Nintendos down to $149. Almost down to impulse-buy levels. Gamers never had it so good. Question: why can’t this happen to the family PC market? With a great gaming machine that also lets you browse the web and check email, there’ll be a lot of people asking, who needs a PC? Put games, mail, web access, digital video and mp3 access, and a Office-like suite (+Quicken/Money) running part-on-the-client, part-on-the-server, and a credit card reader on the device and you have created a device that can take us back to a future of (albeit very smart) terminals. Manufacturers give away the box at a loss and make money on the apps.

Btw, I don’t think this is a very good idea for power users (I love my PC!) but I think it’s inevitable — the PC has become too much of a commodity game and volumes, at least in the developed world, have peaked. And the disconnect between the home PC — (colorful, entertaining and filled with the the latest P2P malware), and the office PC — beige, staid and utilitarian — grows every day.

A lot of people see this as an opportunity for the Sonys of this world. The PC will become a consumer electronic item, they say. Revenge of the White Goods Business. Well, as the first para said, "It’s the apps, stupid!" The real genius of Microsoft and Intel will be not delivering a glorified set-top box, but in leveraging the crowds at WinHEC and creating reference designs which will be stunningly easy to produce by any electronics factory in Taiwan. Bring PC dynamics to the consumer electronic business, and use it to drive a rich, varied platform where ease of use is at consumer electronic levels.

The next few years will be fun to watch.