Today's computers are fast enough. That's the message you hear from my colleagues in the press, proponents of stripped-down computers, and corporate IT departments.
Internet speed is held back more by modems than by computers.
Therefore, we don't need to have computers become any faster. It's a seductive argument, but I disagree with it. In reality, today's computers aren't nearly good enough for what we want to do with them. As we pointed out in our July issue on service and reliability, readers reported that one of every three machines they had used during the past year had a service or support issue. In many cases, the problem isn't physical reliability but that it's just too hard to operate the products properly.