New is often better, but it's not automatic: It still has to be done just right, with respect. As with the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI), for instance, good things are more likely to happen when the acknowledged need for establishing standards is balanced against the engineer's creative need to get there in his own way.

When it's done like that, predicting the future becomes easier for both users and editors, and after all, saving money is what accurate prediction is all about.

In the case of ACPI, it means the smooth and timely arrival of chip sets that do precisely what's intended: digital video disks that play for the entire record in mobile PCs because of ever thinner and more efficient battery technology (like polymer), better power-management devices, superior displays and the welcomed arrival of Windows 2000 (NT5) that ideally will fit into any platform.

As they say, it's all connected, right down to advances in the universal serial bus and the 1394 bus, too. All thanks to power management.

Overall, the On-Now and ACPI initiatives, plus Device Bay and all the rest that are essentially part and parcel of more efficient power supervision, are seamlessly coming together as fast as any other effort ever has. And while the ACPI timetable has seen a few startup glitches related to various sleep states and BIOS, few can argue with the success thus far. With power politics having less of an effect on the end result.

It wasn't, or isn't, always that way, in this field or any other, whether in the absence of or in spite of various participating "oversight committees."

If the truth be known, there are more than a few engineers, for example, crying for the good old days of Windows 3.1 when universal 'plug and play' was more of a reality than a futuristic notion, before Windows '95/98 was introduced for our 'consideration.' Then again, did we really have an option? We did with ACPI, and it's no longer an economic necessity to go along just to get along.

The timeless advantages of sensible choice and 'open' architectures, while never a lesson totally learned (as demonstrated by recent happenings related to the 1394 bus), is catching on. With the oft-forgotten area of power providing an indelible example.