Internet Explorer market share down to 70%

For the first time in 8 yrs, Microsoft Internet Explorer market share is down to 70%. What does this mean? I don't believe that this is an indication of greater popularity of Mozilla, Opera, Safari etc. But this is due to more and more web-based applications that are now accessible through many non-IE browsers. Users are moving to Web-based Office, Social networking, Collaboration and maintaining their personal/professional content on the web. Any browser that supports the delivery and manipulation of this content will see an increase in market share. On the flip side, browsers that do not support direct integration will see a decrease in market share as is the case with IE.

Have we reached the Microsoft Windows tipping point?

As the PC industry continues to stretch Moore's Law to its maximum, how longer can we expect to go until the IC's can no longer hold on to the etched information?

I believe that we have reached a tipping point in terms of the PC hardware. We can't go on and keep upgrading hardware with all due respect to Moore's Law. I'll be the first to reverse the trend and dust off that Celeron-based eMachine lying around in my basement. Compared to the PC's back in 640k days, this Celeron is a powerhorse - 1GB RAM, 80GB HDD, 1.2GHz.

But, Houston - we have a problem. Microsoft Windows has gone so far ahead in terms of capacity demands that it has managed to obsolete the hardware. Even if I manage to run XP Home on this Celeron, it will be dog slow just swapping process information between the RAM and Virtual Disk.

My choices - a thinner OS that gets the job done with minimal downtime. Can't look to the Microsoft camp for any solutions. Looks like it'll have to be Linux, Ubuntu variants.

As more and more PC users catch on to this reverse trend, it might just be the tipping point (in a reverse way) for Microsoft Windows.

Thoughts?