Computer Evolution

C

comphy

New Member
Hello everyone. Computers are getting more and more faster. But do you think that the general public have a need for that?
 
Depends on what you're going to do.... If you're just Joe Somebody surfing the internet, looking at posts, and reading e-mail. You will probably not take advantage of the new faster technology.

If you like to play hard-core games, or have a job where you need to process lots of information, then you ALWAYS need the newest, hottest, fastest computer out there.
 
Archangel said:
define need? People could live perfectly without pc's.. they just make life a lot easyer.
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people could "live" without computers but not with our current lifestyle, stop and think about it, how many things do we do every day that rely on a computer, and we probably do need faster and fast computers because the stuff we want to do with them is more and more intense, working with digital media can be quite demanding not to mention watching HD Tv on a computer. Then you've got games that are only getting bigger in terms of the storage space they require not to mention the graphic detail that will suck up ever ounce of computer power you have. In reality i don't think people realize how much we rely on these would saving machines.
 
AdmnPower said:
people could "live" without computers but not with our current lifestyle, stop and think about it, how many things do we do every day that rely on a computer
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hehe, not true tbh :) I cant be bothered if i cant read my mail etc, If people want to reach me,.. they usually come to me in person.

on the holliday's I usually do survival suff, wich is great fun,.. and no pc in a range of 50 kilometers or so (at least ^^ ) I dont watch much tv either.

But yes... people rely way too much on a pc. when you hear for example how bored people get when there is a long power failure..

for some reason it looks like people cant entertain themselves anymore without a pc. :o
 
well think about this, detonate an electro magnetic pulse in a small city then try to go to the bank to get some cash or go to mc donalds to buy some fast food, or even try to get gas. almost everything these days is reliant on some sort of electronic device or computer. it's scary to think about it
 
That's a point, however, I think comphy was asking about PCs in general... I for one can point to my parents... They get along very happily without using a computer. They are your typical middle-class 40+ year old parents. I still talk to them using the phone. I would be shocked if either one of them ever sent me an e-mail.
 
Yes, to a degree you need a faster computer, even for the most basic functions, such as surfing the web. I'm sure you might have trouble surfing the web with a 10 year old computer, as new websites have flashy ads and stuff.
 
They talked about this in PC Magazine not too long ago, how with the P4's the clock speeds kept getting higher, but no one really needed that speed. I do agree that now that the Core 2 Duo's are out, the performance increase is huge, and is worth it.

As for the future, we shall wait and see :)
 
Well, I used a Pentium 1 Dell, with 96MB of memory, for a year, which worked fine for surfing the Internet and playing Civilization. Websites with a lot of flash did slow the computer down, but they didnt crash it or anything.

I just managed to browse the internet, listen to music, and chat on msn at the same time.

I chuckle a bit on the Dell advert, when the guy phones saying he wants a computer for work, and they 'recommend' a Core 2 Duo.
 
comphy said:
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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The hardware is getting faster and smaller and more powerful because it has to support far more complex software. Humans have a primordial instinct to better themselves, and that feeds into every technology since the flint axe. The public don't need computers to survive, but think of all the applications that we benefit from other than a pc sitting on our desk at home. Weather forecasts, GPS navigation, Space exploration, etc. PC's help make our lives easier.
 
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?
 
MS Word is not the reason why people want fast computers. There were perfectly competent Word Processors available long before Windows was invented. But what drives the consumer pc industry more than anything else is gaming. Which brings me to my previous statement. It's software that drives the development of hardware.

One other aspect that causes people to want to have fast machines is video encoding, which with the introduction of HD, gives more work for the cpu to have to deal with. People will always be eager to cut down the time required to encode a file, twice the speed means half the time needed. By the time the encoding becomes easy for the cpu's, a newer better video format will come out which takes more time to encode. And so the cycle continues.

People will always want to do more intensive tasks, over and above basic applications, which I agree have been working fine since Windows 98.
 
The problem is that computers, once you start installing even the simplest software on them, start to slow down. Everyone is always wanting things to go faster, and to be more efficient. You will not get this apocalyptic downturn in the industry before they can affordably make a PC or a business computer that can load up the OS interface a working environment (word, excel, whatever) in under 2 - 3 seconds. That in itself will take years.

See, every time processor speeds start to catch up to the overhead presented in loading the OS, they make the OS more complex, and the processor world falls behind again... Just look around you.... no sooner than the advent of the 64 bit processor came by, Windows invents a new OS (Vista) to take advantage of the additional speed. This will be a never ending cycle... this will keep computers getting faster and faster for the foreseeable future.
 
I would buy that if you replace "more features" with "sloppy design and coding"

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.
 
comphy said:
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?
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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

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
 
what do you think:?
what gonna happen to the world and the human in the next 200years, technolog is growing every day, commputer and robot are taking the place of human and they can do evrything we want?
shall we stop producing computers?
"The future of computer software is programs and applications that think for themselves--but don't write us off the screen."Tux magazine.
 
We've come way too far and have become way too reliant on computers to ever go back to working without it. Face it computers are here to stay, and they are only going to become a bigger part of our lives... for better or for worse, that's just the way it's going to be.
 
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