PC Makers Hit Speed Bumps; Being Faster May Not Matter "... an unpleasant new reality for the personal computer industry. For decades it has relied on the certainty that customers have an unquenchable desire for speedier new machines. But computers have reached a point where for the most common home purposes — Web surfing, e-mail and word processing — they are already more than fast enough to suit a typical home user's needs."

Considering you can now get a reasonable laptop with built-in 802.11, Windows XP Pro, 256 meg RAM, 20 gig hard disk, etc. for ~$1,300 (e.g., Toshiba Satellite 1300), I tend to agree. This is a broader theme: what is the IT industry going to do now that many categories have hit "good enough" feature/function levels?