Intel Corp has hit upon a novel new way to combat the slow down in worldwide PC sales growth. The giant Santa Clara chip maker says it wants to transform those clunky beige boxes, which Compaq and Dell churn out by the million, into quieter, more attractive home accessories which are far easier to use. Intel’s newly launched ‘Ease of Use Initiative’ aims to bolster PC sales by reaching out to consumers who currently want to own a PC but who are intimidated by the technology. And to accentuate the point, Intel has built a radical ‘Concept PC’ which it showed off in San Francisco earlier this week. Intel isn’t about to enter the PC manufacturing business but, says Steve Whalley, one of Intel’s new PC initiatives managers Rather than Intel saying to all of its OEM partners – go do this, we’ve done it ourselves to show what a working system could look like.
By Alex Sloley
Running a special version of Window 98 on a 500MHz Intel processor, and looking something like a cross between a scale model of a Mayan temple and a set of kitchen scales, the concept PC is certainly different. But it’s the internal workings of the machine, originally code named Aztec, which Intel is most concerned with. The primary difference is the use of Universal Serial Bus (USB) ports to connect the compact, eight pound, red and silver metallic pyramid with all of its peripherals. The box contains a hard drive, but all of the other peripherals, such as keyboard, monitor, speakers and DVD drive, are simply plugged in via numerous USB slots. Intel’s research has shown that unsophisticated users are deterred by the thought of having to open the PC’s chassis to add ISA cards for connection to peripheral devices. It’s now pushing USB as the replacement for serial and other PC ports for input/output devices like joysticks, scanners and digital cameras. Intel calls this process ‘Legacy Removal’. The need for backward compatibility has led PC evolution towards being additive, says Intel’s Whalley. The PC platform is now weighed down with legacy hardware that is adding to complexity, slowing down the boot sequence and burdening the user, Whalley explained. Examples are the old ISA slots, the multitude of aging I/O sockets and the overly wide range of peripheral storage devices available, which now include 3.5 inch floppy disks, Iomega’s Zip drive, and rewritable CD ROM . Removing legacy hardware and promoting fewer standards will increase reliability while cutting the costs of supporting disparate standards, Intel reasons. And who better to act as a rallying point for this than Intel? Also saved will be the millions of dollars currently wasted on customer support calls across the PC industry after these old ISA cards and devices have been incorrectly installed, Intel says. Hence the first thing on the removal schedule is ISA. By promoting USB, Intel hopes to rid the PC industry of ISA by the second half of next year, saving around $8 on the build cost of a PC. Following this, the serial and PS/2 ports are targeted by Intel for disappearance by mid 2000. Parallel ports and floppy drives are to be out by 2001, and so on. Less is more, and ease of expansion is everything in Intel’s pursuit of the new, reluctant PC user. Apple’s USB friendly iMac, for example, has sold more than half a million units since August, something which Intel has watched very closely. Another novel feature of Intel’s concept PC is the faster boot sequence, around 20 seconds from power up. Not bad when compared to the typical boot sequence of new Windows 98 PC, which can take over a minute, but still a step backwards from the old x286 machines which could do it in a substantially more satisfying 15 seconds. Microsoft has worked with Intel to provide a special version of Win98 which cuts out many of the calls to peripherals, and speeds up the boot time. Whalley said he would also like to see a PC capable of reverting to a powered down mode, allowing it to wake up even faster, and also one that only crashed in the background by reverting to the last known stable state without subjecting the user to unintelligible error messages. This, alas, the Aztec machine could not do. The eventual idea is that Intel powered PCs should be capable of crossing over into that hot new consumer category called the Information Appliance. It is aiming for a product that is stable, attractive, easy to use, and that works far more like a VCR than a crash happy, Window powered PC; a device that consumers can quickly power up in order on to watch a DVD movie or to read an online newspaper; something that wouldn’t look out of place on a cabinet in the living room. The idea is a compelling one, and Intel seems earnest about championing this new drive on behalf of the PC industry. Whalley said Intel was currently assembling OEM groups to push these ideas forward over a four to five year time scale. The obvious sticking point, however, is the chronic lack of reliability inherent in Windows, the most popular PC operating system. Microsoft recently admitted that the soon to be launched Windows 2000 (or NT 5.0 as was) will contain between 35 million and 40 million lines of code. By comparison, Sun Microsystems Inc’s Solaris operating system contains just 12 million lines, while open source operating system Linux has just 1.5 million. Perhaps Intel could benefit the PC industry even further if some of its zeal for legacy removal were to be communicated to its long time partner in Redmond.
