History
The failure of the NC to impact on the scale predicted by Larry Ellison may have been caused by a number of factors. Firstly, prices of PCs quickly fell below $1000, making the competition very hard. Secondly, the software available for NCs was neither mature nor open.
Thirdly, the idea could simply have been ahead of its time, as at the NC's launch in 1996, the typical home Internet connection was only a 28.8 kbit/s modem dialup. This was simply insufficient for the delivery of executable content. The world wide web itself was not considered mainstream until its breakout year, 1998. Prior to this, very few Internet service providers advertised in mainstream press (at least outside of the USA), and knowledge of the Internet was limited. This could have held back uptake of what would be seen as a very niche device with no (then) obvious appeal.
Ironically, NCs ended up being used as the very 'dumb terminals' they were intended to replace, as the proprietary backend infrastructure is not readily available. 1990s era NCs are often network-booted into a minimal Unix with X, to serve as X terminal. While NC purists may consider this to be a suboptimal use of NC hardware, the NCs work well as terminals, and are considerably cheaper than purpose-built terminal hardware.
Read more about this topic: Network Computer
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“Anyone who is practically acquainted with scientific work is aware that those who refuse to go beyond fact rarely get as far as fact; and anyone who has studied the history of science knows that almost every great step therein has been made by the “anticipation of Nature.””
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“When the history of this period is written, [William Jennings] Bryan will stand out as one of the most remarkable men of his generation and one of the biggest political men of our country.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)