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Legacy-Free PCs
JeffM2001 writes "InformationWeek is running a story by Fred Langa which gives an overview of the ways to create a true-Legacy-free computer. Finally we can have a PC not based on twenty year old technology." Update: 04/07 17:34 GMT by T : Pages past the first one of this article seem just to loop; here's the printable version, which has the whole article in one go.
People (including myself) constantly note that Macs and other non-PC designs are much more reliable than Wintel PCs.
All theology aside, there is a good reason for that; the other designs don't have to cope with the odd possibility that someone will try to install a twenty year old piece of hardware or a 15 year old piece of software on it - or more likely, a brand new piece of hardware that still uses twenty year old design guidelines.
The PC's ability to accept that vast array of cheap hardware is it's greatest strength but is also the biggest obstacle to reliability and performance the PC has.
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The OS reached a stage of perfection with UNIX.
Really, it is very hard to improve on it. I think the Starship Enterprise runs OpenBSD myself.
So - it is no big deal when the non-legacy computer runs the old OS.
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
...and therefore does not, apparently, understand the reasons why not having a BIOS is an awful idea. Can you say, "machines that are locked into using only one OS?" "Microsoft Palladium inextricably inside?" "Machines crashing on boot due to crufty C code in ROM?" "Viruses that can make the hardware utterly useless... even more so than the Chernobyl virus?" Sure you can. The idea of a BIOS isn't a bad one just because it was invented many years ago. It's a classic concept that just works. And it's one of the reasons the PC architecture has been so successful and long-lived.
Jeez, dude, couldn't you just say "Very few new motherboards have ISA slots"?
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