Is technology growing for its own sake?
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Is technology growing for its own sake? Intel and AMD are coming out with new processors about every six months; ATI and NVIDIA are coming out with new video cards at the same rate. Where is all of this going? Does the world purchase that much of each that these companies will continue to prosper? I cannot speak for everyone but I have not bought a new video card in a while and the last one I did was a generation old. The last processor was given to me and it is two generations old. Are people buying new technology just to have the latest? There must be a lot of Jones out there people are chasing. ATI is coming out with the new Radeon 4850 and 4870; sure they both seem to have good price points, so I guess they are trying to get more people to upgrade from what they have now. I have a NVIDIA 8800GTS 320MB video card that handles all of my needs so why would I want to upgrade? Thinking about the industry and it boggles my mind how these companies can continue functioning. I know there is an upgrade cycle that is staggered and some people will be ready to upgrade about the time the new video card and processors are out, is that enough to sustain these companies? I realize that OEM companies are buying large quantities, that’s good but the upgrade market is where they make the real money. It seems like all of new computer technology is coming way too fast for the market to sustain. I would love to have someone explain to me why I need the latest in technology so I can buy it without reservation. Being in the technology industry like I am, all of this progression still does not make sense, all of the new video cards are geared towards gamers, and new processors are geared towards those highly productive people. I fall about in the middle, I enjoy gaming, and I also enjoy working with Photoshop and my 3D graphics. I think if Intel, AMD, ATI, and NVIDIA all stopped making new products for a year everyone would be happy with what is out there right now. Am I just too closed minded not to see that by producing new and exciting computer hardware, tons of people will buy and these companies will thrive? I am trying to be realistic, someone please explain the madness. Well that’s my rant for Tuesday, I hope you all have enjoyed it or at least it made you think.
Until next time,
Kineo
4 Comments
leftystrat
June 24th, 2008
at 3:25pm
I figured this out years ago. I kept wondering why we have cameras in our cell phones.
Because we CAN.
kineo
June 24th, 2008
at 5:03pm
Leftystrat, I know what you mean, hehe, sometime it just does not make any sense. I was scanning my headlines on Monday and most of it was what Intel, AMD, ATI and NVIDIA was doing with their latest stuff…it is like a serious act of redundancy.
mhz
June 25th, 2008
at 1:28am
What if a medium or large sized company took their millions of dollars in annual IT budget and used it for something else? (Some stuff would break down over the year of course, and would need to be fixed.)
What if they just agreed to let the IT equipment stand still for a year and spend those millions on fancy catered lunches?
Or purchasing a new building (or retrofitting an the old one). Or add swimming pools, water slides and a golf course.
Seriously. IT budgets are HUGE, constantly replacing equipment on a schedule, and then paying over again for software licenses.
Usually its only getting replaced in order to maintain vendor service agreements, because you can’t have equipment or software versions that are “past end of life”, or “out of support.”
Oh well…it keeps me employed.
kineo
June 25th, 2008
at 6:43am
mhz, I never thought of that, I could imagine what would happen to the company if they didn’t have IT support for a year. The next year and beyond would be madness just trying to play catch up. Major companies are in a constant state of upgrades and replacing computer and printer equipment so I could see where that would be crippling.