Re: A chip too far? Where is your solution Mr Larkin?


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Jan Panteltje wrote:

http://money.cnn.com/2008/08/13/technology/microchips_copeland.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008081405

The website above presents a problem.

The following website contains the solution:

[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computing_minimalism ]

The solution is to change the game. The CNN webpage says:

"For decades the PC industry has juiced performance - and
sales - with a regular two-step dance. First, chipmakers
jacked up the speed of their latest offerings. Then the
software brains figured out how to turn all that processing
power into faster operations and cool new functions."

Leaving aside the fact that the software brains actually *used
up* all that processing power with *slower* operations and cool
new functions, why do we need so many cool new functions? Sure,
there are some cases (gaming, for example) where the bigger and
newer programs actually deliver more, but why the need for more
and more processing cycles to surf the web, send emails, and do
word processing?

Consider this comparison of Microsoft Windows "Recommended
System requirements" (and we all know that Windows really
needs a lot more than the minimum to run fast and well):

Windows version Processor Memory Hard disk
Windows 95 25 MHz 8 MB 50 MB
Windows 98 66 MHz 24 MB 140?255 MB
Windows Me 150 MHz 32 MB 320 MB
Windows 2000 Server 133 MHz 64 MB 1 GB
Windows XP 300 MHz 128 MB 1.5 GB
Windows Vista 1 GHz 1 GB 15 GB

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bloat

Are the new features in Vista really worth 40 times more
cycles, 125 times more ram and 300 times more hard disk?
Is Vista 40 times better? Am I 40 times more productive?

Why should a business have to keep buying new PCs, to
support new bloatware when most of the workers are trying
to complete the same tasks?

Meanwhile, I am running the latest version of Slackware
Linux on a box that has:

100 Mhz 486 Processor
100 MB RAM
2.1 GB HDD

....and it runs just fine -- in fact it runs faster than some
of the older versions of Slackware Linux do. Yet I installed
that same version of Slackware Linux on a 8-processor Xeon box
with 4GB of RAM and a 1TB RAID array, and it worked great there
as well.

Also see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy
http://www.digitalvideoediting.com/2001/02_feb/editorials/chazzletter18.htm
http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=6508273



--
Guy Macon
<http://www.GuyMacon.com/>

.

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