Inside Track: John C. Dvorak

Dvorak’s InsideTrack

Windows 7 is at the top of this month’s gossip items as early reviews start coming in. Despite all the supposed new features that will probably disappear before offi cial release, most people see Windows 7 as SP3 of Vista, and perhaps that is what it should be.

One of Windows 7’s characteristics apparently is that it seems snappier. Tests appear to conclude that while it is actually not faster than Vista, it feels as if it is. What does that mean? It means, to me at least, that the OS is organizing tasks differently and perhaps buffering things like directories in a manner that makes it feel faster.

I’ve harped on this problem over the years. Too often Windows will choke on something like loading a download directory and bring up the little fl ashlight as if it’s looking for something. It’s often ridiculous. The OS should be better at anticipating or understanding what you are trying to do.

Some people are asking if this is the last iteration of Windows that we will be seeing. Perhaps the Windows franchise is over. What will Microsoft do? Let’s face it: The moniker “Windows” is old. In fact, it’s 25 years old.

The reason that there are no parties celebrating this anniversary is because Microsoft does not want to remind people how old this product actually is. “Twenty-five years! Holy crap! When are they going to do something new?!?”

Apple has reinvented its OS numerous times, and Microsoft has not. Microsoft evolved DOS from a product it bought from someone else. Then it developed Windows while supposedly working with IBM on OS/2. A quarter of a century later, we have Windows 7 and nothing else. With all its money and resources, you’d think Microsoft would have a half dozen parallel projects running as experiments. Even Intel has made some effort to decouple from the x86 architecture. It has not been successful, but at least it’s trying.

Criticism aside, I did see one interesting specifi cation on the Windows 7 list. Apparently Windows 7 will support up to 64 processors. Does this mean the OS will actually do load balancing on an eight-core CPU? Let’s hope so.

Guessing Game Dept.: The forecast for PC sales for 2009 appears gloomy, but forecasters keep getting these predictions wrong. The past year was supposed to be gloomy, but sales of processors, for example, were up 15 percent worldwide. A lot of this has to do with the emergence of the smartphone as a platform, the unforeseen popularity of the netbook computer, and the ridiculously low prices of full-size notebooks. It’s amazing what you can get for $600. Go shopping!

Whither UWB? Dept.: It looks as if Intel is going to bail out of the technology known as ultra wideband (also called pulse radio). UWB is one of the biggest disappointments in technology I have encountered since discussing this 20 years ago. Nothing much has come of it. Intel was developing a putative commercial iteration of the idea, but now it’s given up, and UWB will continue to be a back-burner notion.

Meanwhile, Intel is pursuing WiMAX to the max as Sprint rolls out WiMAX to various test markets. WiMAX covers a much broader territory than Wi-Fi and can transmit for miles and miles. But because the receivers—especially the mobile ones—are unlikely to have the same amount of wattage to transmit signals back, the practical distances will probably be around 1.5 miles at most. This means a lot more towers than were talked about when WiMAX fi rst joined the conversation and the idea was to have a 25-mile radius. Personally, I think the idea of mobile WiMAX is a dead duck. Let the cell-phone companies have that business. I think fi xed WiMAX to the home is the only chance the technology has to gain a foothold. Predicting the Future Dept.: The affable Brian Halla, CEO of National Semiconductor, sees a rosy future for, of all things, analog chips, saying in a recent press conference that analog is better than digital for many applications. Of course! He went on to outline what he called the five waves of semiconductor demand in the transistor era. The first wave was DRAMs for mainframes. Then came the demand for microprocessors. Number three was networking chips, as the Internet took off. The fourth wave was for mobile phones. His fi fth (predicted) wave is a sketchy hodgepodge having something to do with health care, renewable energy, and “personal mobile devices.” In other words, he doesn’t have a clue. While I cannot subscribe to this list of fi ve, I do think the mobile phone “wave” is just beginning, as the smartphone becomes a computer platform. Most observers would see the next wave as microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) rather than the Halla witches’ brew that drops his love of analog chips into the pot.

MEMS are made like semiconductors but contain minute mechanical capabilities. Some would say that these are nanotechnology devices. From my perspective, the fi rst practical MEMS device was the Texas Instruments DLP (digital light processor), which was originally called a DMD (digital micromirror device). The little mirrors on the chip are mechanical. Other MEMS products include sensors, microgyroscopes, weird display chips, and even microphones. Nobody can guess where this technology will head.

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