Comments on: Microsoft gets it exactly wrong

By: Joe

Joe — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 21:16:08 +0000

I’m right there with you about what will be available hardware-wise. I just think the 3D vision side of things will be far more popular than the projection side of things.

I am not optimistic that computing environments will be portable enough that signing into any nearby computer to do whatever it is you want to do. It would be great if that could happen though.

By: lewis shepherd

lewis shepherd — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 19:20:59 +0000

I think you’re not stretching your mind enough in terms of where the technology is heading … and from that, the capabilities. On the hardware front: projection, 3D vision, and chip-computational power are all getting cheaper and yet more powerful. Within several years the hardware for an immersive environment will be way affordable for any home or office. Meanwhile, the software side of this is becoming really attractive and capable: of COURSE you’ll want own personal data & environment to follow you around, way beyond today’s mere “loading my web-based bookmarks into whatever browser I’m using”. It will be more like, “I just walked into this conference room at a partner’s office, and after identifying myself with OpenID [or something] all or my online services, mail, software, docs, storage, etc., is available to me here… as it will be likewise when I get home to my living room.” The notion of a “laptop” will change accordingly; in most cases you’ll just use any keyboard available, and/or a hand-controller (Wii-style) or just the camera-based recognition (Natal).

By: Joe

Joe — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 18:52:53 +0000

@Brian: Netbooks are pretty damn cheap. It’s hard to beat a $200 computer that you can take with you. The cheapest desktops start around there for just the system (without monitor and keyboard), though obviously the $200 desktop is more powerful than the $200 netbook.

At the moment the R&D costs of those low-end systems are subsidized by the higher end systems that companies and gamers buy. If that subsidy shift to mostly build portable and mobile computers, I just don’t see the low-end repurposing stuff just to stick to the desktop.

@Matthew: Yeah, that’s a good point.

By: Matthew Weigel

Matthew Weigel — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 17:19:08 +0000

“The rise of Hotmail and other web-based email packages changed all of that.”

Well, so did IMAP, and to a lesser extent supporting protocols like IMSP and LDAP (for your address book and the like). Still, that points to there being even more effort, and pre-web effort, to provide data portability (as do things like AFS, which is largely dead now but 15 years ago was amazing for letting you “take” all of your data with you on whatever computer).

By: Brian 'Psychochild' Green

Brian 'Psychochild' Green — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 07:21:26 +0000

I don’t agree that desktops are going away. The thing a lot of people tend to forget is that not everyone is equal in the world. Some people are not able to afford highly portable machines as we can. No matter how cheap laptops get, you can often find a more powerful desktop for even cheaper.

Likewise, something as elaborate as a room-sized interface is not going to be affordable, either. I suspect that between these two competing technologies, we’ll see wearable computing before we see room-sized interfaces.