From...

March 11, 1999
Web posted at: 4:02 p.m. EST (2102 GMT)

by Galen Gruman

(IDG) -- Intel Corp. has a dizzying set of technology changes in store for the next several years. Should you jump on these new technologies or plan your major PC upgrades around Intel's plans?

"Honestly, no," said John Dunkle, a consultant at Workgroup Strategic Services Inc. in Portsmouth, N.H., echoing other analysts.

"I don't believe Pentium III will have as wide acceptance in the next six to 12 months" as Intel hopes, said Brad Day, an analyst at Giga Information Group Inc. in Norwell, Mass. Companies typically upgrade their systems every two or three years — at a fraction of Intel's pace, he said.

Among Intel's major initiatives are faster systems via new processors, buses, memory and other motherboard components, plus improvements designed to shorten PCs' boot-up time.

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The biggest benefit to companies may be that Intel's dominance in PC technology means PC makers have little differentiation, thus making pricing their key separator; that gives users "more sources to negotiate a price," Day said.

Companies that do decide to buy new systems should think twice if they plan major purchases at the end of this year, said Tony Massimini, an analyst at Semico Research Corp. in Phoenix.

That's because Intel plans to use a new kind of RAM, called Rambus Direct RAM — or RDRAM — a technology the company has acknowledged will likely be in short supply. At its recent developers' forum, Intel suggested that PC makers prepare systems that can accept several types of RAM during that period. But such a strategy could introduce systems-administration headaches, Massimini said.

It may make sense for companies seeking to consolidate several server platforms to adopt the new Intel technology for widely used business applications such as e-mail and accounting, Day said. But for Web hosting, large databases and other historically high-performance, Unix-based systems, the forthcoming 64-bit Intel servers won't be serious contenders, he added.