Looking ahead to the PC of 2007
InfoWorld | at | by Mike
PCs enjoyed a better year in 2005 than most analysts had predicted. Notebook shipments continued to accelerate, Microsoft's Media Center PCs started to gain shelf space among receivers and DVD players in the living room, and corporations continued to upgrade as IT budgets proved firmer than anticipated.
But in terms of groundbreaking new features, there wasn't much to cheer about this year, and next year probably won't be very different. Leaps in PC technology, seen in previous advances like wireless networking, truly portable notebooks, or optical storage technology, will be hard to find in moderately priced PCs in 2006. Dual-core processors will become the norm, but companies such as Microsoft are worried about the leisurely pace at which PC application developers are converting their products to take advantage of a new parallel world.