PC Prices Through The Ages

On Nov 4, 6:46*pm, Carnations <Beauti...@Carnations.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:54:59 -0800, AD. wrote:
> > I think you've also forgotten just how slow apps could be 15+ yrs ago -
> > eg office suites now are subjectively way faster than they were in the
> > mid 90s.
>
> Um... no.

Um.. yes.

>
> Office productivity suites perform substantially the same stuff today as they did 15 years ago, only the
> hardware is considerably more powerful.

Which has nothing to do with what I said.

>
> How economical is MS Office with resources today compared with, say, the oldest version of MS Office
> that could actually run without error on the same platform that MS Office 2003 can be installed onto?

That was not the point.

>
> If you put the two onto identical computers will the older one run substantially much faster? Most likely
> yes - because the newer version is much less efficient with hardware resources!

Putting them on identical hardware is not the point.

Office suites from 15 yrs ago ran like absolute dogs on typical PCs of
15yrs ago. Office suites from this decade haven't run anywhere near as
bad on the typical hardware of their time. Even if Office 2007 is a
step backwards compared to 2003, it would still be much better than
Office 4.3 was on a high end 386 or low end 486.

Either you weren't using that stuff back then, or you've forgotten how
bad it really was. Back then you'd get awfully familiar with each apps
splash screens, this decade those apps start in a second or so.

So if more modern apps on the typical hardware of their time still
feel faster than their equivalents did 15 yrs ago, then their extra
resource usage isn't as big a deal as you make it out to be. And
that's not even taking into account that a typical new computer was
many times more expensive back then.

And that's not even getting into just how unstable that stuff was
15yrs ago.

--
Cheers
Anton

AD.

On Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:25:19 -0800, AD. wrote:

>> Office productivity suites perform substantially the same stuff today
>> as they did 15 years ago, only the hardware is considerably more
>> powerful.
>
> Which has nothing to do with what I said.

Actually, it has everything to do with my point.


>> How economical is MS Office with resources today compared with, say,
>> the oldest version of MS Office that could actually run without error
>> on the same platform that MS Office 2003 can be installed onto?
>
> That was not the point.

It is exactly the point!


>> If you put the two onto identical computers will the older one run
>> substantially much faster? Most likely yes - because the newer version
>> is much less efficient with hardware resources!
>
> Putting them on identical hardware is not the point.

It's entirely the point because it demonstrates how grossly inefficient the newer version is.


--
"Filtering the Internet is like trying to boil the ocean"

Carnations