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New Year, New PCs?
A look at what's in store for PCs in 2005, and why 2006 may be the
year to buy.
Martyn Williams and Tom Krazit, IDG News Service
Tuesday, December 21, 2004
Consumers thinking about buying a new personal computer in 2005 might
be better off putting off their purchase until 2006. With few major
changes in PC hardware or software due over the next year, the PC of
2005 is likely to look awfully similar to the PC of today.
Big changes aren't due until 2006, when the Longhorn operating system
from Microsoft, 64-bit applications, and optical drives based on the
Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD formats will become available to the average
user.
Still, that doesn't mean there are no technologies worth looking out
for for those who do plan to upgrade in 2005.
Fresh Chips
Intel and Advanced Micro Devices are expected to unveil dual-core
chips--which contain two processor cores on a single piece of
silicon--by the end of 2005, although they probably won't appear in
mainstream PCs until well into 2006, said Stephen Baker, director of
industry analysis at NPD Techworld in Reston, Virginia.
Intel will likely boost the cache memory in its Pentium 4 processor
and AMD is expected to increase the clock speed of its Athlon 64, but
these changes will be incremental. A more substantial shift in
processor performance, the move to 64-bit computing, probably also
won't happen next year, even though Microsoft is expected to finally
release a 64-bit version of Windows XP in early 2005.
Bigger changes can be expected in chipsets, which handle the flow of
communication between the processor and the rest of a PC. A new series
of Intel chipsets supporting the PCI Express interface and DDR2 memory
will trickle down to mainstream systems, or those priced at about
$800, in 2005, Baker said.
PCI Express will allow data to travel faster between the chipset and
peripheral hardware such as graphics cards and storage. Intel has
billed its introduction as one of its most important upgrades in a
decade. While that might be stretching it, mainstream users will begin
to see more and more products that take advantage of the increased
bandwidth in 2005, Baker said.
DDR2 will allow memory chips to move data at faster clock rates. The
older DDR standard is reaching the limit of its effectiveness as
memory clock rates exceed 400MHz. Memory chip vendors are expected to
produce larger amounts of DDR2 in 2005, bringing costs down and
allowing vendors to put faster memory chips in cheaper PCs.
PCI Express and DDR Memory will also appear in notebooks from early
2005 with the introduction of Intel's next-generation Alviso chipset.
Notebook sales have been growing faster than those of desktops for
several years, a trend that will continue into 2005, said Roger Kay,
vice president of client computing at IDC, in Framingham,
Massachusetts.
That's Entertainment
Technologies that make it easier to handle music, video, games and
other multimedia are also on tap for 2005.
PC vendors will release more PCs with Microsoft's Windows XP Media
Center Edition 2005 operating system, designed to make it easy to burn
DVDs and manage digital media files, as well as pause and record live
television.
To help users handle their expanding collections of music and movie
files, PC vendors will also increase the storage capacity of hard
drives in mainstream PCs. Today they are typically between 80GB and
120GB. In 2005, expect to see $800 PCs with around 200GB of storage,
Baker said.
A disk technology called Serial ATA is also becoming established. It
includes a feature called Native Command Queuing, which allows a drive
to manage multiple commands from the PC in whatever order it deems
most efficient, rather than the order in which they were received. It
can deliver a substantial performance boost to users, and that's good
news for data-heavy applications such as those involving video.
In the optical disc space, users are likely to see incremental
increases in DVD read and write speeds. In the latter half of the year
the first PC drives supporting new, blue-laser based disc formats,
Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD, are expected to make their way onto the
market. Both formats are aimed primarily at high-definition video and
can store several times more data than today's DVDs. Single-layer
Blu-ray Discs can store around 25GB, while HD-DVD isn't far behind.
Hewlett-Packard recently became the first to go on record with its
plans for shipping Blu-ray Disc PCs, saying it will offer them in
2005.
However, the move towards PCs with better multimedia features will
only work if they provide a simple, rewarding experience for users,
noted IDC's Kay.
PCs captured the hearts and wallets of buyers by making tasks such as
word processing much easier. Televisions and DVD players are also easy
to use. People won't want a PC in their living room if it doesn't
provide them with a good experience for their money, Kay said.
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,119025,tk,dn122204X,00.asp
===
"He was like a magnet. I was being pulled." -- Britney Spears
on hubby K. Federline
A look at what's in store for PCs in 2005, and why 2006 may be the
year to buy.
Martyn Williams and Tom Krazit, IDG News Service
Tuesday, December 21, 2004
Consumers thinking about buying a new personal computer in 2005 might
be better off putting off their purchase until 2006. With few major
changes in PC hardware or software due over the next year, the PC of
2005 is likely to look awfully similar to the PC of today.
Big changes aren't due until 2006, when the Longhorn operating system
from Microsoft, 64-bit applications, and optical drives based on the
Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD formats will become available to the average
user.
Still, that doesn't mean there are no technologies worth looking out
for for those who do plan to upgrade in 2005.
Fresh Chips
Intel and Advanced Micro Devices are expected to unveil dual-core
chips--which contain two processor cores on a single piece of
silicon--by the end of 2005, although they probably won't appear in
mainstream PCs until well into 2006, said Stephen Baker, director of
industry analysis at NPD Techworld in Reston, Virginia.
Intel will likely boost the cache memory in its Pentium 4 processor
and AMD is expected to increase the clock speed of its Athlon 64, but
these changes will be incremental. A more substantial shift in
processor performance, the move to 64-bit computing, probably also
won't happen next year, even though Microsoft is expected to finally
release a 64-bit version of Windows XP in early 2005.
Bigger changes can be expected in chipsets, which handle the flow of
communication between the processor and the rest of a PC. A new series
of Intel chipsets supporting the PCI Express interface and DDR2 memory
will trickle down to mainstream systems, or those priced at about
$800, in 2005, Baker said.
PCI Express will allow data to travel faster between the chipset and
peripheral hardware such as graphics cards and storage. Intel has
billed its introduction as one of its most important upgrades in a
decade. While that might be stretching it, mainstream users will begin
to see more and more products that take advantage of the increased
bandwidth in 2005, Baker said.
DDR2 will allow memory chips to move data at faster clock rates. The
older DDR standard is reaching the limit of its effectiveness as
memory clock rates exceed 400MHz. Memory chip vendors are expected to
produce larger amounts of DDR2 in 2005, bringing costs down and
allowing vendors to put faster memory chips in cheaper PCs.
PCI Express and DDR Memory will also appear in notebooks from early
2005 with the introduction of Intel's next-generation Alviso chipset.
Notebook sales have been growing faster than those of desktops for
several years, a trend that will continue into 2005, said Roger Kay,
vice president of client computing at IDC, in Framingham,
Massachusetts.
That's Entertainment
Technologies that make it easier to handle music, video, games and
other multimedia are also on tap for 2005.
PC vendors will release more PCs with Microsoft's Windows XP Media
Center Edition 2005 operating system, designed to make it easy to burn
DVDs and manage digital media files, as well as pause and record live
television.
To help users handle their expanding collections of music and movie
files, PC vendors will also increase the storage capacity of hard
drives in mainstream PCs. Today they are typically between 80GB and
120GB. In 2005, expect to see $800 PCs with around 200GB of storage,
Baker said.
A disk technology called Serial ATA is also becoming established. It
includes a feature called Native Command Queuing, which allows a drive
to manage multiple commands from the PC in whatever order it deems
most efficient, rather than the order in which they were received. It
can deliver a substantial performance boost to users, and that's good
news for data-heavy applications such as those involving video.
In the optical disc space, users are likely to see incremental
increases in DVD read and write speeds. In the latter half of the year
the first PC drives supporting new, blue-laser based disc formats,
Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD, are expected to make their way onto the
market. Both formats are aimed primarily at high-definition video and
can store several times more data than today's DVDs. Single-layer
Blu-ray Discs can store around 25GB, while HD-DVD isn't far behind.
Hewlett-Packard recently became the first to go on record with its
plans for shipping Blu-ray Disc PCs, saying it will offer them in
2005.
However, the move towards PCs with better multimedia features will
only work if they provide a simple, rewarding experience for users,
noted IDC's Kay.
PCs captured the hearts and wallets of buyers by making tasks such as
word processing much easier. Televisions and DVD players are also easy
to use. People won't want a PC in their living room if it doesn't
provide them with a good experience for their money, Kay said.
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,119025,tk,dn122204X,00.asp
===
"He was like a magnet. I was being pulled." -- Britney Spears
on hubby K. Federline