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"Good Enough" Computers Are the Future
An anonymous reader writes "Over on the PC World blog, Keir Thomas engages in some speculative thinking. Pretending to be writing from the year 2025, he describes a world of 'Good Enough computing,' wherein ultra-cheap PCs and notebooks (created to help end-users weather the 'Great Recession' of the early 21st century) are coupled to open source operating systems. This is possible because even the cheapest chips have all the power most people need nowadays. In what is effectively the present situation with netbooks writ large, he sees a future where Microsoft is priced out of the entire desktop operating system market and can't compete. It's a fun read that raises some interesting points."
Being saying since the Pentium II days. This "always-be-upgrading-the-latest-spec" is fine for hardcore users, but for everybody else, "good enough" happened quite a few hardware generations ago. The sad part is that we're only now having this conversation.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
There is nothing particularly insightful about the article. Obviously the largest portion of the computer using population would never need cutting edge power, so effectively "good enough" has always been the paradigm. How many of us have super computers? This is just a piece with some wishful thinking hoping that people eventually see through Microsoft's coerced perpetual upgrade cycle.
I got a catholic block.
I'm level 6 you insensitive clod!
I've been in the small/medium sized business support for a while and I'm here to tell you that "Good Enough Computers" are the standard. You'll have a few engineers and designers (along with a boss or two that is a wannabe nerd) that have the latest and greatest but the vast majority of users in those businesses have had good enough computers for a long time. Sally Dataentryspecialist has a computer that she can type up Word documents on. Jimmy Executive has a laptop that's just good enough to browse porn and play DVDs. This includes home computers. They never ask about some brand new state of the art system (see exceptions above), it's always about the eMachine or Gateway that their dear grandmother left them when she died, and the only use it saw before they had it was traveling to church websites on Sunday.
This is especially true in small town America.
Its funny because the same feeling people get about using Linux (will it run what I need to), I now get when I boot into Windows. I sit there in front of windows and wonder, what can I do with this? I'm not sure its going to run the applications I need it to. The tables have turned.
The reality is that computers today "live longer" than they used to. Having a 9-10 year old computer was once unthinkable; it's now almost normal for just about any old Pentium 4 to still be in use today, and the Pentium 4 was apparently released in late 2000.
I put a new (but cheap!) AGP video card into an older P4 desktop computer (hint: PC-133 RAM!) that my son now uses to play Spore - one of the newer, hotter games around - it plays just great.
It's a trend - computers are "doing" for longer than they used to. They are in use for longer, and people hang on to them longer. They are less willing to buy the top-end because there's no reason to.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Have you actually seen Linux? Honestly - you CAN learn the CLI (and a powerful skill it is) but you really don't NEED to (no more than you need to use the CLI in Windows).
Take a look at Ubuntu (which is one of the easiest Linux's out there). It's simple to install. Adding applications is easy. Updating is easy. Seriously, what's not to like (apart from the brown colour scheme)?
You can get plenty of paid support, from proper firms (Oracle, Novell, IBM - to name a few). I'm not sure where the engineers live, but they've got jobs (even if they don't have windows).
Your post is true; but I don't think that it actually contradicts TFA's assertion.
Apple is, in fact, a significant beneficiary of "good enough". They make mostly laptops, which always have price/performance and worse absolute performance than do desktops. Nobody much cares; because laptops are more convenient, and they are fast enough for the job(even within the laptop market, Apple doesn't bother with any dual HDD offerings, or SLI setups, because the lower spec stuff is good enough). On the desktop side, all of Apple's consumer offerings are all-in-ones with extremely limited expandability. Nobody(except gamers) much cares; because the stuff built in is good enough, and PCI blanking plates are ugly.
Having a manufacturer selling limited-performance hardware, with minimal expansion capacity, distinguished by industrial design and software, rather than performance, and doing quite well is exactly what "good enough" looks like.
That doesn't mean that Apple is the only part of "good enough" el-cheapo walmart desktops and netbooks are also a (larger in marketshare terms) part; but Apple is hardly in opposition to "good enough".
Well then, get on writing efficient code that'll decode HD video on a 900mhz processor. Don't tell me that is something "normal users" don't want, video on PCs is exploding and people are all about a higher res better looking picture. Don't forget the 5.1 audio that goes with that, and HRTF calculations for those that want to wear headphones but get surround. Oh it can't handle that? Well there you go then.
I get real tired of this whining about "Programmers aren't efficient," thing, as though the be-all, end-all of coding should be the smallest program possible. No, it shouldn't, computers are getting more powerful, we should use that power. There are a number of reasons for programs to get bigger and require more power:
1) Features. I don't want computers to be stuck and never get any better. I want more features in my software. This goes for all software, not just power user type apps. For example one thing I really value in Office 2003 (and 2007) is their in line spell checker. It is very good at figuring out what I mean when I mistype, and learns from the kind of mistakes I make to autocorrect and make more accurate guesses in the future. Well guess what? That kind of feature takes memory and CPU. You don't get that for free. No big deal, my computer has lots of both. But it isn't "bloat" that it has features like that, rather than being a very simple text editor.
2) Manageability of code. Generating really optimized code often means generating code that is difficult to work with. I mean in the extreme, you go for assembly language. You get the smallest programs doing that, and if you are good at it the fastest. Ok great, but maintaining an assembly program is a bitch, and it is easy for errors including security issues like buffer overflows to sneak in. Now compare that to doing the same thing in a fully managed language like Java or C#. Code will be WAY bigger, especially if you take the runtimes in to account. However it'll be much cleaner and easier to maintain. No it won't be as efficient, but does it matter? For many tasks there's plenty of power so that's fine.
3) New technologies. HD video is an example that is out now, true speech understanding (as in you can command the computer using natural language) would be one that we haven't reached yet. These are things that are only possible because of increased processor power and memory/storage capacity. Look at video on the computer. For a long time it was non existent, then when it started it was little postage stamp sized things that weren't useful, to now where you have full screen HD that looks really smooth. It wasn't as though peopel haven't always wanted better video, it was that computers back in the day couldn't handle it. Only recently have drive become large enough to hold it, and CPUs fast enough to decode it in realtime.
4) Faster response. Computers have gotten MUCH faster at user response. The goal is that users should never have to wait on their system, ever, for anything. The computer should be waiting on the human, not the other way around. We keep getting closer and closer. If you don't try new systems it is hard to appreciate, but it has been massive strides. As a simple example I remember back in high school when I went to print a paper for school, I'd issue the print command and wander to the kitchen. Printing a 5 page paper was a lengthy process. The computer had to use all it's resources for some time to render the text and formatting in to what the printer can handle. Now, I submit a 50 page print job with graphics and all and it is spooled nearly immediately. The printer has the entire job seconds later, since these days the printer has it's own processor and RAM. It is printing before I can walk over to it. Things that I used to have to wait on, are now fast.
5) Better multitasking. People like to be able to have their computers do more than one thing at a time, and not bog down. It can be simple things like listen to music, download a file, and surf the web but not that long ago it wasn't possibl
I feel that if Ubuntu made it easier to change to well made themes, it would cause many people to take a second, if not even the first look. Design is important, and that includes the look and feel. Imagine if during the setup you were given up to ten themes in different colors, all "professionally" done. I am not trying to hate on Ubuntu, I love it, but when I show it to people with the default colors they go uh, yea ok....
They could even stick to earthy tones and cooler colors. I like blues myself. I would even be willing to donate to this, because I feel that it could that strongly help adoption. I just don't have the artistic skills myself.
Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control.
I know exactly what you mean. I had to boot into Vista the other day to update my iPod, and it was a mess. I mean, it's pretty much a brand new install, and I've done as much as possible to reduce running services and apps, but still...it can barely handle a single browser on this computer. And it's so damn unresponsive. Combine that with the horror than is iTunes (It just starts doing all kinds of crap that I don't want it to do, and it slows my computer to such a crawl that it takes ten minutes get my mouse to the cancel button) and what should have taken five minutes ended up taking over an hour.
After that experience I have truly realized why I love Linux. I love it because, even on my $500 Dell Vostro, I can run a browser with 15 tabs open, and leave it running for weeks at a time (an old, leaky firefox even!)...while running KDevelop and Pidgin and Amarok and Konsole and Epiphany (yes, I run two browsers sometimes) and kate and whatever else I need. And nothing slows down. I love it because I can squeeze almost 6 hours of life out of a battery than can barely hit 3 on Vista. I love it because I can do 'sh passmount.sh' and punch in a password rather than typing in some huge string, typing in a username and password, selecting a drive and hitting next 6 times...but if I want GUI tools, they're right there too. I love it because all of my apps run. All of them. From Fantasy General and Zone Raiders (old DOS games) to World of Warcraft and Command and Conquer: Tiberium Wars. Basically, I love it because it does what I want. Everything I want. But _only_ what I want.
I feel that if Ubuntu made it easier to change to well made themes...
How is System>>Preferences>>Appearance anything but easy?
You'll note he said "easier". A default theme that more people like is easiest. A picker during install is easier.
And, as we're talking about mass-market users here, a "System" menu is just about the scariest thing they can imagine. They don't see, "This is where you can customize your computer to just the way you want it. Have at it, you freedom-lovin' hacker-dude!" They see, "click the wrong button and you're fucked." Except all the buttons are in Chinese. And they don't read Chinese.