Slashdot Mirror
No Need to Upgrade that PC?
An anonymous reader writes "The Washington Post (free reg.) has an interesting article about a developing trend in the computer retail business: People aren't buying new PCs. Why? Well, no suprise to those who read this, but grandma and Joe Sixpack don't need a screaming new P4 to surf the net and write letters. Are they just figuring this out?"
I didn't need to upgrade my 386 until the Pentiums came out. Give it another few years, most people just got new computers recently. First post?
I was wondering when people would catch on to this.
in our office, i hardly see the graphics guys upgrade their macs. after 2 years they always buy a complete new Gx. Do people actually upgrade Macs?
With a Celeron 400mhz and a Riva TNT 2 video card I can't play many of the games released in the last year. :(
Being a gamer I'm REQUIRED to upgrade or get left out of all the fun. At least Half Life still works...
Computer power goes up, windows's speed remains constant. If we lag behind with hardware windows'll be going *backwards*
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
We had no PCs to upgrade. Just Macs.
... it's time to put Longhorn on the fast track to release. Nothing stimulates the hardware industry like a new, even more piggish release of Windows with plenty of "new features to make Windows even easier to use"!
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Until KDE4 is released
...this is the only voice readers may hear to contradict the endless marketing hype by computer mfr who realized this a long time ago! This is a general audience pub., and they can repeat this message as often as they like.
To be honest, it only really occurred to me about a year ago, that there wasn't anything you might need for most folks that you could get for 1/2 price on eBay, and then I thought, gee, the industry is in trouble unless these things start breaking a lot. (Soon, we learn about the built-in SELF-DESTRUCT chip.)
I can smell the taint of the sun-dwellers on thou. Clearly, thou hast turned thy back upon the one true calling of first postness. Get thee gone from my sight, unworthy heathen. Go, live with the normals, if that be thy way, foul unbeliever.
I do all my home development on an old AMD K6-2 450. This way, I know that any software I release will run with acceptable performance on systems that most people have.
After 3+ years with my trusty K6, I think this may be the season I make the big jump to something faster. Yay me.
"You're not going to be able to connect a DVD-recording drive to your PC unless it has either FireWire or a USB 2.0 port."
What happened to IDE? Still, recording a DVD would probably still suck on an older computer. I know CD burning works much better on my newer machine than it did on the old one, even using the same burner.
Microsoft and Intel are finding that while they have a monopoly, it is a monopoly on a durable good. As such "the monopoly creates it's down competition and must take that into account in its production decisions" (nicholson)
In the extreme case the products are perfect substitutes, only the competitive price can prevail in the long-run i.e. price = marginal cost.
As Boogaroo, above, pointed out, gamers need to pretty much constantly upgrade. Used to be, developers put a lot of time and effort into making software compact and min spec - friendly. No more. The bigger and more demanding the software, the better the computer you need to run it. Everyone wins. Oh yeah, except the consumer.
Thankfully that's not where everyone's at. My parents need their email, a little word processing, and that's it. And if console games keep getting better (and offering network play), it may finally come to pass that gamers have their console and their word machine and never the twain shall meet.
Okay...
;-)
I guess this article states the obvious. Of course people don't need faster computers. The only reason they'd need fast computers is if they are playing high-end computer games, or using Windows (which for some reason or another always keeps on making it's software more dependent on speedier computers, even though it is completely unnecessary.)
Most family friends, and people I know who need computers just need a simple box that allows them to chat online, play a few simple games, e-mail, surf the web, and perhaps play "The Sims". Since almost all of this can be done on linux, I buy older cheap computers, and i have a special "personal distro" of linux that I give them, which always works, and they usually have no complaints, since everything they want is included, and it didn't cost them much ( I just charge the price of the used computer I bought. ) For smaller families without much money this is great.
As well, for those families with the little brat that demands more you can usually appease them with something that is sub 1-GHz and has a good graphics card, since most games don't require screeching speeds.
Just from my experience though. Right now I am running off a 750Mhz Laptop, and I have been considering upgrading eventually to a small tower, but nothing with the numbers I have been hearing lately (2.0+Ghz, with 1Gb+ of RAM, etc.)
Well, maybe something with those numbers.
~ kjrose
figure out how to make it a subscription service...
Even Windows Can't keep forcing people to upgrade no matter how horribly it manages resources. I doubt we will see a windows OS that WILL require a GHz machine any time soon. Unless Joe Blow is a 3d gamer or likes to do video creation, i doubt he will ever upgrade untill his computer no longer works.
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
Macs were meant to be used over longer periods of time than PC's were. I'm typing this post on a 2 year old iBook 466mhz...the only thing I need to upgrade on this machine is maybe the hard drive and ram
"Some fight for law. Some fight for justice. What will you fight for? One day, you will see."
My in-laws are still using a PII and it suits them just fine. Same goes for operating systems - it's only due to forced obsolescence that they will eventually move off of Windows98. (ie/ when they eventually buy new hardware, no support for it in win98 will mean new OS)
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
Yeah, they're just figuring this out. Of course, I went and did the "impossible" for a buddy of mine at work and installed XP on his Cyrix MII box with 96 megs of ram... People really need to begin asking themselves why things are spec'd the way they are, and maybe save a few $$$ As for myself, there's a few 486's and P75's sitting around here, perfectly adequate for 90% of the day-to-day stuff. I've got this monster dual PIII Coppermine box here with a gig of ram for the other 10%
C|N>K
They aren't playing ANY of the latest games. Unreal 2k3 stutters on a 2GHZ with 512MB and a GeForce3 card.
NBA 2k3 needs lower resolution to flow smoothly through some of the animations and events occurring on the "floor"
And I just bought 2 1700 AMD XP Athlons to UPGRADE my 1Ghz systems.
Maybe Mom & Pop don't need to upgrade, but they also don't use the computer for the tool it was designed to be.
You keep going until you die..."Me".
The PC I have would probably be put in the category of P.O.S. by you hardcore geeks, but it does just fine for me.
It was free, a gift for going off to college, and has about 128 MB of RAM (if i'm lucky) a 466 MHz Celeron, a 7 GB hardrive and everything else (soundcard, video card, network card) are all built in right on board.
I don't plan on buying a new one until I'm done with school and so far it has sufficed pretty well for surfing the net, downloading mp3s, oggs, movies, pr0n, etc. and even for recording music in my dormroom and bedroom. No hurries here.
Think of all the waste generated by the demand for games. Not just the money for continual CPU and video card upgrades, but there are studies that show how much water and energy it takes to make computer chips. All in the name of entertainment.
I'm not a gamer, so I used my P90 for 3 1/2 years before I replaced it. My current P450 is almost 4 years old now, and I'm not planning on replacing it for a good while yet. GNOME, Phoenix and Evolution run just fine for me.
I'm so confused, I just don't know who to believe anymore!
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
New releases of Linux have actually been improving speed on the same hardware. Of course the latest and greatest KDE/GNOME can't say the same, but unlike Windows I can upgrade my kernel without upgrading the GUI. As a developer who's invested in some heavy duty build boxes, it's good to know I won't have to chuck my hardware anytime soon just to run more stable and secure versions of Linux.
Come to think of it, I wonder why hardware vendors coose to support Linux when it doesn't force the same bi-annual upgrading that Windows does.
"Robert Clemenzi, an electrical engineer who lives in Manassas, is still using an older model that runs Windows 95. He has no interest in modernizing his computers, because what he's got works. "I'm petrified of upgrading," he said. "Every time I've upgraded it takes days to get things running. "
At that rate, he probably upgraded from a Vic 20 to Windows 95.
...by almighty Cringely.
The only reason to buy a new machine is to play the hottest latest kewlest videogames, and it's been that way for about five years. So, if that's not enough of a reason for most people to get a new computer, when are the game companies going to start designing games for slightly older ones? Assuming that "everybody's going to have more CPU and graphics than we have now" made sense, for a while... but now that there's a huge installed base of people who WON'T have a bigger machine next year, it doesn't anymore.
I can't help but think that games could be improved by having less emphasis on whiz-bang graphics and more on gameplay anyway.
I'm currently considering a downgrade.
Except for my gaming needs, I'd like a small (physically), extensible, *low-noise* little PC, with a comfortable screen and a decent keyboard.
It seems to me like the low-noise requirement is starting to appeal to more and more people. Hell, else the Via C3 would have been laughed at in *every* review it's gotten.
I'm currently thinking of getting an (otherwise worthless) Epia C3 933MHz box for server duties, provided I can hang my harddrives in there and keep those silent a bit.
Oh, where are you, Transmeta, with halfway decent performance low-noise/heat solutions?
People: most computer users simply do not care about running the latest and greatest applications on their PCs. They are quite content with Windows 95, Office 97, and AOL. To them, this is all that a computer does. The PC is merely a way to send email, instant messages, and write papers. The sad truth is that it's the same way for many college students as well.
From the article: Robert Clemenzi, an electrical engineer who lives in Manassas, is still using an older model that runs Windows 95.
This is another surprising trend in the PC world -- many users don't care about which operating system their computer uses to manage hardware devices and programs. Whether or not their machine's underlying system code is an inherently secure model such as BSD or an inherently virus-prone OS, they simply do not care. They will go to Download.com, perhaps, and install whatever free virus scan is available. Of course, the virus definition files may be a year old and they'll never update them, but they just do not know how to do this.
It's the same way for many users of Unix-type machines. All these hackers care about is getting a command line interface so that they can run a couple instances of the Vi text editor and the Mutt email client. Simple. That's all. It's just that straightforward. Whereas the average Windows users just wants to write and chat, the average Unix user just wants to code and post to mailing lists.
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
This is a trend that has been going on now for about ten years now. The average upgrade time has been slowly moving up, from 12 months to 24 months over the last ten years IIRC. My guess is that average home computer upgrade time has moved from 2-3 years to 5-6 years (with the exception of gamers, who ofetn live on the cutting edge).
For people to upgrade, they need to see sluggish performance. An upgraded GUI can soak tons of raw CPU power in ways that make you yearn for it (just ask the Mac folks about CPU consumption under the OS X GUI). Transparent windows, photo realistic icons, bayesian user interfaces, fully indexable content, database file system, you name it: these features can keep a P4 busy all day.
Until then, a slow pentium at home is all I need to surf the web and read e-mail.
I just got rid of my old p3 box and build a new one
I replaced it with a custom built box. it has AMD Athlon 1800, 256 MB ram, a 60 gb hard drive and running Suse linux 8.0. Its too much!
KDE 3.0 is too fast, tux racer runs at 100 FPS (on a 1024x768 display), and that hard drive is just sitting there. Its too much power.
Those athlons are hot too (mines 45c)
I seriously think every software designer/programmer/whatever should have a Pentium-133 as their primary platform.
:p
People with new, fast computers sometimes end up writing bloated software just because they don't realise that everyone doesn't have the same equipment they do.
I'm not a softeare developer, I'm a GIMP artist, so I'm allowed to use a Celeron-600 powered laptop.
Begs the question. For things that individuals use computers for, will there come a time when we will simply run out of things to use the computing power on.
I remember when I got a 200MHz machine for my mother and I could not think of anything that she would want to do that would require anything faster.
Unfortunately then came MS products which want more and more computing power and flash heavy internet.
So is it stupid of me to think that once I upgrate her machine to 1GHz she will not need anything more? Or will programmers be able to use even more power?
Currently I cant think what anyone using a computer for just writing and looking at the internet would need faster processors.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
Computers were designed to play games? Maybe someone should have clued Babbage, Turing and the rest into this a while ago. We could have some kick ass gaming machines now, though they probably couldn't run notepad.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
You say this like it's a not a new thing.. but it is.
I know we've been saying this for years, but the reasons to buy a new pc have been diminishing rapidly as time goes on.
Last year's fast PC is still really really good. One from the year before that is still tolerable, maybe with a bit more memory.
A 500Mhz box with 512 MB of ram is enough, still, to do most things.
A 1Ghz-ish box with 512MB of ram is plenty modern.
No need or a 3 or 4 Ghz machine right now.. the software just hasn't changed enough.
the newest pentium 4 processors are needed to fully "experience" websites, and streaming video.
and that somehow, a lesser PC hooked up to a cable modem has a slower internet connection compared to a P4 system on a similar cable.
[become a trained intel sales drone at http://retailedge.intel.com]
A linux plug:
...But it also ran Windows XP equally well for surfing, email and light word processing.
I got a PII 266 laptop with a 8gb drive and 96 mb of ram. I bumped the ram to 384 and it runs Redhat 8 great....
But I went to Redhat as this was the first 'spare' computer I could singleboot to.
All for $100 (plus $60 for the ram)
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
I'm going to be content with what I have. The only reason to upgrade PCs is for the games, but I'd rather spend $300 every 2 years or so to have my next-gen console.
I've been running my dual Celeron 366's running at 550 on my Abit BP6 motherboard since September of 1999. It still suits my needs just perfectly. However, my main HD is a 10K RPM U2W drive. But nonetheless, the system is still faster than the new P4 systems in many ways. I have a laptop with a P4 2.4 CPU in it (before you say there's no such thing, read up because there is and has been ever since the P4 2.4 came out). I have a P4 1.8 system at work. Both of the single CPU systems I use on a daily basis feel pretty sluggish at times compared to the duals.
Duals are just plain awesome! I do plan on upgrading to an Athlon MP system. I will never go single CPU again!
You know, developers sometimes need to compile stuff. It's a pain to code if half of your time is spent building the binaries for testing.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Write once, never upgrade ;-)
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
I doubt we will see a windows OS that WILL require a GHz machine any time soon.
Of course not! Just like Microsoft says you can run Windows 2000 on a 386 with 4MB of RAM.
"All art is quite useless." -- Oscar Wilde
These chips are DESIGNED for people who dont need all that power.
The 800mhz duron in my laptop is all ill ever need.
Call me a cynic, but the reality is that the PC industry needs a new reason to sell boxen. This is the next wave of marketing from the big three (two?) PC manufacturers along side of Micro$oft -- create fear, uncertainty and doubt among the majority of PC users who don't know any better and convince them that they need the new *secure* computers along with the latest generation of Windows crap.
Or create a Windows Media PC that allows you to plug your computer seamlessly into your entertainment centre and TV at home -- everyone knows we can't do that today (sarcasm).
The other huge push of course will be the .NET revolution that MS believes will snare all the unwitting mom&pop operations and casual users. And mark my words -- that 1999 Compaq PC that grandma has sitting on her desk at home just won't cut the mustard on the MS controlled .NET-enabled Internet.
It is truly sad, but the computer industry has sunk to the "whiter-than-white" marketing driven society that we all live in today. Intel, Microsoft, HP, etc. all step in line because they know that it's the only way they are gonna sell new computers. What's the world going to be like in 5 years? Hard to say -- but at the rate we are going now, it'll look an awful lot like today but with more widgets and gadgets than we ever need. And I'll still be typing away on my PII-400MHz and accessing the 'net via outdated software.
The surest sign of intelligent life in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us. -- Calvin & Hobbes
Perhaps this is why AMD is branching away from CPUs ...
..." excuse anymore. I'm still having trouble justifying a switch to an iBook (from an eMachines tower / pc), since I'im fine for productivity with OpenOffice and Mozilla right now. Seriously can't think of anything I've used the computer for for anything other than Web, Writing Papers, Tracking Finances, and Playing some dumb games ... I digitized a movie recently, tht's all. I would have been happy on my old P1 / 75. As soon as Joe consumer realizes this fact, manufacturers are screwed.
Seriously, no home user could ever need all of the power of today's machines for e-mail, web, writing, finances, etc. Unless you're doing home video or something similar, or want an amazingly fast game machine, you're fine. Sort of a bummer, though, can't exactly use the "Mom, I need something new
-Rob
terpmotors.com
I have a medium-sized collection of DVDs. Among the movies it contain are favorites, like Barcelona, GhostWorld, and Annie Hall, that I sometimes want to watch just for a certain funny or intriguing scene.
I also prefer (not owning a large TV) to watch movies on a computer screen. I think would prefer this even if I *did* own a large TV, which is (drumroll) one reason that I don't. Ahem.
So I have been compressing my movies into DiVX;) using the excellent software dvd:rip and enjoying the results.
This is a very slow process, and it's the first thing in a while which has specifically made me want to upgrade both processor (a 600MHz Athlon otherwise still feels very fast to me, and I'm in time-machine-based negotiations to lease a fraction of its power to the U.S. Space program circa 1962) and hard drive (because movies are big, even compressed).
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
...that this is my new favorite type of nonsense post. Thanks.
I don't need powerful hardware to run Debian. I'm typing this on a 5 year old Thinkpad, at 166MHz.
My Fiancee has a couple of games from that she really likes to play, that on a PII 400 are very playable, whereas if she tried to play them on a P4 2ghz+ they would drive her insane. She had an opportunity to play a Shockwave game on both types of systems and she was very happy to go back to her PII. :)
Natalie Portman imagines a Beowulf cluster of you!
Once you hit 1Ghz you hit the point of diminishing return on CPU's. Unless a hard core gamers or running some high end graphic or simularion software you aren't going to see much difference and Joe Public is seeing it. IMO the main contribitor is software, there is no popular with the masses software that needs that many CPU cycles. Most software is sitting waiting for the user to give it something to do. Then the rest of the computer system memory, buses, cards, and devices are way slower, again a lot idle cycles for the CPU. Intel has noticed this and has said they are going to start focusing more on power usage. Also this is part of the reason for HyperThreading, trying to take advantage of all those idle CPU cycles.
someone has *waaay* too much time on their hands...
you also missed a career or two, maybe you should apply with one of those phone sex thingies ? that would save *all* of us a lot of trouble.
MP3 Search Engine
640 kb of memory should be enough for everyone. BTW this is my first /. post after just reading for 6 months. Is it a sin not to have a cool signature? If yes then I'm a sinner. (Maybe this can be my signature.)
less is more
Computers are currently a few common things:
Word processor
Email/Web/Chat
Accounting
Games
And if that's all they are, and all they will ever be, then there's no reason to upgrade, outside of the dedicated gamer who needs the faster parts. The three former uses simply don't require it and haven't for years.
So what must they do if they want to keep inspiring people to buy? Give us new uses.
The multimedia PC is a step in that direction- using the computer as a home jukebox is a great idea, except that certain interests are determined to undermine that use.
Apple's making an attempt at it with their bundling of video editing software aimed at the home movie maker.
We need to see more moves in this direction that stretch the definition of what a computer is for, for the regular home user.
Then, and only then, will people have a reason to go out and buy new machines.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
I'm sure that most people will disagree with me, but I think not having to upgrade your computer to get an equivilent experience as a person with a new PC is a fairly recent phenomena.
The key thing is "equivilent experience" -- sure, you can browse the web and send email on a 386 with 16MB of RAM running Linux, Lynx and Pine, but its not the same experience that a person running a newer system with a GUI, new browser, plugins, etc. I'd argue that an absolute bottom of the barrel equivilent experience would to have to be 98SE/ME on a PII450 with 256MB of RAM. Anything below that just isn't the same as P4 running XP.
Sure, there are some Linux trolls out there happy to deal with sluggish old P1s and P2s, but they're not getting the same experience.
I don't really notice a difference with my "old" computer (2.5 yr old dual PIII, WinXP) and brand-new P4s with XP. But had this been 4 years ago and I was trying to run Win2K Pro on a P1 166, it would have been glaringly obvious (yes, I have done this).
I'd attribute most of the comparability between 2-3 year old systems and new systems to the lack of overwhelming mobo throughput increases but mostly to the relative OS stability over the last three years -- the economic slowdown has definitely prompted MS to slow its OS upgrade cycle a little.
I also see analogies between the computer industry and the auto industry when it developed. At sometime back in the auto's history, probably the 40's or 50's, cars could already travel as fast as most people would ever want to drive. That didn't stop the industry from improving, and I don't think it will stop the computer industry either. We'll start concentrating on safety(security) and design factors, making software safer, easier, and more fun to drive.
But first, economically we somehow need to get out of this funk. As long as what we make is an extra that people can do without(and it always will be that) people won't buy in economically hard times.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
I sell Macs for a living. In terms of processing power, for the consumer-targeted lines of products it can reasonably be argued that you get more processing power for your buck with a Wintel machine. However, very few of my potential customers are concerned with such things. I'd say maybe 50-60% even bother asking about what sort of Pentium an 800 Mhz G4 (the CPU in a flat-panel iMac) is equivalent to. Home users care about applications, and about not having to deal with driver conflicts and the Blue Screen of Death. When a potential "switcher" comes into the store, I mention OS X's stability, then start showing the iApps. And that's usually all it takes. :-)
If all the content people want (songs, movies, games) come prelocked and only the right kind of Intel processor can unlock it, it will spur a new generation of replacing PC's. Good for Intel, good for MS who will get to re-license Windows yet again. Time marches on.
Or is J. Q. User expected to attempt a reinstallation of Windows? I shudder to imagine certain members of my family trying that.
(Disclaimer: I use OE, and have never suffered from an email virus)
My fastest computer that I use daily is a PII-400MHz running Debian that I bought about 4 1/2 years ago. Since I'm not a gamer, this works fine for me. The only upgrade that I've had is moving up to 352 Megs of RAM with a strange arrangement of DIMMs. I keep on telling myself that I'm going to build a new computer soon, but I sometimes wonder what I will gain. It might make mozilla slightly quicker and the screensavers run smoother, but that's about it. Besides, I'm curbing a potential counterstrike addiction.
Frankly, if you take a person who knows very little about computers and plop any OS in front of them they get scared and will not really know what to do. Mr. Gate's "easier to use, faster internet access" marketing ploy to sell his OS's (which drive the hardware industry) would be meaningless if everyone really knew 2 things. One is that just browing the web will work fine with a 200 - 400 MHZ machine with 64+ MB if ram. The second is that no matter how many features, knobs and gizmo's that Gates packs into his bloated OS the same functionality is really available in older versions of the OS. Plus, a novice will still not be able to use the XP os out of the box very effectively (see below for explanation.)
My bet is that MS is very aware of these dangers and builds some abstraction into their design to purposefully make the OS harder for new users. Note that Win XP has no desktop icons or easy HUD type bar (like KDE, GNOME, Aqua etc.) on the default install. The start menu (possibly the most familiar "PC icon" i the world) is completely different and much harder to navigate IMO. They make these OS's seem better with gadgets but the core functionality is still not in line with the common users needs. MS will then be able to launch a new OS every few years that is "easier to use." To use an analogy, would anyone be interested in a car that doesn't drive very well (hard to steer, accelerates erratically, just "cuts out" while driving.) then keep buing a new car every 2 - 3 years that has only slightly better conditions (or fixes some problems while adding more!)
Jesse Wolfe Sr. Manager Systems Integration
You'd think maybe someone would be working on using desktop computers for a digital hub, or maybe intergrate it with home entertainment. Funny how nobody has thought of that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signature_bloc
Software isn't growing in complexity as fast as the chips. Perhaps this a good thing... But I really do wish comercial software would start using some of the more cpu-heavy algorithms out there. I want a neural-net email filter and IM status indicator, a GA for determining disk load order in order to improve boot time, and huristic news gathering agents the output of which can be used on my PDA, my computer, or my website. Quick-launch menus should be generated from observations of my behavior, not manual labour or click-counts. For example, I want a quick-launch bar that can understand that when I start firing up web development apps, I may want other suchlike programs. Why must the icon for Warcraft III remain prominant if I am currently working in photoshop? If I use a certain directory constantly for a certain type of document, the agent should recognise the importaince of that directory to ME and promote the accessibilty of it somehow when I am working on such a document. My directory structures should be somehow understood, so that when I want to save a new document, the computer can recommend where it thinks I want to put it. Software is starting to stick in its current roles, and so chip speed is no longer the limiting factor. If we start building better software, the chips will resume their progress.
Linux (except for bloatzilla) is VERY fast on old (>500mhz) systems. On the other hand, it chokes on any system with less than 64 mb ram. Slot in some more memory, and its amazing. The internet was painfully slow on a 56k, but install a cable modem and its fast again. 3d games are slow with software rendering no matter WHAT the speed, but set up hardware rendering and then you can simply plonk a new card in to the agp slot and the difference is great!
Nero-burning ROM for Linux!
Sorry pad're ... I run 3 web-boxes : a k-6/450, Duron900 & XP2100+ on DSL and the performance difference among them is marginal. Excepting a few "flasher" pages, even the primative 4 Mb Jaton_9750 in the K-6 really makes little difference so I'm not pushed to upgrade one of the GForce2s in the other systems for the extra Vid .
It's not even worth getting the "official" NVidia drivers for my P4 RedFat_8 box. Yawn. Face it pad're, as it now mopes along - even for a performance slacker like me - the web is dead-of-boredom.
I loved the Gateway? commercial, advertising a computer with the latest and greatest processor, ram, video card, and 56K MODEM, "so you can surf the web faster"! The target audience saw nothing wrong with this.
Its been nearly one hundred years since the automobile hit the mainstream in the United States, and more than fifty years since it was just assumed that you had access to one. A majority of people still haven't bothered to learn how to change their oil, replace basic parts (brake pads, headlights, spark plugs), or even use the turn signals. New Jersey doesn't even know how to pump gas. People don't spend the time learning all about their products. They never will. Dumb will always be the aim of the major commercial players.
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
I upgraded a few months ago - I actually went down in speed, to get a crusoe-powered fujitsu p2110 laptop. Now, for the type of stuff I do (latex+vi+gcc+perl) I can get nearly 14 hours battery life(!), and have built-in wireless.
To me, that was worth upgrading for.
what people want and need are bandwidths upgrades, so that we can trade movies back and forth cheaply and easily.
This seems like common sense, as it has long been held that most of the innovations in faster computing largely benefit either gamers, artists, or servers. There is really nothing outside of these 3 uses (except dev, but that does not require a sick system to actually code, just compile, atleast in my experience) that require crazy hardware. In general, media authoring such as sound, music, 2d, 3d, etc are the things that need those extra MHz, not typing some document that my 486dx2 did just fine. Fit the computer to the use, its just common sense. Though sloppy coding practices are making this harder due to bloat, it is still not THAT bad that you need great hardware to do basic tasks. Longetivity of a system depends on its user and their patience.
A women I know is a very successful graphic designer and has been using Photoshop (latest versions) on a p233 w/ 64mb of ram for a long time. Only recently did her son convince her to buy a new system (she argued, why should she, her current system works fine). PS took about a minute to load and so on, but it was fine for her, and she got her work done on it fine. So, that goes to show you that speed is largely dependant on the user's patience. Of course, this does not apply if you wanted to play Battlefield 1942 on your 233, since the 1 fps slide show would not be playable.
The new upgrade trend for the general public will no longer solely be done for a faster PC with more storage space. Most users need only about 20GB HD for their MP3s, emails, etc... because the general public doesn't have a porn collection or tons of video games installed.
My prediction is that people will start demanding silent PCs that are power efficient, don't take up much space, and have a chasis, moniter, speakers, keyboard, and mouse that fit the fashion of the day.
Oh, and people will want a PC that is more easily maintained. For example, just last night, I help a friend fix his sister's PC. Turned out there were no hardware problems at all with this thing. Instead, she had a rotted out Windows 98 install with over 250 spyware infections, 40 virus infections, and about 50 processes running in the background and system tray.
It turned out that this girl's PC wasn't very old. It was about a 700mhz machine (can't remember exactly), which is faster than both my computers (windows and linux). Anyway, after removing all of the spyware, viruses, and unnecessary background processes, then 3 Windows Updates, updated drivers, a scan disk (tons of errors found), and a disk defrag later... the computer performed wonderfully!
I also cleaned the "broken" mouse, which now works wonderfully. Before I "fixed" this broken computer, it performed like a 386 with 8 megs of ram...
Basically, computers are like cars: people are going to have to take them in to a specialist every once and a while, to have them tuned. The problem is, I got to thinking that once this girl gets her computer back, in 24 hours, she will reinstall most of the spyware, and after a few months, she will reinstall most of the viri. So maybe people need to learn how to use their computer in addition to taking it to get tuned up by a specialist.
My point is that the average computer user only needs to upgrade because their computers are so un-tweaked and they are running so many spyware daemons and viri.
Back about 1985 I started saying that I hoped the software 'industry' understood their market had a very limited lifespan. Once Word Processors actually work, well, that's the end of the WP software industry.
What's more, people won't have to even buy one. Once the concepts are public literally anyone who wishes to take the time can right them and distribute them for free.
In fact, I went on, the single biggest problem Micro Soft (remember those guys?) faces is the fact that by the turn of the century even operating systems will have an effective market value of $0.
It was entirely predictable and, give or take a few years here or there, I pretty much nailed it.
Of course what I didn't count on was the sheer marketing power the big guys have been able to bring to bear. The average Joe is completely unaware that software has zero effective 'value' these days and continues to pay through the nose for it.
But they *are* at least begining to realize that what they already have works to their satisfaction. The upgrade cycle depends on customer *dissatisfaction.*
Well hey, if the car still runs make the customer dissatisfied with the size of its tailfins. Hence transparent widgets being hailed as a major breakthrough in 'technology.'
Well, I hate to tell the computer 'industry' this, but while this may work with a the younger crowd for a while your grandma already knows how to suck eggs better than you do. She remembers the invention of planned obselesence. She bought into it before you were born, and learned the folly of it, again, before you were born.
When your market consists entirely of people waiting with 'bated breath for the next release of the latest and greatest gee gaw you're ok, but when your market moves to Walmart and the nations grannies it's a whole new ball game. Granny just wants to buy it, take it home, and have it work, and if it does. . . well, that's pretty much it for her, she's done.
And so are you computer 'industry.'
KFG
Sniffy! Whoooo!
If this trend takes off, we're never going to get affordable supercomputers!
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
I am going to save this article for when the annual wave of new pc buyers hits me this season. I keep telling people that unless they are processing video, doing number crunching, programming or playing 3D games there is no need for a monster pc. Maybe if they read it in the post they will believe me.
I switched from a dual processor PIII-1GHZ Windows XP Pro PC with 1.75GB ram and a 64MB nVidia card to an iBook 600 MHZ with 384 MB ram and OS X 10.2 (for work) and an xbox (for play).
The xbox plays games a hell of a lot better than my dual processor pc ever did. The iBook runs MS Office v.X as good as my dual processor pc ran MS Office XP. The 600 MHZ have been plenty for everything I do with it at work (web programming, remote server management, office tasks, etc). There is only one program that runs like crap: Macromedia Dreamweaver MX. Everything else runs perfect.
Worse, I offered to my wife to give her my dual processor pc and to sell her Celeron 600 Dell with 256MB ram and Windows XP Pro. She told me to go to hell, so I sold the dualie to offset the cost of the xbox and a few games. Her Dell runs rock solid and I don't average one hour per month in maintenance for that pc.
Eventually I am switching her to mac too, but that pc will probably stay in action for at least a couple more years.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
In Soviet Russia, Ill Mitch boxes hard and skateboards tough.
and im typing thid by throwing stones at telephome wires!
Is the fact that a Windows install gets slower over time from a bloated registry and so on. I know a lot of people with decent machines that are simply bogged down by software who don't know to reinstall and instead buy a new computer.
--------
It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
Oops, except once. I did in fact upgrade my 7100 with a g3 card so it could run an old pro tools system. Works fine.
At home I use three operating systems, Windows 2000, Solaris 9, and AIX 4.3. Where I see the problem with upgrading is is twofold (1) software is seriously lagging behind hardware and (2), operating systems really don't support the "killer" hardware! Looking at the hardware requirements for Unreal Tournament and Quake III Arena, Pentium CPU's minimum! Why should I purchase a game that runs on a CPU that is four generations behind the current hardware! Now I am sure I will get flamed by many gamers for that statement, but if you want killer performance, the applications and OS should be compiled to support the hardware, and in many cases it is not. My Windows boxes are dual Celeron machines with 512 MB of RAM, dual hard disks and AGP video. This is more than sufficient for what I, my wife and daughter use them for. My Sparcs (2 Ultra 1's, an Ultra 30 and an Ultra 2) all support 64 bit Solaris, and I am sure it could be faster if the following would take place: 1. Removal of SunOS 4.x support 2. Removal of 32 bit support 3. More applications are compiled for 64 bit support On the Windows side of the house: 1. Remove NetBIOS support. 2. Remove 16 bit support. 3. Remove OS/2 support 4. Compile the OS for something a little more recent (like a PIII). 5. Compile applications to take advantage of better hardware instead of what I call "lowest common denominator" for "compatibility". Why should we be using software compiled for computers that for some of us we have donated to schools, sold, given away, or thrown away. The only hardware I might replace is hard disks and possibly video cards (unless something blows up). I use PIII and PIV desktops at work and the performance difference is not that great for me to justify a new machine at home. Maybe if enough people "pitch a fit" about the lousy software being cranked out (and I am not just talking from a security standpoint), maybe we will be in a better position to look at upgrading, as opposed to upgrading simply to deal with OS and application bloat!
People buy PCs to do things, and the PCs that people have now can do the things they want to do. The good sales in the past were based on the jump to the net.
Windows 3.1 machines were horrible online, Win95 was better but still way too flaky, Win98 was an improvment when it first came out, and by the end a well patched 98 second editition became more or less usable. 2000 and XP are much better than 98, but if you just surf the web and send email, 98 is good enough.
The thing is, my 1.4G athalon is crummy at playing full screen hi res video compressed with a top notch codec. I use MPEG2 instead. That makes me crave a faster machine. Video is the next killer app, the one that will push people into upgrading.
A world with solid PVR apps, good file sharing apps, and lots of video files floating around would be a good thing for the tech industry. I'm not saying anything about the ethics of that, or anything else. But it would push people to buy better computers.
-
For most users, the only killer app for a fast desktop machine is games.
- Now that A-title games cost around $20 million to make, good games have to be high-volume products.
- The game industry is moving to consoles for the high-volume products.
Therefore, games won't be driving the PC industry for much longer. The requirement for a PC is levelling off.What this may mean is the beginning of the PC appliance era. About 80% of PCs are never opened once they leave the factory. They could just as well ship as sealed boxes, with the usual "no user serviceable parts inside" marking. It's already possible to build $400 boxes that will do everything needed for 80% of home and business desktops. That's the future of the PC. Expandable boxes will be a niche market, sold by specialty retailers.
I have both a dual P4 Xeon 1.7GHz and a Pentium II 400MHz with ample memory each. Other than my largish hour long compiler runs and some higher end games, I notice very little difference between the two. Other than memory, hard drive and graphics board upgrades, my P2 400 runs essentially unchanged from its 1998 configuration.
Btw: It is spelled 'equivalent'.
... is like using a big, huge, truck to drive 10 miles back and forth to work in..
:-)
Oh, wait.........
bun-fhuinneog agam!
How about a new line of MS ads devoted to our favorite tool of social change: peer pressure?
**a gang of good-looking high school kids hanging out in front of the school, along with one slightly dopey looking "outsider"**
Bobby: hey, did you hear? The P-IV it out. And it's blazin fast!
Sue: yeah, we've got one, and suddenly, like, the internet actually makes sense.
Jamie: what about you, Myron? What did you say your dad had?
Myron: Uh. (pushes glasses up on nose) We've got an old Celeron 333, but that's all we need to run Linux.
**everyone laughs**
The question we have to ask ourselves is where is the software? For sometime programmers needed better hardware to fill their needs for the processor hungry software they wanted to make. The industry sort of lost track. We use our computers mostly to do a few things. There isn't enough software to take advantage of the hardware. Games are as far as you get in the consumer market. This is not to blame on the hardware or software industry, but society. The processor intensive hardware lies in the hands of companies, organizations, and private individuals who can afford it. It is somewhat like the rich get richer poor get poorer phrase. The rich use this great tool to find better ways of making/designing old and new products, ways of marketing to the consumers, and computing environmental, physical, natural phenomona. When was the last time you used your computer to calculate weather patterns? or find places where oil might be found?
Question everything.
My PIII 667 has been trucking along just fine for the past 3 1/2 years. Bought it for $900ish bucks CDN back then, too. Only upgraded the memory when it became cheap and threw in a second hand 20GB drive. I use it as my apache/mysql server, to surf, and to terminal service in from work. My wife uses it for her homework. All can be done at the same time with almost no lag, and no need to upgrade.
Oh, and games? Why would I bother throwing away thousands just to play games that crash my machine and take hours to configure? Grand Theft Auto: Vice City looks great on my PS2 and big screen. And it worked the first time.
"You disturb me to the point of insanity. There. I am insane now." - The Sprockets
Because the monopolies on broadband aren't expanding speed and capacity, processor-pushing broadband internet-based apps aren't developing, such as a videophone, MPEG-4 video encoding/decoding, RARing of large files, or stuff I can't even think of. Yep, napster probably pushed processors and hard drives, and we need video/CDROM pirating to do the same.
Hey, I'm just your average shit and piss factory.
I will admit, I do not use Linux I tried installing it a few times and gave up. But at the moment I have Windows 2k Pro, and Win 98 SE on this computer. Although on the other household computer it's just Win 98 SE, that one is used for e-mail and basic stuff like that, it has been upgraded beyond repair and is only 200 or 300 Mhz, the RAM, HD, are mid-end and the rest is mostly low end at least now.
The only problem that I have seen with all of Microsoft's foresight, well the lack of it is basic. They have been heading in the right direction since W2k, WinMe was a giant mistake but XP is definitely better equipped then 98 but can't be used on these slower machines that could use the functionality of WinXP or 2k. That's a plus for Linux though, it can perform well on a low-end machine and just gets better on a high end machine. So if I was Microsoft, I would give the ability for a low end machine to run a low end version of WinXP but it still contained the stability of WinXP on a high end machine(unlike Win 95 or 98, XP is more stable, IMHO of course)
I haven't slept for a little over a day now... so please don't be harsh with the comments, be gentle, no whips this afternoon just handcuffs k?
If what you are reading sounds funny, or sarcastic, lame, or stupid
it is because it is supposed to be. just laugh
If this becomes widespread, where are we going to get cheap discarded pcs to upgrade our beowulf clusters?
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
There is no compelling reason to upgrade because, heck, there's no new killer app out there. A killer app IMHO, is a software that pushes the existing hardware technology to the limits, and at the same is being wanted, no *LUSTED*, by an average computer user, to boost his/her overall computer experience.
For example, when Windows 3.1 came out, people realized out that their 286 is really old. Along with Windows 3.1 came unified industry standards (no need for third parties) like memory management, familiar look-and-feel accross the board, OLE, and working in WYSIWYG, among others.
Same goes for Netscape 1.0. When all those eye-candies (JPG,GIF,etc) started to load almost simultaneously, people noticed the difference between browsing with a 486DX versus browsing with a Pentium 133. So they upgraded.
Now that we have reached a point wherein the software cannot take advantage of cutting-edge hardware (except for games), people do not have one compelling reason to upgrade their old hardware. A PII-266 can run a browser with little or no noticeable difference versus a PIV-2.66.
I know I upgrade my Macs. I am currently upgrading my Umax S900 604e/225 to a G3/400 with additional SCSI drives, new/used IDE controller, 60GB IDE drive, USB/Firewire PCI card and another 256MB of memory. I'm looking at spending around $250-$300 (already had the 60MB hard drive sitting around).
As for upgrading my PC or buying a new one, I've never had a compelling need to buy a newer/faster Windoze machine. My Pentium II/266 has over 300MB of RAM, an upgraded IDE controller, second hard drive, 8MB (upgraded from 4MB) VRAM and runs all the programs I need like a champ. The only thing I can't do is run games that require more than 8MB of VRAM. And if I wanted to, I would just by a new video card instead of a new computer. Why would I buy a new machine? My serious work and game playing I do on my 333MHz iMac or my 400MHz G4 tower. And eventually instead of buying a new G4 Tower, I will simply buy a processor upgrade card-or, wife permitting, a DUAL G4! (drool!) processor upgrade card- and a faster video card-maybe in two years.
Well, to be truthful, I will upgrade to the new processor as soon as my wife....uh..our finances allow.
Veritas patesco per quaestio questio. Truth is revealed through questions.
I just close my eyes and imagine the next Great Leap Forward my MS. Windows 2K5XP whatever they call it. It will REQUIRE a 2GHz processor a Gig of RAM and ATA133 drives. Probably high end video and sound adapters as well. Now everyone here will think this stupid but it's never been stupid before. And at any rate they'll have DRM built in so they'll drag you along the upgrade path because nothing else will work.
Unless there is wholesale revolt and people stop buying Office and MS doesn't strong arm everyone into coding to IE9.5 (or whatever) and you don't want to play you r audio CD's or DVD's anymore.....
that's exactly what I've found myself doing. I've got a reseller just a couple blocks from my house and can put together used systems, with monitor, for about $250. I'm looking into the Walmart computers because I think I can now do better with *new* equipment, or with the newest generation of integrated motherboards build from scratch at the same price with higher quality.
I then install a "personal" Linux distro ( right now a heavily modified Mandrake/KDE, but I'm working on a "from scratch" version) that I've found includes just what the average 'Joe/Mary' is expecting from their system. . . and nothing else, which is *also* what I've found they expect. ("Why the hell do I have seven console programs, and why do I need a commercial grade web server to play Tetris?) If at a future time they feel their needs have changed I just pop in whatever it is they want.
Simple, bullet proof and so far not one *single* complaint about Linux being too 'hard' or 'geeky.'
Not even a single complaint about not being able to run Quicken. I don't know about your friends and family, but *my* friends and family already know how to balance their checkbooks and don't appreciate being treated like morons by inanimate objects.
KFG
hey fran, jen here. you got me fucking PREGNANT. you're fucking dead sonny!
There are a lots of motherboards that support sata now, but I have yet to find a true sata drive out(cuda V soon). Lots of people are waiting for hammer, I was tempted to upgrade to xp 2800 with the asus nforce 2 board, but i decided this year to examine my cpu usage for a week with my XP 2100.
The were only very rare instances where my cpu hit 100% utilization for a long period of time, mainly compiling and seti so those are probably the only activites that would benefit from an upgrade besides games, which with the ps2 network adaptor I playing console games online rather than say unreal tournament, since there has no real revolutionary fps since half-life, just graphic improvements.
I dunno about the rest of you, but my celeron even with its modest memory still plays almost all the games I'd want. Sure I might not be able to go out and play the latest & greatest without plunking down $30 on memory, but as is, I can play Half Life and most of the other graphics intensive games that have been out a couple of years. And you can pick those up at pretty deep discounts.
New software should be designed not to run on existing hardware. The electronics market badly needs a new software direction to keep alive the demand for new hardware. Most software for the mass market, even the huge latest version of MS-Office, is using similar amounts of central processing power to software of a year ago. You guys upgrade your hardware regularly. But for the average user using average software, how could you persuade them they really need to upgrade their PC/settop box/games console or whatever? I think demand cannot grow without fundamentally new types of CPU intensive applications.
Why oil price increase equals economic trouble (Score: Interesti
Wasn't?
... ;)
Can you imagine an industry NOT propelled by the mythical speak of a cofounder of Intel?
Engineer Joe to Boss: Hey Boss, I think this processor is actually quite good. Howz about we simply put some faster memory in the cache locations and, well, erm, take out a few bugs? Why reinvent the wheel right now?
Boss: Eh, it's a now win battle. Microsoft is driving the processor curve right now. In fact, they're AHEAD of the curve in terms of producing OSes which require 125% of what's anticipated to be available at the time. It forces US in turn to ramp up production (thusly causing errors, can you say floating poing bug, etc, etc, etc because of the rush to manufacture.) We'll look weak, basically, if we try to set stable, paced goals that work with technology, improving and enhancing existing chips.
Engineer: Damn that Moore! He's causing a great deal of harm here. We're simply pushing immature technology out into the marketplace.
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Not meant to be humorous, this was a poke at the fact that what IF we weren't able to throw bigger and badder hardware at every turn to the programming gods?
What IF -- programmers had to grapple with poorly written code, forcing them to actually patch performance bugs, optimize routines, et cetera?
Linux has been doing this for a decade now
i have a duron 1ghz .. and i run all my games fast!
i run the BEST games to date! that's right, the BEST games! and I NEVER notice a drop in frame rate.
i play moo2, ascendancy, starcraft, etc etc. on my win2k box. No loading times, no "chunking" up.. all the best games.
the only reason u need a new computer, is if u play some of the NEW/BAD games.
My 286 can run CHESS. Let's see unreal2k stay around for hundreds of years and still be played by thousands of people.
-judging another only defines yourself
he who smelt it, dealt it.
I have a 1.2 GHz Athlon and a GeForce 2 Pro, and this runs everything well, including every game I play. The only reason I'm even considering an upgrade is Doom 3, and I'll probably hold out on that until Doom 3 is closer to a release, at which point I'll probably just replace the Motherboard, Processor, and Video Card rather than making a whole new PC.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
The law of diminishing marginal utility basically states that the utility that any consumer derives from additional units of a particular product diminishes as total consumption of the product increases (if the consumption of all other products remains unchanged).
For example, I am currently typing this on my P4 2.2GHz workstation. If I replace the CPU with a P4 2.4GHz, the utility that I gain will be marginal (ie: hardly any difference). In any case, I have to argue that it is all relative!
I have a P3 1.3GHz laptop, and another P3 450MHz workstation, and for me to use those as my main workstation is just not possible anymore. Why? Well, believe it or not, there is a noticeable speed difference with all the machines - even for basic word processing and internet browsing. Sure there are architectural differences in terms of RAM, HD, etc, but the fact remains that there is a speed difference.
Why is that important? Computers are used more than just for word processing and internet browsing. Playing games, watching movies, listening to music all require a decent amount of resources for the experience to be enjoyable. You're kidding yourself if you can really play (and more importantly enjoy) UT2K3 on anything less than P3 1GHz and less than a GF2. Don't tell me that you're getting 60fps, max details, 32-bit colour, at 1280x1024 because you're not.
Nonetheless, we have to remember that CPU speeds are relative. The gaming industry is driving CPU speeds a lot more than say Microsoft is with productivity applications. But to say that you're 'happy' with your less than 1GHz machine with today's applications and games is kidding yourself a lot more than you realize. You'll never want to use a 'slow' machine as your main workstation when you've used something 'fast'. It's human nature after all.
they're buying mac's, you twit ;)
Here I sit on an old Toshiba 130 ,80 mg ram, running wmaker. suse 8, happy as a clam. Swapping. what are you talking about? And what version of redhat are you using? Swap file? How big? Sounds like you are running it under vmware. The only way you are going to get linux to swap as much as you allege is to run it with veerry little ram.
fudpucker
The powers that be are not going to really be able to sell enough of these new copyright protected computer systems to make a difference (the 'puters are hackable anyway). No one wants to buy all this new nextgen sh-t. If we get linux distros just a little more dumbed down (for Joe Sixpack) then we're pretty much good to go as far as keeping all the existing hardware out there running effiiciently with contemporary software and protocols.
Don't You Agree?
Peace out... Or war in... Which ever you prefer...
SlowToneJoe(null);
Everyone (damn near?) has a computer in their home. This is a given. However, the new market is the second PC market. A lot of people have turned one room of the house into the computer room and share it amongst all in the family. Now that mom uses the computer for email too damn much and dad has found the joys of net porn and the kids cant get enough of downloading thousands of songs on kazaa that they will NEVER listen to, its time for two if not three PCs in the house. On top of that, there is cheap wireless networking which makes such a crazy cooky idea even more feasable. The sales monkeys need not to be saying trash your old PC and get a new one - they need to say, its time for PC #2.
PS - I have known people who have taken an entire PC, Monitor and all and thrown it in the trash when they got their new PC.
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
I'm typing this on a Dell P166-MMX overclocked to 200. It has 64 megs of RAM and is running Windows 98SE. Actually, I found this computer sitting among a pallet of old computers on their way to the dumpster. All the other ones were P133's.
I took this one home, installed a 6 gig hard drive I had sitting around, an old sound card and a $1.99 NIC (on sale at Fry's). Know what? For basic web browsing, checking email, typing a letter or two, and other mundane tasks, it works just fine. Yes my wife has a P4-1500 with half a gig of DDR RAM, a whiz bang video card and an 80 gig drive that she edits photos on...but we find that this little computer in the bedroom gets used every bit as much as the power one does. Indeed, it's used all night every night to play ambient music from Live 365 to lull us to sleep.
Let me ask you doubting Thomases this: for what this is used for why does it need to be any better then it is? I believe the answer is no.
my mother's machine starting getting slower even though she only used it for email and surfing. The software had been upgraded and 32M wasn't enough. So I added 256M of memory for $50 et voila: happy mother. Bill isn't happy. Monkey-man isn't happy. But mom is doing just fine.
I'm still using my PIII 800MHz/ASUS combo that I got 2 years ago, and I haven't noticed a need to go GHz yet. The only upgrades I've made are RAM (512 to 1024), CDRW (12xR to 24xR) and video card (32MB to 64MB) and regular HDD size increments. I've been thinking about getting a P4, but there seems to be no obvious benefit, especially since I can compile happily and quickly using cygwin or VC.
The only thing I would really like to replace is my monitor... and get a cool new 19" LCD! Anyone have good deals where I can get one for less than $600???
Computers tend to become obsolete long before they wear out. My dad is going to need a new computer soon (to run some newer software) because his home computer was new in 1991. It still works perfectly fine - but good luck running software less than 5 years old.
Actually, that computer was bought when my mother's TRS-80 finally broke down. The idea of hardware obsolecence was foreign to her then, so she brought it to Radio Shack to see if they could fix it. The guys there laughed at her for the idea that they could fix a 15 year old computer. She was really upset having to buy something new (and completely different) and figure out how to transfer her work over.
This is one of the few times I've actually heard of a computer wearing out - in fact, it was still a simple repair, Radio Shack just no longer had the parts/experience to do it.
Have you read the Moderation Guidelines Addendum?
I am the IT manager of a small retail store chain. We use Windows 2000. The once a month that a computer actually crashes (out of all 50 or so) they call me and I have to tell them how to reboot their computer(if it didn't on its own).
Mac's are for misfits who just want to be different. I would suggest to you the used car profession, as it has more of a future, and probably pays better also.
You sound just like me... I build a dual 366@550 BP6 machine about then. I believe the chips were 40 dollars a piece then. It's the first computer I ever built that increased in value after the months I bought it. This was the begining of my junior year of college. I think you might have the year wrong, should be the fall of 2000.. Any way... My apartment burned down that following May, killing my BP6. Very sad. (Not to mention I had 2 gallons of florinert in that apartment also) So my next machine was a dual Athlon, built in the summer of 2001. I started with 1.2Ghz MP chips and 512MB of RAM... and then after an NMB power supply explosion, I raised the bar to 1800(1.53Ghz)XP models, and 1Gig of RAM. I liquid cooled the chips. The whole system is in a Lian li aluminun case. If you want any tips or suggestions on the dual athlon build, just throw me a note.
Once you go Dual you never go back. I can encode mpeg 4 faster then real time. I have an ATI AIW card and my computer in a Divx base Video Recording box.
i will agree duals are great! in 1997 i put together a dual pentium 200mmx and i still use it today. it runs as fast as my pentium-iii 800 laptop (both have the same amount of ram). there's just something really nice about having that extra processor. i always advise people to go with a dual processor even if it means that they have to get a processor that a year out of date to keep the costs down.
I guess then I can excuse your mistakes. Must be hard to do that accurately.
Consumers who use a computer to perform tasks, rather than because they're actually interested in the computer itself, won't have a reason to upgrade until their hardware keeps them from doing something they want to do. This applies to home AOL/browse/email users as well as to corporate and institutional users. (That's why there are still lots of Win98 machines in homes and NT boxes desktops.)
For many people, bandwidth and network limitations bound performace and capability more than chip speed. The slowest piece of the foodchain will determine overall subjective performace, and increasingly that bottleneck is the network.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
n fucken t biatch.
One trend that this does not take into account is many families have more than one computer. How many Dad's have upgraded so that their kids could use the old computer?
I think that manufacturers saw a big surge in purchasing as many homes bought computers for the first time. Y2K was also a big reason to upgrade PC's. Now I think that most people have a PC that meets their needs with no reason to upgrade for functional reasons. The main reason to buy a computer is not to replace the old one but to have another computer in the house/office.
I have no idea. Redhat 7.1 I think. Generic install, chose the defaults, just like I do with W2K. I don't really have time to dick around with it. Either it works or it doesn't. Redhat didn't work.
we software developers with slower machines have discovered this cool utility called "make", so usually the core stuff of the project doesn't need to be compiled, just the recently changed newer stuff.
:D )
(I'm living in denial about linking time
In order to drive sales of new computers, new applications are required. These new applications require companies that are willing to take a risk and enter the software market - but with Microsoft hanging over the market like a Godzilla waiting to tromp over any newcomer that might threaten Microsoft's cash cows funding for innovative software is going to be very hard to come by.
People don't forget what happened to Netscape - the web browser was the last real killer app, and look what Microsoft did to that.
The fact is that Microsoft is strangling the computer market, and the situation won't change any time soon. AMD realizes this, and is looking to make cpus for markets where Microsoft is not dominant. Markets where innovation and new technologies are possible.
That's why it's best to code on an Athlon, test on a Pentium.
The only reason I got a TiBook is that I knew that eventually the G3 would croak (it finally did this month,) and, even at that, I waited until the TiBooks could burn CDs and CD-RWs.
Backups (redundant data & hardware bought before a catastrophy,) take all the ugency out of buying a replacement.
I may not buy a new computer for a decade. Maybe some boards, more RAM and a new monitor (just picked a Nokia 4445Xpro for the Linux box,) some new bigger drives (I ripped ALL my 200+ CDs to Mp3s,) but I don't use Windows so I never got on the upgrade treadmill.
My client's a bank and their thousands of NT4.0 SvcPk6 boxen are definitely NOT multi-media ready (bad idea with the public doan'cha'no? You're supposed to be at work, not playing games and watching DVDs.) NO CD burners, no audio cards.
The apps that we write and that run on those desktops are client-server so they don't need more than a 200MHz pentium III, a 4GB drive and 64MB RAM (and even at that most of that foot print is the OS.)
Frankly, pitching DRM at these people is a waste of time. Pitching 90% of the software is a waste of time. Pitching 90% of the hardware is a waste of time.
The working world needs better security, better user authentication, better subnet management tools and 100% reliability. The rest is noise.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Regarding your sig... The girl in the sixth photo on the left looks a lot like some nudie pictures I have. I'll bet they're the same girl.
Windows 95 version B was an OEM only version of win95 that was released as a stopgap measure until 98 came out. you could only get it on a new computer. It fixed a lot of win95 bugs at the same time as adding a couple things...those are...
You can download a PATCH from M$ for it that can give it LIMITED USB support. Most hardware manufacturers that make USB devices say 98 or higher because of the problems with the 95 version. Also, it could not support more than 1 USB device very easily. (In fact, if you install an Iomega Zip drive the driver install tells you that you will not be able to use any other USB devices on the port until you uninstall the iomega stuff).
Hopefully this helps you.
RoundTop
Most people remain ignorant of it, and their computer's performance is continually decreasing. Eventually they will upgrade their computer.
Also most people have every single program they install create a quick start, memory-hogging icon in windows.
Here's my two cents. Hardware companies certainly can benefit from the proliferation of spyware etc. Is their a partnership?
oh yeah if you have spyware, get adaware from lavasoft. Again i dont feel like making a link. Its easy enough to find.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
No, it was 1999. I am certain of that. In Y2K, I was living downtown. I had built this machine the year before, when I was living on the edge of rurality. ;)
Duals-4-ever!
The story yesterday on AMD states that AMD is going to be branching out to make processors for other pieces of hardware.
Looks like this might be a smart thing to do. Make the processor for the MP3 player, for the handheld, etc, if it's a growing market.
I find my 1.2 ghz Athalon too slow, but my wife is happily running on a P2 450.
I first used a 286 with about 1MB of RAM. This ran Wolf3D, but poorly. Wolf3D was copied to my dad's pride and joy 386 w/3MB RAM where it screamed.
Then Doom came out. And it wouldn't run on my 386 (needed 4MB of RAM). Luckily my dad just bought a 486dx2/66 with 8MB of RAM and Doom was good. Doom2 was just as fine, but we bought a sound card to complete the experience.
And then came out Quake. It ran at about 5fps on the 486, so I saved up some cash and transformed the 486 into a P133 powerhouse at 16MB (and it only cost about $1000 to do). Quake played nicely and the world was at peace.
That was until Quake2 came out. Time for a k6-2/300. That was cool, but with a voodoo2 it was even cooler. I bought a companion k6-2/350 and could host h2h deathmatch in my household for the first time.
But what's this? Quake3? This prompted me to put together a powerhouse of the likes that I had never seen before. I built it piecemeal over time, like mechanics might build a hotrod in their garage. Acquiring it piece by finest piece. Finally, my Athlon 700 was complete. It sported 256MB of RAM, a voodoo3, and an SB 512K.
And here I am using it now, waiting for Doom3 to come out so I can no doubt upgrade again. I dare to say id Software is more important to the home computing industry than most vendors realize.
A new space exploration game from Electronic Arts Inc. called Earth & Beyond, for example, specifies as its minimum processor a 500MHz Intel Pentium III or equivalent AMD processor. Even the cheapest computer available from discount computer maker eMachines offers more than three times that horsepower on its most basic configuration, which goes for $399. (Many games do require more powerful graphics cards, but they can be added to older systems much easier than processor upgrades.)
Gamers are going to consoles because they are tired of needing the newest $200 graphics card is one reason. Second, most parents are probably tired of updating their kids' computer for the most recent high-end game too. I know several people that get wowed at superb graphics and sound; then toss the game when it crashes their GeForce 2 (?) a dozen times or they have to constantly update their game software or hardware drivers to keep up at the next LANparty/geekfest. Businesses are getting the same way about their workstations -- unless it wears out or breaks it should not be replaced every three years.
And further, there are many, many of us out here who chose between the electronic gadget or the computer and choose gadget; or cannot afford either thanks to current economic trends [to borrow a cliche and NOT to say this is just a tech sector thing. My first wife's boyfriend was recently laid off and he does nothing IT. It's hurting us all].
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.
If games are the only reason for fast PCs, why is it that the consoles don't have gigahertz processors?
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
While the statement about joe user not needing a faster PC to read email and type the occasional letter is true, I'm amazed at the number of average users that have to have the newest, biggest thing. It's a keeping up with the Joneses type of thing. I run an ISP, and all the time, I'm getting new users signing up that brag to me about the specs of their computers. "Yep, I got me a Pentium XV 5 billion megahurts w/ 9000 megabites in the hard drive, and 3000 GBs of RAM, er wait, flip that there around. My next door neighbor just got one from Dell, so I had to upgrade. Got great financing, just $10 per month fer the next 50 years. It's great for playin' ma new Deer Huntin' game. It's a great game, it's called "Redneck Christmas" and came out on the first day of Deer Huntin' season. Minimum requirements is a 1024 MB video card so it can render them pretty 16-point bucks.
Instant Karma's gonna get you...
I am writing this from our six month old P4 with XP.
When our 166 mh pentium died (MB problem) I picked a cheap little pIII box out of a catalog. I thought that an upgrade to windows 98 or 2000 (whatever was lying around my dad's office) and a dsl line would solve all of our computer problems.
My wife had a conniption: we just painted, framed pictures and hung track lights in the office and she was d***ed if I was gonna clutter it up with some mismatched frankenstein beige thing.
It's not all her fault. When we got to the store I upgraded to a flat screen, better sound and more memory. I still have not burned any vinyl to cd, my ostensible excuse for the upgrades.
[Arithmetic according to C: float x = 3.14159; int y = 1/2 * x; Value of y? zero.]
errhhmm, you're converting y to an int so it rounds to the nearest whole number...
uhm, no, that's not the reason.
The reason is that the numbers 1 and 2 are integer, which means that 1/2 results in 0.
He should have written int y = 1.0 / 2.0 * x;
The original comment (Arithmetic according to C) is silly. If you don't understand the way types work in C, use an other language. It's obviously not for you.
College student or everyday user, so what?
There's nothing wrong - or sad, certainly - about people using computers for the tasks they're best at. Office work, email, the Internet: these are what people have always bought computers for. Using them for that purpose, and not buying into marketing hype, just makes sense.
Of course the digital video/audio markets call for either more power or more-advanced connectivity, and these still are growth markets, so that's where vendora are shifting their concentration.
But there's no need to rip on the lusers for using their computers for workaday tasks. That's what they're there for.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
C++ source that uses templates would take forEVER on a slow machine. Well, it already takes forever on a fast machine....hmmmmm...what comes after 'forever'?
Its funny the type of people who need the latest cpu and graphics cards so they can play their video games at 1600 x 1200 x 32 x FSAA x anisotropic filtering with games that are still programmed for last years cards. They buy a slightly cheaper cpu than the top end, overclock it and brag about how much money they saved. When you ask how much did the fan cost they say $40 so they can cool their cpu better lol. They could have just bought the fastest cpu and a regular fan instead. I'm on (by today's standards) a low end athlon 1.2 ghz. I play at 1024 x 768 x 32 and I still woop their asses. I especially hate it when they damage their card or cpu by overclocking, and expect the manufacturer to RMA it. I wish there was a way for the manufacturer to test the card , to see if it was overclocked so these people wouldn't get their money back or a new card for free.
I'm still using the Dell laptop I got freshman year (I'm a senior now): 400Mhz Celeron, 192 MB Ram, 4 Gig harddrive I'm a CS major, and when I need to code I ssh/xterm into the more powerful machines here. When I want to play Warcraft/counterstrike I use a cluster computer. I don't do any video editing, but what fraction of the population does? I use email/IM/Opera 90% of the time, the other 10% in ssh. This article seems right on.
You want something small and quiet, but doesn't sacrifice anything in terms of performance?
/. article. Put in a Pentium 4 2.0 GHz CPU (Northwood-core version), 512 MB of DDR333 RAM, a 60 to 80 GB ATA-100 hard drive, a combo DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive (e.g., Toshiba SD-R1202), and a LeadTek WinFast A250 LE TD card with the nVidia GeForce4 Ti4200 GPU, and you have a very nice computer that not only plays today's most advanced games quite well but also has enough connections to support today's and tomorrow's multimedia hardware that use USB 2.0 or IEEE-1394 connections.
Get the Shuttle SB-51G motherboard/case combo, which was mentioned in a very recent
"Faster" is not coming for free. We're seeing boxes with five fans in them and several pound heatsinks. Good grief, the new NVidia card requires an external power supply. So not only are we not needing the extra performance, but we're paying for it in other ways.
Intel should just give up developing new processors until they stop buying more speed with what may be a greater than linear increase in wattage. When something much better comes along, like optical processors perhaps, then we'll have something.
As it stands, Moore's Law is going to prematurely fail in another generation or two, when the cooling system is prohibitively expensive and/or large.
Microsoft and Intel saw this coming a couple of years ago, which is why they started pushing for broadband adoption (and, if I remember correctly, Microsoft even invested in cable). So what happens? Telco monopolies kill off DSL competitors, and Hollywood's unwillingness to make content available over the net does not drive consumer adoption (no killer app). The only thing that comes close to being a killer app right now are online games. Funny how everyone may be dependent on The Sims Online to drive upgrades...
Dual-P3 motherboard $29.00 with IDE raid on board.
2 P-3 866 processors $50.00 each
Could you tell me the name of that mobo, and point me in the direction of a retailer who's selling it?
Also, the cheapset price for PIII-866's at PriceWatch is $89 [not including S&H]. Who's your supplier on them?
Thanks!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Clue us in, who has them for that price?
I wouldn't be surprised the next major form factor for desktop computers is something akin to Shuttle's designs. Why bother with big, monster-sized system cases when you could built a very powerful system with a case that is 1/3 the volume of the average mid-tower system case?
I have a personal rule when it comes to upgrades. Any upgrade must provide at approximatly 2x more speed/space, repair a damaged component, or provide a wanted feature that cannot be obtained in any other way. I've gone from upgrading every six months to almost every two years now. 100MHz speed jumps don't mean a heck of a lot when you have a 2Ghz CPU. CPU history: 386DX33 > 486DX2 66 > P120 > P233 > Celeron 300 (OCed to 450) > Duron 750 > XP2400 (OCed to 2266MHz)
but grandma and Joe Sixpack don't need a screaming new P4 to surf the net and write letters. Are they just figuring this out?"
Yes.
grandma sixpack is about in her second or third machine since she got interested in this internet thing.
the kids and advermedia had got her used to a cycle of newer faster parts. she's gone through several modems, a few harddrive increases, very probably gone from 95 to 98, needed usb when she decided she wanted a nicer printer, then needed real usb when she got that digital camera for christmas, and had to go atx for the latter, which she also had to do for modern large drives [the only thing available to her at the store] and modern large ram [the only thing available to her at the store] and if she decided she wanted a burner.
it hasn't been a software issue much. her Peterson's Bird Guide CDROM ran fine on the old pentium under 95.
now, for the first time in a while, upgrade doesn't buy her anything. so she isn't upgrading.
unless the industry finally makes graphically intensive entertainment for other than the current narrow definition of 'gamers', she doesn't have the hook to upgrade.
it's killer app time for the hardware industry. and they're investing in PDA and tablet devices instead of making more reasons for a P4 level box.
Celestia, which is as close as I can think of, doesn't need anything like a P4, neither does broadband, or OpenOffice. Most any atx level box will do, so non-gamers aren't buying upgrades, and the general populace already has their first computer.
'normal people' sales have pretty much stopped. so that is 'normal people' news; they *are* just figuring it out because it *is* just happening now.
if you're going to sell the new 'platform', you've got to have new 'games'.
yoir tellin me!
From the FAQ:
berlin is not 5 years old. the berlin project formally started around 1997 (making us 3.5 years old)
*ahem* Somebody fix it, it's a wiki web after all. I'm too lazy.
I think in today's economy, the next major burst of upgrade comes in four areas:
1. Memory upgrades. You'll be amazed that many computer built before 2000 sport 64 MB of RAM at most. Given many of them use 168-pin DIMM's, they could be easily upgrade the RAM to 256 MB or well beyond that for a very reasonable price. And the benefits are immediate: since the need to use the hard drive as virtual memory is very low with computer that have memory upgrades, performance increases of 70 to 100 percent are not out of the question, not to mention substantially fewer system crashes, too.
2. Hard drive upgrades. The switch to a 7200 RPM drive makes reading and writing data on a hard drive much faster. People shouldn't worry about ATA-66 or ATA-100 hard drives working on motherboards with ATA-33 connections, since they should be compatible in general. Sure, you won't get the full benefit of the ATA-66/100 data rate, but it would probably be much better than the old hard drive.
3. Graphics card upgrades. Many older systems use old technology AGP slot graphics cards that are woefully underpowered to handle many of today's multimedia tasks. Cards such as the ATI Radeon 7000 or card that use the nVidia GeForce4 MX420 CPU of course won't offer cutting edge 3-D performance, but they're very reasonably priced and are still vastly better than the original cards.
4. CPU upgrades. Don't laugh--if you have a motherboard that uses Slot 1 or Socket 370, there are now upgrades that can tremendously increase the speed of the computer. Powerleap is now selling CPU upgrades for Slot 1 and Socket 370 that uses the Tualatin-core Celeron and Pentium III CPU's running at well beyond 1 GHz CPU clock speed.
Very likely, most people will spring for the memory upgrade first, since it's the cheapest solution and the one that has the most immediate benefits for all programs.
Why the hell should I even upgrade my 600Mhz PC? my broadband continue to be slow - like I need to display yahoo web page any faster.
HA!
Ah, the title got you reading, didn't it?
Even Mac users don't really care much about the OS X eye candy, from what I've seen. Eye candy is neat for about a month, and then you just ignore it, unless it slows you down (in which case you turn it off).
The reason you get so many Mac people lauding the UI is because they're fed up with MS's stuff, they like the quality of the software that Apple puts out, and the biggest and most obvious difference between OS X and Windows is the eye candy-filled UI.
Eye candy is good for selling/demoing a machine. It really doesn't matter for long-term use, though. Not many Enlightenment users always use E, and at least not most of the effects (like the water). They just keep it around to show it off, then flip it off and go back to work.
May we never see th
If you do not do the following, please use -MM. It autogenerates dependencies so that when you change a header, affected object files are autorecompiled. It makes everyone's life better.
C++ is still hideously slow to compile with g++.
ccache should be a standard developer tool. Tremendously helpful. Speeds up builds after "make clean"s by a huge amount.
May we never see th
OK: I don't have a shuttle small form factor case right now, and perhaps I never will, but a question for all six of the other people in the world without one: Can you look at the picture (right hand side) at the LANL space simulator page without lusting at least a little bit for a shuttle case? :)
:) (Or even VIA's low-power stuff ...)
:)
What I'd really like though is a case that small but with a cool-running, low-power chip, for low noise and even better for low power consumption.
Shuttle eventually gave in and came out with SFF cases for AMD chips; what about for Transmeta, esp. the new Astro?
For reasons of paranoia and inertia, I have (and anticipate continuing to have) several computers around the house. They might all end up being laptops, but that gets expensive, too. I'd rather save space and utility bills by making my multiple computers small and frugal
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Oh, yes. I almost forgot.
The "new upgrade" feeling, the rush of excitement when putting the thing together is much better this way. Upgrading every two years means that you notice a bit more snappiness, a bit less paging. No big deal.
But, I still remember upgrading from a Mac Plus to a Power Mac 6100/60. From a monochrome 512x384 8.5 inch or so screen with a wave-synth sound system, 800k floppies, an 68000 chip, no numeric keypad to a system with *16 bit* color, a *14 inch* monitor, a (you may want to sit down for this one) *CD-ROM drive*, a totally different chip architecture, an effectively non-multitasking OS to a cooperatively multitasking one...
Wow. Quite an experience.
May we never see th
No, guys, thesen things are too easily fixed. Think more like the motherboard equivalent of a thermonuclear weapon. A big static discharge might fit the bill.
I hope I'm not giving "them" ideas....
Ed Craig "Who cares what you think?" George W. Bush, 4th of July 2001
As someone put it recently, you can run Word just fine on a Macintosh SE. Miraculous, I survived college with just that, including by thesis work. (You can buy an SE for about $5, BTW.)
:)
Maybe not the latest, most bloated Word, but I figured they'd lost their minds way back when they introduced voice annotations. Also, the screen is a little small...
Computers have gotten a lot nicer, and prices have dropped a lot, but there is a lot of exaggeration as to what people "need."
Hate to break it to everyone, but the consoles have won the game wars. You can buy a nice, high-end console (PS2/XBox), for the price of a video card these days, and you don't have to pay for OS, processor, drives, etc. On top of that, the games run consitently and are at least on par if not better than many PC games. Quit wasting all your money and buy a damn console already.
but then I realized that Unreal plays flawlessly on my network with its P3 866, AMD 900, and AMD 1gh. A new machine would be just that a new machine without much more to offer (im practical terms anyway)
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Lemme see, my upgrades go as follows (Hey, I've not been alive all that long, so my first computer -was- a 286): 286, 386, 486, 400mhz Celeron/old 486 Laptop, 1.5ghz Vaio, 600mhz G3 (iBook). It seems I've actually gone down in processor speeds, by 900mhz in fact! I'd say I'm the opposite of what AMD/Intel want. Oh well, I don't want them, either.
I think what's happening here is that despite a great deal of criticism, Windows XP is pretty stable if installed by the OEM. The typical user only upgrades when there's a need. Until now, one of the reasons to upgrade was the elusive search for reliability. As XP is largely reliable (although certainly not perfect), users with XP computers are not as likely to upgrade because of reliability issues - they'll upgrade when new "must-have" bloatware comes out that requires faster computers with more memory. Or because they want to play Doom III.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
When longhorn is out sales will go up again
Well, I guess they are right about people not buying new computers as much. I tried to con my dad into getting a new machine so I could take his and use it as a LINUX box.
I had a WIN 95 box that wouldn't boot correctly. So I got all of the information off of it and I am using it NOW to type this in (as a LINUX box)
HOORAY. NO MORE WORRIES about VIRUSES all of the time.
Screw upgrading until I have a job.
When will there be some?
You know, developers sometimes need to compile stuff. It's a pain to code if half of your time is spent building the binaries for testing.
.c and .h files (you should be doing this to make version control easier anyway) it's really not that arduous, so long as you have plenty of memory and fast disks.
So long as you aren't doing make clean between builds and you have your code neatly split into many
I still do useful work on a 33Mhz 68040 with 32M running NeXTStep 3.3. Nothing like knowing a compile is quite an expensive operation to sharpen the mind rather than taking the "shotgun debugging" approach.
Is Jennifer Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer?
Is Drake Sir Francis Drake?
eeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
This game requires a beowulf cluster to run properly.
256 meg of ram is NOT ENOUGH for this beast. You need 512meg or you get 1fps as the game stops to load from the HD every 10 feet, and some people recommended that I get 1 gig instead...
Its interesting that so many people are talking about MSoft OS boxes getting obsoleted quickly.
I just finished hacking around with my brother's PowerMac 6116CD. Its running Mac OS 7.5.1, it can only support 72 Meg of RAM and MacOS 9.1. This product line was out of production in 1996.
Most of the PC's in my house are from 1996 and have been upgraded with (at least) large, fast hard drives and RAM (256 to 512 Meg). They 350 - 450 MHz Pentium and Celeron boxes running Windows 2000 and Office XP. They are reasonably fast and useful for my daughters to run Office, browse the web, listen to music, etc. The Mac on the otherhand takes longer to boot than my server and its basically a doorstop. It can't be upgraded to the latest OS rev and RAM/disk upgrades are pretty limited.
This ties into the theory that lots of people only want wordprocessing, e-mail and web browsing. You can do this on a 5-6 year old machine.
Rumour has it they are making an Nforce 2 model, which would be quite the high speed monster.
If they could just make them upgradable (board / power supply / etc) I'd seriously look at one of them.
All I need is a DVD burner / reader - floppy (sue me, I'm "tech like" by nature and they come in handy) plus my xyz fast video card.
Definately a cute little machine - portable too.
Fine, code locally, test locally, do some funky distributed compiling. 5 develpoers on old machines, 5 graphics artists on new machines. USe the CPU power of the graphics machines (when not running filters etc.), to compile.
what comes after 'forever'
"And again"
A lot of the *speed* of new computers is the faster hard drives and more memory.
Take that older PII/K6 era machine, throw 256M of memory into it, and give it a fast [IDE] hard drive. Congrats, you have a faster machine. Buy a nicer video card off ebay for $20 (someone recently recommended 8 Meg PCI Matrox Millenium II's for the 2D support), and you got a big enough vid card for a 17" or 19" monitor at 1024x768. Assuming it has around a PII 300 mhz or K6-2 400mhz processor, its fine for Mozilla, Open Office, and a few old games. For a lot of users, they don't need more.
ok, so next step should be computers doing your job ;)
I'll second the SMP. I have a dual PPro 200 at work that I've had for nearly 5 years. Runs NT4.0, has bluescreened maybe 3 times in that time. I have a new 2.5Ghz Pentium 4 sitting in a box that I haven't had time to set up; my first use will be to load Perl on it and use it for a distributed programming run that would take 65+ days on one of our servers. With this machine, and 4 or 5 others it will only take 7-10 days.
Then, and only then, will I probably transfer my desktop to it.
Oh, yeah, and my Pentium 150 laptop works fine for everything I need on the road!
(but my home machine is an XP1600+ )
Eat Lamb, 1 million coyotes can't be wrong
Well, if you use a distibuted compiling solution, then you could put all your Pentium Classic boxen to use compiling OpenOffice.org.
Unfortunately I am one of those geeks waiting on Doom 3 to make my next machine decisions.
:(
HOWEVER, I've recently begun DOWNGRADING my machine's and selling off the older hardware - for what little I can get for it, before it's worth nothing. (which to me = profit!)
4 months ago I was running an XP1800+, GF4 ti4200, 512mb, 12x CDRW and 21" monitor.
Now I'm hanging on my Duron 600@950, Radeon 7200, 256mb, 17" monitor and no burner.
I guess that I like many other gamers and enthusiasts am getting sick of pouring large sums of $ into PC's and getting little for it.
Plus I've never been one of those "must have the latest" geeks or I would've had a 2400+, Ti4600, 1gb of DDR plus a 48x burner.
There is a lot of diminishing returns when it comes to PC gear, you have to make the right move for the right bang to buck ratio or you find yourself with 35,000$ AUD in hardware receipts from when you were 13 until now (11 years) - and no, that's no exaggeration.
Right now this Duron is doing more than I need it to do for me, as long as I can email, browse, and watch lesbian porn - what more do I need it for?(except Doom 3)
The other problem at the moment is the clawhammer, I really would like to be an early adopter of a 64bit machine (and support AMD some, they damn well need it at the moment) but I don't know how long I can wait!
If you want my opinion no the hardware to consider for the best bang to buck right now it's this.
ECS K7S5A (onboard sound, LAN with the US model)
256MB SDR or DDR
Athlon XP 1700 or 1800+
GF3 ti200 64mb or GF4 ti4200 64mb
That machine will amply run 99% of _TODAYS_ games at a good speed in 1024 @ 32bit - no AA of course but some of us (me) don't care for it at all.
Also that machine should run SOME of tommorow's games - yet the total cost for those parts wouldn't be far above 250$ US.
Now the laws of diminishing returns kick in, as you COULD buy this.
P4 3.06
Granite bay board
1gb PC3200 DDR
Radeon 9700 pro
Probably 3-5x the cost for basically barely any more performance in 1024x768 32bit - if you like AA sure thing, but realistically it costs a fortune and offers little.
Hence the users getting smarter and smarter with their upgrades.
My next machine however - for Doom 3 is hopefully going to be something of an "uppper end" compromise between "stupidly overpowered" and bang for buck - I'd never go the ludicrous LATEST technology route but only 1 step behind to save that crazy 25% premium on the latest parts...
Dell seems to have figured this out already since their ads hint that families should have more than one pc these days. "Dude, we're getting another Dell."
Vote for Pedro
that's all I need to do everything I want to do, including playing Diablo II with WineX.
I'm a hamker. Hams, hackers, same ethos, different medium. == 73 de KB0STG
My wife's machine matches yours (except Celeron/450 instead of P3/350) and is running KDE 3.0.3 (from Mandrake 9.0). Everything in it was autodetected correctly, it runs some things faster than my Athlon 1800 (bodgy MSI motherboard), and it's dead peaceful even with a copy of StarOffice 5.2 and OpenOffice 6.0 (don't ask) and Mozilla and XChat loaded and doing stuff (like Flash, in the case of Mozilla, 'coz #1son (3yo) likes Bob The Builder). It also found a nice Yamaha sound card when I plugged it in, and drives an Epson C41UX printer, Sony DSC-F707 camera and a second (Swann) USB mouse (for little hands).
/etc/rc.d/rc5.d might be instructive.
RedHat has been notorious for starting un-necessary services, although I gather that they've improved on that a lot in recent distros. A listing of
What does `top b' look like on that machine once it's got (say) a copy of OpenOffice.org started?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
AMD did, they recently announced that they're diversifying (away from bigger heatsinks and a microwave on your motherboard). Actually figuring out what customers need? Inconcievable! (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I remember I was doing some work on a website for my boss, on my new Dell laptop.
Everything was done, looked good, so I burned it to a CD and let him take a look.
Apparently, colors are VERY different on a CRT than on a LCD display. Depending at what angle you look at it, there can be some big variances.
Rumor was, the developers had to test every build on the original PowerMac 6100's.....60mhz, 16mb ram, etc etc
Office 98 was it?
i love how the same little pukes that put 500 pounds of stickers on their car and call it modded have preempted the use of the term 'gamer'... you know there ARE other ways to 'game' besides playing doom2 clones all day.....
When I graduated in 2000 from a college in the Austin area I had an on-campus interview with Dell. I asked the recruiter the following question:
"After this current PC sales boom is over, what leads you to believe that Dell's sales will remain steady, allowing you to keep all of the workers you are currently hiring?"
His answer was that people will not be satisfied with their computer after a couple of years and will want to upgrade.
I said, "So you think these people are going to need to upgrade their entire box, monitor, printer, keyboard, mouse, etc. every couple of years. I find that to be very unlikely."
They guy nearly tossed me out of the room. He really just got red in the face and ended the interview quickly. Needless to say he didn't get the job. I still dream about the mindless idiot in the unemployment line when the Silicon Hills turned into a tech graveyard.
I'm finally about to get a new mobo and CPU now that I my AMD 500 is sputtering a little bit, but don't need an entire new system.
There were really 3 groups in on this game trying to force consumers to upgrade every couple of years.
1) Intel
2) Microsoft
3) Desktop PC makers
Intel and the PC makers teamed up to market computers to consumers in a way to make them believe that a computer is obsolete just because there are faster ones available...who cares. Unless you are a gamer, graphics designer, etc. why do you need anything faster the 1GHZ? Instead of simply understanding that most desktop users would be satisfied with a certain speed and keeping that speed of desktop on the market while lowering prices, they keep increasing the speed to keep the prices steady.
Where MS plays into this is they realease crappy software like Win XP. They basically say hmmm, let's waste tons of processing power by adding a PLUS type package onto Win2k. This way we'll make Intel and the PC makers happy by effectively forcing users to upgrade to be able to run our new system. Oh, and just in case any of those people don't want/can't afford to upgrade their hardware, let's add pressure by telling them that the software we used to release was extremely buggy and insecure...oh, and we don't support it any more.
This is why I do value AMD's new statements regarding their company being more aware of the consumer, and not just processing speed.
you can tweak the Core and Memory bus speeds on a 4200 to match the 4600 if you have adequate cooling. So you have NO EXCUSES!
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Complete Pentium 4 2.53 GHz system: $476
512 MB PC3500 DDR RAM upgrade: $173
GeForce4 TI4600 video card: $210
17 inch LCD monitor: $416
Realizing Medal of Honor looks great on a computer that costs 1/3 of what you spent on yours: priceless
I agree. My little 500 Mhz AMD, K6II runs Photoshop 7 on Windows XP speedy as ever(and with antivirus and firwalls running). Of course, every few months I put another 128 MB of ram in it (but what's that, like $25?) I keep wanting to upgrade, but I just can't justify it yet.
I think people are becoming a little too confident in constantly lamenting that current hardware is final, no further word necessary. Let's think back to some hardware changes, big and small, that changed how we use personal computers:
* Broadband Internet connections
* 3D gaming (which literally created a whole market of high-end graphics cards within the PC industry, and continues to push hardware limits and rake in money)
* DVD-ROM (WinDVD continues to sell 1,000,000 more copies each month, not to mention sales of bigger monitors and surround sound speakers)
* LCT flatpanel monitors
* Quiet PC cases
* Distributed computing
Surely there will be more "kiler apps" that will necessitate upgrades!
Recently I read an internal Microsoft white paper that discussed the need to drive the purchase of new PC hardware by creating bigger, more demanding apps that do exciting, useful things. I go along with the exciting and useful part, but it would be nice if they weren't bent on maxxing out hardware so people will have to buy more. Maybe it's to put Palladium chips in place, I dunno. But if there seems to be a lack of motivation to make MS apps smaller, simpler or more efficient, it's not because their coders don't know how, it's because the suits don't want them to.
I see your point, and for basic applications you're correct. But the real value in upgraded PCs tends to come from new, innovative software that performs tasks that weren't possible before.
.WAV sounds and play them back - but it wasn't the same as mathematically calculating the whole thing and reproducing the instrument in real-time. This new ability allows you to have a nearly perfect simulation of an instrument on stage, without lugging the thing around with you or worrying about it getting out of tune. (Not to mention the cost savings, or instruments you simply can't buy at any price anymore.)
EG. Software synthesizers for computer musicians. Before the newer generations of CPUs, a PC simply didn't have the processor power to accurately simulate a real Hammond B3 organ, or a Steinway piano, or you name it. Sure, you could sample in one as a series of
High-end PC sales won't sell in massive numbers to the general public, perhaps -- but they'll still have customers. (Assuming, of course, that software development doesn't stagnate and resign itself to re-inventing the same old apps year after year.)
I have a PII laptop that has served me very well over the years (4+...a long time in hardware years). I don't have to worry about OS obsolecence, because I don't use 'doze. And even though I do a lot of image processing, the things that count (ram, hd capacity) all can and have been upgraded (albeit slowly on my meager grad-student budget). With graduation approaching, and no real promise of employment on the horizon, I have resigned myself to the possibility that I'm gonna have to 'make-do' with what I have for a while- but it is no great source of distress to me, my little laptop still performs like a champ....
except for one thing- I use the heck out of this little machine, and it is beginning to show its age. Buttons are falling out, the case is developing cracks (I dunno, maybe 4 year old Dells tend to do this). I think the condition of the case is going to be the limiting factor on my poor ol' portable. If only there were a rejuvenating case mod to save my pathetic little inspiron 3500, I'd hang on to it longer.
I dunno, maybe I'll take out one last student loan and get that imac I've been drooling over....
In the past, upgrading has not been nesescary, in fact, up until last May I played ANY game just fine on a P2 412mhz w/ 256mb ram and a geforce 2 gts... Now I am on an athlon 1800+(OCed to past 2000+) 512mb pc2700 ddr ram, and a geforce 3... And I need to upgrade my video card to play the latest games.
Doom 3 won't even run well on a GeForce 4 if you want all the cool features on! There is now a reason to go out and buy a GeForceFX for $500... And I'm going to do it =)
I dont play games but watch a lot of DivX movies and do scientific computations. I need at least one 1GHZ PIII for this.
I guess that's why Intel now goes the way of Hyper-Threading ..
e x. html
.. again .. :-)
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/02q4/021114/ind
I guess that will make us all upgrade
They don't really need them, because consoles are designed from the ground up to be multimedia powerhouses. Their architecture's make them more efficient, more gaming bang for the buck. Check out the articles about the Playstation 2 on ars technica for details.
Basically, his operating system wore out.
A lot of us who are pretty hard core about programming pay more attention to the theory and practice of programming than we do to tinkering with hardware and drivers.
For Windows, ordering a power machine from a major vendor works wonderfully. Even with Linux, I like having a mainstream hardware setup (not too cutting edge) to increase the chances that my distro installer can do the grunt work of making all the hardware pieces work together without intervention from me.
The sooner I can get my dev tools installed and get down to programming -- and put the hardware and system config out of my mind -- the more I like it.
(Ironically, all my relatives think that since I'm a programmer, I'm naturally the perfect person to resolve all the driver conflicts they have in that hacked together pile of PC parts they just saved so much money on, so that's how I get to spend my holidays....)
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
A well-used door needs no oil on its hinges.
A swift-flowing steam does not grow stagnant.
Neither sound nor thoughts can travel through a vacuum.
Software rots if not used.
These are great mysteries.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
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