> I realized that he was just railing > against cheap laptops. > Folks should probably keep in mind that sweeping generalizations can be good guides, but are generally inaccurate in some detail.
We've had BO, and now here's PO (Peter's Opinion), based on what I've learned from 15 years of working on the Windows OS, and designing drivers and devices with OEMs: 1) ANY commodity type system -- be it laptop or desktop -- can be subject to variability in design. Motherboard versions, BIOS versions, add-in cards, can all change during the life of a system label. 2) MOST laptops are not designed for performance. No brand-name laptops use commodity motherboards (laptop motherboards are almost always custom designed), but the engineering challenges of building the typical laptop include finding ultra-small devices, stretching a very tight power budget as far as it will go, not adding to cooling problems, and hitting a particular price point. Not that "creating a device that responds well for real-time processing" was not in that list. Neither was performance. I've seen many, many SUPER performing laptops -- True desktop replacements. They've all been big, they got really hot, and the power brick was usually larger than a real brick and much heavier. Seriously. 3) There are both laptop and desktop systems that will work well for our real-time processing needs. 4) It's trial-and-error knowing which systems will work. There's no way to look at a machine, or its specifications, and know it will work... unless you've already tried an IDENTICAL system. Changing just ONE peripheral -- or one driver version -- can dramatically change the real-time performance characteristics of a Windows system. A poorly engineered system will never perform well for real-time processing, but a well engineered system may not perform well depending on the drivers on the system. For example, a system might get excellent disk or network throughput, but at the cost of longer DPCs which we would find intolerable for use with a Flex. That's the only wisdom that I have to impart: There's no way to know in advance by looking at a system, it's packaging, or its components and know whether it'll work well for our uses. The motherboard, the peripherals, and the software -- right down to the driver version -- all matter. Peter K1PGV _______________________________________________ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List [email protected] http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kc.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/ Message delivered to [email protected]
