To those people that have followed my writing these last two months, I’ve been exposed to virtualisation more than I would like, due to an incompatibility between my Macbook, a Java Virtualbox I’m running on it, and the Windows 2003 server managing our company network. As a result, I’ve been booting a lot into Windows via Boot Camp, got hooked on Windows Live Writer, and have been using Parallels frequently just for that app (I need a Crossover fix for .NET apps badly).

The second consequence is that I’ve been thinking a lot about the implications of virtual OSs. With Google OS recently having been announced, which is supposed to integrate flawlessly with Macs and Windows, assumably Android, as well as being designed for Netbooks, I wonder if Intel, with it’s multi-core processors, has not created a situation where nothing else matters, hardware-wise, except to have a powerful enough processor? In other words, have hardware-manufacturers like Sony, Samsung, and to some extent, Apple simply become irrelevant?

Take Sony for instance, which has just announced its first “Netbook.” It’s one selling point?

“Like other netbooks the Vaio W has a 10-inch screen, but its display has a resolution of 1,366 by 768 pixels rather than the more common 1,024 by 600 pixels. That means more of a Web site can be fitted onto the screen, and the user will have to scroll less, the company said at a launch event in Tokyo on Tuesday.” (emphasis my own)

Not much to write home about, except if you absolutely need to use a Sony, and bear in mind that that company was at some point a premium manufacturer of technology. The PC market has long been commoditised of course, ever since IBM opened its hardware up to the world, but with the rise of ultra-cheap PCs & laptops, I think they are digging their own grave.

I think that, as I wrote in a comment to a recent post, Netbooks are a failed experiment and, to add to that, unless either drastic changes in the cost-structure can be made to increase profit-margins, or new business models can be found (e.g. a similar hardware-service bundling to what has been happening in the mobile phone space), I think that we won’t be hearing from netbooks after 2010 onwards.

What also seems clear is that software companies, with their much more favourable profit margins, are winning this war, and, pretty soon, they won’t have to think about hardware at all any more. Instead of writing for a “spec,” you just need to write for a virtual space, which can run anywhere or everywhere.

Arguably, hardware has always been enslaved to software (except for one company), but I see the Sony’s & Samsung’s of today becoming the Nokia’s & Motorola’s of the future.

Since I’m not a technologist (more of a technology philosopher), I may be drastically oversimplifying. What do you think?
P.S. going to stop signing my name for a while. I’ll see if that makes a difference. V.

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