If you’ve been keeping track of the computer hardware industry during the past year, congratulations: It’s fried my brain.

But from the ashes of my smoking skull, I’ve managed to find details about the rapid changes in technology that all boil down to this: BUY NOW!

I came to this conclusion recently after touching base with hardware sources that I had been temporarily out of contact with during the hiatus of my wedding. (And a wonderful hiatus it was, too!) My source’s tack on the market movement is that many of the major manufacturers have leveled off with their innovation, and those of us who are content to ride the cutting edge of technology (instead of the bleeding edge) are going to clean up on the "also ran" hardware.

I say "also ran" because not many people have the cash to throw at a new Hard Drive, Motherboard, CPU, and RAM every eighteen months. (See Moore’s Law, in the 4-97 PAUG.) Most of us can do our work quite well, thank you, on the "second string" hardware that has just gone out favor for the newest gadget on the block.

With that in mind, let’s review what the current "hot" hardware technologies are, and then delve into why this circumstance makes such a cozy environment for the average Joe to update his hardware with "second string" equipment.

Intel spent a fortune with its blitzkrieg advertising for the MMX (Multimedia Extensions) enhanced Pentium processors, and the publicity paid off. Too well, it turns out. Intel suddenly found itself with more of a demand for MMX enhanced chips than it was expecting and couldn’t meet the demand. This meant that non MMX enhanced Pentium chips (that were still selling well) suddenly looked like a dead end purchase. BOOM! That was the sound of the bottom falling out the non-enhanced Pentium market. A 200 MHz Pentium went for about $400-450 dollars before the MMX blitz; now they retail for about $240. Ouch.

Quickly, competitors like AMD and Cyrix stepped into the gap with their MMX enhanced CPUs and Intel got insult added to injury: AMD retailed their MMX enhanced 200 MHz processor for the same price as the non-enhanced Intel device, about $240. Double-Ouch.

Intel is recovering from the gaffe (production on the MMX Pentiums has been stepped up considerably) but not before the do-it-yourself crowd of computer builders (and custom build retailers) took notice and started building equally good machines with cheaper parts. AMD scored big on this one, but Cyrix was plagued by a manufacturing flaw that badly hurt its chances of staying in the race for this lap. Maybe next time, Cyrix.

All of this adds up to great time to buy. Many of the changing standards that were in flux when I fired a warning short last December have finally started to firm up, not the least of which are MMX, USB (Universal Serial Bus), and FireWire. MMX is finally becoming an "assumed" for new computer systems, and USB is being built onto motherboards as Microsoft is finishing drivers to make USB operate in the soon to be debuted Windows 98. (More on that next month.) All of this adds up to great price breaks, because all of these doodads are considered baseline now. When something is considered standard, you don’t typically pay more for it: When you last bought a car you didn’t get charged extra for your manual window crank, right?

USB is becoming the defacto standard for new serial devices. The basic premise is that all serial devices (mice, tablets, keyboards, et. al.) will use a common data port type, and the larger devices will act as "hubs" for multiple devices to plug into: No more wire tangles. Companies such as Cypress Semiconductor are rapidly preparing and testing standard and innovative USB peripherals that will change the way we use our computers. USB is being shipped on most prebuilt PCs now, and many of the devices that exploit this technology will be available by Christmas.

Oddly FireWire is being billed as a competing specification to USB, which it is not. FireWire was developed for use with bandwidth hungry multimedia applications. Call it the BIG PIPE.

But no one needs a FireWire keyboard, unless they regularly pop LSD and then start typing the Library of Congress catalog. No human types at 10¹² characters per minute, so pumping that much data through the pipe is completely unnecessary. FireWire will make it possible to watch a Digital Video Disc (DVD) on your computer, or send the image to your TV, but it doesn’t make sense to have a FireWire compatible mouse. Thus the rattling about "competing standards" is just that: rattling.

Two heavy hitters in the game for upgrades are Hard Drives and Video Cards, both of which should be of considerable interest to the CAD and 3D Studio users. It is not only time to bring your system up to snuff, but now you can go Cadillac size, with Porsche speed, all for the price of a Geo.

It gives me heartburn to report on the prices for Hard Drives, but some lucky folks all over the world are benefiting by it: Prices have plummeted. My personal confession of agony goes like this: In 1993, I got a friend’s father to build me a new computer for use at university. The most expensive item was the hard drive: $350 for 302 Megabytes. This was a decent size drive at the time, and at $1.16 per meg, I thought I was doing pretty well. Last year I bought a 1.6 Gigabyte drive (equivalent to a 1,600 Megabyte) and paid less: $250 total, or about $.16 per meg.

Imagine the cartwheel my gut did when, for $330, it is possible to buy a 5.1 Gigabyte drive (thats 5,100 Megabytes!) for the home market, totaling out to about $.06 per meg. Ah, the march of progress. Now you can store the ACAD files that show an exploded view of every rivet on an aircraft carrier and still have room to run games.

Ah yes, games. Before you tune out on computer games, they are (despite their apparent detrimental effect on society) driving the advancements in graphics technology. That fact makes it important to give computer gaming the (reluctant) nod that it deserves. Video game graphics have moved from low resolution charmers like Pac-Man to "realistic" helicopter simulators like Steel Talons and finally to today’s first person, immerse gaming like ID’s ghoulish Quake. The continual pursuit of "an experience so real you prefer it to reality" is producing technology useful for purposes other than glorified Cowboys and Indians games with Bazookas. A productive "real world" beneficiary is AutoCAD, along with other species.

Video card technology has gone from passable to advanced in the time that the Republicans have been in control of Congress. The major features that have improved are those concerning real time 3D refresh rates. This means being able to model your ACAD drawing or 3D Studio file in real time with solid models. No more of the change-render-change-render nonsense. Just grab the edge and drag it out to where you want it. Poof! It is done.

Many of these advances have been lead by Diamond Multimedia, an old hand in the video card market, and Matrox, which exploded onto the market two years ago with its Millennium processor, and then rattled the gaming and 3D production world again by releasing the Mystique, a low cost board with most of the rocketry from the Millennium left in. Both the Diamond and the Matrox products are excellent choices for someone who wants to upgrade without breaking the bank.

With a stack of options like this, no one wants to be left out in the cold. If your system is wheezing, sneezing, or more frequently freezing, now is the time. When you know you have to jump onto a moving train, you pick the one that is slowing, not the one that is speeding up.

I do hear some cries from the back of the audience yelling, "Hey, what about us poor puck-pushers who don’t know how to do triage on our computers? I drive my car, but I don’t replace the transmission myself!"

An excellent point. I got in the habit of doing computer upgrades because I could "win friends and influence people" and it kept me in the good graces of my family. But just because you don’t know a bit from a byte, doesn’t mean you can’t take advantage of the current market behavior: find a local system shop, explain what you need (i.e., what your application is) and then let them put a proposal together. Get their price and then shop the system specs around to other custom shops. As per normal, if a price seems too good to be true, you are probably about to get taken for a ride. Be sure all of the systems come with a warranty and technical support. Above all, invoke some third disinterested party to check out whether you are getting a good deal.

It is never simple to keep up with technology. Most of us don’t have the money to shell out big bucks every time Bill Gates has a midnight vision of The Next Big Thing. But if you are careful in your buying habits, and stick with purchasing hardware that has been around long enough to become standards (but not so long they become "old standards") you are going to keep up with the big dogs quite well.

Next month, Windows 98 looms on the horizon. Are you ready?

Peace,

Webwalker