Lavasoft Ad-Aware has AdWatch, which is an anti-spyware app that lurks in the background.
AVG and Outpost Firewall are taking up a fair percent of my CPU time, because I have a low end machine, but it's still not enough to be noticeable.
Of course there's no need for a second core, and there really never will be, but there are a lot of situations where it would be desirable.
My example would be so I can compile faster, I've found that in general a single-CPU machine and gcc will compile 3 source files at once just as fast as it would compile one, a dual-core machine would theoretically bump that up significantly, provided proper OS support for SMP.
But yes, I agree that it's all hype.
I'd throw in that I think the BSD kernel is superior, better tuned, etc. than the Linux kernel. At least I've always found BSD to be faster and more stable than any Linux that I've used. Although, Darwin uses MACH, which is completely different than the standard BSD kernel, isn't it?
I recently sat down and used an iBook G4 800MHz and frankly I was quite impressed at how well it handled itself, loads better than Windows or Linux desktop environments do. I think we can attribute this to MacOS X sending adoration rays through the built in wifi antennae.
That said, I'm a Mac fanatic, even though I don't have one manufactured after 1995, and try to convince myself I'm not.
The laptop I'm writing this on is 7 years old, I've regularly switched between running Windows 98, Windows 2000, and Linux on it. All I need in terms of a word processor is Wordpad, and vim. I play mp3's and program on it, browse the web, MUD, and make music. Often simultaneously. I use the latest and greatest GAIM, Firefox, and PowTTY, along with Winamp 5 Pro and Pro-level audio software. I'm doing all this on a PII with 160MB of RAM, and I regularly see my friends with 2-3GHz machines and 512MBDDR RAM chugging along a whole lot slower than my trusty little ThinkPad. It may just be me, but I'd say the fault lies more with the user than the bloat in a lot of today's situations. Having such an old computer, I try to squeeze all the performance out of it I can, and I get a snappier setup than my friend's gaming rigs. I'm happy.:)
Actually, the cartridges are a significantly more/powerful/ storage medium, due to the fact that they can contain add-on hardware (SuperFX chips in the SNES, the rumblers in various GBC games (pokemon pinball)), really most any kind of co-processor that one might find useful could be stuck into the cartridge. Whereas the optical storage mediums are just that... storage mediums. Surely they could have stuck a CD reader on a cartridge if they felt the a strong enough need for it.
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Lavasoft Ad-Aware has AdWatch, which is an anti-spyware app that lurks in the background. AVG and Outpost Firewall are taking up a fair percent of my CPU time, because I have a low end machine, but it's still not enough to be noticeable. Of course there's no need for a second core, and there really never will be, but there are a lot of situations where it would be desirable. My example would be so I can compile faster, I've found that in general a single-CPU machine and gcc will compile 3 source files at once just as fast as it would compile one, a dual-core machine would theoretically bump that up significantly, provided proper OS support for SMP. But yes, I agree that it's all hype.
I'd throw in that I think the BSD kernel is superior, better tuned, etc. than the Linux kernel. At least I've always found BSD to be faster and more stable than any Linux that I've used. Although, Darwin uses MACH, which is completely different than the standard BSD kernel, isn't it? I recently sat down and used an iBook G4 800MHz and frankly I was quite impressed at how well it handled itself, loads better than Windows or Linux desktop environments do. I think we can attribute this to MacOS X sending adoration rays through the built in wifi antennae. That said, I'm a Mac fanatic, even though I don't have one manufactured after 1995, and try to convince myself I'm not.
The laptop I'm writing this on is 7 years old, I've regularly switched between running Windows 98, Windows 2000, and Linux on it. All I need in terms of a word processor is Wordpad, and vim. I play mp3's and program on it, browse the web, MUD, and make music. Often simultaneously. I use the latest and greatest GAIM, Firefox, and PowTTY, along with Winamp 5 Pro and Pro-level audio software. I'm doing all this on a PII with 160MB of RAM, and I regularly see my friends with 2-3GHz machines and 512MBDDR RAM chugging along a whole lot slower than my trusty little ThinkPad. It may just be me, but I'd say the fault lies more with the user than the bloat in a lot of today's situations. Having such an old computer, I try to squeeze all the performance out of it I can, and I get a snappier setup than my friend's gaming rigs. I'm happy. :)
It's true, ya know. Linux has outpaced desktop installs vs Mac OS X...on x86 hardware.
Actually, the cartridges are a significantly more /powerful/ storage medium, due to the fact that they can contain add-on hardware (SuperFX chips in the SNES, the rumblers in various GBC games (pokemon pinball)), really most any kind of co-processor that one might find useful could be stuck into the cartridge. Whereas the optical storage mediums are just that... storage mediums.
Surely they could have stuck a CD reader on a cartridge if they felt the a strong enough need for it.