4 ms·
I agree with the sentiment (wouldn't it be nice to not treat computers, particularly full of nasty chemicals, as items meant to be thrown away every other year)
by iigs 18y ago
I agree with the sentiment (wouldn't it be nice to not treat computers, particularly full of nasty chemicals, as items meant to be thrown away every other year).
Unfortunately you will find that this isn't the way it works. Manufacturers will keep rebundling the same general parts in slightly different arrangements, with fresh design, and sell it to the disposable-product loving public. Even beyond the core processor, a PC is made up of a ton of little accessories that require drivers, and these are going to keep shifting around for the next couple decades. Linux is arguably better than Windows at supporting old outdated hardware, but good luck finding current OS support for anything but the most popular 1993 (now() - interval 15 year) products in the latest kernels.
In my opinion the precedent was set by the auto industry. Sure there are a few people who collect any given type of car and daily drive it 40 years later, but for every one of those there are hundreds of people who keep their old car only as a curiosity (i.e. show car), and for every one of those there are probably hundreds of cars that are trashed and sitting in junkyards or have been recycled into new ones.
- nihilocrat 18y agoA more positive way of expressing the sentiment might be "manufacturers will find a way of improving performance, though the gains might be harder to capitalize on than clock speeds or core count". Either way, given that the industry can't survive selling old products, they will find a way of selling us more stuff. We can only hope that we actually get some benefit out of the new products. On the plus side, notice that today, with a computer that is 5 or so years old, you can get on the internet, watch flash video, play music, etc. etc. Compare that to using a 5 year old PC in 2000, or even worse, a 5 year old PC in 1995.
- DabAsteroid 18y ago"manufacturers will find a way of improving performance, though the gains might be harder to capitalize on than clock speeds or core count". Don't count cores out. Intel isn't. http://www.ciol.com/Intel/CP-Intel-CIO-Update/Future-Intel-design-codenamed-Larrabee/8908110053/0/ http://www.ciol.com/Intel/CP-Intel-CIO-Update/Future-Intel-d... Larrabee is expected to kick start an industry-wide effort to create and optimize software for the dozens, hundreds and thousands of cores expected to power future computers.