Projected 'Average' Longhorn System Is A Whopper 1539
greg_barton writes "At first I thought this was a joke, but this article from Microsoft Watch confirms it: 'Microsoft is expected to recommend that the 'average' Longhorn PC feature a dual-core CPU running at 4 to 6GHz; a minimum of 2 gigs of RAM; up to a terabyte of storage; a 1 Gbit, built-in, Ethernet-wired port and an 802.11g wireless link; and a graphics processor that runs three times faster than those on the market today.'"
The estimates are OK (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see anything wrong with these specs. Next year well be in the 4 GHz range and my system today has 2 @ $150 gig memory which isn't a bunch either, Gigabit Ethernet is on ~2/3ds of the mommaboards today, Moore's law will take care of tripling the video processor over the next few years, AMD is kicking butt with their 64 bit chip so Intel will get it's 64bit ready for the masses, if you're not running 802.11g then great you can upgrade to wireless SuperG @108Mbps. When long horn comes out in ~2006 than I imagine this will be the average system. MS is making quite good estimates on the intended consumer. But then you read that a dual processor machine is on the horizon makes me wonder if LongHorn isn't targeted for desktops.
Problems ? (Score:2, Insightful)
When you're a subscriber, you get the story early, and you also get the line:
Well, Duh!
Let's see now: 1TB of storage is the thing that stands out. I've been running a dual CPU machine with 4GB of RAM for a while now, but 1 TB of storage, what the hell for ?
I've just commissioned a dual opteron 248 (2.2 GHz) , 8 GB of RAM, 1TB of disk with a 3ware 9500 raid controller (I'll post benchmarks soon if anyone's interested - I can't find any on the net but it promises 400MB/sec sequential raid-5 reads. We'll see...) This is far and away the most powerful machine I've ever ordered, and it doesn't meet the Longhorn 'average'... Something smells...
Simon
How does Microsoft Intend to Survive ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Really? Because all this time I thought that... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's why the smarter people use Firefox.
With Moore's Law (Score:3, Insightful)
LK
Re:Why is this is a big deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The estimates are OK (Score:5, Insightful)
Naked Rayburn
Re:And that will be the standard computer (Score:5, Insightful)
It probably won't be uncommon for that much RAM to be in a machine by 2008, but 1 Terabyte disk space seems a little rediculous. And longhorn is suppose to by release like early 2006 isn't it?
I'm not convinced that this article is for real.
If So, Microsoft Is Screwing Itself (Score:5, Insightful)
If these specs are correct, Microsoft is making a major tactical mistake. The computer market is driven by early adopters, but the bread-and-butter is still in the business market. The average business still has P3s running around, or even older. Even with the average upgrade cycle, but 2006 what's cutting edge now will be the average. Even with Moore's law Longhorn will require far more resources than the average business machine.
If Microsoft ships with those specs as a baseline, 2/3rds of their business customers will say now. If Microsoft demands they switch or lose support, they'll end up switching to Linux (which by then will have made significant inroads as a business desktop OS).
I can't imagine this story being true. As much as I dislike Microsoft, they're not that foolish to release an OS that most businesses can't afford to buy. Even XP can run (albeit slowly) on a two or three year old machine. If Longhorn can't run on today's machines it needs to be streamlined until it does.
Every thime they announce a new operating system.. (Score:2, Insightful)
The price in $ for a nice fast PC has fallen quite slowly, but you definitely get more for your money now....
I like running desk-top linux on hardware that never needs to use it's swap file
RG
Yup, this just more Timothy FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot is no better than Simone:
Re:Really? Because all this time I thought that... (Score:1, Insightful)
The 3ghz cpu makes some difference, but it's mostly hard drive speed. And it's certianly not ram. 256 is enough if you're just running a modern OS and Mozilla.
Re:Why is this is a big deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Right now, the average home user is probably close to a 500 mHz Celeron. The average new XP machine might within shouting distance of a 3.0 GHz P4, sure.
Thus Microsoft's estimate of the average Longhorn machine sounds plausible.
Spare a thought for the testers (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm glad I don't have that job.
* No, I don't have inside information, just experience at the software development cycle. For anything this complicated, the early development versions run too slowly.
Re:The estimates are OK (Score:5, Insightful)
Naked Rayburn
Two points (Score:5, Insightful)
Now the second point: does anyone remember all the big flap over the story that Windows 98 was going to require (gasp) 200MB of hard drive space? Who could forget... "200MB for an OS! That's ridiculous", etc. Of course, everyone forgets that at around the same time, Linux had similar HD requirements. And when XP was set to be released, bitching and moaning about the expected 1GB install (or thereabouts), when modern Linux distros installed to roughly the same size. Time marches on, and OS requirements will climb because modern OS's will be expected to do more and more hardware-taxing things. The minimum recommended specs for a modern version of Redhat would look downright bloated to just about any computer user of 3 or 4 years ago, so keep that in mind. Windows will require beefier hardware, and so will Linux. This sort of behavior is not limited strictly to Windows.
Nothing to see here, just more geek hypocrisy...
Re:Why is this is a big deal? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's nice (Score:5, Insightful)
people whined about reqs for WINDOWS 95 (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Why is this is a big deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
You have a very skewed concept of "average", good sir. Too much time on Slashdot. That might be the average system being SOLD today, as in right this second, but that's far from the average system in peoples' homes. "Average" users don't buy a new system every year, and 3.0 GHz wasn't the average when they bought systems 2, 3, 4 years ago.
Nor is there an application today that the "average user" requires that needs 3.0 GHz. The "average user" may be playing with digital photos more, but they don't require maximum Photoshop performance. Slicing their picture cropping time from 4 seconds to 2 seconds isn't worth hundreds or even a couple thousand dollars to Joe Average In Less Than Optimum Economical Times.
Re:The estimates are OK (Score:5, Insightful)
No, there's a very good reason. If your PC is made obsolete, you'll have to buy a new one, which just happens to have MS Janus(tm) DRM [slashdot.org] built in.
What are they skomin' out there in Redmond? (Score:5, Insightful)
I know we can expect hardware performance to improve substantially in the next three years, but COME ON! what are they trying to achieve here? What problems do I have with my computer that this solution is going to fix?
Ten years ago (pre-win95), if you asked me what my 5 major computing problems were, I'd have said:
1. Memory management - need a flat model with real 32 bit support
2. Standardized driver and hardware support, especially for printers.
3. Long File Names.
4. Standardized install/uninstall support.
5. Performance - hardware needs to be faster.
Well, a year or two years later, we've got all of them.
So, what are my top five today?
1. Spam
2. Viruses and Spyware
3. Every software vendor on the planet wants me to send them money every year even though I'm happy with what I've got. (See: license keys and forced registration/activiation.)
4. Tech IP (Patents).
5. Vendor lock-in.
ONE... **ONE** of those (#2) is a problem software can fix. and FOUR of them are *CAUSED* *INTENTIONALLY* by Microsoft and companies just like them.
I am not the only one who's soured on MS just because I'm tired of putting up with the crap. The corp world is moving, too.
I also think MS is in more trouble than they let on. They feel their grip on the monopoly rope slipping and rather than letting go and trusting that they can compete in an open world, they are forcing themselves to be the only player in a smaller and smaller box.
BTW, Knoppix 3.5(?) came out today. It now supports my NForce2 audio and net card correctly in the default configuration, and it makes NO demands of me beyond making me look at pictures of penguins.
Re:Why is this is a big deal? (Score:3, Insightful)
The real reason to require lots of hardware. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Repeat after me: HE NEVER SAID THAT (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd say, "you must be new," but your UID is too low.
Re:And that will be the standard computer (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but there will be demand when Microsoft tells the hardware manufacturers that the only way they will be allowed to maintain the OEM agreement is by selling machines exclusively with Longhorn installed...
Re:And that will be the standard computer (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Every thime they announce a new operating syste (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Two points (Score:4, Insightful)
You're comparing apples to zebras. The 1 gB linux install is an operating system plus a thousand applications. The 1 gB Windows install is an operating system with a handful of bundled applications.
-----
MS building OS to avoid competition and lawyers (Score:2, Insightful)
This is similar to the case of when Internet Explorer became an integral part of the operating system. Now we all know that a browser is fundamentally a separate piece of the pie, but by including the functionality of IE, MS manages to exclude as much competition as possible.
I imagine that a lot of the operating system will be functions that sweeten the GUI performance.
If the legal cases over software provision are to have any effect, they really need to lay down the separation of the development of software into distinct modules in the case where there is clear monopoly abuse.
For example, it would be possible to instruct MS to supply Longhorn with a minimal GUI (and no IE) with a published GUI API/Protocol so that other developers could easily compete with the provision of GUI related software.
Re:Two points (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And that will be the standard computer (Score:5, Insightful)
For those requirements, this machine is perfectly adequate. Sure, my Photoshop could get stuff done faster. Sure, my frame rates in my games could be higher. But fuck, for most everything I do anymore, it's perfectly acceptable.
When this machine won't keep up with the games I want to play, or the programs I need to work with, then I'll pony up for a new one.
Most folks I work with/for are still on Pentium II or III machines, with 256MB of RAM being "a TON of memory, dude!"
Re:And that will be the standard computer (Score:5, Insightful)
Most office computer users are bean-counters, secretaries, powerpoint-using middle managers, etc. These people do NOT need 3D graphics, 4G of RAM, or 3 GHz CPUs. What's more, their companies are not going to give them this hardware just because MS's latest OS recommends it. Intel and MS are already having severe problems with their quarterly results because businesses are now extending their computer upgrade cycles from the customary 3 years to 5 years or more, despite Wintel's desperate cries of how much "productivity" they're losing by not equipping secretaries with 3 GHz processors so they can run Word faster. Businesses, which drive a huge portion of computer sales (probably the largest portion), have finally wised up to the fact that they don't need to change computers so often, and unless Intel/MS make some changes to their business models which until now have depended on frequent upgrades (expanding into China is one tactic, though it's not working so well for MS because of piracy), they're going to be hurting.
Two words: (Score:3, Insightful)
Trust me, you can never -- never -- have enough RAM, disk, or CPU when doing this. And people need to do this; home movies/videos are painfully boring unless chopped down to the interesting bits.
(I just dread the period we'll inevitably go through with video editing analogous to the DTP (remember DTP?) "use all the fonts!" era. It'll be the same thing, only 100 times as annoying.)
Re:Why is this is a big deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the cost of the hardware came down too much, you might notice that you are paying a huge chunk of the price to Microsoft. Keep the cost of the hardware high and Microsoft's cut gets lost in the static.
Re:The fatal flaw in this reasoning (Score:3, Insightful)
In all honesty, if windows 98 could now(maybe with the latest unofficial SP) be shipped in a secure way, that played modern games somewhat well, it would likely never need to be replaced...
I mean, security aside, the ONLY reason people upgraded their home machines from 98se was newer machines, promises of better security(that XP did bring, not ME though), etc.
98se with stability improvements and bugfixes(both huge tasks, but a third edition could have been it) could have been the last OS home machines needed.
Heck, 2000 was, in most ways, the last OS business es needed.
Re:How does Microsoft Intend to Survive ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Simple. DRM in BIOSes at the hardware level. Attacks on Linux via SCO etc at the OS level. FUD, loathing, and lock-in at the applications level. Patents, DRM, EULAs and DMCA at the legal level.
Remember the hidden APIs in Windows 3.x? They'll be at it again. Even better, Microsoft could put in "Trusted Computing safeguards" so they can Trust that only Microsoft's applications suite, IDE, etc will run. Bypass these safeguards, and it's charges under the DMCA and 20 years in max security prison as an evil godless communist hippie software pirate terrorist hacker for you, buddy!
Oh, and meanwhile they'll sue you for breaking the clause buried in the Longhorn EULA where you agree to only install Microsoft applications. Good luck in fighting off their army of rabid jackals with law degrees.
> People, Businesses, Universities, and others will not be able to afford to upgrade their systems to use Longhorn.
Can they afford not to? Since Office Longhorn will (because of Trusted Computing again) only run on Windows Longhorn, and will have incompatible file formats with any previous version, and after a certain date they'll only ship Longhorn, once you buy one new machine, you have to replace them all. (They've done it before, remember?) Intel, AMD, NVidia, and ATi, among others, will love them for forcing the installation of the latest CPUs and graphics cards even in the office. Intel and AMD, in particular, will be ecstatic to add the "features" to their CPUs that will help Microsoft to do all this.
Over the last few years, it's seemed Microsoft has this plan: Make consumers believe that lock-ups and crashes are normal consequences of owning a computer and not a result of poor OS design. Make them believe that viruses and other malware are normal consequences of surfing the internet and not a result of poor browser design. Make them believe that you really do need a 2 GHz chip to run the OS and a word processor (plus a top of the line graphics card for that paperclip). Make them believe that the only thing that can replace Windows, Office or Microsoft anything else is the next version, that nothing else is an "enterprise ready solution". In short, take credit for everything good that happens, and shift blame for everything bad onto something else.
And we here on
Maybe that's the clearest sign that Micros~1 has won.
Microsoft Windows Longhorn. Projected Release Date: 1984.
JonKatz (Score:5, Insightful)
Since when has that man ever been bringer of exacting knowledge?
Re:Two words: (Score:3, Insightful)
Video editing.
Trust me, you can never -- never -- have enough RAM, disk, or CPU when doing this. And people need to do this; home movies/videos are painfully boring unless chopped down to the interesting bits.
And video editors use what? MacOS. Or maybe Linux, like IL&M. But who's going to buy a super-powerful computer to run Longhorn, dammit, to do video editing? In 2006 (more like 2008), I expect Macs to be even more better at video stuff.
Lets talk about the meaning of AVERAGE (Score:4, Insightful)
You are out of your mind.
I don't dispute that those stats will exist, but I strongly dispute the assertion that the average person will feel the need to have a computer with them. We're not talking the average
Re:CPU clock speed growth seems to be slowing (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do you think a 1.4Ghz Opteron beats a 2.8Ghz P4 in many benchmarks?
Re:The estimates are OK (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The estimates are OK (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously, more powerful computers means the ability to do more than what the average user can do today. And then the average user will want to do those things.
Re:And that will be the standard computer (Score:5, Insightful)
What I want. (Score:5, Insightful)
If I go nuts and decide to open every program on my machine, or listen to my whole mp3 collection at the same time, while lens flaring every photo I've ever taken, I don't want to wait. Ever.
I may be using extreme examples, but the OS should be instant. I'm still amazed at what BeOS can do on 233 pentium. Why can't today's Windows do that? Why won't tomorrow's? Why does it take 20 minutes to copy a 14 meg file on my OS X machine.
Instant. Now. I want it now, and I want it yesterday. Specs be dammed.
Re:The estimates are OK (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, the point is more like: what does this new OS offer me that has this spec as a must, a.k.a. I can't get it with a different OS for a significantly lower spec? Software has been stagnating lately - and it's not even using the full power of the current average hardware. It's not like you're currently constrained to fit everything in 64k of memory and use CP/M off a floppy. The horsepower is there, only mostly idle.
Besides, with current technology this spec is hilarious - water cooling systems will have a hard time keeping the whole thing radiating below the visible spectrum, unless it's idle. And summers would be very hot this way in 100+ offices. I'm not saying a future computer exceeding those specs is impossible - far from it. But it will require a qualitative change in technology and that isn't likely to happen before Longhorn.
This story is a "whopper" (Score:2, Insightful)
"developer sources close to the company"
So if the author article defines "developer" and "close" as loosely as she did "source", this little tidbit of minimum specification could could have come from pretty much anywhere.
It's worthless anti-MS FUD like this, backed up by absolutely no journalistic integrity that tarnishes the image of slashdot.
Re:The estimates are OK (Score:3, Insightful)
In three years (2007), I can easily see this as a high-end machine. If that's when Longhorn launches, those machines will be bundled with Longhorn. Most copies of Windows, remember, are bundled with new computers. If it's 2008, I can see this as an AVERAGE computer at launch. It's simply the bastard version of Moore's Law (Actual Moore's Law deals with transistor density... Bastard Moore's law is the 'double in speed' one) in action.
If these were the minimum specs, I could see being outraged, but this is just an attempt by Microsoft to gauge the average computer it's going to ship with...
Re:Microsoft didn't tie IE to the "kernel" (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Two points (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason for the hyperbole is that the *original* announced release date was 2004. Then it became 2005...then 2006...then 2007 was "possible". While I'm sure they're working very hard on very new stuff (unlike XP), it doesn't change the fact that they announced wayyyyyyy early, a classic Microsoft tactic. After all, why switch away from a MS platform when they'll have New And Better features Real Soon Now?
Contrast with Linux distros with a 6-12 month cycle and few "really new" features, or Apple with a 9-18 month cycle and announcements only 3-6 months in advance.
Microsoft can say, basically, "In 2-3 years, we will be better than everything that's out now." And they're probably right. It's a kind of monopolistic complacency. They don't have to compete for marketshare, but they have to retain mindshare. I won't say that Linux distros or Apple can't compete on that level, but they certainly aren't.
Apple's way of keeping things secret until they're available is a great way to create rumor and spectacle and popularity among users, but it doesn't serve to make their platform attractive for long-term development.
Re:Two words: (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, of course there's always going to be applications to take advantage of the highest-performance computing technology available. We aren't seeing ever-more-powerful Beowulf clusters and compute farms popping up for no reason. The scientific community can always use more cycles for better simulations, and the Hollywood people can always use them for better FX (of course, neither of these groups use Windows either). Certain engineering jobs require fast CPUs too for simulations, and others require advanced 3D graphics for modelling.
But none of these people are home users confined to a $2000 budget for a computer (or better yet, sub-$1k).
Gamers who can't stand anything less than 100fps also "need" high performance machines. However, just because some small groups of people with specialized needs or wants exist doesn't mean there's going to be a huge market for giant hard drives and 6 GHz CPUs. Are so many Joe Sixpacks going to rush to BestBuy just so they can get one of these super-fast machines so they can edit their home videos faster? I really doubt it.
The upgrade cycle is slowing, and most people who want computers have them now. I think this is going to cause the drive for ever-increasing specs to slow.
Lastly, why would an OS need all this power? The OS isn't supposed to gobble up all the machine's resources, because then you can't run these power-hungry apps.
Re:And that will be the standard computer (Score:2, Insightful)
And I half think they are correct.
Add in some of the UI improvements that are likely to come down the pike (verbal control, facial recognition, a computer generated face on your computer screen to interact with, etc) and the video card requirements (think real time near photo quality rendering) become more sane. The hard drive is required for the media storage, and the processor is needed for the human interaction, video encoding (though this will likely be handled by special hardware, likely in the video card), etc. I can't figure what the need for so much RAM is, though it could be to have an exceptionally large disk cache as the OS and apps will be very real time oriented and thus more heavily affected by swapping to disk. And of course the networking is to transfer large media streams to all the network connected media devices, etc, and wireless is central to Microsoft's pervasive computing initiatives (see research.microsoft.com).
So, yeah, I see the OS driving a demand for these machines.
Of course, I also see Microsoft releasing a lower end OS for the rest of the world.
Re:CPU clock speed growth seems to be slowing (Score:3, Insightful)
1995: 133 Mhz
1998: 400 Mhz (200% faster)
2000: 1500 Mhz (233% faster)
2002: 2800 Mhz (90% faster)
2004: 3400 Mhz (20% faster)
Also, you're not top of the line with 3.4Ghz. With 4Ghz the numbers are better, but yeah, Motorola's not the only company with some Moore's Law problems.
Re:Really? Because all this time I thought that... (Score:2, Insightful)
Internet Explorer 5.2 -- 5 seconds
Firefox 0.8 -- 6 seconds
Safari 1.2.1 -- 11 seconds
What does this tell me? More or less nothing, because, in the first place, I only start a browser once a day, if that. In the second, Firefox has bugs and IE just doesn't do tabs. So, frankly, load time isn't important.
And while I was at it, I made them all display a series of miscelaneous sites. Safari shaves seconds off the time the other two take. So I guess load time REALLY DOESN'T MATTER.
"Forced" Hardware upgrade? (Score:5, Insightful)
MS is a bit conservative about this... (Score:2, Insightful)
Moore's law predicts approx. double every 18 months, nowadays we are looking at avg 2~4GHz CPUs, so by 2007, it should be avg. 8~16GHz.
800GB harddisks shall have the price of today's 200GB.
But then, what is that pair of 16GHz CPUs doing during that whole 1 minute boot? Trying to detect non-existance plug and play hardware? Scanning and analysing your harddisk for traces of evidents of using privated MS software/childpron/linux distros? Uploading your My Documents folder to the MS CRM server for analysis for better-customer-support? Waiting to get authorization-to-use(tm) from the forever-under-DDOS Microsoft server?
Re:And that will be the standard computer (Score:1, Insightful)
People who do this refer to themselves as beta testers, irrespective of the actual level the software is at.
This goes back a longgg time.
I mean, when was the last time you heard someone refer to themselves as an alpha tester? Sure, it might happen... but it is nowhere near as common as "beta tester"
Re:right... wheres my usb toaster? (Score:2, Insightful)
~20megabits/second would fill a 1TB disk in under a week (4.6 days).
If computers become media centers, then 1 TB media center would be fairly stifling (compared to my 300 hour Tivo).
Gigabit ethernet is similarly explained. If you want a couple video feeds to coexist, 100mbit won't cut it.
Multiple cpus is a no brainer. CPUs are running out of steam; the road to better performance is multiple cpus. It's inevitable, and 5GHz is really a very modest increase in clockspeed over today.
Save your post and reread it in 4 years and feel a bit embarassed!
Re:Really? Because all this time I thought that... (Score:2, Insightful)
Because most of us dont want to settle to restarting an App every day or reformating every month. We don't want cheap windows workarounds, we want software that works.
Re:The estimates are OK (Score:3, Insightful)
It's my property, and why shouldn't I have the ability to protect it? After all, you're driving something that is designed to have stuff in it. Next thing you know, you'll have my stuff in it. I'm only looking out for my property rights.
well, you know.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Video Editing (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The estimates are OK (Score:3, Insightful)
That's right, copyright holders shouldn't have the ability to control what I do with their works post-sale. I have no issues with busting people for download copywritten songs, movies, whatever. I specifically don't want the media companies deciding under what circumstances I watch the media I have bought. A number of the open source projects I use every day (like mplayer, xine, mythtv) would be severely crippled or simply impossible with strong hardware/software DRM. That's why I oppose it.
Re:doesn't matter whether he said it... (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh yes? Which "popular press"? Or do you mean, like everyone else, that you've heard it was "reported in the popular press of the time"? Don't you think that in all the years that this sily statement has been going around that someone might produce an actual citation? NO ONE EVER HAS. It comes up at Slashdot often enough. How many tens of thousands of geeks read this -- if any one had the ability and desire to prove this, some reader here would.
Re:And that will be the standard computer (Score:3, Insightful)
So, if in 2006 (or maybe 2007 when companies start releasing all their PC's with Longhorn) the PC makers only sell PC's with 2GB RAM and a terrabyte of space, that's what businesses will buy.
They won't NEED it to do word processing, but they WILL need it if they want to keep using Microsoft.
I'm sure MS will have some "gotcha" in Longhorn that will make it difficult to avoid. They will probably stop releasing versions of Office and their other products that run on older windows. Kinda like how Office 2003 won't run on 98 and you can't buy Office XP anymore.
Gosh, you gotta love a good monopoly...
Re:Two words: (Score:4, Insightful)
For the past several technology cycles, I've adhered to a policy of not letting *anything* drive me to spend more than $400-$800 on any new computer. I have no regrets whatever. This seems to be the sweet spot for my uses, which are notably more rigorous than the average office worker, but not so cutting edge that I'm paying through the nose for a bunch of unreliable bleeding edge fluff. (The stability benefit of riding back a bit on the wave is an often overlooked bennie to this option.)
I'm sure lots of PC snobs will be happy to let us all know how they *require* a Longhorn-spec system, but realistically, I haven't been able to tell any diference in CPU speeds since about 500-600 MHz (especially if you go with the lighter XP Home, which doesn't have all the heavyweight crap that has no value anyway if you use samba rather than MS servers.) XP is memory hungry, though: 256 MB is pretty much a bottom end minimum due to its wasteful ways, and more sure helps. (Being a user of the equally bloated Mozilla doesn't help this any...)
The power available/power used curve is just *way* out of hand now, though: even with my "cheapo" systems, I have more cycles, RAM, and disk sitting in my office than my first employer (a very large aerospace subcrontractor) had across the entire company when I graduated in 1985. Listen, people: that means it's really possible to run an entire multi-billion dollar business (including serious apps such as database/ERP and 3D CAD/CAM systems) off a few sub-kilobuck PCs. For those of you too young to remember, there's really not much that gets done in Excel that couldn't have been done in Lotus 1-2-3 back then. We're burning all these cycles on the user interface, and it's not even a particularly good one! To put this in perspective, I called a hardware vendor today to try to order the really slick little 1 GHz laptop they introduced a few months ago. "Bangalore Bob" was all to happy to tell me that, "Oh, no, a 1GHz CPU is much too slow for real working. We cannot be selling them anymore..." Maybe I'm just getting to be a curmudgeon, but I think that instead, things really *have* gone off in the weeds, and the industry is desperately trying every trick they have to convince us that every single desktop needs systems more powerful in every way than the fastest high-end workstations or even mainframes of just a few years ago. I call, "B.S.!"
Re:The fatal flaw in this reasoning (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What I want. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Really? Because all this time I thought that... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't disagree with your point, I'm just feeding...
Most of us means
However, with CAP H....
The reality is that you do drive a car that requires oil change every 3000 miles or the dirt will kill it. Engine rebuild every 70,000 miles. AKA, VW Aircooled engine circa 1969.
Computers still have a LONG wan to go, horn or not.
Regardless of what the 'average jo/joe' user wants he/she either deals with the (current++) reality or not. Not == moves on to something else (other than computers; GOTO ELSE).
Re:Oh shit, oh shit... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, it's nice to drag the bottom end along to a higher standard... but the thing you overlook is that, many times, even the top end doesn't need that standard.
In my shop, I've got 50 odd machines, and 43 of them are toasters. The users use exactly 3 applications - internal email (no internet); a custom app that lets them answer the phone and transcribe info from a caller; and a custom app that lets them manage the results of that call. And, oh yeah... 3 of that 43 will occasionally make a spreadsheet, consisting entirely of static cells.
That's it. That's all they do, and that's all they WILL do. We don't want added complexity - literally, people can die if our stuff screws up. And quite frankly, a 486 is overkill for this.
Instead, I'm being force-fed a piece of crap that's so complex, noone can manage it. The first 12 hours of box's life will be me, uninstalling AOL, MSN, OE, Media Player, and all the other crap that is nothing more than an exploit vector if I'm lucky. How I spent my past week? $35k for a rack mounted box, no keyboard or video... and it has Solitare on it. It has IE on it. It has a cute little wizard that'll help me setup MSN as my dialup ISP. This, in a quad-homed box that'll have 3 fractional DS3s on it. Yep, the inclusion of NetMeeting on this thing really made my day, and thank god OE keeps getting reinstalled every time I patch.
So... no, sir... the potential "new development" argument doesn't fly. It is rarely appropriate, and it is pretty much responsible for the bulk of the MS exploits running around today. Unknown, unneeded, and therefore unmanaged features that are not needed by that specific install. Look at the exploits running around, look at who keeps "catching" them and why... it's all caused by these "new developments" being force-fed in an environment where these developments are *not* appropriate, and in fact not needed. I had to patch against a MIDI file exploit, on a rack mounted box with no sound card. Huh??!! Then consider that I had to patch my neighbor's box against Sasser... a box that has only a single NIC connected to a cable modem. No file sharing, etc, is needed by that user... and the user doesn't want it. Yet, we still have to manage it, even though it has no business existing in that install. You'll find that the bulk of the Sasser victims are a similar case, and this case is caused by unwanted, unknown, and therefore unmanaged features.
Consider how irrelevent most firewalls would be if this were NOT the case.
Speed is not simply a function of MHz!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Mhz to MHz comparisons are only valid within the same generation of CPU
You ignore the changes in chip generations. A Pentium I chip @ 75Mhz is FASTER than a 486 chip running @ 75mhz. An alpha EV56 is faster than an EV5 at the same clock frequency.
Just look at AMD vs Intel if you want a current example of how clock speed isn't the only factor.
Moore's law deals with the overall speed of the processor NOT the clock frequency.
Re:The fatal flaw in this reasoning (Score:2, Insightful)
Ummm, no. When a game on the scale of Vice City can run and look like the D3 screenshots, then maybe you'd have a point. But my understanding is that the D3 can only have a handful of baddies on the screen before it gets unplayable. And even then, that looks nothing like real life. Obviously games will need to look different than real-life--who wants to shoot (seemingly) real people? But regardless, games still have a long way to go until it reaches the point where the graphics are 100% mature.
Nothing you can do to a word processor will require more processing power than a current "average" machine offers.
Fair enough: I certainly don't need dual processors to write a letter to my grandma. But more computational power will open up more possibilities: voice-to-text that doesn't suck; real-time (as in >24 Hz) internet video chat; advanced data-mining; etc. I mean, if we're shooting for pure bare-bones functionality, bust our your 486s, cuz that worked fine for me.
It is a good point that there is a lag in software catching up to hardware, but it will catch up. For the past year, my 9700 Pro has basically been able to handle with ease any and all games thrown at it. But soon, with HL2, D3, and so on, it's really gonna start to chug. Another example: think of how long it takes to transfer files from a floppy to your HDD. Now think of how long it takes to rip a CD. Wouldn't you be willing to pay a pretty penny to make those two times equivalent?
Re:JonKatz (Score:2, Insightful)
Katz is a feature writer as oposed to standard journalist. Theres not really the same sort of expectations working there. Truth's a little more subjective, the opinion is eleveated, and flowery language is an asset.
Sure he wasnt always writing he-said she-said reverse pyramid journo-drone, but he had something to say.
I have a suspicion that he touched too sore a nerdy nerve on his hellmouth series, and eventually became the target of the verry bullying he was trying to fight against.
Re:Not Trolling, jes askin' Why All this Power? (Score:3, Insightful)
If these requirements are really used, it'll be to support the huge DRM encryption and decryption lock-ins at all levels of the computer hardware. This makes things like DVD's and CD's lower cost on Windows. But If everything is encrypted, your data will be locked in as well and you'll be glad to pay whatever "protection fee" MS markets (in the form of service plans and OS upgrades) because you'll have no other way to get use your own data.
Re:Not affordable for businesses (Score:3, Insightful)
You can run XP on a slow CPU. Performance is much more dependant on:
- Non crappy graphics (with a good driver)
- Enough memory (at least 256M)
The grandparent is not flamebait. It is a valid comment. I ran Whistler (XP Beta) on my Celeron 233 with 192M of memory for years.
I ran Windows 98 on a Pentium 75 system with 32M of memory. It ran OK (not great, but it was usable).
Remember, XP runs like crap if:
- You don't have enough memory
- Your graphics card/drivers are crap
That's why you should always get a system with an ATI/NVIDIA graphics card (chip). It is unbelieveable how much faster the 4MB ATI Rage in my notebook is than the "Intel Integrated" graphics in my friend's (much newer) notebook (note, this is for 2D, not 3D - the Rage sucks in 3D, not that the Intel doesn't).
Hardware vendors need that, that's why (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:And that will be the standard computer (Score:2, Insightful)
That's not so dumb, underneath it all. It will get to the point where in order to get something done, it will be figured out how to 'trick' the universe into doing things like this.
I mean, there's already been a mathematician or two who've done mathematical proofs (or at least theorems or somesuch, I'm not a mathematician) that warp travel ala Star Trek is possible - the ship is still doing less than light speed inside a warp bubble. As far as the universe would be concerned, that ship hasn't broken any rules of physics.
OS X... (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, MacOS X 10.3 currently has most of the things Microsoft is promising with Longhorn (e.g., hardware accelerated GUI), and my Powerbook "only " has a 1GHz processor, 256MB of RAM, and 30 GB HD space...
What dose it need it for? (Score:2, Insightful)
Nothing used in the office or Internet today needs such power.
So why dose Longhorn need so much processing power? Obveously those requirements are not for the apps. Most of that is needed by the OS itself.
So what is planned for Longhorn that it needs such resources?
And more importantly....
Can we do it in Linux TODAY?
What I'm saying is that's a lot of features and I'm sure there are a lot of potental Linux projects in that. If Microsoft is going to tell us what Longhorn will be doing years from now maybe we could recreate those features in Linux TODAY as sepret projects.
(Of course you couldn't install them ALL at once but if you had only what you wanted installed you wouldn't need anywhere near as much as Longhorn will)
Re:And that will be the standard computer (Score:1, Insightful)
As for chip-to-chip interconnects, many modern busses operate with multiple bits "in flight" on a single PCB trace because the trace is longer than the wavelength. For example, IBM's "Elastic IO" FSB for the PowerPC 970, which runs at 1 GHz in the top of the line PowerMac G5. Hypertransport too.
It's not the end of the world when delay issues like these crop up, it just makes the designs harder.
OK, Fine: He Just Built It That Way (Score:3, Insightful)
But that's how it is with a monopoly: one man screws up, and everybody suffers.
Re:Not Trolling, jes askin' Why All this Power? (Score:5, Insightful)
Autonomic Computing
It's been the policy of some Operating Systems (FreeBSD and OS X, for example) for a while to use 100% of your RAM, on the basis that if it's not in use then it's wasted. The operating systems will speculatively cache anything that look potentially useful on the disk, and will over-allocate RAM to existing processes (at least in the case of OS X. Not sure about FreeBSD) so that malloc calls will return quickly.
Autonomic computing takes this even further, and says that the CPU should be in 100% use at all times. If it's not in use by applications then it should be indexing files, and predicting things the user might want to do in the future.
Re:Really? Because all this time I thought that... (Score:3, Insightful)
It sounds a bit outrageous today (Score:2, Insightful)
The bottom system today which I purchase for my company, for $399 Canadian Dollars ($270 US roughly) comes with an 80GB HD at 7200 RPM.
So think in terms of how *fast* computing power grows and how equally fast its price falls. By 2007 I'm thinking most of us will be running and coding for 64Bit systems.
I have Run WinXP on much much less power than MS recommended. You have to understand that Microsoft will try to take advantage of whatever they can, so if they think that a terabyte of storage will be standard by 2007, they will put that as the recommended space for Longhorn.
The concern should not lie on how much power Longhorn will require 3 to 4 years from now, the concern should be: how much better will it really be?
Re:And that will be the standard computer (Score:2, Insightful)
My greatest hope is that all the top hardware manufacturers see dwindling sales (and dollars) in the future if they adopt Microsoft's specs for Longhorn PCs and collectively tell Microsoft "Fuck you!" That would make my millenium.
Let's look at these one at a time (Score:3, Insightful)
The only CPU roadmap that even shows these, let alone within the next 2-3 years, is the PowerPC. With the Xbox2 going PowerPC, and
running at 4 to 6GHz
We'll have CPUs at this speed on the desktop, but not laptops. And the desktop CPUs with these chips are going to suck massive power and need massive cooling solutions. Yikes.
a minimum of 2 gigs of RAM
RAM quantity has been slowing down. Dell still ships 256MB in most of their PCs. 2 GB is an 8x increase. The trouble here is that massive increases at these levels don't scale nearly as nicely as increases did in the past. At these levels, there are noticible power consumption increases from adding more memory. And memory prices have leveled off, with price hikes expected. We'll need to see some pretty drastic price decreases for 2GB to be the norm.
up to a terabyte of storage
Believable. Backing it all up will still be an issue.
a 1 Gbit, built-in, Ethernet-wired port and an 802.11g wireless link
Believable.
a graphics processor that runs three times faster than those on the market today.
No, sorry. ~35% of all PCs still ship with motherboard graphics that aren't even to the level of a GeForce 2 (e.g. no hardware T&L pipeline). Maybe the specs mean 3x the power of one of these? But if we're talking 3x a Radeon 9800, then no, it won't happen. We're getting huge boosts in graphics card power with the new offerings from ATI and nVidia, but at the same time the power consumption and cooling problems are increasing TREMENDOUSLY (i.e. you need a 480W power supply to use the new nVidia cards). These are not consumer level cards. None of these cards are anywhere near suitable for a laptop either, which is where the market is moving.
Pipelining negates the problem with c (Score:3, Insightful)
> 6 GHz --> 0.17 ns per cycle. Light travels 5 cm (about two inches) in 0.17 ns, and information
> cannot travel faster than light. This means that even at the speed of light (electrical signals in
> typical electronics propogate at ~0.8 c, IIRC) it will take almost the entire clock cycle to get
> information across the chip, never mind whatever time it takes the transistors to respond.
Pipelining is a well-understood technique that was introduced to the x86 world with the 80486 processor (that's the one that was a generation before the Pentium for you new folk). The idea is that each stage of the pipeline acts as a dedicated, specialized processor with limited functionality that hands off its results to the next stage. It is analogous to the Assembly Line, where each worker has a specialized task and hands off each in-progress product to the next worker in the chain.
The key here is that the electrons only have to pass through *each stage* in a single cycle. If your cpu is 4cm across, then the electrical signals (according to your number) would take 0.17ns to cross it. But if the cpu were separated into ten stages, then the signals would only need to traverse 0.4cm during each cycle.
Naturally, the tradeoff is that when you increase the number of stages, then the number of cycles that each instruction needs to complete increases, so you get penalties from erroneous predictions and cache misses and the like.
So your 6GHz limit only applies if your cpu is a one stage processor. Most consumer desktop processors have ten to fifteen stages. The Pentium 4, depending on how you count it, has as many as twenty-eight stages.
> In the meantime, those nursing dreams of 100 GHz chips had better look beyond nanotech to
> picotech-- atom-sized transistors.
I don't think that I disagree here, despite my above comments. To do these frequencies without a dramatic decrease in transistor sizes would require an absolutely obscene level of pipelining, to the point that performance would take massive hits and operating temperatures would be quite Venusian.
--
-JC
coder
http://www.jc-news.com/parse.cgi?coding/main
Re:And that will be the standard computer (Score:1, Insightful)
It's worked fine for 3 years and I see no reason to spend $2k of my company's money on a new one.
But the sad part is that many middle/upper-managers will have the very latest laptops (at least from what I've seen of my company) because they equate their laptop to their office size to their BMW 7-series to their vacation home... you're a loser if you have a 2 year old laptop and you're a manager... what's wrong w/ you that your company doesn't get you the latest and greatest?
and my favorite "What will the customer think if you show up with old technology!"...
Heaven forbid the customer should see that I can amortize an investment and continue to use perfectly good technology until it has broken or actually become dated. Wouldn't want them to know that we save money...
Frankly I wonder how serious our sales guys are taken by the customer when they show up in BMW's, w/ brand new laptops, expensive suits, bleeding edge cell phones and PDAs and then take them out for a $75/person dinner... and then say "we can't go any lower on the price". No kidding you can't... maybe that's because you look like you're getting paid $250k/yr to sell a couple of a freakin' widgets.
Re:doesn't matter whether he said it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Video Editing (Score:3, Insightful)