Are Cheap Laptops a Roadblock for Moore's Law?

Timothy Harrington writes "Cnet.co.uk wonders if the $100 laptop could spell the end of Moore's Law: 'Moore's law is great for making tech faster, and for making slower, existing tech cheaper, but when consumers realize their personal lust for faster hardware makes almost zero financial sense, and hurts the environment with greater demands for power, will they start to demand cheaper, more efficient 'third-world' computers that are just as effective?" Will ridiculously cheap laptops wean consumers off ridiculously fast components?"

Comments

I doubt it

[_xeno_]

My cellphone is now more powerful than the first computer I used. It supports up to 1GB of removable storage in about the smallest form factor I've ever seen (micro SD). It's built-in camera is as good as the first digital camera that I owned.

In other words, yes, people may start demanding smaller and more powerful devices - but so what? It just means that instead of speed doubling, power use might start decreasing, storage density might increase, who knows what. We're using computers for purposes I never would have dreamed of when ten years ago. I have a computer under my TV that records shows - I never saw that coming until it did.

Computers will continue to evolve. The laptop and desktop might start to fade out, but new devices will take their place.

Re:It's about the software.

[billcopc]

Right... so what does Vista do for YOU, better than XP did five years ago ?

I remember a long long time ago, I was surfing on a puny little 96mb 200mhz Pentium. The World Wide Web may have changed a bit since then, but it's still just a bunch of text with a few pictures mixed in. A quad-core 3.2ghz monster doesn't do it 64 times faster today, instead we throw more garbage at it to "make use" of the extra power.

The problem with Moore's law is simple: computers may evolve quickly, but humans sure don't. We're as dumb as we were ten years ago. Life on earth is pretty much the same as it was before, it just costs more money now. We consume more and more, and produce less and less. Why aren't these "thinking machines" doing our work for us ? Productivity is supposed to have increased, but what have we done with the excess ?

If anything, cheap laptops are a roadblock to progress. We're right on track to becoming telecom slaves, just the way they want us.