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Dell Reflects on 25 Years of PCs
An anonymous reader writes "Michael Dell, founder of the world's largest computer company, took a few minutes with CNet News.com to reflect on the past 25 years and offer a few personal notes. While Dell certainly has an impressive business history, he still thinks the best is yet to come. From the article: 'Michael Dell started off using PCs to create homework shortcuts, the way many young people at the time discovered the new devices. Few people, including Dell's parents, realized exactly how large the potential was for the personal computer. More than 20 years after he founded PC's Limited, he admits his parents never quite embraced his decision to leave the University of Texas at Austin to start the company that would eventually bear his name and record $56 billion in revenue during its last fiscal year.'"
that no one cares about.
From the article, Dell says he has their top of the line Dell Precision. Some observations about the default (without customization) configuration and guesses about his usage:
guessing not a single web app is served out of his compouter, from IIS and .NET technology (one of the main reasons
for having PRO)
guessing never ran that processor at greater than 30% usage for more than five minutes at once
guessing never filled that memory, never swapped/paged
(Actually, he mentions he actually has 32G memory in his machine, no change in my guess)
no guesses
guessing less than 10G data
guessing less than 1000 digital pictures, less than 5 personal digital videos, and of the digital photos, less than 5% are tagged and cataloged via some organizing software such as Picasa, or ThumbsPlus.
guessing never burned a disc
guessing never had enough applications running to come close to filling the real estate of the two screens (and probably not even one (2560 x 1600 resolution)).
guessing uses them (it) to watch movies (yawn).
I don't even have an opinion as to the goodness or not about the utilization... don't necessarily care people aren't using more than 5% of their machine -- but it's more a reflection of the effectiveness of the marketing of computers than their necessity and usefulness. Owning a machine like Dell's doesn't suggest a need.
Dell and everyone else is welcome to their over-configured machines, but (and related to today's previous slashdot article) PCs are becoming overconfigured underused status symbols and far less utilitarian. Dell's vision of PCs importance in the future is distorted by the company he must continue to make profitable. The upcoming wave of Vista and the fat machines required to drive Vista are a big yawn to the consuming community.
"More than 20 years after he founded PC's Limited, he admits his parents never quite embraced his decision to leave the University of Texas at Austin to start the company that would eventually bear his name and record $56 billion in revenue during its last fiscal year.'"
Did they "embrace" the money?
Dell tech support makes me suicidal.
"...but think about what could have happened if you'd have stayed in school"
Check out my sysadmin blog!
Fun as it is to complain that xyz people have superfast computers that they'll never use, realize this: computers work on an economy of scale. If less people bought high end computers: - Computer technology would not update as fast - High end computers would cost several times more So, the fact that they use these
Even he knows the lowend dimensions and optiplex are crap.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
His skill was in streamlining a business model. AFAIK he hasn't done anything directly to improve computers. He helped lower the cost to consumers. He deserves a lot of business credit, but I'm not sure he deserves any geek cred. He's already been written up in BusinessWeek. I don't think he warrants a /. article.
Developers: We can use your help.
Who did well include Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. I think it's strange how 20-30 years ago, college dropouts could do so well. Now, it's almost expected to have a Bachelor's degree or even a Master's for some occupations.
Funny createSig(Witty remark, Odd reference)
{
return (Funny)remark + (Funny)reference;
}
Oh cmon' we both know he's "Pwnzor" on counterstrike. He's blames it on lag and then goes "ROFL I own Dell. Noobs!"
And I'm guessing your guesses mean 100% of nothing when he is worth 13 Billion dollars, he must be doing SOMETHING right.
Why does this slashdot story have the IBM logo?
-mrxak
Onions Will Kill You
My employer did some customization of our product for Dell. We know for sure that Michael Dell does look at daily reports - but maybe not on his home machine. But I wouldn't be surprised if he uses VPN and gets all that corporate web-based dashboarding from home.
And I have got two of our 30-inch monitors, so it's 8.2 million pixels of resolution, which is kind of nice.
I need to convince the place I work at that if they get me setup with a 30 inch monitor, my productivity would skyrocket thru the roof!
"Ah, we at Dell have sure come a long wa-- BOOM "
guessing not a single web app is served out of his compouter, from IIS and .NET technology (one of the main reasons for having PRO)
Actually, I assume the main reason he would choose Pro is because it lets you join domains. Home doesn't have that ability.
Dell started his company making IBM compatible computers. That was an easy question sonny!
My only response is this...we flew to the Moon and back using a computer with 32kb of RAM. Have you *at least* done that with your system?
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Not with 32gb of memory... He'd need XP-64 bit to see anything above 3.0 gb (approx... with that video card.)
I'm guessing that Michael is not a typical Dell owner.
KFG
Yes, but can Michael Dell's dual Xenon 32GB RAM workstation run Windows Vista?
I don't even have an opinion as to the goodness or not about the utilization... don't necessarily care people aren't using more than 5% of their machine -- but it's more a reflection of the effectiveness of the marketing of computers than their necessity and usefulness. Owning a machine like Dell's doesn't suggest a need.
Two things.
First, people like to overcompensate for things they could never use but for status. Why buy a car that can go 150mph when its illegal and unfeasible to drive it at that speed?
Secondly, computers age quite fast. If you buy a computer, it is reasonable to overcompensate because in 2-3 years an average computer will be out of date and underpowered. The top of the line computer today will be the below average in 5 years but you still can get some life out of it.
Remember 640K ought to be enough for anyone.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Hmm..dual core for multiprocessing, big screen, nice video card, gobs of memory....this dude must be doing some massively parallel porn! Imagine being able to watch 10 porn movies at once. With Dell Technology, we can help make this dream a reality!
Monstar L
Depending on how you slice the pie Hewlett Packard is the largest PC company. When is that the case? Pretty much any other way you look at it.
I'm sure he feels like a Yakov joke, that Windows Vista is running him and Dell. ragged.
If I were to guess, he probably hasn't spent more than $100 million of that.
Yeah, I bet he only uses one of them at a time! And he probably doesn't even go over 70mph!
He totally doesn't use any more than 10,000 square feet, I bet!
Point: welcome to the gratuitous world of the absurdly wealthy.
It is through the streamlining of purchasing computers that led to more standardization across components. It also led to innovations in cooling and airflow, integration, and ease of use. They have to find new ways to keep people coming back. This means more features, easier access to the features, and easier use. This just doesn't happen. The market has to be there or be invented.
While Mr. Dell might not have been personally in the design process of every machine I bet he did have some influence over early machines and to this day the ideas he suggest do have weight if not merit. Too many people discount Dell, Gates, and others simply because they don't like the product or just have some inate personality problem - especially against people who did well.
Not everyone can do this, and obviously not as well as he did. Dell is very much his company just like Jobs is Apple. You cannot separate the two and have the same thing. Both could go off and do something else but its their drive and initiative that led their respective companies to success.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Discovering the joy that was a 'plotter', that produced nice smooth output, rather than the pixelated crap that came out of dot matrix printers. Found an HP letter-size plotter used really cheap, and bought it. Started printing out my homework on that, rather than on the dot matrix. The handwriting-style font that was included with Windows 3.0 worked very well for this. Plotting out my homework on notebook paper, with a blue pen, the teacher just thought I had perfect handwriting. :-D (Although, it did take about half an hour to plot out a single page....)
My high school also had early internet access, thanks to a donation of a 'mini-supercomputer' from a local supercomputer company (Sequent,) and dial-up access provided by a local college during my senior year. This computer had a whopping 32 386 processors, (which makes it marginally slower than my current cell phone,) and our connection used a quad-linked 9600 baud (effective ~38kbps) SLIP connection. It even ran X. Too bad the web browser wasn't invented until after I graduated... I had to wait another two years before the internet became 'public', and a friend and I convinced the local ISP to install SLIP software so we could try out this 'Mosaic' thingy... (On OS/2 of course. We wouldn't be caught dead running Windows.)
Then there was when (this same) friend would spend every night dialed up at 14.4kbps to a BBS in Finland so he could download install disks for this 'Linux' thing... One disk a night. Man, he had a big phone bill that month.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
I'm guessing I should say "so what". I want that machine. I don't really need it, but I want it anyways, if I could afford it I might consider it. Can you say that you wouldn't want such a machine? Even if you didn't need it, can you honestly say you wouldn't wish you could own one? I love workstation machines, they are generally very well built, much better than nearly any consumer machine, with very high quality drivers. Despite my wishes, my dad's is kept on all the time and the only restarts it needs is for updates, otherwise it can stay up indefinitely, and this is with Windows. The computer is used quite a bit, for CAD, office, email, web and some media stuff. The machine itself is a 2x 500MHz Xeon, eight years old now and I'd be happy to use it though I'd have to curtail the media encoding and such.
BTW: XP Home won't take advantage of a quad, it is intended for a single processor module, the second module wouldn't even be made available. XP pro handles two processor modules, each being dual core makes it a quad.
Yeah cause his name being attached to giant piles of MONEY his company produces is a horrible thing.
I think the invisible hand of the market has its middle finger extended
--A wise old fart named SC0RN
If you're smart, you can get by on someone else's dime be it family, student loans, scholarships or GI bill money. It's the best time to start a business. In fact, it is the time when a young person can probably be at his or her safest while doing it. They have access to a lot of cheap help and free mentorship.
From the article, Dell says he has their top of the line Dell Precision.
He had a Dell notebook, but it got consumed in an office fire...
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Hey clueless. How you plan on checking your exchange email on XP Home? Typing your password every single time you open it because your too stupid to use PRO and join the domain?
Perhaps you should stick to the Linux comments if you have never managed a Windows domain (and God help those who are stuck doing so).
guessing he is on exchange or his blackberry is sitting useless in his pocket.
Maybe he did some public good by running the SETI screensaver on it. Then, at least, he may have warmed up the processor a bit.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Secondly, computers age quite fast. If you buy a computer, it is reasonable to overcompensate because in 2-3 years an average computer will be out of date and underpowered. The top of the line computer today will be the below average in 5 years but you still can get some life out of it.
Actually, it makes more sense to buy a middle of the road system today and upgrade it in 1.5 - 2 years. You probably break even on the money since you avoid the premium for the best hw, but you will have more power than that when you buy you next system. There is an added benefit of actually having 2 systems after 2 years. You may not like the power of the first one, but it will make a good file server, a good PC for your kids, or whatever else you feel like using it for.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
Do these reflections include the moment when he was suddenly inspired to decide, And I think I'll stick with Intel for the next 25 years, and then dump them piecemeal.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Of course, management came down heavy on him. "Why is your department only using 15% of their machines capabilities! Every other department has 100% utilization of their resources". The other managers had just filled out 100% in the weekly reports.
Ah, the Dell secret blogger emerges. And so much better than the over-moderated, homogenized pap on One2One.dell.com.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Seriously they're on FIRE!
If you're "between calls", I take it that the next person who calls for assistance will be connected immediately with no wait time at all.
Boy have I slipped into another dimension lately.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
On the other hand, for the money you spend today on a top of the line computer, you can buy an average computer today, and another one in 2-3 years that outperforms today's top of the line computer (and is average at that time).
So, over the entire 5 year period you have spent equal (or less) money, and you end up with two systems.
There is only one reason for not doing this: saving the environment.
Otherwise, spending on top of the line computers is always a bad investment.
Almost no one with XP Pro cares about IIS. The main reasons to have XP Pro are:
> Michael Dell, founder of the world's largest computer company...
In what alternate universe?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I may not be impressed with the quality of a few items (PV 220s top of my list), but they design products that are extremely easy to work on. The modular design and extremely well documented online resources make almost any hardware failure easy to troubleshoot.
Plus, ANY time I talk to their tech support, they actually from America. No horrible accents to understand. They know their stuff inside and out. All the email correspondence I've received lists the techs credentials, which is usually MCSE plus others.
The key to their success is top notch support for large businesses and corporations. The consumer market I'm sure doesn't touch the revenue they get from companies who buy tens of thousands of computers and thousands of servers, all with next day warranty services. Keeping the largest group of users happy, not the $500 Dimension users, is how they're still doing well today.
Future ruler of a small Asian-Pacific island
Well, slap some pr0n up on those 30" monitors and something will sure go thru the roof...
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Actually, the single biggest reason to have XP Pro is to join a domain.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
If you buy a car, a normal car, that can go up to 140MPH, would you consider it a waste because you never actually reach that speed? If you have a five-seater, but normally drive on your own, would that be a waste? I guess you don't normally drive your car at more than 40% of its capabilities, yet you, presumably, would not buy a car that can reach a top speed of 70MPH.
Problem is modern computers must produce less thrust than those old ones. My computer just humms, and really dosn't move anywhere, much less to the moon. Now some of those old IBM's I have taken apart, they have 4+ huge 120V fans that move a lot of air.. so I can only guess how much thrust those old pre IBM computers had.. obviously enough to go to the moon.
Btw, what hell do you care if the dude doesn't "utilize" his machine? The guy's the company figurehead, not sysadmin/programmer.
I don't even have an opinion as to the goodness or not about the utilization... don't necessarily care people aren't using more than 5% of their machine -- but it's more a reflection of the effectiveness of the marketing of computers than their necessity and usefulness. Owning a machine like Dell's doesn't suggest a need.
I'm not really sure I see your point.
First, Mr. Dell did not pay retail for this machine-- in fact in all likelihood the company owns it, not him. I would also say it doesn't look good for the CEO of a computer manufacturer NOT to use the absolute best his company has to offer. It demonstrates success as well as pride. Perhaps your criticism would be valid if we were talking about Paris Hilton or Al Pacino or even your dad having a similar rig so they could email and IM... But we're not.
Finally-- yes, there are a lot of people who have setups that are pure overkill. But then there are many who find a way to push these machines to the limit and still feel they aren't enough. Dell's machine (as well as a brand new Quad Mac Pro) would still take time to render video, for example-- and more so to do complicated effects on HD. A utilitarian machine from five or six years ago would choke on complex video and lag when importing a CD.
Didn't the Commodore Pet come out about 1978? How about the TI99a? Or the Apple I? Don't these count as "Personal Computers?"
Had I been a Billionaire I would've been optimistic about the future too.
Has anyone ever noticed how the PC industry is not like other industries - eg cell phones which are all fragmented and incompatable and the user is mostly locked out from the hardware, or even laptops - try buying a laptop case and building your own at home. Try taking a tire off a chevy and putting it on a ford, or the breaks, or even the engine.
The PC industry is the way it is because IBM just assumed they could patent the interfaces - when they couldn't. When people started to copy them, billions and billions of dollars worth of lawsuits started to fly all over the place. IBM against Compaq, Intel aganst AMD - inspite of great effort and costs, they were given no rights to impose patents over the interface. Maybe this was a failure for IBM and Intel, but it created a nuclear explosion of business, commerce, opportunity, and R&D for the rest of us.
The moral of the story is that patnets do not help R&D and do not help finance R&D, they help lock out competition, and force the industry to fragment and center around a licensing model (which is good for lawyers and bad for engineers) instead of a service model (which is good for engineers, but bad for monopolies).
IIRC, Home also only supports 1 CPU.
No he is not. How many people have their name embossed on their computers?
The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer. - Edward R. Murrow
"My only response is this...we flew to the Moon and back using a computer with 32kb of RAM. Have you *at least* done that with your system?"
I strapped mine to a cow.
You could say the same thing about Henry Ford.
Bah what did he ever do? You know, besides making it cheap and easy for the common person to own a car.
Please mod parent up. This is the first guy to post who actually understands the difference between home and pro.
.net servers...what a dipshit. Thats what the server editions are for.
that other guy...IIS and
Did you ever have to replace a power supply in a Dell tower? Proprietary plug.
Did you ever try to use a case from Dell? Proprietary too.
Enough with the starry-eyed optimism. It was plain old economics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_compatible
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
*Required legal disclaimer: This was a joke. I did not hack his box. I do not know how big his hard drive is or how much porn is on it. Is that enough to keep the Dell lawywer's away? We shall see.
There is only one reason for not doing this: saving the environment.
Otherwise, spending on top of the line computers is always a bad investment.
Or heavy duty photo and video editing, or animation, or developing extremely large and complex systems, or anything else that takes a lot of processing power or memory....
Some people actually need the power of high end systems.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
It no longer makes any sense to buy top end to 'get some life out of it'. It makes a whole lot more sense to get some life out of your money and use half of it to buy a second system a couple of years later, one that blows away what you could gotten for the whole shebang in the first place.
Run on little sentence run on, we hardly knew ye.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
First, I doubt that applies to very many people. Possibly only gamers. Certainly not to the average non-geek who doesn't know his gigahertz from myasshurts. What will sell them is a fancy big flat screen, or maybe a sexy laptop. I wouldn't count on very many people tossing a machine that has 20x the performance they need for one that has 40x.
Second, wrong. That was true in the 80s, but not anymore. My 1998 Dell Dimension (P2 233mhz, 512 mb) is just as capable of running the same apps as it did brand-new. It's a little dustier, but has no rust, and hasn't lost a nanosecond of it's original performance. My 2002 Dell Dimension (P4 2Ghz, 512mb) is capable of running every modern app that I'm interested in, and my kids find it adequate for WoW.
So, when are they going to be obsolete? When they no longer provide a useful service. I don't see that coming. PCs have long passed the point where increased performance means anything for a desktop machine.
Third, overcompensation cannot be reasonable.
Most people don't even think inside the box.
Nah, I think Dell's plan for continued profitability is to continue turning the PC into a commodity. I buy Dell because Dell is affordable, and I get more for my money. $970 buys a decent portable computer for a student, and the computer will do far more than just basic word processing to boot. But no, Dell's business model definitely doesn't appear to revolve around selling high-end machines to everyone.
Home also doesn't let you change ownership of files either as well as a few other absolutely critical things that home doesn't do. Try it sometime: delete a user in Home then try to recover their files. Home is only usefull if you run everything as administrator wich is exactly what I wish people wouldn't do.
The only thing worse than XP Home is XP Family Edition.
Dell 49.04B market cap
IBM 114.64B market cap
Dell 56.74B revenue
IBM 88.50B revenue
It would be nice if even some basic facts could be checked. Of course - maybe some ppl think IBM is not a computer company.
One CPU, two cores.
jellous, much? why do you care if he ever use more than 1% of capacity? if i'm not mistaking, U.S. is still a free country, no?
I bombed out of UT Austin about the time Dell was quitting and running his biz. I knew about his company. To me my choices were look him up and get a job there, or get a computer job at a hospital.
I figured, eh the hospital will always have money, and this kid is likely to go through ups and downs and have cash flow issues, I want the security.
Figure out just how I feel about that.
________________________________________ History Must Not Fall Into The Wrong Hands ___________________________________
And how would the fans produce thrust when in space (no air)?
The only option I can see is that you burn the chips to prodice a rocket-like thrust ability.
nope. (Vista's not out yet, in case you didn't know.) :-)
"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." A. Huxley
My only response is this...we flew to the Moon and back using a computer with 32kb of RAM. Have you *at least* done that with your system?
I can do that with a little square of paper.
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
only hire lucky people! ;)
I'm not that secret, and I'm not at work anymore, I'm loafing at home with a coke in hand, mmmmm acidy.
I have absolutely no complaints about Dell from a business support perspective.
Their home support is evil.
There's a clear difference in machine quality, as well. Take two Dell machines, with nearly identical specs, one from the home line and one from the business line.
Same specs = same computer, right? Nope. In addition to the home machine being preloaded with every piece of crap software under the sun, the business machines seem to be better quality. Larger capacitors on the motherboard, perhaps, or just better quality components all around. Take two Dell machines, one from home, one from business, same specs but different model lines, wipe the HDD and install XP Pro from scrach. The business machine will just seem snappier, a bit crisper, a bit more solid. I'm convinced it's because they're slightly over-engineered and are designed to last.
Business support? I get routed to America, and I can say, hey, here's our express service code, we have a corporate account, I am a tech for their IT department, and I have a bad [whatever]. They usually say, "ok, where do you want the part shipped." Every now and then, they ask me a couple of questions, obscure, model specific stuff, just to make sure I covered all the bases. Once, I thought I had a bad motherboard - no boot, no post, removed every component except memory and still no post - and the tech said, "Pull the riser board, let's make sure it's not that." Sure enough, thing booted back up and they just sent me a riser instead of a motherboard. Cool, quick and competent.
Home support? Enter in a service tag number for a home machine, and you're on a merry romp through India. They MUST make you jump through hoops, but some of the more experienced techs will allow you to skip most of the hoops if you explain you usually work on the corporate machines and actually know what you're talking about.
Server support? Beautiful. "Hi, I'm running CentOS, a clone of RedHat Enterprise with the branding removed." Dell: "No problem, how can we help?" In every case, got first call resolution, and even when the tech was obviously clueless about my specific issue, they were honest about it -"Well, I don't know, let me put you on hold and ask some people". I've worked in enough call centers to tell when someone is wandering around saying, "hey, anyone know how to fix [this obscure issue]?" Invaribly, they come back on within 5 minutes or so, "This should work, so and so has seen this before."
I enjoy the great documentation and smooth support on their business line. I avoid the home line whenever possible. I have noticed that a lot of the Dell Latitude Laptops in years past have really crappy internal wireless; an electronics engineer informed me that he thought Dell had cut corners on some of the Lats by not hooking up proper internal antennas in the shells. We have a client with a huge wireless setup in a hotel, and if they have signal problems it's almost always a Sony Vaio, a Dell Latitude or a pre-2004 Mac.
Ask for the repeat queue call number, there's one where you can enter in an extention and get past all the phone menu's except for the first one. The guy in charge of our site mentioned that Dell used to have about 15,000 phone #'s and we've whittled it down to something like 8000. So yea, for the most part of the day when I'm looking at the queue though, at it's peak it gets to about 33 people waiting with around 3 minutes hold time, I've seen it get upto around 89 people waiting with about a 10 minute hold time which I still wouldn't consider bad since I've been on hold alot longer with operations much smaller than Dell.
I'm guessing that since you don't know how his system is confiqured or how he uses it your guesses are worthless.
Yes. Yes I have.
No, you made a movie about how would be moon and told everybody in the planet it was true. And they belived.
2. They are made better.
3. If a maniac is after me, I can outrun him/her. (Or insert any emergency).
First, people like to overcompensate for things they could never use but for status. Why buy a car that can go 150mph when its illegal and unfeasible to drive it at that speed?
Illegal? Sure, on public roads. Doesn't stop people from doing it. I've been to 150 MPH plenty of times on the interstate and on long, straight, clear highways. And there are plenty of race courses where you can take your car to stretch its legs, legally.
Furthermore, a car that can do 150 MPH generally has a lot more power than one that struggles to break 100, and it will thus accelerate much faster (at all speeds.) You might never get into a race in your life, but you might could use that extra acceleration when executing a tricky merge into heavy traffic.
In conclusion, don't jump to the conclusion that every time someone buys something that you deem "excessive", that it's for the purpose of status or to show off. You are just into different things than other people are. When asked what a car is good for, you might say "getting from point A to point B". To me, the best part is the trip, not the destination.
Can you get XP Home 64-bit? If he's not running a 64-bit OS, it seems rather pointless to have 32GB of memory. Like installing Windows 95 on a dual CPU PC.
Also note that DELL does not offer XP Home on their Precision line. The four available choices are: XP Pro, XP Pro 64-bit, Red Hat® Enterprise Linux WS v.4 (EM64T) and Windows VistaTM -capable.
Of course, since he's kind of the BMOC, he can install what he wants, but he'll have trouble trying to get help from "Steve" Nahasapeemapetilon due to his non-standard setup.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Illegal? Yeah.
Unfeasible? After owning a Toyota Corolla for 13 years, I recently bought a car which is electronically limited to 130 mph, and which I have no doubt would otherwise be capable of 150 mph. And here's the funny thing about it: the handling on this car (an Audi A3) is sooooo much better than on my old car that I feel comfortable going much higher speeds. In the Corolla, I could safely cruise at 70 mph or 75 mph, but any faster and I felt that I was pushing the limits. In the new car, everything feels absolutely rock solid at 80 mph or 90 mph or even 100 mph. So much so that I've found myself going 100 mph while passing someone on the highway without really realizing it.
I haven't experimented with anything over 100 mph. (I am not a speed demon. I haven't had a traffic ticket in 7 years.) But if I were on a road trip out in the desert with ideal conditions on a straight, flat road and very little traffic (such as out in west Texas), I don't know that it would be that much of a stretch to think of cruising at 100 mph as safe. Or maybe even faster speeds. And this is just an Audi A3, the bottom-of-the-line Audi that you can buy for under $30,000. If I had a true sports car, I might feel safe cruising at 125 mph or even at 150 mph. (They do that in Germany, after all.)
Secondly, computers age quite fast. If you buy a computer, it is reasonable to overcompensate because in 2-3 years an average computer will be out of date and underpowered. The top of the line computer today will be the below average in 5 years but you still can get some life out of it.
That thinking is no longer current (but it was back in the late 90s up until around 2001). Back in the late 90s, things were improving at a very fast rate. Processor power doubled roughly every 12-15 months on average. So that 4 year old machine might only be 1/16th the speed of a more modern machine.
Fast forward to 2001's machines. How much faster were the 2005 machines? Only about 2x to 3x faster over a 4 year span. Multi-core is going to change that a bit, but that's one of the few games in town for increasing performance. (Process shrinks might help, some...) My 4 year old 1.7GHz laptop isn't the speediest thing on the block anymore, but the 1GB of RAM keeps it usable.
RAM is the secret to longevity. Buy a slightly slower CPU and use the savings to double the RAM installed. That's an old trick that we've been using for 10 years. Nowadays, I'd even say go for the fastest dual-core CPU you can afford while still being able to purchase 2GB of RAM.
A midline machine with enough RAM could easily see lifespans in the 6 year range (give or take a year). With care and the purchase of a dual-core machine, that could extend out another 1-3 years. Especially if the user isn't doing CPU-intensive tasks that require the latest and greatest CPU power.
Heck, I'm still retiring machines that were purchased in 1998-2000 before my time. We're replacing them with ~$1000 machines that are dual-core, 2GB RAM, 80GB HDs, including MS Office Pro and XP Pro. Between the dual-core and the 2GB of RAM, I won't be surprised to see some of them lasting until 2020 in the less demanding roles. As long as we don't fry any motherboards or CPUs, that is. About the only upgrade that might be needed 4 years from now is a RAM boost to 4GB.
PCs are becoming overconfigured underused status symbols and far less utilitarian.
Which decade are you from? That was just as true back in the mid-90s as it is today. It was probably even true back in the mid-80s (look at who got the color terminals on their desk while the peons worked in green/white or amber/white).
OTOH, I work at a company where that doesn't hold true. The people who need the CPU power get the fastest and newest machines, with the slightly used 2 year old machine going to the less demanding users. It probably helps that it's a small business where the management structure is loose enough not to get hung up on "toys".
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
...he doesn't have a hovercraft full of eels yet, so he's still not cool. Wealthy, but not cool...
Those cheap bastards! They should at least spring for the 60" roof!
I have bought several relatively high-end systems over time, and I don't care about spending the money.
But even then, there is little justification for going the last few percent.
Look at tables of prices of processors or harddisks vs capacity. The price per unit of performance of capacity is increasing dramatically at the high end.
As new options become available (faster processors, larger disks) the prices of what once was the fastest or largest relatively drop most.
So, when you really want 3.2 instead of 3.0 GHz, or 500 instead of 400 GB, go ahead. But you are burning your money.
I seriously doubt the man watches porn on his computer. With his kind of money, he can have live perfomances at home.
But we're talking about his home PC. I would be surprised if he'd set up a domain controller in his home.
A book I highly recommend. One may not be in a position to impliment them, but there's something to learn though.
You can actually add the security tab to windows XP home, it's fairly trivial (if you know computers). Here is just on of the many wonderful links google delivered. http://www.scottxp.com/winxp.php
Cheap storage VM.