Word: pc
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...SOFTWARE. Monday-morning quarterbacks wonder just what precisely AOL is now. Since its humble birth in Vienna, Va., as Quantum Computer Services in 1985, the company has focused on one thing: creating an attractive online experience for the average schmo who can barely plug in his PC. It was a smart plan whose execution has been more or less perfect. The catchy populist name. That effortless user interface. Those millions of free starter discs. Those infamous chat rooms. And, of course, that cheerful robot chirping, "You've got mail" (now the title of a romantic comedy coming soon...
While the selection at Amazon is far greater than even at the megabookstores, and the shopping is PC-potato easy, it's seldom cheaper and certainly not faster. Amazon chops an impressive 30% or 40% off the list prices of most hardcovers, but standard shipping adds back about $4 and takes three to seven business days. Next-day shipping runs $11, eating nearly every penny of the $11.58 you'd save on Tom Wolfe's A Man in Full, for instance, compared with the full list price...
Never as hard-core as Wozniak (who actually built the Apple I and II) or even Gates, it was Jobs, nonetheless, who made the key decisions that shaped the company and the PC industry in its formative years: to name his computer after a fruit; to package it in a molded plastic case; to hire world-class p.r. and marketing firms; and, most incredibly, to drop everything to build the industry-incompatible but user-friendly Macintosh after visiting Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center and seeing its icons, its windows, its mouse. Jobs made us choose sides...
...could soon overtake them as the preferred means for sending e-mail or accessing the Web. "You shouldn't need a $1,000 computer to listen to radio broadcasts or make phone calls over the Internet," says John Latta, president of the research firm 4th Wave of Alexandria, Va. PC-wary shoppers would heartily agree, of course. And the intelligent devices that are heading into stores could encourage even technophobes to get connected...
What does the evergrowing pool of adult videogamers want? Why, an update of their youthful obsessions, of course. Given the success of Frogger and other remakes of classic arcade games, a revamped Asteroids is a sure win. In the new version, available on both PC and PlayStation, you still get to blow space rocks to smithereens--but now you do it in vivid...