monkeys watching over the systems 24/7, or the expensive routing equipment used. While there is much more to a datacenter my point is already made so i dont need to delve into other reasons we need datacenters.

Central power generation is doomed...

[Dr. Zowie]

... with internal combustion engines so small and easy to implement, they're showing up in personal vehicles and even handheld devices like weed-whackers. There's no reason to build all that infrastructure of central powerplants any more -- anyone who wants electricity can just run a small motor to generate it locally.

Come on, get real folks.

Hello computer

[Jerim]

I don't think the blogger understands what a datacenter is for. True, processors are turning up in all sorts of gadgets. By the are usually RISC processors designed for a very specific use. But even processors, don't store data. That is what a recordable media like harddrives or memory sticks are for.

A datacenter is for collecting large amounts of data, running operations on that data and providing that data to others. For instance, there is no way that a small handheld device at the loading docks can store the entire inventory for the company over the past 10 years. It can maybe keep a record of the last 30 days, maybe. And even if it were, how would that device let the main office, over 200 miles away know that the cargo has arrived at the docks? How would this CEO be able to find out how many widgets arrive annualy during the month of October and get the average price on them? The answer is that he wouldn't get it from a small handheld device.

This reminds me of when Scotty said "Hello computer" to the mouse. This guy clearly doesn't understand IT. I sure hope they have a good IT department to keep this guy from sinking the company.

Paper is for old people

[brunes69]

Seriously - I am 26, and I use a pen to write something on paper perhaps once every 3-4 days. I also use the printer at my office or home maybe once every 3 weeks at the most.

Any time I have to do something over the phone or by mail, that I know as a programmer I could be easily be doing online, it pisses me off to no end.

I know I am not in an uncommon age group either. As I see my nieces and nephews go through school, they use less and less books. They hand in their assignments in USB keys.

The only people I know of who use paper in any amount are people who are 40+, the type of people who like to print off any website longer than a page because "it is easier to read". How is reading paper easier on the eyes than reading a TFT LCD? Answer? it isn't - it's all psycological.

The whole "myth" of the paperless world is not a myth, it was just misconstrued - you can't create a paperless world until all the people who are used to using the paper everyday are gone.

Re:Paper is for old people

[avalys]

" How is reading paper easier on the eyes than reading a TFT LCD? Answer? it isn't - it's all psycological."

Are you kidding? I'm all for getting rid of paper, but at the moment, it has better contrast and better resolution than even the most high-end LCD screens.

Re:Paper is for old people

[jfengel]

Actually, I do find paper easier to read than a TFT LCD. It's a question of DPI: 600 on a page vs. 70-100 on a screen. It's also a question of total surface area: at a comfortable font size (to compensate for that low resolution) you have to scroll a screen, where you can just scan a sheet of paper.

Like you, I only hand-write or print every few weeks. I won't print off a web site to read it, but I will for papers published in PDF, which have a paper-oriented bias. I'll stop doing that, too, when screen resolutions double.

Re:Paper is for old people

[patrixmyth]

I'm a few years from your 40+ old cut-off, but I still want to speak up and disagree with you. If you've bought a car or a house, joined a gym, graduated from college or been married, then you should be well aware of the importance of physical representations of data. It's great to be able to look up facts on wikipedia, but do I trust my military records to the digital archive? No. Is that because of my age? No. It's because of my experience. My parents have albums that they no longer can listen to, because they don't own a record player. I have lost touch with friends for months at a time when my cell phone died and took their numbers with it. I have gone to a store to show them a cancelled check that their computer system claimed they never cashed (after my bank's dispute resolution process had sided with them.) I can keep going with examples, some of them from wartime experience where 3 guys standing around a six year old map have saved hundreds of lives. Historians are studying written documents that are thousands of years old. We will only be a paperless (or vellumless, parchment, etc) society when a more reliable form of data storage is available. That day is a LONG WAY off.

Re:Paper is for old people

[phil reed]

How is reading paper easier on the eyes than reading a TFT LCD?

Depends. Is the power on?

Re:Paper is for old people

[SanityInAnarchy]

We will only be a paperless (or vellumless, parchment, etc) society when a more reliable form of data storage is available. That day is a LONG WAY off.

While it will take awhile to prove, I suspect that digital representations can be more reliable and less forgeable than paper. The problem is, computers are some of the most mishandled tools around.

I wouldn't trust paper either if clueless people were always accidentally burning them ("I thought you could set a book down anywhere! How was I to know the stove would burn it?"), storing them in cool, wet places ("Oh, you meant a cool, dry place?"), using important documents for scratch paper or making paper hats out of them... You get the idea.

Reliable computer storage is pretty much here, for those who care to use it. The problem is not that computers are so unreliable, or even that Windows is so insecure. The problem is that most people have plenty of education surrounding other aspects of their life -- they are required to learn arithmetic and geography in school, they need to pass Driver's Ed to get a license. Nobody uses a paper filing system without having some idea of what's going on, and paper filing systems are generally redundant. But we are not required to take a class on basic computer usage, that explains things like the necessity to keep backups, or when not to reflexively hit "OK".

So, reliable computers are easily possible. Reliable users are a long way off.

Re:Paper is for old people

[kent_eh]

The only people I know of who use paper in any amount are people who are 40+, the type of people who like to print off any website longer than a pagebecause "it is easier to read". How is reading paper easier on the eyes than reading a TFT LCD? Answer? it isn't - it's all psycological.

Hmmm. Let's see what I've printed off recently..

- A couple of pages from a work order so I can take them into the racks with me - I want to connect everything correctly.
- Some sheet music. Because that laptop doesn't fit on my music stand.
- A floor plan, so that I can take it with me to the room it describes and mark the plan up as I measure the *real* dimentions of things around the room. (sure, I could take a laptop with me for this, but it's not nearly as portable).
- An article or 2 to read on the bus (or in the shitter)

Easier to read doesn't always mean "easier on the eyes". It's not easy to read something if it isn't where you are doing the reading.

Re:Paper is for old people

[merreborn]

Anyone who's done any serious research into long term archival media will tell you the same thing. If you want access to your records 100 years from now, put them down on acid-free paper, and store them in a controlled environment. CDs, hard drives, floppies -- all crap, in the long run.

However, paper currently serves many purposes other than archival. There's no need for the phone company to send me a bill every month, for example. I can take care of it over the phone and/or internet; and I do. And us young folks are looking to eliminate *that* paper.

For archives and books, paper's still the way to go.

Ironic

[databank]

It's ironic that a CEO would have issues with considering a datacenter that is designed for centralization and management considered to be anachronistic. A datacenter will always be needed for centralization and management.

Hey, while we're at it, what do we need a CEO for? Overall intelligence has gone up over the years. I'm sure we're going to evolve to the point that we won't need a CEO anymore. After all, any one of us can do the job just as effectively, right? Let's hear it for true distributed management!

APPS run locally. Data? On the network.

[Ahnteis]

I think we'll see a lot of network-based applications. However, the data has to reside somewhere central, otherwise you're gonna have to replicate it a lot.

I think that as network availability and bandwidth increase we'll see larger computing centers with smaller (physically) and more ubiquitous clients.

No need for datacenter to go away -- just change a bit.

Drill Bits are an interesting example.

[Anonymous Coward]

Back when electric motors were relatively new, analysts predicted that "someday every home would have a large electric motor in the garage; and pullies and gears to drive washing machines; sewing machines; and all sorts of appliances throughout the home".

I think the article's a perfect one - just like electric motors got distributed; computers are too.

Ah, memories.

[Honest Olaf]

This reminds me of the prediction on /. last year that some day in the not-too-distant future we would be using ubiquitous public computer terminals and joking about the old days when people lugged around laptops. Both prophecies are anywhere from 90-100% foolish.

Paper's for the thoughtless and lazy.

[Kadin2048]

I agree, but I think at least right now, for every person who's like us, there's some asshole out there who insists on printing out 60+ pages of single-sided PowerPoint slides and distributing them to everyone in the audience at their presentation, because it's "the thing to do." Sure, 90% of them end up in the trash near the door within five minutes of the end, but they do it anyway. Somebody might want them, right? (And this is in an office where everyone -- down to the last clerk and secretary -- has a computer and an email address, and where the presenter probably sent the meeting invite via email and thus has the entire distribution list already.)

Computers made it easier to use up paper thoughtlessly. While going to the Xerox machine and photocopying a 100 page document at least requires you to stand there while it prints, you can print a 100-page Word document pretty much by accident. I know people that make a point of just printing entire 40+ page specification drafts when they only need a page or two, because "it's faster to just print it and pull the pages out later than figure out which I want." There no way they would be that cavalier about it, if printing required more than a "Control-P, Enter", and then picking up the sheaf of output the next time they're headed out to the water cooler.

People aren't logical. People are dumb. People are thoughtless. Computers make being thoughtless easier. When you make something wasteful easier, it happens more often.

Re:Paper's for the thoughtless and lazy.

[PFI_Optix]

Quick rant on printing slides, and PP use in general:

Power Point does NOT by default enhance your presentation. In fact, the vast majority of PP "enabled" presentations I've seen have sucked because the speaker simply read off the slides; this means either the slides would have been better off as a Word document because they're so wordy, or the speech is more of an outline. Write your speech, THEN make your slides to match your speech.

If you're going to give a handout, copy the text of your slides into an outline format. It won't take ten minutes to give people the same information in two pages that they're going to see in twenty slides. Why waste paper?

That said, I like paper. I like being able to quickly sketch out ideas--especially small flow charts and layouts and the like--and can put information together faster on paper than I can with a computer. If I have to write more than a few sentences I turn to my computer and I don't use paper for anything I plan to keep (yay for Google Desktop's scratch pad), but for brainstorming paper is where it's at.

Corporate control of data

[Mr Krinkle]

Hmm
After reading the blog, I'm not really following his theories.
His networked drill bits, are sensors at the tip of HUGE deep sea oil rigs. That's not my happy 24 volt cordless drill. It's financially sound to stick a few thousand dollars of sensors on the end of something that can make you millions.

As for data centers going away? It sounds more like he's saying the large hoards of mainframe operators are going away?
True. Most of them have. Or have been centralized into ginormous data centers hosting boxes for tons of companies. (IBM's huge computer rooms come to mind. I know there are quite a few companies in the one I have to go to regularly)

But as for getting rid of centralized servers?
Insane. Thanks to SOX (bleh *#@(#(*@# etc etc) IT groups are being hit with requirements to control more and more data. We need to keep stricter tabs on everything. NOT farm more and more of the computing out. With things like the DAV laptops getting stolen, there should be a push for MORE centralized servers/file storage and FORCE the users to keep all the data up on controlled servers. I KNOW that my servers, inside of my network, behind my firewalls, etc etc are safer than Jimmy the sales guys laptop that he forgot sitting on the table at Starbucks for the 100th time. (Or the nifty Irish pub that has free wifi. But they're pretty good about remembering you and holding your lappie for you. :) )
About all the data I keep on my local laptop is a contact list of phone numbers, and a pst file. My email might be amusing to someone? But if they REALLY want to see the 32423423423 backup notifications and all trouble ticket notifications, they have more free time than I have. :)

In summary, if the guy is saying centralized servers/file storage is going away, he's wrong. If he's just saying the hordes of mainframe operators are going away, then yea, he's probably close to accurate. Or at least getting congregated into larger facilities where fewer people manage more boxes.

(BTW sorry for the completely incoherent path this took, to much allergy medicine)

Sun Logo?

[Chapter80]

My gut reaction when reading the headline and seeing the Sun logo was "Stupid Slashdot - Sun's never made any headway in the Data Center". Then I see it's Schwartz's blog. I guess Sun's datacenter strategy now is just to declare it dead.

An interesting question would be "Hey Sun, do YOU still have a data center?" Of course they do.

All in your perspective.

[Kadin2048]

Not to put words in his mouth, but I think Google is providing that "network is the computer" concept when it provides web-delivered applications that replace things currently done on the desktop. E.g., Gmail, Calendar, Spreadsheet, Writely, etc. In those cases, you're moving the application into the datacenter instead of the end-user's PC, so it's a net centralization and not decentralization, but to the user it seems as though "the network is the computer."

If taken to the extreme -- and I'm not sure that it will -- a user might actually use applications which reside in any number of large datacenters. So while there is a lot of centralization, during the course of a day, a single user might request data from several locations. I.e., use GMail from Google's datacenter, then Flickr from Yahoo's, then some Citrix-delivered stuff from a coloed blade system that their company pays for...they're using datacenters, but from their perspective they're less centralized than they were before, when all of their work would be done locally.

So it's sort of as if we're centralizing some things while decentralizing others at the same time.

Wrong conclusion

[Tancred]

The proliferation of computers is making datacenters more important, not less. Who needs standalone computers? Of course there are uses for them, but most systems are moving to be more connected, not less. And what do they connect to? Odds are they're tied back to central servers somewhere that need to have high availability, hence the need for datacenters. It's cheaper than every company buying their own redundant power, backup systems, diverse fiber paths and 24/7 support staff.

Testify, brother! (Powerpoint)

[Kadin2048]

Amen to that.

I'd just like to add that I wasn't ranting against paper in general -- I take lots of notes on paper during presentations. I use either spiral-bound notebooks or legal pads, generally, and I find them both essential parts of my organizational/creative process. I'm still waiting on an electronic note-taking system that's as versatile as a spiral-bound notebook and a 0.07mm pen or pencil, in terms of quickly inputting high-resolution text and graphics.

However, in general I've found that each PP slide, which done according to the seemingly near-universal business-template "style" (which only has a few words of text on it!), only boils down to about one line of written notes. Thus, a 60-slide presentation might only take up a page or two of notes, plus diagrams and editorial comments as appropriate.

There's so much wrong with PP presentations that I don't even want to get started on it; most people who use them are really using them like a backwards-facing teleprompter, rather than a visual aid, and giving out tons of handouts encourages people to not take notes, meaning less retention of information. Powerpoint is a service by the lazy (presenters) for the lazy (audience).