We, the consumers, have had a great ride the last 30 years. The IBM PC and the Apple genre of desk-top boxes became such a big and prolific demand that an entire industry developed... much of it financed and fueled by corporate purchases. Now with iPhones, iPads, Blackberrys, and tablet devices I have lost count of, the marked for traditional computers, including laptops, is something of a shell of it's former self. No longer can young people hope to start a company around one application and build a company that grows into a full line of software through aggressive marketing and pricing. No longer can publishers print magazines full of free code we can all try for ourselves in $60 language compilers.
I worked at one time in computers at one of the Big Box stores and a co-worker over in appliances reminded me one day: "yeah, the day will come for computers also. Every year they come up with stereo systems that are a little bit better that the previous model, but they have reached the point that only our dogs know if they are actually any better or not. And when computers reach maturity, who can tell us if the newer model is any better than the previous one? Our dogs can't listen to the computer and tell us.
I guess we are there. Yes, maybe stockpiling an extra XP or Win 7 is a good idea for those of us who still "make nice every day" with our traditional, bolted to the desk style computers.
