BILLYGRUFF GATES believes that hardware costs are going to fall so much in the next ten years that it will be almost given free with software.
He's having one of his visions again.

The Microsoft chairman said that in a decade's time in terms of hardware costs you can almost think of hardware as being free.

"I'm not saying it will be absolutely free. in terms of the power of the servers, the power of the network will not be a limiting factor," Gates said.

Speaking at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo, held by information technology researcher Gartner Group, Gates said Microsoft was betting that advances in hardware and computing will make it possible for people to "talk" to their computer. Rather than just swear.

"Many of the holy grails of computing that have been worked on over the last 30 years will be solved within this 10-year period, with speech being in every device and having a device that's like a tablet that you just carry around."

In Gates' brave new world, advances in programming will allow software developers to create applications in less time by using visual representations of the inner workings of software rather than writing lines of programming code.

He said that Microsoft will spend $6.8 billion on research and development in its current business year to June. You could probably send someone to methane laden Mars for that if you outsourced the space mission.


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The Inquirer

Sounds good to me where do I sign up ? lol been waiting for visual programming for a while... it would suit my style of thinking so much so that I probably could get a job programming I find typing in endless lines of commands such a bother.... I thought computers where supposed to work for me LOL

The Inquirer has to be one of the worst "news" sites. I agree with bill on this. Look at hardware right now. Hard drives cost abour $1 per gb, ram is rather cheap, everything on a whole has greatly come down in price. Things will be VERY inexpensive in the future, maybe not to the degree he is speaking of, but close to it.

Man I hate the inquirer.

hmm, but hprices will not fall as rapidly, moe importantly, performance will increase while the price remains the same.

What do you have against the inquirer bb? not that i kno much bout it

The Inq. is the Jerry Springer of the net... I agree with Bangbang some of there stories are either late or are half truths or just out right lies lol I still read the site but I take everything with a grain of salt (sometimes two...) Ow my finger hurts typing sucks on a fresh cut....

Just compare the price of a 10gb hard drive a few years ago to that of a 200gb hard drive today. Prices are falling. Computers, on a whole, are ALOT cheaper than they have ever been and they keep on falling in price.

yes, but compare the cost of a 200 MHz processsor which was top of the line when it came out and that of a 3.4 GHz EE today. They will almost be the same.

EE is a different league. Look at a top of the line 3.4 p4 to a top of the line 200mhz back when.

no, i mean look at it from this angle :

Take the price of the most powerful hardware component today in any category

now compare it to a top of the line product avaiable 2 years ago. it will be almost the same.

instead, they could try to make it a bit cheaper & more powerful, but they dont

we have more power on our PCs then they had when they went to the moon... If they really did.

Heheheh one PC is more powerfull then all the computers on the planet at that time..... and yes they went to the moon you can buy a nice home telescope and see some of the equipment they left there by nice I mean over 1,000$ hehehehe

I don't know ... I think I saw wave motion flowing through the American flag they put on the moon.

When I bought a stick of 256mb of ram about 2 years ago or so it was dirt cheap; about $50 or somewhere around there. The hd's are also dirt cheap now, very cheap.

Hardware will be included with software just like magazines include demos of some of the latest games. Doesn't Final Fantasy VIII include a 120gb hdd? I've seen the commercial quite a few times but am always on the computer and never catch what it says for more than a few seconds.

Im not being anti-anything here. But step out of your geek mind set and THINK.... wasn't the world a better place without such complications caused by computers? Hey I'm trying to be honest...