[rescue] Re: rescue digest, Vol 1 #1783 - 14 msgs

[joshua d boyd]

On Fri, Aug 03, 2001 at 11:11:54AM -0500, Bill Bradford wrote:
> Win95/PPro (or WinNT4/PPro, since the Pro sucked at 16-bit code):
> Great platform (well, for varying definitions of "great"), plenty
> of CPU speed (200Mhz) for anything 99% of normal users will need to
> do (web browsing, word processing, etc).

I still think we need to be careful about saying "need to do".  I mean,
word processing is convienient, and I don't want to give it up, but do we
"need it"?  Will we face finacial ruin if we don't word processes?

I say this not to suggest that we get rid of word processors, but to open
the door to other things we don't need, like entertainment and home
management tasks.
 
> Most people now have 500Mhz+ AMD or Intel-based boxes, but yet they
> dont use it for much more than they used PPro or P200MMX systems for
> in '98.  The ONLY "advantages" I can think of would be games (bah,
> MAME is all you need) and stuff like Photoshop or 3D rendering.

I disagree.  I think that a Dreamcast with ethernet (for loading roms from
file server) is all you need for games.  Actually, they just cut the price
of dream casts again.  I just might have to buy myself one to hack on and
maybe even play games on it (haven't really seen any compelling games, but
that probably is because I haven't looked paste the ads on TV and on the
net).

Further, with a dream cast, you can use a vga monitor, keyboard, and
mouse, and play quake as it was meant to be played.

Oh, students use DivX now.  From what I've seen DivX really requires a
fast CPU.  Not gigahertz fast, but faster than a P200mmx.
 
> Now, we've got 1.4Ghz CPUs.  To "make up" for it, Windows XP comes
> out.  On a 700Mhz or faster system, this OS (with its bloat) reduces
> the system to the general performance level of a 1997-98 Win95
> machine with a 200Mhz CPU.  This *sucks*.  Programmers need to learn
> to be "lean and mean" again, instead of going "well, RAM and CPU is
> cheap.."

Well, ram and CPU are cheap, but you are supposed to take advanteage of
that to give customers more, not less.  I mean, what new features does XP
have?  I have yet to hear of one single new piece of functionality.  Can
anyone point out anything?
 
> Personally, I dont think people can tell a difference between a 
> 200Mhz CPU and a 1.4Ghz CPU, if you take away things like HD
> speed / program loading time / etc.

The difference is that on a 1.4ghz machine, you type and as you do what
you type appears on the screen, but on a 200mhz machine there is a several
second lag between typing and seeing.  This occurs only under certain OSs
mind you.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd