Sebastian Späth wrote:
> jesus X wrote:
>
>> I frequently see people with 200 MHz Pentiums (and even the occasional 486)
>> complain about Mozilla (among other apps) running slowly on their machine.
>> Ditto with people who have 16 or 32 megs of RAM. I don't mean to offend, but
>> expecting modern apps to run on hardware that is 5 years old is unreasonable.
>> Yes yes, 5 years isn't that long, but that's in the real world. In the computer
>> technology world, it IS a long time. Relating to the Internet it's FOREVER to
>> most people. When the net hit the mainstream public, it was 1995. Netscape was
>> king, Yahoo was a college dorm side project, Amazon.com wasn't even around to
>> lose money, and MS was touting Win95 and the CDROM as the future of computing.
>>
>> This is the end of 2000. We have retail CPUs running significantly in excess of
>> 1,000 MHz. In 1995, MMX technology was the latest buzzword, Intel was still
>> reeling from the FDIV bug, and 200 MHz was all you could get. 128 MB or RAM
>> costs $45 (at Pricewatch), while in 1995 you'd have to mortgage your house to
>> buy that much RAM (fitting it in your computer was another matter). HDD
>> companies are selling 80GB hard drives for $250 (Pricewatch again), while in
>> 1995 Seagate had a HUGE 9GB drive for a mere $10,000. Things have change QUITE
>> a lot.
>
>
> Yes, it is indeed a controversal statement and I don't agree with it
> (and not only because my personal computer falls into that 233 Mhz
> category :-)).
> For one thing, not everybody pays as low prices as you say. I, for
> instance, bought 128MB RAM here in Sweden and paid nearly 200$ a couple
> of months ago (25% VAT!).
>
> For the second: I don't want/need a high end computer at home. For these
> means I can use one at work or at University, but at home I need a
> computer to type letters, to read e-mail and to browse the web. So why,
> should I invest in the edge of the technology 1Ghz CPU to achieve this?
> My computer is three years old, and I am not gonna throw it away just
> for the reason that I can't type a letter anymore with it, while 10
> years ago, I'd never even had dreamed of such a fast baby. I can't type
> faster with a newer machine.
>
> The third and for me much more important argument is more of idealistic
> nature: I hate the attitude of people who consider it naturally and
> normal that programms get bigger and bigger with time, just because
> technology manufactures faster CPU's and bigger HD's.
> Heck, independent of what CPUs can achieve or how big HDs are nowadays,
> is no justification that e.g. a simple notepad program should take more
> than 30KB code.
> We could achieve a lot more with our current computers when programmers
> wouldn't say: "Why bother with optimization, in one year faster CPUs
> will have the same effect."
>
> In the end we are not talking of an high end CAD/CAM program here, we
> are talking about an everyday commodity which should be able to run in
> the background while a couple of other programs are in use.
>
> Sebastian
I whole-heartedly agree with you.
I find jesus X's attitude to be offensive!
Sure my computer is not the highest-spec'd machiene around today - I
know that - but it's not that far off! The fastest/newest CPUs are only
2 times faster than my CPU, the amount of RAM that I have is more than
adequate to record and edit large audio files AND it's not yet two years
old. Mozilla cannot run within 32megs - which was the standard amount of
RAM not even two years ago. This inability of Mozilla is it's singularly
biggest fault!
I have no intention of upgrading my computer unless I have a NEED to do
so - and reading email *hardly* counts as a NEED to spend another $2500
on a computer!
I expect this memory usage issue to be resolved, and to be resolved with
little fuss on the part of the bloat-merchants(!) if they want people to
take their software seriously.
TTFN
D.
