Hardware costs will fall sharply within a decade to the point where widespread computing with speech and handwriting won't be limited by expensive technology, Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates said on Monday. "Ten years out, in terms of actual hardware costs you can almost think of hardware as being free -- I'm not saying it will be absolutely free -- but in terms of the power of the servers, the power of the network will not be a limiting factor," Gates said, referring to networked computers and advances in the speed of the Internet.
Microsoft has often been at odds with the computer hardware industry over the last 20 years, given the dominant position it holds through the lock on PCs it has through its Windows operating system. The world's largest software maker is betting that advances in hardware and computing will make it possible for computers to interact with people via speech and that computers which can recognize handwriting will become as ubiquitous as Microsoft's Windows operating system, which runs on more than 90 percent of the world's personal computers.
News source: Reuters
