On topic: Watch, in a couple years there will be quad core smartphones.
I doubt that mobile devices will get that intense. Could computing is going to change how hardware is used becuase the majority of processing will be done in the cloud. For ultra portable computers/sub notebooks I can see them addopting low power mulitcore some time.
A $400 PC now with a C2D in it is just standard because it is cheap to make.
Yeah that makes sense to me. Still seems like a wate for the most part now.
The reason vista needs high specs is because it's a badly written piece of software - same with most games out there.
No, modern applications are made with the knowleged that computers are fast. Back in the day when every thing was done in the low level every cycel matter because of slow computing. Time was essential, now, however, the restraints are by far less. Bill Gate, the pionear of the software industry, invissioned that computers would be come faster so large code would become exceptable as more could be done, thought he was well know for being highly critial of good programming.
Faster computers can do more in given time frame than previously so more is being done today.
Still don't know what modern operating systems are doing that require so much more processing, even out of the box linux distros. Sure GUI, multitasking, multi-media, 3D applications demand more. These were new technologies and hardware addapted to use them better. For example MMX was added the intel CPU's and other instruction sets. 3D games became popular so the work load was moved from the CPU to graphics accerated hardware. MPEG-2 decoders were added to video cards to play DVD's. etc.
If you look at most embeded devices they are not using large capabilities CPU's, they use microprocessor or microcontroller. I would image this is due to cost, design and power consumpution. Embedded systems/devices are preforming more specific tasks, though they have large degrees of freedom with in that task depednign on design, rather than the desktop computer general purpose. So there inlines the concept of general computing, its general and changes, embeded systems do the same task until some thing more demadning comes along and the old devices gets replaced with a newer model.
