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"Good Enough" Computers Are the Future
An anonymous reader writes "Over on the PC World blog, Keir Thomas engages in some speculative thinking. Pretending to be writing from the year 2025, he describes a world of 'Good Enough computing,' wherein ultra-cheap PCs and notebooks (created to help end-users weather the 'Great Recession' of the early 21st century) are coupled to open source operating systems. This is possible because even the cheapest chips have all the power most people need nowadays. In what is effectively the present situation with netbooks writ large, he sees a future where Microsoft is priced out of the entire desktop operating system market and can't compete. It's a fun read that raises some interesting points."
There is nothing particularly insightful about the article. Obviously the largest portion of the computer using population would never need cutting edge power, so effectively "good enough" has always been the paradigm. How many of us have super computers? This is just a piece with some wishful thinking hoping that people eventually see through Microsoft's coerced perpetual upgrade cycle.
I got a catholic block.
There will always be higher res movies to view and process, and more data from the world to be saved. I remember one colleague telling me in 1995 that if I got a 2 gig drive it would never be full.
Your post is true; but I don't think that it actually contradicts TFA's assertion.
Apple is, in fact, a significant beneficiary of "good enough". They make mostly laptops, which always have price/performance and worse absolute performance than do desktops. Nobody much cares; because laptops are more convenient, and they are fast enough for the job(even within the laptop market, Apple doesn't bother with any dual HDD offerings, or SLI setups, because the lower spec stuff is good enough). On the desktop side, all of Apple's consumer offerings are all-in-ones with extremely limited expandability. Nobody(except gamers) much cares; because the stuff built in is good enough, and PCI blanking plates are ugly.
Having a manufacturer selling limited-performance hardware, with minimal expansion capacity, distinguished by industrial design and software, rather than performance, and doing quite well is exactly what "good enough" looks like.
That doesn't mean that Apple is the only part of "good enough" el-cheapo walmart desktops and netbooks are also a (larger in marketshare terms) part; but Apple is hardly in opposition to "good enough".
I know exactly what you mean. I had to boot into Vista the other day to update my iPod, and it was a mess. I mean, it's pretty much a brand new install, and I've done as much as possible to reduce running services and apps, but still...it can barely handle a single browser on this computer. And it's so damn unresponsive. Combine that with the horror than is iTunes (It just starts doing all kinds of crap that I don't want it to do, and it slows my computer to such a crawl that it takes ten minutes get my mouse to the cancel button) and what should have taken five minutes ended up taking over an hour.
After that experience I have truly realized why I love Linux. I love it because, even on my $500 Dell Vostro, I can run a browser with 15 tabs open, and leave it running for weeks at a time (an old, leaky firefox even!)...while running KDevelop and Pidgin and Amarok and Konsole and Epiphany (yes, I run two browsers sometimes) and kate and whatever else I need. And nothing slows down. I love it because I can squeeze almost 6 hours of life out of a battery than can barely hit 3 on Vista. I love it because I can do 'sh passmount.sh' and punch in a password rather than typing in some huge string, typing in a username and password, selecting a drive and hitting next 6 times...but if I want GUI tools, they're right there too. I love it because all of my apps run. All of them. From Fantasy General and Zone Raiders (old DOS games) to World of Warcraft and Command and Conquer: Tiberium Wars. Basically, I love it because it does what I want. Everything I want. But _only_ what I want.