I wonder how they defined PCs? I suppose the only way to find out is to purchase the report, which costs (looks) ah, $775. But it must have taken ages to do.

Not a single mention of Macs ..... bwah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha..

Cycles might be getting longer in established markets too, over time. Not to sound like a Linux nut (although I am one) but a distro like ubuntu is quite easy, and runs fast on really old hardware. I use mythtv at home, and something like that does need a fast machine when using a raw capture card like I am (BT878 card).. I'm using an Athlon XP 2200+. But I have experimented with gentoo and ubuntu on lower-end machines, and found that a full setup including beryl (giving Vista-like special effects) ran on a PII400 with a PCI Radeon 7000. This was too slow to play a few 1GB/hour 640x480 TV captures I've got, but the usual youtube and ipod sized vids ran fine. a PIII will play the 640x480 videos as well. Yep, jiggly windows, semi-transparent desktop cubes and all that fun stuff on a P2. I honestly didn't expect it to be fast enough but it was 8-). Ubuntu's performance is about the same as gentoo's, while seeming much more polished and easy to use. (I fully admit that most distros are not easy enough for just some random person to use, but ubuntu really seems to be..)

If there was much adoption of something like ubuntu, it could stop quite a few potential computer upgrades dead in there tracks, with upgrades waiting for hardware failures rather than because the machine is too old and slow for the "latest and greatest".

If that new billion is from China and India, I think we can expect a tenfold increase in spam. Oh my God.

@Webster Phreaky

A Mac is a PC you plonker.

Its people like you that make mac people so smug....

(and no, im not a mac user)

"Not a single mention of Macs etc"

I think that Forrester are talking about desktop computers in general, rather than IBM-compatible PCs specifically, although there's no way to be sure from the report. That's why I wonder how they define a PC. I assume they include laptops, but would they include miniature laptops and ultra-mobile PCs? The "One Laptop Per Child" (the creators of which envisage shipping millions of the things)? Smartphones? An XBox? Presumably yes, probably, no and no in that order, but I can't tell. The PC will be very different in 2015.

forecast: a billion/PCs by two-thousand-eight./from whence their power?

a billion PCs/in commission by next year/techs fry potatoes

predict a billion/PCs on earth by next year/whither the old Dells?

In 1977, Ken Olson, founder of computer giant DEC, sniffed that "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."! Might explain why DEC never made it on the home computer gravy train!

Webster Phreaky is a troll and should be completely ignored by everyone for that basis alone.