What is the reaction when you talk to politicians?
They have other 30-second priorities.
Let's turn to the technology business. Do you see a faster PC upgrade cycle in the future?
You are probably going to see more distributed upgrade cycles. It is not going to be big lumps of stuff happening all at once, but I am sure people will upgrade their (PC) clients in the US. Consumption in the emerging economies is growing much faster than the US -- and will continue to do so.
Is it a problem for you that Microsoft has not been accelerating its (operating system) delivery schedules?
You should really talk to Microsoft. I would rather see those new features get into the market, but it does not slow us down in any great respect. We do not want to put a whole bunch of stuff out there that we say is 64-bit compliant and perhaps is not because we do not have the software to validate it before it goes out.
There is a lot more conversation and dialogue around the customer being king. What specifically over the last 6 to 12 months has happened that was not happening in the past 20 years?
The customer is king from the standpoint that the customer uses your product. You may either get the customer excited about your product or you do not. And so you start to look around and say, "what are the exciting applications for technology?" Is it something that you perceive as exciting or something that the customer perceives as exciting.
Back in the mid-90s, Intel thought ProShare was exciting and that the customers would be excited -- but we forgot to ask the customers whether they were excited about it or not. If you look around today, the customer speaks very loudly and very rapidly about what their interest is. I do not think it is the last 6 to 12 months. I think it has been a gradual awakening as we move from a technology focus to a use focus.
If you look at the HPs and IBMs, they are trying to come up with terminology -- be it utility computing or adaptive computing or what have you -- because customers are demanding that the products interoperate. That is what I was talking about.
Well, there is probably nothing better to sensitise you than a recession.
