Are PCs having TOO MUCH computing power?
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From: Mickel on 3 Mar 2010 19:51 "Man-wai Chang to The Door (33600bps)" <toylet.toylet(a)gmail.com> wrote in message news:hmikdb$96f$2(a)news.eternal-september.org... > > Esp when most PCs are not being used to play DirectX games.... :) Most people watch video on their PC and it takes a 3ghz dual core PC to watch a hi def video while recording one or 2 others. Michael
From: Gorril on 3 Mar 2010 21:18 On 2010-03-04 08:36:52 +1000, kony <spam(a)spam.com> said: > P3/1GHz is below the minimum threshold needed to comfortably > surf the internet today, with all those horribly designed > heavy flash usage websites running like slideshows... Actually the main cause of sluggish browser rendering is Javascript, and in particular the use of AJAX. Turning off Javascript on an older system is enlightening. It is as if you have upgraded your CPU.
From: "nobody >" on 4 Mar 2010 03:57 VanguardLH wrote: > You think you need that 3GHz dual- or > quad-core processor with 4GB, or more, of system memory to run a word > processor (when then used to run back in DOS in under 640K on old P1 > processors running at 100MHz)? Methinks you are mixing generations here. P-ones @ 100 megahurts were usually running Windows. M# Office won't do diddly in 640K. ITYM: XT level or lower, with the Wordstar/DOS bootdisk in one floppy drive and the "docs" disk in the other floppy drive. I do agree on the 'real needs' thingie. My Palm Centro smartphone has about 50X the CPU power of an XT and 'eons beyond' storage. It doesn't hurt much when I drop it on my toe... (did that with an XT box, wrong time/place/circumstances, .. bad..) Said smartphone could probably "run my life" and it does, I have ringtones built for about everything and everybody, and a calendar system that confuses my boss. (pauses for the poor iPod users who find that there are no "good apps" for what they do. See what you can find that compares with Electrist.. http://www.redbinary.com/electrist_index.php)
From: GT on 4 Mar 2010 04:19 "Mickel" <mickle(a)nospam.com> wrote in message news:uuDjn.11038$pv.1543(a)news-server.bigpond.net.au... > "Man-wai Chang to The Door (33600bps)" <toylet.toylet(a)gmail.com> wrote in > message news:hmikdb$96f$2(a)news.eternal-september.org... >> >> Esp when most PCs are not being used to play DirectX games.... :) > > Most people watch video on their PC and it takes a 3ghz dual core PC to > watch a hi def video while recording one or 2 others. I don't think that is true. At least half of the PCs in the world must sit on desks in offices and aren't used as TV. Of those PCs in peoples home, I would be surprised if more than 1 third are used to watch TV - most people have a TV for that job. That means that less than 1 sixth of PCs are used to watch TV. I also don't think many of those PC TV watchers actually watch 1 channel while recording 1 or 2 others - there are dedicated boxes that do this job much better and easier. I agree with your spec statement, just not the % of users implied.
From: Mark on 4 Mar 2010 07:29
On Wed, 3 Mar 2010 10:58:20 -0000, "GT" <ContactGT_rem_ove_(a)hotmail.com> wrote: >"Darklight" <nglennglen(a)netscape.net> wrote in message >news:kdydnSuCf4zeuhPWnZ2dnUVZ8jJi4p2d(a)bt.com... >> GT wrote: >> >>>> "yaugin" <yaugin(a)gmail.com> wrote in message >>>> news:bfe3164a-b45a-4440-964e-> >>>> 925445053161(a)l12g2000prg.googlegroups.com... >>>> On Mar 2, 2:30 am, VanguardLH <V...(a)nguard.LH> wrote: >>>> > Man-wai Chang to The Door (33600bps) wrote: >>>> > >>>> > > Esp when most PCs are not being used to play DirectX games.... :) >>>> > >>>> > Um, other than games, just what software pushes the envelope to prod >>>> > users >>>> > to buy more powerful hardware? >>>> >>>> If you consider his question more carefully, that's what he was asking. >>> >>> And if you consider his reply more carefully, he is agreeing! >> >> playing devils advocate who amongst you would go back to a pIII 1 gHZ pc >> after having a dual or quad core. 2 to 3 gHZ pc. >> >> That should answer your question. > >Until fairly recently, we used PII 533s and PIIIs 866s with Win98 + MS >Office 'old' for basic office day-to-day tasks. They were fast enough and >did the job. We upgraded to new PCs last year, simply for reliability - the >old ones *had* to start failing soon. The overhead of WinXP combined with >the newer Office software, and we don't see any real performance >improvement! I think documents probably load a little faster, but nothing >worth writing home about. The new machines are quieter, smaller, have much >larger capacity and are probably lower power draw, but we are not using 10% >of their potential. I think the same goes for a lot of computer users. For normal light "Office" applications an older basic PC will often do fine. >And we are back to the original post here - we need >faster hardware to cope with the newer, higher demand software that we >'choose' to run. 3D Games are the usual reason for upgrading IME. One downside of ever increasing hardware performance is that programmers can become sloppy and there is less pressure to write efficient and fast code. Take Vista as a 'good' example of this. The same, of course, applies to application software. -- (\__/) M. (='.'=) Due to the amount of spam posted via googlegroups and (")_(") their inaction to the problem. I am blocking most articles posted from there. If you wish your postings to be seen by everyone you will need use a different method of posting. [Reply-to address valid until it is spammed.] |