NetNews Offline 2/NetNews Offline Volume 2.iso/news/comp/sys/amiga/misc-part1/7792

Internet Message Format | 1996-08-05 | 3.7 KB

Path: news.hsonline.net!news
From: [e-mail] (Dan Moore)
Newsgroups: alt.2600,alt.binaries.warez.ibm-pc,alt.destroy.microsoft,alt.fan.bill-gates,alt.wired,comp.infosystems.www.browsers.ms-windows,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.misc,comp.os.ms-windows.win95.misc,comp.os.ms-windows.win95.setup,alt.sex.anal,comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.os2.misc,comp.sys.amiga.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.adventure,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.misc,comp.unix.unixware.misc
Subject: Re: Will anyone buy NT?? (Yes - Intelligent People)
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1996 11:30:21 GMT
Organization: Hoosier On-line Systems
Message-ID: <4i3neu$[e-mail]>
References: <4ef48q$[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <4ghi50$[e-mail]> <4gnp0l$[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <4i2lqg$[e-mail]>
NNTP-Posting-Host: cdial23.hsonline.net
X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.0.82

[e-mail] (Ned Kelly) wrote:

>Don't confuse computing-power/dollar with lower prices. While the price
>per meg RAM or HD space may drop, it seems the hardware requirements are
>rising faster than the power/dollar ratio! The computer prices are
>getting like the cars. Instead of dropping prices, they add enough
>features to <italics>increase</italics> the price instead! Why does
>labour on the planet gets cheaper, along with materials, yet cars are
>getting increasingly unaffordable?

Actually, cars may not be the best example because in absolute
dollars, discounting inflation, the cost of the average car has more
than doubled in the past 15 years.  If your earnings (in the US)
haven't gone up 2.5 times in the same period, then the price of the
car is a much larger portion of your income.  The engine isn't any
bigger and it doesn't really go faster and its functionality is about
the same as what it was 15 years ago.  The cars tend to last longer,
however, and people keep them 5 years instead of 3.  Since fewer cars
are being sold, prices have gone up in order to maintain car
companies' stockholders' return on equity.

Compared to cars, computer prices have gone down dramatically.  A
256K, 4.77Mhz PC with a CGA color display and no hard drive cost well
over $4,000 15 years ago.  Today, $2,500 will buy you a 133Mhz Pentium
with 16 megs of RAM, a gigabyte HD, and a hi-resolution color monitor.
15 years ago there were less than 1 million PCs in the world.  Today
there are probably 250 million.

The computer industry has been very successful in continuing to make
technological progress.  However, you are correct: it takes a lot more
resources to accomplish the same computing task today than it did 15
years ago.  Code is no longer efficient, because the average machine's
horsepower no longer reuires that we write efficient code -- we just
have to write it faster.


>Soon enough, there will end up being a chip like the DEC Alpha made by
>Intel. The DEC Alpha is roughly equal to the first Cray. (according to
>the Guinness Book of World Records) Will Winblows 9x slow it down to the
>pace of a 386SX16 running Winblows 3.1? I bet it will, and Linux will
>blow you out of your seat and into orbit. :)

>Tell me this: Do you need a Cray to edit some text?

Of course you don't, but in a few years you won't have a choice.  The
average PC will be far more powerful than the original Cray and if you
decide to go with the flow, you'll edit text with it and your prophesy
will come to pass.  But that same PC will also be able to do things
that a Cray couldn't do, especially in the graphics department.

From a strategy standpoint, it's important that the industry NOT
develop the perfect and affordable computer.  If they do, no one will
want to upgrade.