Since the upcoming year is the last before the odometer flips to 2000, one has to assume that no matter what happens, it'll be overanalyzed by historians and pundits alike.
Price becomes king, again.
This will probably both save and kill the PC market, and it will change the way we think about computers in the 21st century. Retail is stronger than ever. While everyone is raving about the emerging e-commerce scene and how it will change the face of the world, retail is bigger than ever. IBM is on the verge of opening a worldwide chain. Desktop flat-panel becomes the standard.