Stewart Stremler wrote: > begin quoting John H. Robinson, IV as of Tue, May 24, 2005 at 02:30:19PM > -0700: > > Todd Walton wrote: > > > On 5/23/05, DJA <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > > > o It's not an x86. > > > > > > As for "It's not an x86", well, can't argue with that. > > > > Yes you can! Black box it. You can't tell the difference between x86 and > > PPC. It is a meaningless distinction. > > If it were truly meaningless, then it wouldn't matter, and we wouldn't > have so many people dancing a jig whenever they hear a rumor that > <vendor> might move to x86.
It is an image thing. Mac made its image by Thinking Different. If you use x86 (what the herd is doing) where is the Difference? Hence how these rumors perpetuate. > (Remember, x86 is where 1/1 = 0.9999999999991992991398 !) I think they fixed that bug. http://www.maa.org/mathland/mathland_5_12.html > > I understand the general aversion to x86, but I will let you think about > > this: The CPU that gives the best bang for the buck is x86 based. PPC > > systems are muchmore expensive than a comparable x86 based system. > > Where the bang is measured in MHz, perhaps. Nope. I contend that a PPC and a x86 based system of the same price, the x86 system can perform more calculations p[er unit time than the PPC based one. This can be due to a variety of factors, including the markup of having to purchase an OS with each system. It is real hard to build a bare-bones PPC system, I understand. > But that's (a) not a fair measure of "bang", and (b) the x86 lagged > for a long time in that area and the x86-supporters figured it wasn't > an important distinction, so it's not fair (but entirely consistent) > _now_ to suddenly consider that important. I agree that would be unfair, if that was what I was talking about. I do think that RISC >> CISC. This is why I am a big fan of AMD. > > Now, this may be because no one makes generic PPC based systems. Only > > really Apple makes them, and they control exactly what goes on the > > board. This may explain why PPC appears to be a better system. I doubt > > that there is much in the PPC that makes it inherently better than x86. > > Aren't there at least two generic PPC based systems? > > (Naturally, the web hates me... http://penguinppc.org/ppc64/machines.php > and http://penguinppc.org/otherhw/ list a few systems. I know the Franklin used to make them. But they were Apple clones. I don't follow the PPC market. I am very ignorant in the ways of the PPC clone market. > > Mass productio of x86 drives down the cost of them. > > Mass production of PPC systems would drive down those costs. So don't > use cost as a sole discriminator. I don't, but it is half the factor of price/performance! It cannot be discounted entirely. > > > I'd like a non-x86 system that could run a Free operating system. An > > iBook or PowerBook would look really attractive, if it was actually > > supported under Linux (the AirPort issue Gregory mentions, and the > > firewire issues). > > Well, Linus has a PPC box now. We'll see what changes. Linus has fewer issues with putting proprietary firmware blobs into the GPL's Linux kernel than those with an eye towards GPL compliance. > > All things considered, my replacement laptop will likely be x86 based. > > As far as laptops go, there's x86, PPC, and SPARC, and that's about all > I can think of. Are there others? Maybe VIA. But VIA is an x86 clone. Did Transemeta ever make it to market? Ever price a Sparc laptop? Yikes! > Any ARM laptops in production? I don't think so, but there are lots of cell phones out there. -john -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
