3 ms·

I think it will be interesting to see how many of them are willing to put their money where their mouth is and plunk down $1000-2000 for an email/Internet resea

by henning 19y ago

I think it will be interesting to see how many of them are willing to put their money where their mouth is and plunk down $1000-2000 for an email/Internet research/word processing machine. Are we in fact entering circumstances where it's believed you need a Core 2 Duo machine with 1-2 GB RAM to run Word, Excel, and a web browser? (I'm assuming most students aren't running or writing finite element codes, simulations, and other computationally intensive programs where more cores and more clock speed gives you huge gains.)

stcredzero 19y ago
Games, tunes, videos. Though you could do these on much less hardware!
- henning 19y ago
  In the case of Apple products, looking cool in the quad or the food court factors in as well.
omouse 19y ago
We've already been at that point. No one really needs more than a 300Mhz for email, word processing, etc. The OLPC is 433Mhz and it's good enough for that. My god, you could use a 5Mhz computer to do spreadsheet stuff. A graphing calculator has more power than some of the older computers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Texas_Instruments_Graphing_Calculators http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Texas_Instruments... The whole software industry is really messed up when we're forcing people to upgrade to do the same things they've always been doing.
- deleted 19y ago
  [deleted]
- jgrahamc 19y ago
  I'm pretty glad to have the second core hanging around in my MBP. It didn't cost me much to have, but when I was working on this project: http://www.jgc.org/blog/2008/02/tonight-im-going-to-write-myself-aston.html http://www.jgc.org/blog/2008/02/tonight-im-going-to-write-my... I was able to continue all my normal tasks while one core did all the processing work.
apathy 19y ago
I'm assuming most students aren't running or writing finite element codes, simulations, and other computationally intensive programs where more cores and more clock speed gives you huge gains That's what quad Opteron servers and screen sessions are for, anyhow. An iPhone would provide all the power I need for statistical methodology development (for genome-wide association studies) if I could use effectively use vim on it. I'm thinking of moving up to an EC2 instance or 20 when the Opteron box gets too slow and I figure out how to use the parallel MLEM approach to missing data more effectively. Again, if I could just get a decent keyboard for an iPhone, I'd probably sell my ThinkPad and just use Putty from the windoze boxes at work, and my wife's iPhone (or buy one of my own, since she's always pecking on it now) at home. (Aside: if you're looking to turn a mild-mannered, fashion-conscious, professional woman into a hardcore Internet addict, buy her an iPhone. Now she's complaining that she can't make videos on it and post them to YouTube) The client-side OS is really kind of irrelevant, I don't care whether I'm in Linux or OS X or... well, I do hate Windows, but that's mostly because it gets in the way.
trekker7 19y ago
The customer pain for college students isn't just that they need a machine to crunch numbers or browse the Web... they also have the pain of wanting to be cool, hip, and trendy.
jgrahamc 19y ago
I think jwz's "How will this software get me laid?" question applies (albeit to hardware): http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html So, for $1,000 to $2,000 I get a really cool computer and an increased chance of getting laid. I'd like to see Dell fight that value proposition.
- Alex3917 19y ago
  Future Apple commercial: A hot girl sitting in the grass in a park with a laptop, and guys going over and wanting to touch the laptop and ignoring the girl.
- mattmaroon 19y ago
  I thought only cars got you laid. And I believed even that so little that I bought an SUV.
- hollerith 19y ago
  The argument that buying Mac will help you get laid is flimsy. It is not based on anything worthy of the name "data". The average college student is better off spending $150 for an old PC, putting Linux on it, and spending the other $850 to $1,850 on hookers if he is unsatisfied with his sex life. This seems pretty obvious to me, and I would think would be obvious to anyone else who stopped watching TV (and hence TV commercials) and listening to the radio (and hence radio commercials) as long ago as I did (about 16 years ago).

by henning 19y ago

stcredzero 19y ago

Games, tunes, videos. Though you could do these on much less hardware!

henning 19y ago
In the case of Apple products, looking cool in the quad or the food court factors in as well.

omouse 19y ago

We've already been at that point. No one really needs more than a 300Mhz for email, word processing, etc. The OLPC is 433Mhz and it's good enough for that. My god, you could use a 5Mhz computer to do spreadsheet stuff. A graphing calculator has more power than some of the older computers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Texas_Instruments_Graphing_Calculators http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Texas_Instruments... The whole software industry is really messed up when we're forcing people to upgrade to do the same things they've always been doing.

deleted 19y ago
[deleted]
jgrahamc 19y ago
I'm pretty glad to have the second core hanging around in my MBP. It didn't cost me much to have, but when I was working on this project: http://www.jgc.org/blog/2008/02/tonight-im-going-to-write-myself-aston.html http://www.jgc.org/blog/2008/02/tonight-im-going-to-write-my... I was able to continue all my normal tasks while one core did all the processing work.

apathy 19y ago

I'm assuming most students aren't running or writing finite element codes, simulations, and other computationally intensive programs where more cores and more clock speed gives you huge gains That's what quad Opteron servers and screen sessions are for, anyhow. An iPhone would provide all the power I need for statistical methodology development (for genome-wide association studies) if I could use effectively use vim on it. I'm thinking of moving up to an EC2 instance or 20 when the Opteron box gets too slow and I figure out how to use the parallel MLEM approach to missing data more effectively. Again, if I could just get a decent keyboard for an iPhone, I'd probably sell my ThinkPad and just use Putty from the windoze boxes at work, and my wife's iPhone (or buy one of my own, since she's always pecking on it now) at home. (Aside: if you're looking to turn a mild-mannered, fashion-conscious, professional woman into a hardcore Internet addict, buy her an iPhone. Now she's complaining that she can't make videos on it and post them to YouTube) The client-side OS is really kind of irrelevant, I don't care whether I'm in Linux or OS X or... well, I do hate Windows, but that's mostly because it gets in the way.

trekker7 19y ago

The customer pain for college students isn't just that they need a machine to crunch numbers or browse the Web... they also have the pain of wanting to be cool, hip, and trendy.

jgrahamc 19y ago

I think jwz's "How will this software get me laid?" question applies (albeit to hardware): http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html So, for $1,000 to $2,000 I get a really cool computer and an increased chance of getting laid. I'd like to see Dell fight that value proposition.

Alex3917 19y ago
Future Apple commercial: A hot girl sitting in the grass in a park with a laptop, and guys going over and wanting to touch the laptop and ignoring the girl.
mattmaroon 19y ago
I thought only cars got you laid. And I believed even that so little that I bought an SUV.
hollerith 19y ago
The argument that buying Mac will help you get laid is flimsy. It is not based on anything worthy of the name "data". The average college student is better off spending $150 for an old PC, putting Linux on it, and spending the other $850 to $1,850 on hookers if he is unsatisfied with his sex life. This seems pretty obvious to me, and I would think would be obvious to anyone else who stopped watching TV (and hence TV commercials) and listening to the radio (and hence radio commercials) as long ago as I did (about 16 years ago).