h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

According to the label on the side of the tower, my computer has 6 gigabytes of RAM. That's a lot more than the one it replaced. It has a lot of speed, which is a big improvement over what I had before.

I've had three desktop PCs:

An Amstrad PC1512 - 2 x 5.25" disc drives, 512K RAM, monochrome monitor and it had GEM, not Windows.
I then upgraded in the mid 90s to an Amstrad Mega-PC, with 3.5" disc drive and in-built Mega Drive, and Windows 3.0 (though I mainly continued to use DOS)
My current HP PC is well over a decade old and though I can't remember the specifics, has Word and Excel 97 and Windows XP. Occasionally I can even, if I'm lucky, use it to go online for as long as 15 minutes before it crashes.

In the unlikely event of me getting some spare money, I'd prefer a desktop to a laptop.

<BB<

Last year our lad upgraded my old desk top, to what at the time was the latest spec, with Windows7.

It meant a complete overhaul of all the internal parts, but we kept the old tower, which still had the old 3" floppy drive.

I had a job explaining to our G/Son what a 3" floppy drive was?

It just goes to show how fast technology goes these days, as it was a few years ago floppy drives were state of the art?

Smudger.

There's been an urban myth that computer power doubles every two years. Art this rate, the equivalent of my 6-gigabyte RAM computer will be a one-terabyte eight or nine years from now.

Does everyone know what a terabyte is? Go read the first sequel to Arthur C Clarke's "2001."

Yes, things are changing fast, but things changed much faster between 1890 and 1910. Recorded sound, moving pictures, sweeping increases in electrification and automotive transportation.

We had computers in 1990. We still have computers now. We had cars then, We have them now. The same for electricity, movies, etc. If Apple and IBM/Microsoft want to compete for the most computer power and the fast downloads, fine. But they're dragging a few billion people along with them. When you impact that many people, do you need to really care what they rally want, as opposed to what you wish to sell them so as to increase your profits? They will buy what you have to sell.

I think you're referring to "Moore's Law"

Gordon Moore of Intel in 1965 predicted that the number of transistors on a chip would double every two years.

Bear in mind that the first microprocessors didn't appear until 1970 (intel 4004)

He has been pretty close to right until recently, the chip makers are now running up against the fundamental laws of physics with regard to producing smaller or faster logic cells on the chips.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law

North's Law: Computing power doubles every 2 years, whereas Microsoft bloatware doubles every 18 months.

Bloatware?

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bloatware

I can see how that would be a problem . Microsoft often seems to be run by people who aren't from this planet.

This subject came up on the recent Gadget show on TV, they were on about the death of the desk top.

They said the final nail was when WiFi came on the scene, along with tablets.

Smudger.

Lots of things "die," despite being hale and healthy. Only 200 million CDs were sold last year, so they must be dead, even though I see them for sale in lots of places. I asked Bose if they were going to stop making CD players, and they said their CD players were among the top sellers last Christmas.

I don't trust a lot of what the media says, though it's important to remember that the media disagrees with itself [themselves?] constantly. If they can;'t make up their own minds, I'm not going to do it for them .

Let's backup here, a second. Didn't the "media" declare the death of the mainframe a long time ago? The hardware package may be different, but I wonder what the cloud runs on if there isn't anything left other than tablets??

Nothing's dead - it just has experienced an evolutionary change in form-factor.

In order for a product to be declared "dead," people have to stop using it. The candlemaking industry was undoubtedly alarmed when Edison came out with electric lightbulbs, but there are many people who use candles for whatever reasons, including religious celebrations [candlelight services] or observances [votives] or emergencies when the power fails. The epitome of product death is the buggy whip, but I'd be willing to bet that there are still people who ride around in horse-drawn buggies. They would need whips, wouldn't they .

Phonograph records died a horrible death in the late 1980s, but I still see new ones for sale at Newbury Comics, a very shrewd and profitable purvweyor of all sorts of cool stuff. Somebody is buying them, so they aren't dead.

Surely the masses will buy laptops and tablet so they can play Kandy Krush whereever they are.

But if you actually work on computers for a living - i.e. need like a proper big screen and keyboard then desktop computers are still the ideal.

{I wonder what the cloud runs on if there isn't anything left other than tablets??}

Thousands and thousands of blades, I reckon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_server

Don't know about desk tops dying, but I know that conversation has?

We used to get to interact with our G/Kids when they came to visit, now they just ask for the password for our WiFi, then they sit on the settee with their tablets, and ignore us?

Smudger.

That is sad.

Are some tablets stand alone from day 1? I was a bit surprised when I bought my ipad, that I had to plug it into a computer with the right version of itunes, to activate it. Of course no disk drive either, so can't play CDs/DVDs, can only download stuff.

I like my ipoad for some things, but wouldn't be without proper screen, disk drive & keyboard.

If you're on the go a lot, and you need to access the 'net from different locations, it make sense to have wireless technology. If you're retired, or have plenty of spare time at home, you can count on using your desktop. Different people have different needs, that's all.