New hardware: the hidden cost of cloud computing
July 17, 2013
Grazed from PCPro. Author: Editorial Staff.
One reason why PCs sales continue to slide year-on-year is that software no longer blackmails us into upgrading our hardware. The system requirements for Windows haven’t been upgraded since the launch of Vista; my five-year-old home laptop is just about capable of running anything I ask of it. Why bother upgrading when there are plenty of other ways to squander what’s left of my disposable income?
That’s not always been the case, of course. When I first rocked up at PC Pro in 1998, barely a week passed without some piece of software pushing the boundaries of what was possible on then-current hardware. Whether it was a new version of Windows, the latest Office suite, or – as was most often the case – the latest games, there was always some justification for an expensive upgrade. Intel and Microsoft even used to publish an annual recommended spec for the next year’s PCs, to give upgraders a target to aim for…
If we’re being honest, this hardware arms race was terrific for PC Pro. Consumers were always running out of hard disk space, memory or processor cycles; businesses were stuck on two- or three-year refresh cycles; and with decent PCs routinely costing north of £1,000, people thought nothing of spending a few quid on a PC magazine to find out which one they should be buying next…
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