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1 Billion PCs by End of 2008
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."
I think I got FP, but I want to come up with something insightful. All I got though is 75%. Good Day.
Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
By the end of next year there will be 900.000.000 infected computers.
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
Good thing IPv6 is just around the corner, what with two billion PCs in 5 years.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
Uhhhhh... yeah..
[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?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
...they are called developing countries: "Brazil, China, India or Russia, which will be responsible of 775 new PCs and laptop computers."
I think you meant witch.
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
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.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Also, referring to 1,000,000,000 as a "psychological barrier" is kind of a strange term. It doesn't block our thought processes. Calling it a "symbolic mile-stone" might be more appropriate.
-dave
http://millionnumbers.com/ - own the number of your dreams
Perhaps we should start making environmentally friendly computers? I certainly don't want any of those toxins in my ground water.
> 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.
You shall see a cow on the roof of a cotton house.
"...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.
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
While it is great that the use of computers is becoming widespread and accessible to nearly all, what is not great is the fact that most of them will run windows. What needs to be done is to offer linux (preferably something simple for end users like Ubuntu) along side windows, for a lower price. There needs to be a marketing campaign in third world countries that pushes linux over windows as a cheaper alternative, in a money strained place.
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?
Imagine a botnet of these!
Somehow I'd think India alone would be using more than 775 new PC's. Gotta feed the call centers anyway.
I think billionth should get a prize. A share in M$... a chair from chairman Ballmer... a big Mac... The mind boggles.
A man spends the first half of his life accumulating stuff, the second trying to get rid of it all.
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.
Or is it "spelcheck"?
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
Does ANYONE proof-read these things ? *boggle*
Sounds like a WoW keylogger post.
Time to sex up the girl!
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
To computers, the more important year is 2009 when we'll have 1000000000000000000000000000000 PC's!
10 minutes working on a sig. What a waste.
I believe the 775 is a typo in conjunction with the FP. I assume it to mean 77%.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
...that the OLPC will be released sometime within the next decade.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
With only 775 to go, I guess I should go buy one soon to win the prize!
The reason: the emerging markets of countries such as Brazil, China, India or Russia...
We are not sure which one of these it is, but it has to be one of them!
I suspect this is a classic typo error. A bit like this one: http://www.ntk.net/2003/01/10/dohmus.gif or even this one: http://www.ntk.net/2004/05/28/doh2e.gif
I feel that calling it an "arbitrary mile-stone" would be the most appropriate.
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)
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
BSOD^9
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
And my first thought at seeing the title of this was the song 1,000,000 Lawyers by Tom Paxton.
Obviously someone has been chmodding files far too long.
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.
circa75.com
I read it as One dot zero zero zero dot...
Or
One
Hmmm.
Skynet?
"Life has improved immeasurably since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously." - Hunter S. Thompson
"Acording"? Kumpooters dune us good!
I always get screwed 1005 of the time.......
What did they do, just count the cumulative sum of all the p/cs ever produced, less the number we know have been landfilled? Lots of p/cs are just sitting around unused but not disposed of, lots have just gone into the dumpster and not been counted, and I know there are still windoze 95 machines ( probably not networked ) that are still doing everything their owners want eg Word Perfect. Where did they cutoff?
Funny or not, somebody here doesn't like people mocking the editor's dyslexia, and is modding everybody offtopic.
In still other news, both Lunix and OSX will still capture the hearts and minds of an insignificant number of PC users.
Serious issue here, not just funny. We're running out of addresses. 4.3B with IPv4 vs 340B with IPv6.
Yeah, like .001% of them maybe if you are optimistic?
If you want to look at the facts rather than the hype, look at the Brazilian government's recent tax breaks on computers and its commitment to making computers as universally owned as televisions and making every school broadband-connected. I am sure there are equivalent reasons in Russia, China and India. Maybe even the falling dollar has something to do with that.
You can now go worship Negropoente's cute toy.
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.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
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?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Can you imaging a beowulf cluster of these!
While it is great that the use of computers is becoming widespread and accessible to nearly all, what is not great is the fact that most of them will run windows.
They are not going to be buying Dell and other US rip-off brands, they are going to buy direct from the people who make the hardware. The makers are going to ramp up their capacity and sell as cheaply as they can, so long as they are making money. They will continue to do things like this to avoid licensing costs.
OLPC is not going to run Windows and it's a good example of what the future really will be like. M$ has a hard time porting to more than i386, so they are going to miss out on the platforms everyone else is going to use. Sure, there will still be premium hardware, but it's going to be more diverse and free software is better for it. Most of the world's hardware is going to look like OLPC.
There's also a language barrier M$ has never really overcome. Free software has already done a good job. As more people get their hands on computers and demand increases for native platforms, the disparity will only increase.
All of the M$ shortfalls are due to the rigidity of non free software. No one company, no matter how large, can compete with the free world.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
"there is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home"
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Right, as in the Epcot Center anthem from Figment in 1983:
"And that's why I'm a rooter, for the Kumpooter, everyone needs a friend!"
Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
I don't know why so many when there's only a world market for maybe five computers...
I did say assume - on purpose because I didn't RTFA. But on the other hand, 775 million is 77% to 78% of a billion.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
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 markets but it would radically affect world wide software markets.
[signature]
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 the hand me down systems out there, and the 1,000,000,000 is inevitable.
Ike
Well, maybe virtualization, NAS devices, and smartphones will offset some of this. Some companies I've been at don't have server rooms filled to the max with actual physical servers, like say 5 years ago. Every task doesn't necessarily need one full computer dedicated to it anymore (not like it's news to anyone here).
And the extra heat from Moniters and PCs will melt our polar icecaps with Global Warming 2.0
~Vexed and loving it!
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..."
No. It's a psychological barrier. They are going to kill us. The computer power doubles every 18 months the computer number doubles every five years and our intellect increases slowly by pure biological evolution (that's assuming it's even going in that direction). We're doomed!
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
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.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
That's 340 billion billion billion billion, not 340 billion.
Yeah, except that by 2015 when the developing world makes up 775 million, there will be 2 billion computers in use overall, so it'd be ~38% ;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milliard
1.000.000.000 PCs each containing at least $ 10.000.000.000 in copyrighted material.
imagine a beowulf cluster of those!
"... how much can a poor nation stand?"