Hello everyone. Computers are getting more and more faster. But do you think that the general public have a need for that?:)
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Hello everyone. Computers are getting more and more faster. But do you think that the general public have a need for that?:)
Absolutely, it's called computer games.
Shure...if the public are willing to pay then they need it :) lol
alakhiyar,
Personally, I don't think it makes a difference. I can't tell you how many beautiful systems I've watched get turned into glorified paperweights. The faster the computer, the faster most users will fill it up with junk. Then piss and moan about how slow it gets.Quote:
do you think that the general public have a need for that?
I think "maintenance" is becoming an obsolete word. These days, if something doesn't work well, the mentality is to just buy a newer one. And this notion isn't just limited to computers. :rolleyes:
I think that more and more powerful machines do benefit society. Already it's allowing us to communicate over large distances using higher and higher quality mediums. From the text browsers of yesterday to the youtube of today. Do we need it? Of course not. All we need is a bit of oxygen, some food and some water every now and then. Granted with the use of technology like this becoming more and more commonplace, the ability and reality of increased monitoring (a supposed invasion of privacy) comes with it. (I say a 'supposed' invasion of privacy because in my opinion one should consider a conversation online about as private as a conversation on a busy street corner.)
If you mean the average user, then I would say not. If you are just doing transaction processing in an office or the typical things that home users do then a PIII is probably quite adequate. People just don't think fast enough and most cannot type fast enough to tell the difference between a PIII/566 and a P4/2.26GHz.Quote:
Originally Posted by alakhiyar
If you are talking servers, communications, design and development and gaming then it is a different story.
Absolutely we need faster and faster computers.
How else will users be able to keep up with all the slower,
bloated antivirus software, software patches, antispyware
software, antiphishing software, newer more secure web
browsers, and software updates? Not to mention online
multimedia content bogged down by half-baked DRM schemes.
Did I leave anything out? :(
Yes, Office Suites. They are getting pretty bloated these days and a lot of office and home users actually use them to some extent.
I preferred the old days where you installed only what you wanted, rather than the whole shooting match;)
I suspect that Vista will be a problem, as it actually seems to need a much more powerful platform than XP or 2000?
Thinking on it, if you have a machine that shipped with Millenium Edition it will run 2000 and XP, only much better.............and that box could well be 6 years old?
Anyway, there is always Linux? :D
Jeez, Nihil, how can you say Office suites are bloated? I can't even get one with a coffeemaker.
:)
More features in software = more code = need more CPU power and RAM
I would buy that if you replace "more features" with "sloppy design and coding" :DQuote:
Originally Posted by ric-o
I have conducted a few simple experiments with Office Suites and Browsers, and they don't seem to actually use that much more resources at any one point in time.
Graphics and multimedia of course, are a different issue.
Given that the "average user" (certainly in an office/institutional environment) is only using a bit of e-mail, some web based applications over their LAN/WAN, transaction processing, word processing and simple spreadsheet stuff; they don't need the processing power that is currently available, let alone any more.
A lot of the apparent "improvement" is just an artifact of "benchmarking software" and is not really noticeable in real life ;)
I remember testing a PI/166 against a PIII/733: the bootup time difference was less that 2 seconds, shutdown was about 4 seconds. Windows NT 4.0 SP6a.
There was no noticeable difference in day to day activities (Office 97 etc......) unless I provoked it by doing heavy duty Access and Excel data manipulations.
The reason we did this was to test updates, new releases, and new software to determine if we needed a hardware upgrade element in the project budget.
Thanks for every input. I think I'm getting some ideas. Advanced systems are used to do memory and speed intensive tasks like in a research. Then the general public benefits from it, such as when a research is successful. Obviously we don't need 1000TeraHz and 1Tb RAM in our PCs. There's one question to ponder here. Faster computers would have almost no buyers from the general public (what I mean is really fast computers in the next 10-15 years) since consumers would be purchasing not so advanced computers at a dirt cheap price. What is $1000 today might be $30 in the future, and it still do what we want it to do. Do you think ordinary softwares like Words can keep up in a pace that superfast computers are desirable even in the common household?
I would predict a catastrophic downturn of the computer industry if not many people are buying advanced computers. The manufacturers can make the old ones obsolete but the old ones can be kept and still be used. I don't think making the old ones obsolete is going to force the ever increasing population to buy the advanced ones because new manufacturers will emerge to take the opportunity to produce the old technology and gain from it.
Any comments?
Hmmm, you raise several issues?
1. General Public Purchasing
Anyone who does gaming and other graphics intensive stuff will tend to buy the best that they can afford. There are others who will buy stuff just to show that they can afford it, not because they need it, or even know how to use it :D
Also, take into account home networking, I predict a rapid increase in this, and some people may feel that they want at least one fast box to act as a server. At least that is how Computer World and Dixons will sell it (UK retailers folks)
Microsoft Vista...........what effect will that have? in any event we all know that MS are no slouches when it comes to marketing.
2. Pricing Considerations & Market Forces
There is a price below which it is just not worth selling stuff, and that is a lot more than $30, particularly if you have warranty and aftersales service to provide.
Institutional buyers go for minimum specifications, but General Public users looking for a bargain are more likely to go for second user stuff in my opinion. Outfits like e-bay will contribute towards this trend? There is actually a sort of inverted snobbery (bragging rights) in picking up a bargain.
3. Software Capabilities
Right now (December 2006) hardware capabilities have way outstripped "average" software packages such as office suites. This is by design, as it is always in the software vendor's interests to be as compatible with as many hardware platforms as possible.............anyways, they aren't exactly rocket science, are they? ;)
On the other hand, I see gaming and design/graphics software keeping up with hardware developments. There is still a lot of room for improvement in these areas.
4. The Future?
I do not see people coming in with "old technology" as the patents are still in force. There may be a temporary demand for secon user stuff, but that is about all I would expect :cool: