Gosh, you are a cynical bunch. Last week, I carefully broached the subject of a "PC recession" just a day or two before that phrase became very popular in the national news. Maybe I'm ahead of the pack, maybe we all think of these things at the same time, who knows? What I do know is that my readers tended to respond to the idea with a yawn. They (you) had seen it long coming. And any ideas I had to fix the problem were too little, too late.

To review the situation, PC sales are suddenly in the toilet. The expected Christmas sales boom hasn't happened yet and might not. If there were enough PlayStation 2s to go around, the situation might even be worse. This is bad for computer companies, whose stock prices have dipped accordingly, but I posited that it is bad, too, for the country, because the PC industry has become so important as a powerful economic center that if it falters the entire economy is at risk of faltering. My solution to this dilemma was to give people a good reason to buy a new PC, and that reason has to be faster Internet access. Despite all the jaw-boning about DSL and cable modems, most people don't have them and the companies that offer them are in trouble. If the PC makers could understand that their livelihoods depend on the quick roll-out of high speed Net access, I suggested, they would throw $10 billion or so into that business to keep things moving faster than normal and thus jump-start their own sales.

At the suggestion of several readers I sent these comments straight on to the head honchos at most of the big PC companies. So far no word from anyone. While it might be nice to think they are simply stunned by my probing analysis, I don't think they have even read the e-mail. Am I getting old?

Whether I'm over the hill or not, it is very clear that many of my readers are young and idealistic, which is to say unrealistic. Two strong ideas emerged consistently from my reader mail. First was the idea that my call for the equivalent of a T-1 to the home would be not nearly fast enough. Second was the thought that it didn't matter how much bandwidth came over the curb, we'd be facing the same PC slump.

I found the bandwidth discussion charming in its innocence. "I do think you are limited in perspective regarding bandwidth," wrote one reader. "I think we need the next level in bandwidth infrastructure. DSL/Cable and current bandwidth is lacking for the up side you speak of if we have the capacity. I think we need to get the telco's out of the way, open the markets for expanded network connections to the home, gigabit, then you will see some long term growth ... extending the industry 25 years. With that level of bandwidth, major new content model distribution is possible. Let's get away from thinking small!!!"

Yes, gigabit to the home would be exciting. Impossible at current prices, but exciting. Let's look at how network bandwidth has grown over time and on budget to get an idea of what kind of bandwidth we can expect.

When Bob Metcalfe was inventing Ethernet at Xerox PARC in 1973, he looked at office bandwidth requirements and concluded that one megabit-per-second (mbps) would be plenty for LANs through to 1990. And this was shared bandwidth, before we started using switched networks. The decision to scale Ethernet up to 10 mbps was based simply on keeping the technology usable through 2000. I think homes are becoming the same as offices, and I think this 10X per decade rule makes some sense. So right now, we are deploying home networking technologies that are roughly analogous to that one mbps pre-1990 standard. I can see where we'd want 10 mbps to the home by 2010 and 100 mbps by 2020, and I think both standards are economically feasible. But by this thinking gigabit to the home will be practical in 2030, not in three to five years. Then you have to take into account the backbone requirements. Stanford had Ethernet when the whole University's connection to the ARPAnet was a pair of 50 kbps leased lines. When you imagine gigabit to the home, backbone capacity will have to be scaled-up accordingly.

And what would gigabit speeds to my home do for me? How many HDTV signals (20 megabits-per-second) do I need to watch at the same time?

I still think a jump to one megabit-per-second to the home would enable videoconferencing, networked games, and entertainment video to the PC enough to draw some of the last non-users into the PC market and to get the rest of us to buy one more generation of machines.

But some readers argue quite eloquently that not even a faster network will be enough. "PCs are now (or will soon become) just another home appliance," wrote a reader whom I found particularly disturbing. "Like refrigerators, they are all based on the same "thermodynamic principle" (Windows here, there and everywhere), almost all use the same motor/condenser (Intel or Intel-clone), all have a freezer section, door shelves, butter dishes etc. (sorry... browser, e-mail, word-processing apps, etc.) From a certain time point, therefore, PCs will have to follow the market laws of home appliances."

"Every once in a while, manufacturers of refrigerators come up with gimmicks to spur sales. Remember when we could buy fridges in almond, harvest or similar gaudy colors to match our kitchen "decor?" (Despite being a staunch Apple supporter, I must say 'iMac' here for the sake of fairness). Colors did not revolutionize the refrigerator business. Nor did anybody I know throw away a perfectly good icebox to replace it with another one that had a plastic case that could hold six more eggs. Even water and crushed ice dispensers did not change things much. They were nice, useful, thoughtful additions, but again, not compelling enough to make everybody throw their current appliances out of the window before their time."

"I am afraid that network bandwidth will not be the driver that moves the PC industry to a new sigmoidal curve. Why can't a 400MHz PII or Celeron or G3 handle current apps and Internet traffic at DSL or even T-1 speeds? I see several one- or even two-generation old machines at the office that can do that without breaking a sweat. Unless network bandwidth goes up by several orders of magnitude very soon, I do not see things changing. And even then, it is debatable if they will. Show me the "killer apps" first (iMovies do not qualify, I am afraid). Just don't tell me 'Build it and they will come'."

If you buy this line of thinking, of course, we're screwed, and the loss Apple announced this week is just the first of many to come. But I think this guy is wrong based on his own evidence. If we have had computers for several years that are fast enough, why do we keep buying new ones? This is a complex phenomenon. While conventional wisdom says we buy new computers to run new killer apps, I think we buy new computers simply because our old computer seems slow. In the last seven years my primary PC has changed three times, which fits my idea that people generally upgrade every other generation. Over those seven years my primary applications haven't changed at all. I'm doing exactly the same things with the same applications. So why did I buy new PCs? I bought new PCs because over time I came to perceive my computer as too slow. This has nothing to do with network bandwidth. Since my move to the boonies I have less bandwidth now (144 kbps) than I had four years ago in San Mateo (384 kbps). But greater bandwidth DOES give me an extra nudge toward that new machine. In a few days I'll be moving up to a Starband satellite Internet connection (500 kbps).

Ask me then if I need a new PC.