PC Prices Through The Ages

Interesting comparison of prices of various classic PCs in inflation-
adjusted dollars, compared to what you can buy today
<http://technologizer.com/2009/10/25/pc-prices/>.

Lawrence D'Oliveiro

In message <4aefe48e$>, vitw wrote:

> On Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:15:43 +1300, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> Interesting comparison of prices of various classic PCs in inflation-
>> adjusted dollars, compared to what you can buy today
>> <http://technologizer.com/2009/10/25/pc-prices/>.
>
> Never ceases to amaze me how, as the hardware capacity grows, the
> software developers make their code increasingly hungry so it eats up all
> that extra capacity.

Speak for proprietary software only.

On the Free Software side, you still have access to low-overhead OSes like
FreeDOS, if you want. And for a low-overhead GUI to run on top of it, how
about OpenGEM?

Lawrence D'Oliveiro

On Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:06:38 +1200, vitw wrote:

> Never ceases to amaze me how, as the hardware capacity grows, the
> software developers make their code increasingly hungry so it eats up
> all that extra capacity.

I have to say that it doesn't amaze me in the least.

Many developers aren't interested in writing fast, efficient, resource-lean code. Witness the use of such
platform-specific but resource-hungry garbage as Microsoft dot net and Microsoft Visual BASIC.

Note the number of developers who can happily produce Assembly Language code.

And note the number of applications that leak memory like sieves and can't run in less than 250mb of
RAM without paging out to the swap file!

Now I don't pretend to be a software developer, but I too have noticed the trend towards sloppy coding
with the attitude that they don't need to produce efficient code any more.


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

Carnations

vitw wrote:
> On Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:15:43 +1300, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> Interesting comparison of prices of various classic PCs in inflation-
>> adjusted dollars, compared to what you can buy today
>> <http://technologizer.com/2009/10/25/pc-prices/>.

> Never ceases to amaze me how, as the hardware capacity grows, the
> software developers make their code increasingly hungry so it eats up all
> that extra capacity.

Let me get this right...

You spend $xxxx.xx to get a computer with 8GB ram and a 750GB Hard drive....

Then you complain coz the software you installed is actually USING the
hardware that you paid for.

Something ain't right here....


If I buy a computer I want software that USES ALL the hardware capacity
it can. That's why I bought the hardware and software in the first place..


--

Replace the obvious with paradise.net to email me
Found Images
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/~mlvburke

Max Burke

On Nov 3, 10:18*pm, Carnations <Beauti...@Carnations.com> wrote:
> Many developers aren't interested in writing fast, efficient, resource-lean code. Witness the use of such
> platform-specific but resource-hungry garbage as Microsoft dot net and Microsoft Visual BASIC.
>
> Note the number of developers who can happily produce Assembly Language code.

You complain about dot net being platform specific, then sing the
praises of assembly language?

Don't confuse taking advantage of higher level languages and more
powerful libraries with sloppy coding.

Most apps today would take an order of magnitude longer to write and
debug/maintain if they were created in assembly and most would
probably never even reach a stable release.

There is no point trading away developer productivity for efficiency
when in most cases efficiency isn't a problem.

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.

--
Cheers
Anton

AD.

In message <77dd8203-5866-4e04-a01e->, AD. wrote:

> - eg office suites now are subjectively way faster than they were in
> the mid 90s.

Rather big counterexamples here
<http://www.infoworld.com/t/applications/fat-fatter-fattest-microsofts-kings-bloat-278>.

Lawrence D'Oliveiro

On Nov 4, 10:19*am, Lawrence D'Oliveiro <l...@geek-
central.gen.new_zealand> wrote:
> In message <77dd8203-5866-4e04-a01e-aafc0a1cc...@m33g2000pri.googlegroups..com>, AD. wrote:
>
> > - eg office suites now are subjectively way faster than they were in
> > the mid 90s.
>
> Rather big counterexamples here
> <http://www.infoworld.com/t/applications/fat-fatter-fattest-microsofts...>.

Not really what I was talking about. That only goes back as far as
Windows 2000 and Office 2000 which was very fast compared to stuff 5-6
yrs earlier. That test seems more about the changes that have happened
to Office 2007.

I was referring the bad old days towards the end of 16bit Windows era
eg Office 4.x 15 yrs ago. When that came out it brought most PCs to
their knees. Back then a 386 with 4MB was a common PC as the DX2 and
DX4 486s with more ram were still very expensive items. Sometimes Word
could take a minute or more to open, and even responding to mouse
clicks was visibly sluggish. It wasn't just Office either, other large
apps bogged down too eg AutoCAD R12 for Windows, Aldus Photostyler,
StarOffice etc.

--
Cheers
Anton

AD.

On Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:54:59 -0800, AD. wrote:

> You complain about dot net being platform specific, then sing the
> praises of assembly language?

Of course assembly language stuff is very much indeed CPU specific.


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

Carnations

On Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:54:59 -0800, AD. wrote:

> There is no point trading away developer productivity for efficiency
> when in most cases efficiency isn't a problem.

And that is the point - they consider their time to be more important than producing a good product!


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

Carnations

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.

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

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?

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!


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

Carnations