I was reading an article about the new generation of CPUs, and the speeds are astronomical. But then my crystal ball fogged up, and I had the following premonition:

It won’t be long before the ever-increasing speeds reach a point where the average user won’t care anymore. Think about it. There are plenty of people using old computers that still work. There are even more people buying and using Pentium systems even though the Pentium II has been out for some time and the Pentium III is already here. Why? Because the Pentium does what they need, and the extra speed of a Pentium III isn’t worth the price.

I’m talking about the "average" user who does some word processing, plays a few games, keeps the checkbook on the computer and has an email account. Power users who play 3D games or work with graphics will continue to crave more and more power.

How can I say CPU speed won’t matter? Simple. As speed increases, waiting time for programs to load, or for video to render, decreases. Let’s say that with the first generation of chips the wait was four minutes. The next generation it was two minutes until the use is down to loading a program in 15/16th of a second. While each improvement halves the waiting time, it can diminish returns. When the computer already works in the blink of an eye, improving it to half the blink of an eye isn’t impressive.

One thing that will slow down this "blink-of-an-eye" progression is the ever-increasing sophistication of software. Today you can find word processing programs that take voice dictation and have multicolored dancing icons and helpful wizards. My first computer had no hard drive and only 128k of RAM, but it ran an adequate word processing program.

The computer I’m using now does the same job, but it does it with more razzle-dazzle. I have colored buttons instead of basic black and white text. The spell checker, thesaurus and grammar checker are part of the word processing software, instead of being separate programs. I can insert tables, clip art, sounds, or hyper-text links into my document. All of these extras take a lot of processing speed, memory, and hard drive space that my old computer didn’t have.

Super-users and technology addicts will love the additional power and the programs that consume that power. They’ll see real-time rendered video in games, holographic displays and intelligent computer opponents. And that will keep pushing the technology so that the average users get better computers for less .

Look at it this way: NASA wasn’t out to create Tang, and the military wasn’t thinking about gourmet cooking when Teflon appeared. But the high-tech inventions ended up giving average people new conveniences. In the same trickle-down way, new technology geared towards the super-users will end up in computers sold to average users, so the off-the-shelf computer will be better, faster, and cheaper.

Donna Currie owns B.C. Computer in Longmont. You can reach her at 303-651-7433 or by email at <dbcurrie@boulder.quik.com>