language_fan wrote:
Thu, 24 Sep 2009 22:58:51 -0600, Rainer Deyke thusly wrote:
language_fan wrote:
The cost of e.g. doubling computing power depends on the domain. If you
are building desktop end user applications, they usually should scale
from single core atoms to 8-core high-end enthusiastic game computers.
So the cpu requirements shouldn't usually be too large. Usually even
most of the 1-3 previous generations' hardware runs them just nicely.
Now doubling the cpu power of a low-end current generation PC does not
cost $1000, but maybe $20-50.
You also need to consider how widely distributed your application is. If
you force a million desktop PC users to upgrade their CPUs, you just
wasted twenty to fifty million dollars of your customers' money (or,
more likely, lost a million customers).
I do not believe the market works this way. According to that logic
popularity correlates with expenses. So if you have e.g. 1 billion users,
even $1 in per-user hardware costs causes a billion dollar losses to
customers. Is that unacceptable? On the other hand a program with a
userbase of 10 might require a $100 hw upgrade and it is still ok?
Usually it is the other way, more popular programs pretty much dictate
what hardware is useful today. E.g. consider a G4 Mac or PIII PC, it is
pretty much useless today since popular web applications like facebook,
myspace, youtube, and others are way too slow on it. (not to mention the
obligatory virus scanner updates which today require a 2 GHz PC). The HD
videos in youtube may require a 1.2+ GHz PC. If you buy an office suite,
the old Windows 98 will not even let you install it. Upgrading to Vista
is not possible since it will not fit to the 10 GB hard drive. The stores
will not sell PATA drives anymore so you either need to buy a PCI PATA
controller (not supported by the OS, of course) or upgrade the case, psu,
mobo, cpu, memory chips, graphics card, and the hard disk.
A used 2.5 GHz Athlon XP with 1GB of RAM and 100GB of disk costs about
$100. Anything below that is obsolete these days. Good luck selling
anything to people who use older computers, they are probably broke
anyways. Otherwise I just see it cheaper to build your apps slower and
require hardware updates. Just imagine - a highly optimized $400 program
is way too expensive for most users, a $50 program + $200 hw upgrade
sounds just fine.
But a $40 optimized program will flush the competition of either $400
optimized equivalents or $40 slow equivalents, making you the winner in
the end. People are so crazy about money they care more about their
profits than the satisfaction of their customers.
