Current thinking goes along the lines that the price of computing halves every 12-18 months. This is simply because this is the rate at which the technology is progressing. What this doesn’t take into consideration is the progression of the software that is being run.
Efficiency could play a vital role in more powerful ways in the next few years. As PC users become more and more savvy to the way their PCs work, the average home user may start to gain more control over how there computer is performing.
Take Windows XP for example. At any given time an average PC runs all sorts of programs in the background without the user ever noticing. Spyware is the name given to malicious programs that spy on all your private info such as credit card information and the like. There are also non-malicious programs that although are not doing anything illegal they do slow your computer down unnecessarily.
Take iTunes for example. Did you know that iTunes runs a ‘helper’ application in the background all the time you are running your computer? Most people are unaware it even exists, let alone know what it does or how to disable it. This is just one example of many.
As up and coming generations reach adult hood, operating systems will have to start catering for their needs. Tweaking the operating system to optimally suit the individual user may just be a feature that the adults of tomorrow would be looking for as a priority.
Today, Windows XP Professional has maybe a few hundred options available for the web savvy user to tweak. But in the future the number of modifications could be set to double or even triple. You might think that there are a finite ways to configure up a PC. But when you take into consideration that each and every component can be overclocked this alone could bring the possible configurations into the 1000s.
Zach Hope is the author of Speed-Up-Windows-XP.com, a site that can teach anybody to significantly speed up Windows to invigorate old computers. You can eliminate slow boot times today and transform your really slow computer.