The future is wireless for PCs

What the technology industry would like right now is a solution to the dreadful tailspin it finds itself in. Well, I have it: let the technology disappear.

Perhaps that needs a little clarification. My suggestion is not for them all to pack their bags and shut up shop, but instead to change their emphasis, to focus on creating technology that you don't notice because it configures itself to your needs, rather than vice-versa. You plug it in, it works. End of story.

More than that, though, the pieces of technology need to be smaller. It's time for the PC to stop having more functions. It's time instead for it to explode.

It's a big contrast to the way the gods of tech have been dressing everything up. Last week Jim Allchin, group vice-president of Microsoft, was talking up Windows XP, the new version of Windows for consumers (that will, by the way, make Windows95 obsolete; no more new device drivers for you, Mr Stopped-Paying-Microsoft-Six-Years-Ago-Win95 user!).

Allchin said XP will have lots of new features that will persuade people (like you, Mr SPMSYAW95 user) to upgrade their operating system, and presumably their computer. "We should have a very good next year, and when I say we, I mean the industry," he told the Intel Developer Forum. "There are 140 million computers out there that haven't been upgraded in three years; the operating systems and applications haven't changed enough – haven't added enough value – to get people to upgrade."

Developers, or "software writers" to you and me, like such talk. Intel loves such talk, since it wants to shift some of those gigahertz-plus chips out the door.

"You've got an installed base [of PCs] out there that is at 400MHz [clock speed] when the state of the art is a gigahertz and above," said Paul Otellini, general manager of Intel's architecture group. "That difference creates such a vacuum that demand is created."

As this year has already proven – you're wrong, Paul. What creates demand is providing new stuff that people actually want, not the same stuff with go-faster stripes.

What I think would really kickstart tech sales is the atomisation of the PC – that is, creating more autonomous products that can talk to your computer.

An example: wireless networks, aka 802.11b or "WiFi". What a blessing this is to home users: no more trailing cables everywhere to create Ethernet links; and you can link up your phone to the "base station" of the wireless link, so no more struggling around for modems either. So that separates the functions of the PC from linking to the modem and to any other PC in the home.

But don't stop there. Split more things out. Ideally, my home would have a central server under the stairs with a wireless link. That could talk to a little computing appliance attached to my hi-fi, receiving MP3s from the server and turning them into analogue inputs for the hi-fi; a similar appliance could play my music outside in the garage (where the DIY gets done). People already do this – such as computer journalist Adam Engst, who writes for TidBits.com; he describes how at http://db.tidbits.com/ getbits.acgi?tbart=06300.

And how about some webcams outside the house, which could chat – wirelessly, of course – back to the server, which you could then monitor via a PC or a touchpad or a PDA with 802.11 functionality? And something linked to outside temperature, or to control lights, or...

All the products exist, at least as parts. Some of it would be an 802.11 card linked to a simple chip – if an MP3 player (to convert files into sound) can cost £50 retail, the chip technology must be a lot cheaper. Some of it is X.10 ("home networking") technology – which is a great system, except that it's hard to find.

However, Jim Allchin doesn't see that future. Nor do the folk at Intel. They just sees one where people use PCs, and access the Net. Dull, dull, dull. Let's blow up the PC.