Haha, well, if you actually like the nipple I guess you're stuck. I can't understand why people like them, is it like a cult or something?
For programmers or touch typists, the nipple allows you to deal with the occasional pesky dialog without having to take your fingers off of the home row. That makes you a lot more productive then someone who is constantly reaching for a mouse and then has to reposition their hands on the home row. Naturally, if your job or task involves moving the mouse pointer around a lot (drawing, re-arranging elements) then an external mouse is far easier to use.
I don't even bother hooking up the external mouse on my Tecra anymore, the nipple provides me with enough mouse control to do everything that I need. It helps if you turn the mouse sensitivity up to the maximum (less force required to move the mouse around means your index finger won't get tired).
Yes, it's not hard to have stable WinXP system. Good habits, not visiting every website under the sun (especially not the ones in dark corners of the net), having A/V software installed and using the box behind a NAT 99% of the time.
My WinXP install is about 5.5 years old at this point. I'm on my 3rd hard drive in this laptop (used a recent Acronis TrueImage image when the previous drive died), but it's still the original WinXP install from early 2002.
(That said... I really like OS X - but don't care for their laptop keyboards and choice of pointing device. So I have a Mac Mini hooked up to a KVM so that I can learn my way around and support our OS X folks.)
Even if that's not much of an increase in space, it's ugly and it makes the repository (just files) hard to copy (have no idea why they implemented it this way). Of course there's a backup feature in the program so there's no reason to copy by hand, but still, it's inelegant.
.svn folders aren't part of the repository, they're part of the working copy.
SVN just chooses to store the metadata about the working copy in the working copy folders rather then putting it somewhere abstract (such as/var or/usr or/home or C:\Documents and Settings).
One advantage of the.svn folders... you can use whichever SVN client you have laying around, and not worry that the tool won't be able to read the working copy. For example, in OS X, you can share a working copy between OS X and WinXP (using Parallels) instead of having to have two separate working copies. Another reason for the.svn folders is that they allow you to compare against the last pristine version that you have downloaded, without needing to talk to the server.
(I have a love/hate relationship with.svn folders... some of my issues will be addressed in 1.5, some will be addressed in SVN 1.6).
Backing up a SVN repository is as easy as using the svnhotcopy command. Or you can do a svndump. There are even scripts that back up the repository after every commit.
SVN is a decent VCS, it's not perfect, it's not distributed, but it's got widespread platform support and works well for most uses. It's also being actively developed, which means things are getting fixed, getting better, and getting redesigned periodically. (It also has a good bit of mindshare - which helps get it onto other platforms.)
There are other issues: the Subversion authors have made a very real mistake here in keeping unencrypted passwords online, by default, in every public Linux or UNIX client compiled from Subversion's basic source code.
Explain to us how they were supposed to *not* store unencrypted passwords and still allow use of the svn: protocol? There's simply no encryption model that allows that possibility to exist.
(Hint, if you want secure communications, use SSH keys.)
MS Access fills, very successfully, an important niche. And OpenOffice still has a ways to go in order to fill its shoes. Need to make a backup of a table? Ctrl-Paste! Backup the entire MDB? Send to compressed file! No need to keep track of 20+ files that make up the database (and the queries, the forms, the reports, the code), although it would be nice for version control purposes.
MS Access is one of the few reasons that we still use MS Windows. There's nothing quite like it yet that can replace it on non-Windows (and Windows) platforms.
Rather then using XCOPY and a batch file, look at a product like Second Copy.
When the user inserts the USB key, you can tell SC to automatically run selected profiles. (SC also only copies changed files and has some other useful features.)
SC also deals very well with situations where the destination location is not currently reachable. It doesn't crash or complain (pestering the user), it simply tries again when the next scheduled time comes around.
(We've been using SC for almost 7 years now, very happy with it.)
Acronis TrueImage 10 now has the ability to e-mail log files.
Second Copy 7 also has notification ability (I think...), but it may require running a command after the job finishes.
We use both in our small office. A pair of external USB drives, periodic images using Acronis and hourly backups with Second Copy 7. Second Copy is very good at only copying stuff that changed, so it can run in the background with hardly any slowdown.
SVN is fine for binary files. At least, it's a hell of a lot better then SourceOffSite / Visual SourceSafe ever was. Now, putting multi-gigabyte binary files into a VCS system is typically a bad idea, unless the VCS is specifically designed for it. But for binary files up to a few hundred megabytes, SVN will do just fine.
And I agree that developers who don't use version control is a major WTF.
At least they're not horrendously overpriced for what they offer. A lot of the small form factor stuff is 2x as expensive as a regular PC with standard parts. This is only 25-50% more expensive. And their "delta" prices look reasonable. They're not charging $300 more for a decent CPU (there's a Core Duo for +$80).
I was originally looking at using a small microATX case to build a PC for someone with limited space. Then I found that site and decided that their prices were good enough to skip building my own.
Or add a few gigabit Ethernet ports and use it as a firewall. Has anyone used a VIA C7 system in this way? If so, I'd be interested in how well it's worked, and if it introduces any significant latency or limits bandwidth.
Even my old VIA C3 600MHz fanless is fast enough to serve as a firewall (for speeds up to around 10Mbps at a guess). The only reason that I'm not running that C3 as a firewall currently is because CentOS5 hadn't come out with a version that would run on the C3.
The downside of something like a C3 (miniITX or picoITX) is ease of part replacment. The Morex Venus case that I have is a wonderful little case with enough room for a DVD-ROM and the two 2.5" laptop drives (in fact, it's a bit large). The downside is that if the PSU goes, I'm looking at a difficult to find part in order to replace it. The other issue is that individual parts are more expensive.
Which means that it's a lot more attractive to get an Athlon64 X2 45W or 65W CPU, microATX motherboard (Asus M2NPV-VM) and a bog standard ATX PSU. Hook up a pair of SATA 2.5" laptop drives and I've got a firewall that doesn't use all that much more energy and is a lot more powerful. That CPU is rarely going to hit 45W, so I'd estimate that the overall unit might pull around 20-30W on average. The VIA unit would probably be half that power requirement, but that's the tradeoff for ease of replacement when something breaks.
Why DVI over VGA? I've seen very few DVI-only monitors and there's still plenty of VGA-only monitors being sold. In this particular application, lower cost, compatibility, and reduced size weigh more towards "better" than pixel-accurate image reproduction.
DVI-I connections can be hooked up to both VGA (using a converter) and DVI. Probably 99% of all LCD monitors (which are the future) have DVI ports. Off-hand, I'd say that at least 2/3 of all PCs / notebooks sold are now using DVI on the external connector (or at least have it available).
And some of the less expensive LCD displays are DVI-only.
I like this kind of stuff, but after comparing what building a system with this material would cost me, a mac mini would be way cheaper, and with the core duo in it, a heck of a lot faster as well.
I found this little gem earlier. Pricing is very reasonable considering the size / features.
IBM Thinkpad and Toshiba Tecra keyboards on their laptops aren't too bad. (I've used a Tecra 9100 for 5-6 years now, so I'm a little biased. I don't use an external keyboard or mouse.)
The Tecra 9100 had a very good key layout for programming. The smaller Thinkpad X61s that I setup for someone last week was definitely made too many compromises (the home/end, pgup/pgdn, and arrow keys are all in difficult to find locations). When I purchase my Thinkpad T60 later this year, I'll need to take a close look at the key layout for those keys.
I still prefer the model M keyboard that I have hooked up to a KVM, but when I prefer to use the laptop keyboard as much as possible. That way, when I travel, I'm not confused by the different keyboard layout.
(And like I've said for the past few years... if Apple's would take the keyboard from a Thinkpad and put it on a Macbook Pro, I'd switch. The pointer-nubby is not optional for someone who touch types and wants to keep their fingers on the home row.)
We've been using NTT/Verio for almost 7 years now ourself. They do a pretty decent job at informing us of the "why" when things fail. They're also good about telling you ahead of time when they're going to be doing work.
We've had them (since we lease the servers) swap out parts on servers that have failed before we even get a chance to call them.
(Needless to say, we have no qualms about renewing our contract again this year.)
The point is that I don't see how a Mac laptop inherently has three more years of life. From what I hear anecdotally the internal hardware is pretty much the same these days. As far as the software goes, my laptop will run Vista adequately if not well, and you could say the same of a three-year-old Apple laptop and Leopard.
Not really. I had a chance this past few weeks to dig an old PowerMac G4 450MHz (single-core) machine out of the closet and drop OS X 10.4 on it. I did cheat a bit and drop another 1GB of RAM in it to bring it up to 1280MB. I also replaced the single 27GB drive with a pair of fresh 80GB drives and set them up as RAID1 using the OS X installer.
OS X is surprisingly snappy on hardware from 1999. While I'm too much of a power user to consider this worthy of being my primary machine, we're going to be putting it back in service on our receptionist's desk. It's fast enough to browse the web, get e-mail, do lightweight document creation and play DVDs (while driving a 1680x1050 display). Apple has done a very good job keeping OS X light on its feet. If she manages to stress the box, we'll go out and buy a Mac Mini Core 2 Duo.
On the other hand, trying to run Windows XP on 1999 hardware is a bit painful. And I can't imagine trying to run Vista on hardware from 1999.
That being said, our expected lifespan for the WinXP, dual-core, 2GB RAM machine that we put in this past year is at least 5-6 years. We expect to drop another 1-2GB of RAM in the units in year 3 or 4. But with the two cores, responsiveness should remain snappy well into the 5th and 6th years (if not longer).
(I'm almost ready to switch to a MacBook Pro... but Apple's keyboard doesn't have a pointer nubby.)
Well, I don't know about that... I can't think of four programs that will use 100% of the cpu and need to run concurrently, all I can think of is movie encoding, and I won't be running four (or three) simultaneously...
Moving encoding typically is multi-threaded, so it will use as many cores as it can lay hands on. So you'd only be encoding one movie at a time.
For the rest of us, having 2 or 4 cores is more about being able to handle spikes in CPU usage without slowing down interactivity. With a single-core machine, when a process needs a lot of CPU time, I'm at the mercy of the (not so good) scheduler in Windows XP to keep the machine usable. On my 5 year old laptop, this often tests my patience as there are numerous tasks that spike the CPU and cause the screen to become unresponsive. Which means I have to interrupt my thought process while I wait on the machine to respond. Those spikes can last as little as 1 second, and still intrude upon my workflow. (Things like e-mail programs checking for e-mail in the background, etc.)
One a dual-core machine, this happens a lot less often. CPU spikes are handled in the background on the other core while the first core keeps responding to my input. With a quad core system (especially if it's for the same price, roughly, as a dual-core), the operating system gains even more flexibility about scheduling tasks. Which should make the system even more responsive, even in cases where I have multiple tasks all clamoring for CPU attention.
Now, it should be noted that I am very much a multi-tasker. I always have at least 6 applications open, with another 6 applets running in the system tray. I prefer to start up things like e-mail clients and web browsers and then minimize them to the background. Having 4 browser windows with 4-8 tabs in each window is not unusual. Along with 6-12 SSH sessions, a few documents, e-mails, and file folders open. My poor single-core laptop from 5 years ago regularly groans under the strain.
I still doubt that we're going to see single-core performance increases like we did in the mid/late-90s. Current CPU cores, even with the smaller processes, seem to be limited in how much they can ramp up.
While I'm a fan of multi-core (dual-core is a minimum recommendation from me for the past year, ever since the Athlon64 X2s broke the $150 barrier), I do question the idea of more then around 4-8 cores on a consumer / light-business desktop. For the power users, yeah, they'll be building systems with 4 CPUs each with 8-16 cores. But I suspect it will be massive overkill (and too expensive) for others. Now, if the CPU makers manage to fit 16 cores into a single CPU and price it under $150...
I've been poking around with an old PowerMac G4 from 1999 this past week. It's a 450Mhz, single-CPU unit. But with enough RAM (I put in 1280MB), it's surprising how snappy OS X 10.4 is on it. Definitely quick enough for all but CPU-heavy tasks. If it was one of the dual-CPU systems, it would definitely still be usable as the primary machine for a light office user. As is, it's fast enough to drive a 1680x1050 screen, play a DVD, and browse the web.
$300 is not an unreasonable amount for someone to spend on the CPU in a system that they think will need horsepower. It's when you go beyond the $250-$320 price range that prices escalate rapidly compared to the performance increase. I would dissuade most users from spending $600 on a CPU, but wouldn't be as negative towards someone in the $250-$300 range.
Of course, for the budget users, I'd be pointing them at the lowest cost dual-core CPU. Or possibly a few steps up from the bottom. There are some pretty decent dual-core CPUs in the $100-$120 range.
Linux's 64-bit support isn't up to much either. Whatever OS you use, experimenting with 64-bit is a trail of tears, and of no use to most users.
If you say "end users", I'd tend to agree with you (although the situation is improving at a good pace).
But for server users, Linux 64bit has been here for at least 2 years now. The early adopters probably started 3-4 years ago. Things were still slightly shaky 2 years ago, but are definitely pretty solid today.
The flip side is that with its unique hinge Apple can't put any ports on the back of the laptop, making a sensible docking station a near-impossibility.
Toshiba Tecra units put the docking station interface on the bottom of the laptop. I believe that the Lenovo Thinkpad units do the same (but I'd have to look at the tech sheet again).
My Toshiba Tecra 9100 has a pretty good hinge on it. The bar runs the full width of the laptop and the hinge pieces are all 2.5" wide and take up the center 3/5 of the laptop's width.
The best thing to do if you have a laptop user who carries their laptop around with the screen open - because they don't want it to go to sleep - is to disable the "sleep on lid close" feature. Then you can train / encourage them to close the lid fully before moving the laptop around.
No computer is future proof. You can get some extra months on one by buying above average, but the best desktop you can get today will still look sad in three years. Pay extra for bleeding edge if you want to but the best value is middle of the road and frequent upgrades.
If you had written that statement in the late 90s or even as late as 2002, I'd agree with you. But system performance stopped doubling every 18-24 months a long time ago. Now it's closer to 36-60 months (although dual-core and quad-core upsets the calculation) before performance doubles.
What I've seen over the past decade is that responsiveness determines how sad a system looks and feels. A single-core/single-CPU system can easily be bottlenecked by a runaway process or by an operating system that gives too much time to a greedy process and not enough to being responsive to the user. But once you start adding CPUs or cores, apparent responsiveness goes up quite a bit.
I have good reason to believe (I've used multi-CPU systems for 3+ years now) that the lifespan of a multi-core or multi-CPU machine is going to be quite a bit higher then you give it credit for. My 3-year old box still feels pretty quick because the interface (except where Windows is poorly designed) rarely blocks input. The new dual-core machines that I'm building today will probably remain useful for 8+ years because of having multiple cores.
And as always, having enough RAM is essential (2GB for a dual-core box is a useful mininum).
2007 called back, just to let you know that 4gb of RAM was $150
If you'd watch the market more regularly, you'd know that RAM has priced out at anything between $30 per gigabyte and $125 per gigabyte in the past 12 months. Last summer it was around $60-$75 per GB, rising to the $125/GB figure in the fourth quarter of 2006. Right now it's bouncing around in the $30-$50/GB range.
All depends on what week you buy it and what week your retailer bought their stock.
I'm hoping that inexpensive ($30 or less) 1GB sticks means that the price is about to start dropping on the 2GB sticks.
I can outfit a standard user with dual-core CPU, 2GB RAM, 2x200GB drives in RAID1, WinXP Pro and Office 2003 for around $1250. Add in a monitor, mouse and keyboard for another $250 and we're at $1500. We don't bother with a warranty other then that on the individual parts because it's less expensive for us to just buy a new DVD drive or other commodity part.
For the laptop users (doesn't matter if it's Apple, Toshiba or Lenovo) a 2GB dual-core laptop (some users want the 14" some want the 17"), along with the docking station and software runs in the $2800-$3500 range. About $300-$500 of that is an extended warranty to cover accidental damage.
Plus, we find that laptops wear out after 3-4 years of daily use. If they're well treated, they *might* last a full 5 years, but they're definitely getting onto their last legs at that point. Desktops have a better lifespan (easily 5 years and can be pushed to 7-8 w/ multiple CPUs and enough RAM) and take less physical abuse. Our planned rotation for laptops is 3 years, but 5 years for desktops.
We may see the desktop computer disappear into the monitor, though.
I think it's more likely that we'll see more computers the size of the Mac Mini. Which is small enough to get lost on a desk full of paper. And it doesn't have the disadvantage that if the monitor fails, you're in trouble.
(Not that LCD monitors fail all that often... they're probably an order of mangnitude more reliable then the old CRT units.)
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Haha, well, if you actually like the nipple I guess you're stuck. I can't understand why people like them, is it like a cult or something?
For programmers or touch typists, the nipple allows you to deal with the occasional pesky dialog without having to take your fingers off of the home row. That makes you a lot more productive then someone who is constantly reaching for a mouse and then has to reposition their hands on the home row. Naturally, if your job or task involves moving the mouse pointer around a lot (drawing, re-arranging elements) then an external mouse is far easier to use.
I don't even bother hooking up the external mouse on my Tecra anymore, the nipple provides me with enough mouse control to do everything that I need. It helps if you turn the mouse sensitivity up to the maximum (less force required to move the mouse around means your index finger won't get tired).
Yes, it's not hard to have stable WinXP system. Good habits, not visiting every website under the sun (especially not the ones in dark corners of the net), having A/V software installed and using the box behind a NAT 99% of the time.
My WinXP install is about 5.5 years old at this point. I'm on my 3rd hard drive in this laptop (used a recent Acronis TrueImage image when the previous drive died), but it's still the original WinXP install from early 2002.
(That said... I really like OS X - but don't care for their laptop keyboards and choice of pointing device. So I have a Mac Mini hooked up to a KVM so that I can learn my way around and support our OS X folks.)
Even if that's not much of an increase in space, it's ugly and it makes the repository (just files) hard to copy (have no idea why they implemented it this way). Of course there's a backup feature in the program so there's no reason to copy by hand, but still, it's inelegant.
.svn folders aren't part of the repository, they're part of the working copy.
/var or /usr or /home or C:\Documents and Settings).
.svn folders... you can use whichever SVN client you have laying around, and not worry that the tool won't be able to read the working copy. For example, in OS X, you can share a working copy between OS X and WinXP (using Parallels) instead of having to have two separate working copies. Another reason for the .svn folders is that they allow you to compare against the last pristine version that you have downloaded, without needing to talk to the server.
.svn folders... some of my issues will be addressed in 1.5, some will be addressed in SVN 1.6).
SVN just chooses to store the metadata about the working copy in the working copy folders rather then putting it somewhere abstract (such as
One advantage of the
(I have a love/hate relationship with
Backing up a SVN repository is as easy as using the svnhotcopy command. Or you can do a svndump. There are even scripts that back up the repository after every commit.
SVN is a decent VCS, it's not perfect, it's not distributed, but it's got widespread platform support and works well for most uses. It's also being actively developed, which means things are getting fixed, getting better, and getting redesigned periodically. (It also has a good bit of mindshare - which helps get it onto other platforms.)
There are other issues: the Subversion authors have made a very real mistake here in keeping unencrypted passwords online, by default, in every public Linux or UNIX client compiled from Subversion's basic source code.
Explain to us how they were supposed to *not* store unencrypted passwords and still allow use of the svn: protocol? There's simply no encryption model that allows that possibility to exist.
(Hint, if you want secure communications, use SSH keys.)
Exactly on the mark.
MS Access fills, very successfully, an important niche. And OpenOffice still has a ways to go in order to fill its shoes. Need to make a backup of a table? Ctrl-Paste! Backup the entire MDB? Send to compressed file! No need to keep track of 20+ files that make up the database (and the queries, the forms, the reports, the code), although it would be nice for version control purposes.
MS Access is one of the few reasons that we still use MS Windows. There's nothing quite like it yet that can replace it on non-Windows (and Windows) platforms.
Rather then using XCOPY and a batch file, look at a product like Second Copy.
When the user inserts the USB key, you can tell SC to automatically run selected profiles. (SC also only copies changed files and has some other useful features.)
SC also deals very well with situations where the destination location is not currently reachable. It doesn't crash or complain (pestering the user), it simply tries again when the next scheduled time comes around.
(We've been using SC for almost 7 years now, very happy with it.)
Acronis TrueImage 10 now has the ability to e-mail log files.
Second Copy 7 also has notification ability (I think...), but it may require running a command after the job finishes.
We use both in our small office. A pair of external USB drives, periodic images using Acronis and hourly backups with Second Copy 7. Second Copy is very good at only copying stuff that changed, so it can run in the background with hardly any slowdown.
SVN is fine for binary files. At least, it's a hell of a lot better then SourceOffSite / Visual SourceSafe ever was. Now, putting multi-gigabyte binary files into a VCS system is typically a bad idea, unless the VCS is specifically designed for it. But for binary files up to a few hundred megabytes, SVN will do just fine.
And I agree that developers who don't use version control is a major WTF.
At least they're not horrendously overpriced for what they offer. A lot of the small form factor stuff is 2x as expensive as a regular PC with standard parts. This is only 25-50% more expensive. And their "delta" prices look reasonable. They're not charging $300 more for a decent CPU (there's a Core Duo for +$80).
I was originally looking at using a small microATX case to build a PC for someone with limited space. Then I found that site and decided that their prices were good enough to skip building my own.
Or add a few gigabit Ethernet ports and use it as a firewall. Has anyone used a VIA C7 system in this way? If so, I'd be interested in how well it's worked, and if it introduces any significant latency or limits bandwidth.
Even my old VIA C3 600MHz fanless is fast enough to serve as a firewall (for speeds up to around 10Mbps at a guess). The only reason that I'm not running that C3 as a firewall currently is because CentOS5 hadn't come out with a version that would run on the C3.
The downside of something like a C3 (miniITX or picoITX) is ease of part replacment. The Morex Venus case that I have is a wonderful little case with enough room for a DVD-ROM and the two 2.5" laptop drives (in fact, it's a bit large). The downside is that if the PSU goes, I'm looking at a difficult to find part in order to replace it. The other issue is that individual parts are more expensive.
Which means that it's a lot more attractive to get an Athlon64 X2 45W or 65W CPU, microATX motherboard (Asus M2NPV-VM) and a bog standard ATX PSU. Hook up a pair of SATA 2.5" laptop drives and I've got a firewall that doesn't use all that much more energy and is a lot more powerful. That CPU is rarely going to hit 45W, so I'd estimate that the overall unit might pull around 20-30W on average. The VIA unit would probably be half that power requirement, but that's the tradeoff for ease of replacement when something breaks.
Why DVI over VGA? I've seen very few DVI-only monitors and there's still plenty of VGA-only monitors being sold. In this particular application, lower cost, compatibility, and reduced size weigh more towards "better" than pixel-accurate image reproduction.
DVI-I connections can be hooked up to both VGA (using a converter) and DVI. Probably 99% of all LCD monitors (which are the future) have DVI ports. Off-hand, I'd say that at least 2/3 of all PCs / notebooks sold are now using DVI on the external connector (or at least have it available).
And some of the less expensive LCD displays are DVI-only.
I like this kind of stuff, but after comparing what building a system with this material would cost me, a mac mini would be way cheaper, and with the core duo in it, a heck of a lot faster as well.
I found this little gem earlier. Pricing is very reasonable considering the size / features.
http://www.cappuccinopc.com/pandora-945-d.asp
IBM Thinkpad and Toshiba Tecra keyboards on their laptops aren't too bad. (I've used a Tecra 9100 for 5-6 years now, so I'm a little biased. I don't use an external keyboard or mouse.)
The Tecra 9100 had a very good key layout for programming. The smaller Thinkpad X61s that I setup for someone last week was definitely made too many compromises (the home/end, pgup/pgdn, and arrow keys are all in difficult to find locations). When I purchase my Thinkpad T60 later this year, I'll need to take a close look at the key layout for those keys.
I still prefer the model M keyboard that I have hooked up to a KVM, but when I prefer to use the laptop keyboard as much as possible. That way, when I travel, I'm not confused by the different keyboard layout.
(And like I've said for the past few years... if Apple's would take the keyboard from a Thinkpad and put it on a Macbook Pro, I'd switch. The pointer-nubby is not optional for someone who touch types and wants to keep their fingers on the home row.)
I'm currently rewriting Post Road Mailer, which is in C on OS/2.
I used that mailer! I think I still even have a bunch of e-mails still in that format.
We've been using NTT/Verio for almost 7 years now ourself. They do a pretty decent job at informing us of the "why" when things fail. They're also good about telling you ahead of time when they're going to be doing work.
We've had them (since we lease the servers) swap out parts on servers that have failed before we even get a chance to call them.
(Needless to say, we have no qualms about renewing our contract again this year.)
The point is that I don't see how a Mac laptop inherently has three more years of life. From what I hear anecdotally the internal hardware is pretty much the same these days. As far as the software goes, my laptop will run Vista adequately if not well, and you could say the same of a three-year-old Apple laptop and Leopard.
Not really. I had a chance this past few weeks to dig an old PowerMac G4 450MHz (single-core) machine out of the closet and drop OS X 10.4 on it. I did cheat a bit and drop another 1GB of RAM in it to bring it up to 1280MB. I also replaced the single 27GB drive with a pair of fresh 80GB drives and set them up as RAID1 using the OS X installer.
OS X is surprisingly snappy on hardware from 1999. While I'm too much of a power user to consider this worthy of being my primary machine, we're going to be putting it back in service on our receptionist's desk. It's fast enough to browse the web, get e-mail, do lightweight document creation and play DVDs (while driving a 1680x1050 display). Apple has done a very good job keeping OS X light on its feet. If she manages to stress the box, we'll go out and buy a Mac Mini Core 2 Duo.
On the other hand, trying to run Windows XP on 1999 hardware is a bit painful. And I can't imagine trying to run Vista on hardware from 1999.
That being said, our expected lifespan for the WinXP, dual-core, 2GB RAM machine that we put in this past year is at least 5-6 years. We expect to drop another 1-2GB of RAM in the units in year 3 or 4. But with the two cores, responsiveness should remain snappy well into the 5th and 6th years (if not longer).
(I'm almost ready to switch to a MacBook Pro... but Apple's keyboard doesn't have a pointer nubby.)
Well, I don't know about that... I can't think of four programs that will use 100% of the cpu and need to run concurrently, all I can think of is movie encoding, and I won't be running four (or three) simultaneously...
Moving encoding typically is multi-threaded, so it will use as many cores as it can lay hands on. So you'd only be encoding one movie at a time.
For the rest of us, having 2 or 4 cores is more about being able to handle spikes in CPU usage without slowing down interactivity. With a single-core machine, when a process needs a lot of CPU time, I'm at the mercy of the (not so good) scheduler in Windows XP to keep the machine usable. On my 5 year old laptop, this often tests my patience as there are numerous tasks that spike the CPU and cause the screen to become unresponsive. Which means I have to interrupt my thought process while I wait on the machine to respond. Those spikes can last as little as 1 second, and still intrude upon my workflow. (Things like e-mail programs checking for e-mail in the background, etc.)
One a dual-core machine, this happens a lot less often. CPU spikes are handled in the background on the other core while the first core keeps responding to my input. With a quad core system (especially if it's for the same price, roughly, as a dual-core), the operating system gains even more flexibility about scheduling tasks. Which should make the system even more responsive, even in cases where I have multiple tasks all clamoring for CPU attention.
Now, it should be noted that I am very much a multi-tasker. I always have at least 6 applications open, with another 6 applets running in the system tray. I prefer to start up things like e-mail clients and web browsers and then minimize them to the background. Having 4 browser windows with 4-8 tabs in each window is not unusual. Along with 6-12 SSH sessions, a few documents, e-mails, and file folders open. My poor single-core laptop from 5 years ago regularly groans under the strain.
I still doubt that we're going to see single-core performance increases like we did in the mid/late-90s. Current CPU cores, even with the smaller processes, seem to be limited in how much they can ramp up.
While I'm a fan of multi-core (dual-core is a minimum recommendation from me for the past year, ever since the Athlon64 X2s broke the $150 barrier), I do question the idea of more then around 4-8 cores on a consumer / light-business desktop. For the power users, yeah, they'll be building systems with 4 CPUs each with 8-16 cores. But I suspect it will be massive overkill (and too expensive) for others. Now, if the CPU makers manage to fit 16 cores into a single CPU and price it under $150...
I've been poking around with an old PowerMac G4 from 1999 this past week. It's a 450Mhz, single-CPU unit. But with enough RAM (I put in 1280MB), it's surprising how snappy OS X 10.4 is on it. Definitely quick enough for all but CPU-heavy tasks. If it was one of the dual-CPU systems, it would definitely still be usable as the primary machine for a light office user. As is, it's fast enough to drive a 1680x1050 screen, play a DVD, and browse the web.
$300 is not an unreasonable amount for someone to spend on the CPU in a system that they think will need horsepower. It's when you go beyond the $250-$320 price range that prices escalate rapidly compared to the performance increase. I would dissuade most users from spending $600 on a CPU, but wouldn't be as negative towards someone in the $250-$300 range.
Of course, for the budget users, I'd be pointing them at the lowest cost dual-core CPU. Or possibly a few steps up from the bottom. There are some pretty decent dual-core CPUs in the $100-$120 range.
Linux's 64-bit support isn't up to much either. Whatever OS you use, experimenting with 64-bit is a trail of tears, and of no use to most users.
If you say "end users", I'd tend to agree with you (although the situation is improving at a good pace).
But for server users, Linux 64bit has been here for at least 2 years now. The early adopters probably started 3-4 years ago. Things were still slightly shaky 2 years ago, but are definitely pretty solid today.
The flip side is that with its unique hinge Apple can't put any ports on the back of the laptop, making a sensible docking station a near-impossibility.
Toshiba Tecra units put the docking station interface on the bottom of the laptop. I believe that the Lenovo Thinkpad units do the same (but I'd have to look at the tech sheet again).
My Toshiba Tecra 9100 has a pretty good hinge on it. The bar runs the full width of the laptop and the hinge pieces are all 2.5" wide and take up the center 3/5 of the laptop's width.
The best thing to do if you have a laptop user who carries their laptop around with the screen open - because they don't want it to go to sleep - is to disable the "sleep on lid close" feature. Then you can train / encourage them to close the lid fully before moving the laptop around.
No computer is future proof. You can get some extra months on one by buying above average, but the best desktop you can get today will still look sad in three years. Pay extra for bleeding edge if you want to but the best value is middle of the road and frequent upgrades.
If you had written that statement in the late 90s or even as late as 2002, I'd agree with you. But system performance stopped doubling every 18-24 months a long time ago. Now it's closer to 36-60 months (although dual-core and quad-core upsets the calculation) before performance doubles.
What I've seen over the past decade is that responsiveness determines how sad a system looks and feels. A single-core/single-CPU system can easily be bottlenecked by a runaway process or by an operating system that gives too much time to a greedy process and not enough to being responsive to the user. But once you start adding CPUs or cores, apparent responsiveness goes up quite a bit.
I have good reason to believe (I've used multi-CPU systems for 3+ years now) that the lifespan of a multi-core or multi-CPU machine is going to be quite a bit higher then you give it credit for. My 3-year old box still feels pretty quick because the interface (except where Windows is poorly designed) rarely blocks input. The new dual-core machines that I'm building today will probably remain useful for 8+ years because of having multiple cores.
And as always, having enough RAM is essential (2GB for a dual-core box is a useful mininum).
2007 called back, just to let you know that 4gb of RAM was $150
If you'd watch the market more regularly, you'd know that RAM has priced out at anything between $30 per gigabyte and $125 per gigabyte in the past 12 months. Last summer it was around $60-$75 per GB, rising to the $125/GB figure in the fourth quarter of 2006. Right now it's bouncing around in the $30-$50/GB range.
All depends on what week you buy it and what week your retailer bought their stock.
I'm hoping that inexpensive ($30 or less) 1GB sticks means that the price is about to start dropping on the 2GB sticks.
For business use, it's about 2x difference.
I can outfit a standard user with dual-core CPU, 2GB RAM, 2x200GB drives in RAID1, WinXP Pro and Office 2003 for around $1250. Add in a monitor, mouse and keyboard for another $250 and we're at $1500. We don't bother with a warranty other then that on the individual parts because it's less expensive for us to just buy a new DVD drive or other commodity part.
For the laptop users (doesn't matter if it's Apple, Toshiba or Lenovo) a 2GB dual-core laptop (some users want the 14" some want the 17"), along with the docking station and software runs in the $2800-$3500 range. About $300-$500 of that is an extended warranty to cover accidental damage.
Plus, we find that laptops wear out after 3-4 years of daily use. If they're well treated, they *might* last a full 5 years, but they're definitely getting onto their last legs at that point. Desktops have a better lifespan (easily 5 years and can be pushed to 7-8 w/ multiple CPUs and enough RAM) and take less physical abuse. Our planned rotation for laptops is 3 years, but 5 years for desktops.
We may see the desktop computer disappear into the monitor, though.
I think it's more likely that we'll see more computers the size of the Mac Mini. Which is small enough to get lost on a desk full of paper. And it doesn't have the disadvantage that if the monitor fails, you're in trouble.
(Not that LCD monitors fail all that often... they're probably an order of mangnitude more reliable then the old CRT units.)