4 ms·

bottom-end (600-900) dollar range in 2001-2002ish got you between 128mb and 256mb of ram. my bottom end pentium 4 presario came with 128 mb and the slowest har

by serf 3y ago

bottom-end (600-900) dollar range in 2001-2002ish got you between 128mb and 256mb of ram. my bottom end pentium 4 presario came with 128 mb and the slowest hard drive in the world. Office XP/2002 and Windows XP both called for 128mb minimum as far as I remember, so a lot of the machines were targetting that number.

Aeolun 3y ago
Even our pentium 3 had 512mb as far as I recall. I couldn’t imagine a P4 with less than 1Gb So of course I checked. It’s bizarre that they ever sold them with 128mb…
- doubled112 3y ago
  I had a Pentium 4 and it was purchased with 512MB of RAM, so I don't have to imagine it with less than 1GB. I was living the adventure.
justsomehnguy 3y ago
Ah, the wonderful world of balanced and effective configurations from the bottom of the barrel PCs... So much time, money and CO2 could be saved by another/bigger atick of RAM.
- mcny 3y ago
  > So much time, money and CO2 could be saved by another/bigger atick of RAM. I did eventually get a 256 MB stick of RAM. iirc I was already out of high school at that point. One point I don't hear being talked about too much is how hopeful and stupid we were in the late nineties and early two thousands. We were supposed to have 10GHz processors by 2005, or I mean mass market for consumers by the end of the decade, at the latest? https://www.anandtech.com/show/680/6 https://www.anandtech.com/show/680/6 https://old.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/5sqw20/the_future_that_never_was_in_2000_intel_predicted/ https://old.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/5sqw20/the_future... To put things in perspective, my parents practically never used the computer. For all intents and purposes, the computer was for a child to learn by parents who were not very computer savvy in a time when computers were advancing (or at least so we thought) very rapidly.
  - dale_glass 3y ago
    What does 10 GHz matter? It's not that meaningful of a number. A modern 3.8 GHz leaves an identically clocked P4 in the dust: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/1081vs3733/Intel-Pentium-4-3.80GHz-vs-Intel-i7-10700K https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/1081vs3733/Intel-Pentiu...
  - justsomehnguy 3y ago
    > One point I don't hear being talked about too much is how hopeful and stupid we were in the late nineties and early two thousands. If I aould be in tbe mood and stance I would reply again, but I for what it gives I'm really grateful for my parent who indulged in this thing, despite it being a total terra incognita for them.
  - serf 3y ago
    >One point I don't hear being talked about too much is how hopeful and stupid we were in the late nineties and early two thousands. We were supposed to have 10GHz processors by 2005, or I mean mass market for consumers by the end of the decade, at the latest? I think a lot of those predictions came from a world unconcerned with cores and threading. The jump from sub ghz to 1 ghz (p2 to p3) came about suddenly, the jump from 1ghz to 3ish ghz came about suddenly (p3 to p4); and then things moved to prioritizing chip real estate for cores/threading/parallelism. The chips we have now are great, but it would be damn nice to have a 10ghz core somewhere. ( I eventually upgraded my RAM before ditching the Presario, too, but I think it's because at the time I wanted to play Dark Age of Camelot without lagging to death in team fights.)
    - TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
      Not just cores and threading but implementation efficiency, which is a couple of orders of magnitude better today than it was in the late 90s. Clock speeds were always more about marketing than actual performance. There are a few power-user applications where a 10X to 1000X speed bump would be very welcome - mostly video, audio, and AI. For example - if you generate/process audio at 32X or 64X oversampling you can eliminate all of the usual DSP and conversion artefacts, even for difficult processes like non-linear distortion. But for most applications, most users have more cycles than they need.
- serf 3y ago
  long ago this 'category' was referred to as 'grandma gifts' by folks near me on the net : a computer that no one in their right mind would buy themselves, but seemingly everyone had received one from a distance grandma/aunt/uncle who themselves were clueless about computers so they hop in the car and just buy whatever is cheapest on the Circuit City (or equivalent) floor; generally they were Presarios/Inspirons/Pavillions/etc. If you were real lucky you'd get a Sony VAIO; but fashion be damned it had the same crap specs as the rest of the grandma gifts.

by serf 3y ago

Aeolun 3y ago

Even our pentium 3 had 512mb as far as I recall. I couldn’t imagine a P4 with less than 1Gb So of course I checked. It’s bizarre that they ever sold them with 128mb…

doubled112 3y ago
I had a Pentium 4 and it was purchased with 512MB of RAM, so I don't have to imagine it with less than 1GB. I was living the adventure.

justsomehnguy 3y ago

Ah, the wonderful world of balanced and effective configurations from the bottom of the barrel PCs... So much time, money and CO2 could be saved by another/bigger atick of RAM.

mcny 3y ago
> So much time, money and CO2 could be saved by another/bigger atick of RAM. I did eventually get a 256 MB stick of RAM. iirc I was already out of high school at that point. One point I don't hear being talked about too much is how hopeful and stupid we were in the late nineties and early two thousands. We were supposed to have 10GHz processors by 2005, or I mean mass market for consumers by the end of the decade, at the latest? https://www.anandtech.com/show/680/6 https://www.anandtech.com/show/680/6 https://old.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/5sqw20/the_future_that_never_was_in_2000_intel_predicted/ https://old.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/5sqw20/the_future... To put things in perspective, my parents practically never used the computer. For all intents and purposes, the computer was for a child to learn by parents who were not very computer savvy in a time when computers were advancing (or at least so we thought) very rapidly.
- dale_glass 3y ago
  What does 10 GHz matter? It's not that meaningful of a number. A modern 3.8 GHz leaves an identically clocked P4 in the dust: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/1081vs3733/Intel-Pentium-4-3.80GHz-vs-Intel-i7-10700K https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/1081vs3733/Intel-Pentiu...
- justsomehnguy 3y ago
  > One point I don't hear being talked about too much is how hopeful and stupid we were in the late nineties and early two thousands. If I aould be in tbe mood and stance I would reply again, but I for what it gives I'm really grateful for my parent who indulged in this thing, despite it being a total terra incognita for them.
- serf 3y ago
  >One point I don't hear being talked about too much is how hopeful and stupid we were in the late nineties and early two thousands. We were supposed to have 10GHz processors by 2005, or I mean mass market for consumers by the end of the decade, at the latest? I think a lot of those predictions came from a world unconcerned with cores and threading. The jump from sub ghz to 1 ghz (p2 to p3) came about suddenly, the jump from 1ghz to 3ish ghz came about suddenly (p3 to p4); and then things moved to prioritizing chip real estate for cores/threading/parallelism. The chips we have now are great, but it would be damn nice to have a 10ghz core somewhere. ( I eventually upgraded my RAM before ditching the Presario, too, but I think it's because at the time I wanted to play Dark Age of Camelot without lagging to death in team fights.)
  - TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
    Not just cores and threading but implementation efficiency, which is a couple of orders of magnitude better today than it was in the late 90s. Clock speeds were always more about marketing than actual performance. There are a few power-user applications where a 10X to 1000X speed bump would be very welcome - mostly video, audio, and AI. For example - if you generate/process audio at 32X or 64X oversampling you can eliminate all of the usual DSP and conversion artefacts, even for difficult processes like non-linear distortion. But for most applications, most users have more cycles than they need.
serf 3y ago
long ago this 'category' was referred to as 'grandma gifts' by folks near me on the net : a computer that no one in their right mind would buy themselves, but seemingly everyone had received one from a distance grandma/aunt/uncle who themselves were clueless about computers so they hop in the car and just buy whatever is cheapest on the Circuit City (or equivalent) floor; generally they were Presarios/Inspirons/Pavillions/etc. If you were real lucky you'd get a Sony VAIO; but fashion be damned it had the same crap specs as the rest of the grandma gifts.