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Dual-core Systems Necessary for Business Users?
Lam1969 writes "Hygeia CIO Rod Hamilton doubts that most business users really need dual-core processors: 'Though we are getting a couple to try out, the need to acquire this new technology for legitimate business purposes is grey at best. The lower power consumption which improves battery life is persuasive for regular travelers, but for the average user there seems no need to make the change. In fact, with the steady increase in browser based applications it might even be possible to argue that prevailing technology is excessive.' Alex Scoble disagrees: 'Multiple core systems are a boon for anyone who runs multiple processes simultaneously and/or have a lot of services, background processes and other apps running at once. Are they worth it at $1000? No, but when you have a choice to get a single core CPU at $250 or a slightly slower multi-core CPU for the same price, you are better off getting the multi-core system and that's where we are in the marketplace right now.' An old timer chimes in: 'I can still remember arguing with a sales person that the standard 20 Mg hardrive offered plenty of capacity and the 40 Mg option was only for people too lazy to clean up their systems now and then. The feeling of smug satisfaction lasted perhaps a week.'"
All the anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-exploit, DRM, IM clients, mail clients, multimedia "helper" apps, browser "helper" apps, little system tray goodies, etc., etc., and so on, it can start to add up. A lot of home and small business users are running a lot more background and simultaneous stuff than they may realize.
That's not to say these noticeably slow down a 3.2GHz single-core machine with a gig of RAM, but the amount of stuff running in the backgrownd is growing exponentially. Dual core may not be of much benefit to business users now, but how long will that last?
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
Also, that 30 inch monitor is also very important.
'I can still remember arguing with a sales person that the standard 20 Mg hardrive offered plenty of capacity and the 40 Mg option was only for people too lazy to clean up their systems now and then. The feeling of smug satisfaction lasted perhaps a week.'
If you build it, they will fill it.
for the average user there seems no need to make the change. In fact, with the steady increase in browser based applications it might even be possible to argue that prevailing technology is excessive.'
I definitely don't agree. I remember hearing the same rubbish comments in various forms from shortsighted journos and analysts when we were approaching cpus with 50mhz. then I heard the same creeping up to 100mhz then 500mhz then 1ghz.
It is always the same. "The average user doesn't need to go up to the next $CURRENT_GREAT_CPU because they're able to do their average things OK now". Of course they're able to do their average things now, that's why they're stuck doing average things.
It's inevitable. The more resources we have, the more we're going to want to use. That goes for basically everything - it's just human nature.
Not really. It all depends on your scheduler. There's just no telling without testing if a given application / OS combination will do better or worse on dual-core.
Remember, two active applications, or two threads in an active application, does not mean those two processes or threads get to be piped to separate cores or processors. That might possibly happen but it probably won't.
I had a boss who loved to get dual-CPU systems. Why? "Because that way one CPU can run the web server and one CPU can run the database." No matter how often I tried to shake that view from his head it never left. (In point of fact, both were context switching in and out of both CPUs pretty regularly).
In short: dual core, like most parallelized technologies, doesn't do nearly as much as you think it does, and won't until our compilers and schedulers get much better than they are now.
All's true that is mistrusted
What about when 56k modems were fast enough for everyone. The capacity of applications will always grow to meet and exceed the available capacity to it.
Ten years ago, people were constantly going "in five years, computers will be so fast that they'll never be able to get any faster!".
Cut to ten years later. Computers are still getting faster all the time. But meanwhile, people are going "for the last five years, computers have really been so fast that we don't really need them to get any faster!".
Well, don't worry, I'm sure Microsoft will come to the rescue. You may not think you need dual core systems now, but believe me, once you find yourself for whatever reason running Vista, you'll suddenly find that however much horsepower you have isn't enough.
Even my oldest hard drives weighed more than that.
He may be an old timer - but I would think even the oldest old timer knows that MB = Megabyte...
I'd rather spend the extra $750 on flash cache memory for the hard drive. Or, just replace the hard drive altogether. I gurantee either of these would win the average Business Joe's pick in triple blind taste test.
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In general, for office productivity type stuff, processor speed isn't much of a problem. We find that older CPUs like 1.5GHz P4s are still nice and responsive when loaded with plenty of RAM, and we still use them. Office use (like Word, Excel, e-mail, etc) is a poor benchmark by which to decide how useful a given level of power is, since it usually lags way behind other things in what it needs. I mean an office system also works fine with an integrated Intel video card, but I can think of plenty of things, and not just games, that benefit or mandidate a better one.
Dual cores are useful in business now for some things, a big one I want one for is virtual computers. I maintain the images for all our different kinds of systems as VMs on my computer. Right now, it's really only practical to work on one at a time. If I have one ghosting, that takes up 100% CPU. Loading another is sluggish and just makes the ghost take longer. If I had a second core, I could work on a second one, while the first one sat ghosting. It also precludes me form doing much intensive on my host system, again, just slows the VM down and makes the job take longer.
My goodness. I wonder often why people want nice new computer hardware at all. I, personally, am happy with my 8080. People who want new, fast computers are such idiots. Look who's laughing now. My computer only cost my $10, and I can do everything that I want on it.
In other words, it sounds like it's perfect for all those people who wanted to get another processor to run their spyware on but couldn't afford the extra CPU before now.
0*0
00*
***
Dual 30" monitors. KVM'd to top systems running Quad-SLI Geforce 7900's. dr0000l...
Wait a minute. Why stop at 30"? Plasmas!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
It wants to know why we need pentiums on the desktop. Why isn't a 486 DX fast enough?
wbs.
Huh?
Unfortunately, ultimately, most business users will be forced to upgrade to new systems simply because there will no longer be replacement parts for the old systems.
Consider the case of memory modules. 5 years ago, 64MB PC100 SODIMMs were plentiful. Now, they are virtually extinct. By 2010, you will not be able to find any replacement memory modules for your 1999 desktop PC because it requires PC100 non-DDR SDRAM, and no one will sell the stuff. In 2010, the only thing that you can buy is DDR2 SDRAM, Rambus DRAM, or newer-technology DRAM.
In short, by 2010, you will be forced to upgrade for lack of spare parts.
They'll want them. Perhaps 'necessary' is not as relevant as 'desired'. Or 'Halo'.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
[out-of-context quote] prevailing technology is excessive.[/out-of-context quote]
I think its been said for years that the vast majority of users need technology at around the 1995 level or so and that's it. Unless of course you're into eye-candy or need to keep all your spyware up and running in tip-top condition. Seriously though, you know its true that the bulk of business use it typing letters, contracts, whatever; a little email; a little browsing and a handful of spreadsheets. That was mature tech. 10 years ago.
I run debian on an athlon1700 with 256 megs and its super snappy. of couse I use wmii and live by K.I.S.S. Do I need dual-core multi-thread hyper-quad perplexinators? nope.
I know. I'm a luddite.
man, I feel like mold.
Really, consider the average business PC user. Outside of folks that have large development environments, do video/graphics/audio work, work on large software projects (such as games) really do not need 80GB hard disks. If you DO need more than that, you probably are quickly getting to the point of being able to justify storing your data on a file server. My unit at work only has 30GB on it, and that includes several ghost images of the systems I'm running QA on. Sure, grouse about Microsoft code bloat all you want but it doesn't take up THAT much HDD space.
/rolleyes
Sweeping generalizations are rarely more than "Yeah, me too!" posts.
"...getting a couple [for the executives]..."
I can't tell you how many times I've seen engineers puttering along on inadequate hardware because the executives had the shiny, fast new boxes that did nothing more on a daily basis than run "OutLook".
Just as McKusick's Law applies to storage - "The steady state of disks is full" - there's another law that applies to CPU cycles, which is "There are alwways fewer CPU cycles than you need for what you are trying to do".
Consider that almost all of the office/utility software you are going to be running in a couple of years is being written by engineers in Redmond with monster machines with massive amounts of RAM and 10,000 RPM disks so that they can iteratively compile their code quickly, and you can bet your last penny that the resulting code will run sluggishly at best on the middle-tier hardware of today.
I've often argued that engineers should have to use a central, fast compilation software, but run on hardware from a generation behind, to force them to write code that will work adequately on the machines the customers will have.
Yeah, I'm an engineer, and that applies to me, too... I've even put my money where my mouth was on projects I've worked on, and they've been the better for it.
-- Terry
Another quote relates to spending.
Ones "necessary expenses" always grow to meet ones income.
Wally: When I started programming, we didn't have any of these sissy "icons" and "windows". All we had were zeros and ones -- and sometimes we didn't even have ones. I wrote an entire database program using only zeros.
Dilbert: You had zeros? We had to use the letter "O".
Unfortunately, the current dual core CPU options do not fit with 'typical' office workers needs/budgets.
Intel/AMD are pushing high speed, high cost CPU's and hoping someone will buy them for the office.
As other's have said, all the background widgets (anti-spam, spyware, virus, IM) apps could benefit from dual core and increase the user experience. BUT, they don't need the dual cores to:
-Run hot
-Be Expensive
-Run at High Speeds
-Raise the power bills
Personally, I've deployed and used some Athlon64 (single and dual) systems. I've liked the power management features and would like to see Sempron/Celeron versions of these chips a year from now to deploy to the average user.
As an aside: Do you think the widespread adoption of dual core systems will help Grid computer or interesting massive P2P type projects gain acceptance?
The value of having faster hardware is more simple than all this cogitation would lead us to believe. If you spend 12 seconds of every minute waiting on something, that is 20% of your day. By decreasing this wait to 2 seconds, it greatly reduces waste: wasted manhours, wasted resources, wasted power....
It might seem trivial, but even with web based services that are hosted in-house, that 12 seconds of waiting is a LOT of time. Right now, if I could get work to simply upgrade me to more than 256MB of ram, I could reduce my waiting. If I was to get a full upgraded machine, all the better... waiting not only sucks, it sucks efficiencies right out of the company.
As someone mentioned, doing average things on average hardware is not exactly good for the business. People should be free to do extraordinary things on not-so-average systems.
Each system and application has a sweet spot, so no single hardware answer is correct, but anything that stops or shortens the waiting is a GOOD thing...
We all remember that misquote "512k is enough for anybody" and yeah, that didn't work out so well. Upgrades are not a question of if, but of when... upgrade when the money is right, and upgrade so that you won't have to upgrade so quickly. Anyone in business should be thinking about what it will take to run the next version of Windows when it gets here... That is not an 'average' load on a PC.
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In my experience, and I'm a software developer so take that with a grain of salt, the vast majority of people will get more performance from more memory than more CPU speed.
... huge whacking gobs of RAM solve more problems than raw compute power. Always has.
I'm almost never CPU bound if I have enough memory. If I don't have enough memory, I get to watch the maching thrash, and it crawls to a halt. But then I'm I/O bound on my hard-drive.
Dual-CPU/dual-core machines might be useful for scientific applications, graphics, and other things which legitimately require processor speed. But for Word, IM, e-mail, a browser, and whatever else most business users are doing? Not a chance.
Like I said, in my experience, if most people would buy machines with obscene amounts of RAM, and not really worry about their raw CPU speed, they would get far more longeivity out of their machines.
There just aren't that many tasks for which you meaningfully need faster than even the slowest modern CPUs. If you're doing them, you probably know it; go ahead, buy the big-dog.
Repeat after me
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The big ole bag of ass that will become Vista someday is going to make good use of that 2nd core. The current preview version loves all the CPU, RAM, and Video processing you can throw at it.
Where I work, we're starting to use VMWare or VirtualPC to isolate troublesome apps so one crappy application doesn't kill a client's PC. Virtualization on the desktop will expand to get around the universal truth that while you can install any windows application on a clean windows OS and make it run, installing apps two and beyond aren't guaranteed to work together. Between virtualization and Vista, it's wise for business customers to OVERBUY for today so it's usable in 3-4 years.
STFU & GBTW
... from the "well-duh" department.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
But I don't think it applies to the single/dual core issue.
I don't think any of the bottlenecks right now are processor related. Most of the issues I see are bandwidth to the box and graphics.
Which would you prefer:
#1. A second proc at the same speed as your current proc?
#2. A second pipe (LAN or Internet) at the same speed as your current pipe?
Assuming that the machine/OS/apps can fully utilize either option.
There are very few systems I've ever seen that ever hit a processor bottleneck
I'm all in favour of the development of inexpensive, multi-core procs. Even for the desktop. Even for them becoming the standard on the desktop. Because I don't know what cool new functionality will be available tomorrow.
But from what I see right now, the limitation is how fast I can get data to the single proc I'm running today.
2x the processor power
or
2x the pipe?
Even quad-core also may not be enough if your computer is busy on crunching spyware, adware, bots and sending spam to all over the world.
The more cores you have, it is pretty important to run a secure multimedia OS such as Tomahawk Desktop.
VoIP, High Definition audio and video, complex Office Suites, 3D demos, etc. may very soon demand more than dual-core.
Since when was "legitimate business purposes" part of the equation? Many business users just using office and email could use a 5 year old PC. But the industry moves on. Lease agreements terminate. The upgrade cycle continues its relentless march. Smart businesses could slow their upgrades down. Typcial businesses will keep paying Dell and keeping HP's business model afloat.
"640 KB should be enough for anybody."
-Bill Gates, Microsoft
"There is no reason why anyone would want a computer in their home."
-Ken Olsen, DEC
in our financial world, users often have several spreadsheets open (deeply linked to other spreadsheets), Bloomberg, Outlook, several instances of IE, antivirus software and antispyware software running in the background... you get the idea.
the more memory and horsepower I can provide them, the better experience they have with their machines. and empirically it seems that underpowered machines crash more; they sure generate more support calls (app X is slooowwww!!!)
same goes for gigabit to the desktop; loading and saving files is quicker and those aforementioned linked spreadsheets also benefit from the big pipes...
IF one can afford it, and the load is heavy as is our case, every bit of power one can get helps...
-=- mf
I will benefit from multi-core.
:)
I'm perhaps not a typical business user, but what business wants is more concurrent apps, and more stability. Less hinderance from the computer, and more businessing
Currently, I have a Hyperthreaded processor at both home and work. This has made my machine immune to some browser memory leak vulnerabilities, whereby only one of the threads has hit 50% CPU. (Remember just recently there was a leak to open windows calc through IE? I could only replicate this on the single core chips).
Of course hyper threading is apparently all "marketting guff", but the basic principles are the same.
I've found that system lockups are less frequent, and a single application hogging a "thread" does not impact my multitasking as much. I quite often have 30 odd windows open.. perhaps 4 word docs, outlook, several IEs, several firefoxs, perhaps an opera or a few VNC sessions and several visual studios.
On my old single thread CPU this would cause all sorts of havock, and I would have to terminate processes through task manager and pray that my system would be usable without a reboot. This is much less frequent on HT.
With muli-core, I can forsee the benefits of HT with added benefits of actually being 2 cores as opposed to pseudo 2 cores.
For games, optimised code should be able to actively run over both cores. This may not be so good for multi tasking, but should mean that system slowdown in games is reduced as different CPU intensive tasks can be split over the cores, and not interfere with each other.
(I reserve the right to be talking out of my ass... I'm really tired)
I really can't believe this debate is ongoing. It's really the same thing, as has been pointed out above, as any "I don't need it this week, so it's just not important, period" argument, which can be traced back some decades now. For some of us, it's worth the early adopter price, for the rest, it's worth waiting until it's a much cheaper option, but as we all should know by now, what Gateway giveth, Gates taketh away. As the new hardware becomes available, software developers will take advantage of it. The only quetion is - how long can you hold out while the price comes down. It'll be a different answer for all of us. There is no definable "business user" to make such generalisations about accurately.
Most software actually doesn't support Dual core. Even Maya only supports it in rendering. The primary uses are multiple applications running as others have mentioned and rendering in 3D and 2D apps that take advantage of multiple processors. Most people will see no increase but if they open multiple applications they should be more stable and run faster. I'd say it affects professional users more but not nessaccarilly business users. If that makes since. You might see benefits if you have multiple large spread sheets open at once but most business users aren't going to see much difference. For graphics they are a real boon. If you have a quad board running dual core chips you have essentially a 8 node renderer. Not a true eight fold increase but still drastically faster than a standard quad system let alone a single processor. Personally I can't wait for the quad core chips but they aren't expected until next year. Eventually games will take advantage of the extra rendering power. By the time that happens there'll probably be quad core chips so the speed increases could be substantial.
Necessary? Is it necessary for me to drink my own urine? No. But I do it anyway, because it's sterile and I like the taste...
The CEO will insist on having a 8000GHZ, 256-core machine with 12TB RAM and infinity-plus-one hard drive, so he can feel more important.
Even though all he uses for work are Outlook and Word, neither of them well, and installs every ActiveX control that promises free porn.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
It's a flocking behaviour... and you *must* take it into account when choosing software.
Q: "What function of Word that wasnt available in Word 6.0 and is now requires this insane increase of performance need?"
A: The ability to open and read documents sent to you by third parties using the newer tools.
For example, when your lawyer buys a new computer, and installs a new version of Office, and writes up a contract for you, you are not going to be able to read it using your machine running an older version of the application. And the newer version doesn't run on the older platform.
Don't worry - the first copy of a program that has this continuous upgrade path lock-in is free witht he machine.
-- Terry
"If you build it, they will fill it."
The pothole in front of my house disagrees with you.
...treat yourself to a gig of Ram for your work machine then? I mean, it's cheap!
I'm a blue collar worker, the boss has certain major tools, but I also buy my own, a lot of them, and replacement parts and whatnot, and it's certainly more per month than what a stick of RAM costs today. A month, not a year, a month. And that's at my low bucks budget, not a white collar IT office workers budget. You got the money, spend a few dollars. I mean, geez loweez... If it would make you work better, and not make you waste time waiting for the computer to do something, just *do it* and be done with it and don't wait for iceberg management to poop out a few bucks for you. It's better than going nuts (you posted about it so it must be bugging you bad),so go ahead and get the tools you need!
Yes, the typical user nowadays is runs lots of processes. And having does almost double the nuber of processes your system can handle. But so does doubling the clock speed. And most business machines already have processors that are at least twice as fast as they need to be.
As always, people looking for more performance fixate on CPU throughput. One more time folks: PCs are complicated beasts, with many potential bottlenecks.
Except that few of these bottlenecks have any effect on your typical office productivity apps. Word processors, browsers, spreadsheets: none of these require a lot of CPU time, or do heavy disk access, or overload your video card. Running lots of apps used to overload main memory, but nowadays systems all ship with at least 256 meg. So if Word isn't performing fast enough for you, get IT to do a spyware scan and to defragment your disk, and forget about that new expensive toy. It will run faster at first, but if you neglect it like you're neglecting your current box, it'll soon be as slow as your current box.
Continued from the wikipedia page... "Cooperative multitasking has the advantage of making the operating system design much simpler, but it also makes it less stable because a poorly designed application may not cooperate well, and this often causes system freezes."
Cooperative multitasking was the programming equivalent of nice guys finishing last. I spent big chunks of my life watching that litte hourglass turn and turn and turn as each and every program power grabbed as much resources as possible while trying to freeze out every other program.
Concerned that dual cores are too much resource for today's programs? Not to worry, big numbers of software developer are currently gearing up to play fast and loose with every cycle dual cores have to offer.
When I had my first 286 an engineer friend of the family came over and I jumped at the opportunity to show off what was a then $3200 kit. He liked but said he stayed with his XT because he found he could always find other work to do while his numbers were being crunched. Sound, mature reasoning.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Of course they're able to do their average things now, that's why they're stuck doing average things.
So, if I were to take the newest, hottest dual core processor, load up with RAM, a massive hard-drive, top-of-the-line video card, etc., etc. and hand it over to the average user, they'd do "exceptional things?"
Please! They'd browse the web, type a letter, send e-mail, fool around with the photos or graphics from their digital camera, and play games. Just about any computer since the mid-'90's can do those fairly well. Even an old 486/33 computer can do it. They aren't going to suddenly start programming or using their computers for power computing.
What drives their purchases are price, and can it perform those basic requirements in a reasonable manner. That the OS, application, or whatever they have on it are what drive the processor/memory/video/storage needs.
I've been using a dual processor computer since 2000.
Just recently I upgraded to a pressler core Intel D 3GHz.
anyone who think's they don't need a dual-core system is just plain wrong.
unless you've got plenty of time to spare.
my made-up statistics suggest dual-core systems save us an average of 30% processing time vs. the same speed single core system.
the reality is, I don't ever see that annoying little hourglass cursor.
hyperthreading is truly a joke as well.
It's not about applications supporting dual-core or SMP.
it's about our OS supporting it. I let that Processor intensive application chug away while I check my email and surf the web like nothing else were running.
WinXP is a fat three-legged dog with a single-core
it is a fat four-legged dog with a dual-core
and Linux 64-bit SMP oh what elegance.
They're using their grammar skills there.
20 Mg, huh? That's twenty megagrams, twenty million grams or twenty thousand kilograms.
Seems plenty big enough to me.
In fact, with the steady increase in browser based applications it might even be possible to argue that prevailing technology is excessive
Why would browser based applications, written in a much slower scripting language (Javascript), mean we don't need such fast processors?
..this being said about the Pentuim II, the Pentium III, and the P4.
:)
That "average users" did not need such processing power.
Personally, I cant wait for a super computing system that will fit nicely in the closet.
And dosent heat the whole house
You need dual core or even dual CPU if you have Windows. As I tell people at work, one processor to run the applications you need to get your work done and a second one to run all the extra anti- virus/spam/hacking software you have to have to keep the thing from melting down into a rootkitted spambot relay DDoS attacking puddle.
Lam1969 writes "Hygeia CIO Rod Hamilton doubts that most business users really need 400 hp BMWs, yet the parking lot is full of them: 'Though we are getting a couple to try out the new Toyota Corolla, the need to acquire this new technology for legitimate business purposes is grey at best. The higher fuel consumption which improves driving performance is persuasive for regular speeders, but for the average business person there seems no need to drive that fast. In fact, with the steady increase in speeding tickets given to rich white people in spite of their obvious superior social status it might even be possible to argue that BMWs are just plain excessive.' Alex Scoble disagrees: 'A BMW is a boon for anyone who runs a business and/or has a lot of responsibility, important meetings and pointy hair. Are they worth it at $75000? No, but when you have a choice to drive a junky commuter or a slightly slower 1995 Tercel for 1/20th the price, you are better off getting the top of the line Beemer and that's where we are in the marketplace right now.' An old timer chimes in: 'I can still remember arguing with a sales person that the 20 Mpg BMW was really for inferior people and only the 40 Mpg vehicle was superior enough for those with the gumption to succeed in management. The feeling of smug satisfaction lasted perhaps a week, when my boss got a new 545i and trounced me on the highway'"
20 Years these computers will be where the pentium 1 is now... It's basically the slowest computer that can run a reasonable version of a modern OS (Linux or Windows)...
These computers are the limit of what gets shipped overseas to third world countries.
486s were rendered obsolete almost immedietly by the release of the first pentiums.
The same situation will probably occur fairly rapidly in the computer space. With the addition of more procesors, real time processing in the operating system will become increasingly likely.
It'll only take one Micrsoft engineer speaking up that "Hey we've got 20 cores! Let's make one a dedicated real time networking processor!" and bam everything 2-3 years old won't run the newer OSs at all.
Working in IT, this is a definite flaw I see in most business owner's thinking. Any business should supply their employees with the fastest machines available for a somewhat reasonable price. If dual cores run apps faster then they are absolutely needed. The highest cost in any business is labor. If you are paying someone $50,000 a year you only have to increase their productivity by 24 hours over the course of a year to justify spending an additional $1000 on equipment. That's only about a 1/2 hour a week.
There are, of course, diminishing returns and no point in buying ridiculously expensive hardware. Many businesses, especially smaller companies, try to get much more life out of their hardware than they should. It all depends on your user, their workload and how much they are costing your company, but if productivity is increased, dual-cores are easily justifiable.
Even with browser based apps, it's difficult to say that current technology is excessive. Until my browser and other tools appear INSTANTLY there is room for improvement. Until I can have as many sites open as I can possibly use without noticing any lag on my machine, new hardware is not excessive.
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>>The lower power consumption which improves battery life is persuasive for regular travelers, but for the average user there seems no need to make the change.
Better power consumption greatly benefits *everyone* who owns a laptop or any portable/embedded device. I'm not even a regular traveler, but I much prefer long battery life over short battery life even at the expense of speed. I've already decided that my next laptop must last at least 24 consecutive hours in the on state (With power management and all during idle time) without being plugged in. I simply don't want to carry a power brick or an extra battery with me.
This was the state of the cell phone industry back in the analog days. Even now, a popular modern phone such as the Samsung A650 only has about 1.5 hours of continuous analog talk time and 14 hours analog standby time versus 2.8 hours of continuous digital talk time and 7 days digital standby time. If the digital talk and standby times on that phone were as bad as the analog talk and standby times, Samsung would be out of the cell phone business. Even though cell phone chargers are small and lightweight, nobody wants to have to remember to carry one around. Why is this seen any differently for power bricks in laptops?
This argument that the dual core is overkill, if pushed all the way through, would advocate using thin clients instead of a PC. If this is true, then we would see widespread use of thin clients throughout (which we don't). Just wait, Vista will be a boon for the dual core processor (with lots of RAM).
...Ken Olsen's quote was referring not to PCs, but to computers literally "in the home"-- what we now call the "Smart house" idea.
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
I'd prefer to go for a desktop system optimized for low power consumption, if I were outfitting an office full of general-use computers. The upcoming generation of desktop CPUs will be available in ~35W TDP versions, which compared to 89-120W TDP CPUs currently in use, can save a lot of electricity, which pads the bank account every month. And if your people leave their machines running 24/7, that can REALLY add up. Think about it - the clock on your microwave uses more electricity than it does cooking, because the clock runs all the time (at least, that's what I've read). Phantom electrical loads from devices on 'standby'...all that stuff adds up. I'd spend more for a desktop system that would use a low-power CPU like an Athlon64 MT or ML series than I would for a dual-core CPU.
If you look at the way most OSX apps are designed, it's easy to multi-thread them. Cocoa pretty much imposes a model/view/controller pattern, and when your model manipulation is separate from your UI, it's pretty simple to spawn a background thread to calculate long tasks, or adopt a divide & conquer approach.
The other nice thing they have is the Accelerate.framework - if you link against that, you automatically get the fastest possible approach to a lot of compute-intensive problems (irrespective of architecture), and they put effort into making them multi-CPU friendly.
Then there's xcode which automatically parallelises builds to the order of the number of CPUs you have. If you have more than one mac on your network, it'll use distcc to (seamlessly) distribute the compilation. I notice my new Mac Mini is significantly faster than my G5 at producing PPC code. Gcc is a cross-compiler, after all...
And, all the "base" libraries (Core Image, Core Video, Core Graphics etc.) are designed to be either (a) currently multi-cpu aware, or (b) upgradeable to being multi-cpu aware when development cycles become available.
You get a hell of a lot "for free" just by using the stuff they give away. This all came about because they had slower CPUs (G4's and G5's) but they had dual-proc systems. It made sense for them to write code that handled multi-cpu stuff well. I fully expect the competition to do the same now that dual-CPU is becoming mainstream in the intel world, as well as in the Apple one...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
and I have one. I use dreamweaver, eclipse, java, ant and several other programs. So it is rather nice to have the speed and also the 1gig of ram. Yes and I use them at the same time sometimes. Eclipse can be a pig, using lots of ram and processing and so can dreamweaver when you use some extensions.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
for the virus scanner and one core so I can get some work done!
I've got a dual core pentium and I'm sorry to say that running two CPU intensive processes simultaneously is in fact slower than running them serially, one after the other. At least that's been my experience and I remember seeing a story about it on Slashdot a few months back. I really wish I had gone with a dual core Athlon instead.
I actually could use a decent dual core because I've usually got several things going. As a software developer on a fairly large system, my compiles can take a while. I usually have movies or TV playing on my second monitor while I work. That doesn't take up a lot, but compiles, receiving mail (because of SpamBayes), and other things can interfere with the playback. How am I supposed to get any work done when my TV show playback is jumpy?
So that's why your company is going south!
Better Processing power enables:
1) Better Presentations and Demos incorporating multimedia, data intensive simulations, and realtime remote control of systems. 2) Market Simulations. 3) Estimation tools. 4) Application prototyping. 5) Multimedia recording. 6) Some application that management and IT hasn't thought of.
In other words, faster tools enable your "innovative" business people to do better work faster than those in companies that believe that processes shouldn't deviate from the current norms.
Faster CPU's may not be necessary to run run widgets through your production line, and may not be necessary to keep your business hobbling along... (Heck, you probably are thinking of contracting those simple things that don't require innovation out to Elbonia or someplace -- and you would be an astute businessman to do so.) However, if you want to retain truly innovative people, and you want your business to stay ahead of the pack, then investing in the best technology for your people is a very small thing.
Business users rarely "really need" any new technology. What they "really need" to do is work hard. What is nice, is if the are more focused and save a little time from their computer being more responsive. This isn't a debate.
We are one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. Back to you with the weather, Bob!
It's very simple. Every time someone comes up with "most apps are useless at multi-processing", it's always a windows app. Most Apple apps are already multi-threaded for the reasons I state.
It seems you can't point out a technical achievement (on either side of the fence) without some 'fanboy' accusation being levelled. [sigh]
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
In the days of the 386, what were the main things people did with their computers?
10-15 years later, what do they do?
Now this is not meant to be a comprehensive list, but I feel it describes an extremely high percentage of the home/office workload for a fairly high percentage of users. Some home users might view/browse photos, etc...
So why do these people need faster machines? Why do they need dual CPU machines? They shouldn't. I believe application software has actually decreased in quality due to increasing levels of complexity and decreasing levels of programmer skill [from the period of irrational exuberance]. For example, a few years ago, I tested a commercial MP3 player progam. They must have used a dumb O(n^2) bubble-sort type sorting algorthm for their playlists. It took several minutes to load, versus a few seconds for WinAmp. Only an incompetent programmer would do such a thing. And the fact that new software is still plagued by buffer overflow attacks [which easily highly preventable] only reinforces my point. I bet many widely-used applications contain parts that are highly inefficient but used on small data sets... Which means the end result is that it is still "fast" but only on a 2ghz machine versus a 200mhz machine.
I don't think most (non-technical) users realize the computational burden involved with all the latest types of "eye candy" in GUIs... Although pleasing, they probably would also be interested in having slower, cheaper computers with less special effects.
The two above paragraphs illustrate potential causes for that anonying little delay that is perceived as sluggishness by the user... Its those few extra milliseconds that make us realize that our computer is not a fast as the neighbor's brand new latest & greatest one. For many man years, computers have been far more powerful than needed for all tasks above...
For economic reasons, it is probably not worthwhile to spend extra time writing/optimizing software to be more efficient, especially in a time when "time to market" is of crucial importance.
For home users, only gamers, artists, and people recording/processing video are going to really **need** the ${CURRENT_GREAT_CPU}. The rest will just be duped by marketing and fooled by inefficient software.
But the illusion won't last much longer... Moore's "lucky guess" is starting to slow down. Unless marketing finds a way to keep the public buying new machines all the time, people will wake up one day and realize their 5yr old computer still does everything they do quite fine.
And when that happens, there will be a surge in the number of plumbers in the US....
The lower power consumption which improves battery life is persuasive for regular travelers, but for the average user there seems no need to make the change.
Hey, it lowers your electric bills...and make the world better, at least not worse, for your grand children. Don't you want a quieter, cooler computer?
In fact, with the steady increase in browser based applications it might even be possible to argue that prevailing technology is excessive.
I strongly believe browers based applications do less than normal application with same CPU cycles.
Mmm I like the sound of this NT-DRAM, where can I get some and which motherboards support it?
In order to save our freedom it was necessary to destroy it.
Dual-core will be the new commodity in 2006. Manufacturing costs for a die size with dual core is nil, so it is a bonus (die size of Core Duo is less than P4).
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
A couple seconds here and there, lets say 2 seconds in sixty.
Now cut that to one second in sixty with a faster machine, ignoring multiple cores for now.
Gain a day of work for every sixty.
Six days of work a year.
A week of extra work accomplished each year with a machine twice as fast.
You are paying the guy two grand a week to do auto cad right?
That two year old machine, because machine performance doubles every two years, just cost you 2 grand to keep, when a new one would have cost a grand.
The real problem is, we are not to the point where you only wait for your computer 1 second in 60. It's 10 seconds in 60. It costs you $10,000 a year in lost productivity. $20,000 in lost productivity if the machine is 4 years old.
That's why the IRS allows you to depreciate computer capital at 30% a year... Because not only is your aging computer capital worth nothing, it's actually costing you money in lost productivity,
Capital. Capitalist. Making money not because of what you do, but because of what you own. Owning capital that has depreciated to zero value, costing you expensive labor to keep, means that you are not a capitalist.
You are a junk collector.
Sanford and Son.
Where is my ripple. I think this is the big one.
Dual core? that is just the way performance is scaling now.
The best and brightest at AMD and Intel can not make the individual cores any more complex and still debug them. No one is smart enough to figure out the tough issues involved with 200 million core logic transistors. So we are stuck in the 120 to 150 million range for individual cores.
Transistor count doubles every two years.
Cores will double every 2 years.
The perfect curve will be to use as many of the most complex cores possible in the CPU architecture.
Cell has lots of cores but they are not complex enough. To much complex work is offloaded to the programmer.
Dual, Quad etc, at 150 million transistors each will rule the performance curve, keeping software development as easy as possible by still having exceptionally high single thread performance but still taking advantage of transistor count scaling.
Oh, and the clock speed/heat explanation for dual cores is a myth. It's all about complexity now.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
I see a few comments here on how people really only need 10 year-old technology in a business environment.
Perhaps they're forgetting that 10 year-old technology is far less secure than modern technology, and that security is important.
Well not until the P4 disabled cheap duals and you had to spend a fortune on xeon's.
What is the advantage of a dual over a single. Simple. NO MORE FREEZING.
No I am not talking about the heat output. I am talking about that effect when you do something mundane but cpu intensive like opening a large slow folder and your entire desktop just crashes to a halt only to resume a few secs later often stopping your music as well.
Fatal? No of course not. Just that it disappears with a dual. Why? Because the one CPU that is entirely preoccupied with that lengthy task can keep doing that while the other CPU does the task of keeping your bloody desktop responding and playing the fucking music.
Oh it is probably more complex then that but in practice it means your computer just keeps working even under load.
In more terminal freezes where a single core only has the option to do a hard reboot because a single task has run out of control a dual can still run the OS tasks of killing the runaway. kill/process manager whatever is your poison.
So is this of use to business users? Well it is to me. Given the choice I between a dual P3 and a single p4 for office use give me the old machine any day. No it will not be as fast in single tasks as the P4 but frankly I don't do many tasks that are lenghty CPU grinds.
I do however prefer it if I don't have to wait for my desktop to finish something wich seems to cause it to faint.
Dual core/cpu vs Single core/cpu is like the difference between sex with a partner and on your own. Some of you might not yet know the difference but once you experienced it you don't want to go back.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I think the main problem today is that many programmers still wet behind the ears, developing on the latest and greatest machine, combined with ineptitude/inexperience...
For example, they can write code that unnecesarily makes lots of copies of arrays (no lazy evaluation, using pass-by-value ), [unnecessarily] evaluate the same function/expression a huge number of times, badly misuse things like linked-lists, or even just use stupid implementations [bubblesort, etc]...
And they will never realize how slow these things are because they are trying small datasets for their testing/debugging. Routine "X" may seem fast because it executes in 20ms (practically instant), but perhaps a more skilled person could write it using lower-order complexity algorithms and it would only need 10ms... The disturbed reader may ask what's the point... Well, if you are on a computer that is 3X slower and using real-world input data that is 5X bigger, you WILL notice a huge difference in the two implementations!!!!
And if you are like most of the public, you will blame the slowness on your own computer being out-of-date ---- and you will go and buy a new one.
Plus, "time-to-market" pressures mean that companies probably tend toward releasing poorly designed & inefficient code, all in the name of the almighty buck. Fscking "Moore" created a self-fufilling prophesy that made things more cost efficient [for software development] to buy a better computer than to write a more efficient program.
When computers stop getting faster, software will start getting a whole lot better...
I just got an x2 3800 for $300, and it is excellent. It makes a big difference for MythTV.
..cynacism. go install *nix or buy a mac or *something*.. you're not supposed to settle for that!
We have a lab full of machines with Office 2003 running on Windows XP. They are plenty responsive. Are they as fast as my desktop? No, but they aren't dragging either. You find you can work on them and not be waiting for them. They even work fine for Visual Studio and such. I wouldn't want to run HFSS or Matlab on them, but just because they are eairly P4s doesn't mean they don't do well on plenty of new stuff. Mainly, they just needed more memory. A gig of RAM has made them work quite nice, and wasn't a costly upgrade.
I am talking about that effect when you do something mundane but cpu intensive like opening a large slow folder and your entire desktop just crashes to a halt only to resume a few secs later often stopping your music as well.
Oh it is probably more complex then that but in practice it means your computer just keeps working even under load.
Don't tell me, you were running some flavour of Windows on those machine? yes?
NT's scheduling and multitasking under load has traditionally been pathetic. Running a heavy process on Windows makes all of the other interactive processes (read: programs with GUI) run like toffee.
Granted the Linux kernel's performance hasn't always been great either. It wasn't until the "desktop/interaction optimised" schedulers were brought in that X11 remained smooth even under load.
Maybe be it is Nero or just Windows 2000, but burning a CD on my GF's computer make it impossible to use for anything else until the CD is ready. I certainly don't get that problem on my machine running K3B.
--
Simon
The note regarding hard drives isnt relevant - for two reasons. 1. A lot of us grew up during this time when hardware was struggling to keep up with business software constantly, but this has not been the case for the last 6 years - not for your average business user, at least. Anyone who has been using PCs since the 286 days knows what I mean. 2. Storage capacity is a different animal then CPU power. Your need for storage capacity was pushed by bigger apps on CDROM, MP3's, video, and digital photography and pr0n. The need for CPU power beyond that which is needed to run a web browser and MS Office for an average business user is more fixed.
I've been looking at the cost of upgrading to a 64-Bit Opteron in the 3000+ range with dual cores. Currently these suckers seem to be running around $500CAD. Through in the board and you're up around $600-$700CAD.
That's just for the CPU and board. RAM and other components might still also be required for the upgrade.
In the last while I've been spoiled with most of my upgrades costing
(and yes, I know I could go non-Opteron, but they're better in dealing with heat issues etc and I'm tired of my space-heater XP2500+ CPU)
Mr. Rod Hamilton,
I hereby revoke your status of CIO on grounds that you lack the computer afficionado credibility to perform your role.
The greater geek community is exasperated by the blatent heresy in your statement.
Please consider that no true technical person could ever admit to having enough power in their toys.
Regards,
The Technical Community
No I am not talking about the heat output. I am talking about that effect when you do something mundane but cpu intensive like opening a large slow folder and your entire desktop just crashes to a halt only to resume a few secs later often stopping your music as well.
I assume you're talking about windows. In which case the problem still isn't CPU utilisation, but a function of the way windows multi-tasks.
I did this test myself, just yesterday. I have an application that runs under linux and windows. The source is located on my server, and mounted remotely for compilation on both my linux and windows machines.
Compilation time under Linux: 35 seconds.
Compilation time under win2000: 2:40 seconds.
Both machines have the same motherboard, the same CPU, the same amount of memory. And yeah, MY music froze when windows was compiling, too.
Not long ago my main machine was a 1.4GHz/512Mb/80Gb, then I decided to go for an upgrade, mainly because the motherboard didn't really work with Linux too well (USB/1394/IDE RAID). So I got a 2GHz/1Gb/160Gb Windows machine. With this new power I started playing Quake3 and running Linux under VMWare. I bought another box as I was given some components, it's a 3GHz/1Gb/400Gb machine with HyperThreading. I really use VMWare a lot on this machine and am considering adding another gig of RAM, that will keep me happy for a couple of years at least until the Intel Duo's with VT are affordable. The 1.4GHz is now my fileserver, it's 80Gb is now in the XBox and it sports a new 250Gb SATA and it's going to need another one soon as I have pretty much my entire software collection stored on the drive as .ISO images, the 300+ DVD/CD's are in the loft. I backup stuff to an 80Gb Firewire drive which is going to need to get bigger soon.
5 years ago if you'd have told me that the 80Gb drive was going to end up in my games console and I'd have about a terrabyte of storage on my gigabit LAN, I'd have laughed in your face!
That said, I'm currently contracting in a very large company that has us developing serious websites on NT4/256Mb/PII's and Sun Ultra10's, it's sad when your laptop has more power than the office Oracle server!
If you make it, software will grow to use it - look at 512Mb graphics cards! It's called progress people, it's also probably largely due to sloppy code....
#include <sig.h>
a young man, who takes really bad care of himself, and looks really old beacuse of it?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Hell yes!
but is windows and office really necessary too.
Dual core processors might help, but with the exception of cost they are no better than multiple-cpu systems. Most systems are not cpu-bound, so they spend their idle time waiting on (1) you to make up your mind, (2) the internet, local net, or something that communicates via IP to actually deliver a packet, or (3) that put-lightning-to-sleep 7200 rmp ata drive.
Dual-core processors in most cases, like multiple CPU systems, simply wait faster for something to do. Spend your money on something really usefull - like a good book to read while you wait on your cable-modem.....
In addition to my day job, I manage a small office network. (1 server, 13 workstations) All of the computers are Athlon XPs but for one. It is a Pentium II 400MHz with 384 megabytes of RAM and a 40 GB / 7200rpm Samsung hard drive an a Promise ATA/100 controller card. It runs Windows XP Pro, MS Office 2003, Wordperfect, and Norton AV with no problems. I anticipate that it will continue to function as intended for years to come.
:)
Most users simply have no need for a $$$$ computer. They and their pocketbooks are victims of clever marketing and horrendously bloated software packages. I think that Vista is a blatant attempt on Wintel's part to make people like me finally get rid off our old boxes. Not going to happen.
OS upgrades require ever more horsepower and the Wintel oligopoly forces us to constantly upgrade. Dual core? Of course - the new 3D holographic dancing Princess Leia UI in Vista will require it. Of course MSO 2007 will require it. OF course IE7.5 will require it. Of course Windows DRM will require it.
And the hardware companies are more than happy to sell it to us./
We have been moving to dual core chips not because of the need for speed, but the software licensing cost. Several of our BIGGEST software packages license by the CPU and define a CPU as a chip, so if I can get a single chip with 2 CPU's performance I save big. We have several software package that cost $50-$90K per CPU . That gets REAL expensive real fast
* one for the anti-virus suite
* one for my use
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
I bought a dual-core system lately and it's really nice to have a system that can handle multiple background processes as well as a foreground process. For instance, my PC is running media center edition and while I'm playing games it can tape shows for me without any slowdown whatsoever, as if the extra processing isn't even taking place. You can do video conversion without having to put your life on hold, and just about everything as far as multi-tasking runs a lot smoother. Now, regardless I did go from a AMD XP 2700+ machine to a AMD X2 4200+ machine which is probably a big jump anyway, but it's the first machine I've seen run at this type of smoothness upon purchase.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
Hyperthreading is not DualCore, it's a bunch of tricks that look like two processors, that tends to help keep the UI Thread running while you're doing something else. Don't expect to to perform like a true Dual-Core or Dual Processor System.
I run multiple tasks at a time frequently, under Linux. My currently machine is three years old, and wasn't high end at the time. It's plenty fast. The bottleneck is disk. While a disk to disk copy is in progress, such as during backup, the user interface grinds to a crawl. The IDE ATA disks suck down CPU, true enough, but also, the controllers are so tied up doing the copy that other tasks have a hard time getting through. SCSI performs better, but currently, SCSI drives are priced out of the market. Multiple CPUs, same core or not, don't solve this problem. How are USB or Firewire drives on cost and performance?
r icewatch-effectively.html
Generally, i'm happy with current performance. The system can display full screen real time video. I have no requirements past this. My system is also upgradable.
http://predelusional.blogspot.com/2006/03/using-p
-- Stephen.
I have two machines on my desk. Both are a little old now, but they are serving me well still.
#1 is a XP3200 (32-bit), and #2 is a Mac dual G4 (at a lowly 866 MHz). Surprisingly, these machines are fairly well matched, with SMP-optimised apps running about as fast on the Mac as on the PC. Single-threaded stuff is much slower on the Mac, no surprise. As for games, well I think we all know the real reason I have an x86 machine at all right?
But for general everday use, I prefer the Mac, not only for the GUI, but for the amazing responsiveness of it. Nothing fazes it. Everything seems to fly at full speed no matter what else you are doing at the time. This has everything to do with the dual CPUs. Watching Strongbad e-mail might not require a multi-GHz CPU to run, but that multi-GHz system can still allow the animation to become choppy when you do something which hogs the CPU for any amount of time. That will virtually never happen on a dual-CPU/dual-core system. Any single thread of execution, no matter how high its priority, can never used more than 50% of your CPU resources. To me, that is the strongest argument for dual CPUs, not against them, as others will argue.
The next PC or Mac that I buy will definitely be dual CPU or dual core. No question.
Or you can look at it like, Moore's law is going to end at some point, we will not be able to shrink silicon gates indefinitely, we wlll not be able to make 1Thz processors, parallelism is the key. And as more multi-CPU systems become available, more and more software will start to utilize them.
As is, I have a browser open 100% of the time, I have eclipse running, I have emacs running, I have my mail reader running 100% of the time. I often have an IM window going. I just switch betwen windows, I don't shut down eclipse and then startup my mailer to read mail, then shut down my mailer and start up eclipse to work again, then shut down ecilpse and start up firefox to look something up on the web. I just switch between them and let them do their thing while I'm working with something else. The baby-boomer crowd seems to have trouble with that concept. Believe me the non-measurable performance difference keeping the app running more than makes up for startup time or the few milliseconds of compile time I get by shutting it all down, just switch over, read my mail, and switch back..
A couple seconds here and there, lets say 2 seconds in sixty. Now cut that to one second in sixty with a faster machine, ignoring multiple cores for now. Gain a day of work for every sixty. Six days of work a year.
Yeah, that's true -- if we're all 100% productive every second of every day, from punch-in to clock-out. Right.
Here's a startling revelation for "productivity" freaks who obsess over how this or that will shave precious microseconds off their busy schedule -- we all waste more time reading slashdot, IMing people, and otherwise screwing around, than we ever have lost to slow desktop machines.
And that's us, part of the so-called technical aristocracy. The article itself was about "average business users", most of whom are not coming anywhere close to using their computer to the maximum. The computer is usually sitting around idle while the user stares in utter confusion at the "File" menu, trying to figure out how to open a new spreadsheet, or wondering which one of their fifty-seven currently open IE windows they were supposed to be looking at. Do they really need dual-core processors to handle the daunting task of experimenting with fonts for their Powerpoint presentation?
Most "business users" would be better advised to stop running stupid crap in the background, stop downloading every idiotic Free Screensaver they come across, and other basic fundamentals of computer use, than worrying about how many megahertz their shiny new computer has. For the average schmuck that runs Outlook, Excel, Word, and IE, the only excuse for having a slow machine is the sheer amount of nonsense they're running in the background because they refuse to excercise any common sense whatsoever.
As for me, I am sitting near a guy who rolled in around 10am, had a brief meeting with our boss, and hasn't done shit since then other than read some websites (not that I'm the paragon of productivity right now either, but...). And you're actually suggesting that he would "save time" measured in seconds per week with bigger, better, faster machines. Save time doing what, exactly?
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
My old Barton 2600+ mobile is currently seeing use today as an HTPC system. It runs ordinary business style things extremely smoothly on any modern operating system (and would probably continue to do so in Vista, but, I don't have any way to test that right now.) Actually, it's already overkill. Basically any P4 running around 2.4GHz or so or any AMD rated at 2400+ or more should run everything at all business oriented as smoothly as silk. Actually, I was really surprised to see an article like this. I would have expected the people at slashdot at least to understand how the system works. The latest greatest processors are relying on enthusiasts, but, that doesn't stop the marketing people from trying to fool everyone into thinking that they need super-powered 10GHz processors or else their copies of Office 97 will slow down. I hope actual businesses are smart enough to not buy the hype and just keep using their money efficiently on systems designed to be properly scalable (eg no locking in on ancient technology that you can't upgrade) while still buying only what they actually need. I hope to never hear that someone has a P4EE or FX processor powering their word processing computers at a REAL business...
I remember when the 386 came out - one wonk stated something along these lines:
A 16 mHz 386 is too much power for desktop use - it will only ever be used for file servers.
...welcome MyLongNickName, our new sysadmin overlord.
Hey if you are running windows, then with a dual processor cpu, you get almost a full processor to run your app your app :-)
I am a "Business User". What sets me apart is that I edit a lot of images while keeping other applications open in the background. It's called multi-tasking and most business users do it all the time. While Windows can divide up the time of a single processor to run multiple apps, it is much more effecient if multiple applications have multiple procs to run on. I can't count how many times I have made my computer come to a crawl and had to wait over 5 minutes for it to start responding again.
Using Nero on Win2k and later on WinXP, I can still do whatever I want while burning a CD or DVD, including play first person shooters, without making a coaster. If I had to guess without any information, I'd guess that you have a wonky burner.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Enough already.
People were saying the same thing about 200MHz PC's in 1997-- you know, "that the average computer user has no need for a machine with more than 64Megs of RAM and a 166MHz Pentium processor".
The OS's, interfaces, media players, and application needs are constantly evolving.
hough we are getting a couple to try out
;-)
I wanna see this... really
PS: Please don't break my fantasy bubble by telling me its not what I think it is... dual core systems and couples....
For most office machines it's probably 55 seconds out of 60. Kill the humans, gain 334 days a year. Then rewrite calendar to be nicely divided by ^2s to gain even more time.