My expirince with Longhorn

[Aloone_Jonez]

toadlife,
My current PC isn't that much faster than my old one.

Form 93 to 97 when I had my old 486 I did a few upgrades because I needed to, but I didn't upgrade form 97 to 2004 becuae I was happy with my machine. Your prediction is absurd that was 7 years and I'd still have my old 200MHz machine now and probably for a good few more years if I hadn't fucked it up.

I'm not saying people will just stop upgrading, I'm saying they will upgrade less often. Just because people like you and muzzy like to have the latest hardware it doesn't mean everyone else does. Why is it that most people's machines are over 5 years old? Because they don't need anything better.

[toadlife]

toadlife,
My current PC isn't that much faster than my old one.

Your 1800mhz PC isn't much faster than your old 200mhz machine? You been drinkn' the green kool-aid today?

Form 93 to 97 when I had my old 486 I did a few upgrades because I needed to, but I didn't upgrade form 97 to 2004 becuae I was happy with my machine. Your prediction is absurd that was 7 years and I'd still have my old 200MHz machine now and probably for a good few more years if I hadn't fucked it up.

You are the exception to the rule. The vast majority of people buy news PC's on a 3-5 year basis. That's how it's been for as long as I can remember and I've havn't seen any sign of it changing. Sure, lots of people save old machines for as long as they can, (I have a 500Mhz machine that serves as my router, and my wife uses my old 750mhz machine) but your average consumer wants all of the new whiz-bang features of new PC's and they end up buying new computers - regardless of the usefullness of their current machines. Oh - and I still stand by my assetion that X86 PC's are junk, and are NOT designed to last more than 5 years.

I'm not saying people will just stop upgrading, I'm saying they will upgrade less often.

Like, I said before, I've seen this prediction made over and over in the last several years, yet it is consistently been proven wrong by the market. Do you have any evidence to show that people are upgrading their machine less often nowadays?

Just because people like you and muzzy like to have the latest hardware it doesn't mean everyone else does.

My last hardware purchase (athlonxp 2800/asusMB/512 memory) was over two years ago. I did recently buy two hard drives, bu that was because my six year old hard drives were going bad.  In computer terms, mny hardware is "middle-aged".

Why is it that most people's machines are over 5 years old? Because they don't need anything better.

Most peopl's machines are five years old? Again, do you have any data to prove that claim?

[toadlife]

Since I asked you for data to back up your opinions, I an obligated to reciprocate:

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=630877
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,15048643%5E15317%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html
http://www.tekrati.com/T2/Analyst_Research/ResearchAnnouncementsDetails.asp?Newsid=4905

[muzzy]

My opinon is not based solely upon the lonhorn beta, my opinon is derived for the lack of programming capability on microhard-phallus's part. To tell you the truth, if hell was ever to freeze over and by some freak occurance winblows was made open source, i still wouldent use it.

I bet you'd regret that decision when you saw the source, it's apparently really solid stuff and very high quality. With the exception of some random userland software with random bugs. And obviously, I'm talking about the NT-tree, windows 2000 and so on. Win9x has plenty of evil black magic in it (at least based on what the binaries look like)

microblow disgusts me with their unlawful FUD tactics and their general disregard of the basic practices of human decency.

Well, I can respect that. However, on technical side, Windows still owns your ass. I've never liked the corporate strategies myself, and I've kinda decided to not care about it. The evil is in the state of corporate world in general, not Microsoft alone.

[BobTheHob]

However, on technical side, Windows still owns your ass.

That is a very false statement in more ways than one, no objects, whether animate or inanimate are ever allowed access to my ass, my ass is very much a one-way street. Anyways, no offense but what the fuck are you doing here anyways, you obiously like microsoft, i dunno why, cuz there are no reasons to.

[muzzy]

I don't specifically like microsoft. I like the Windows operating system, specifically the NT-branch, especially Windows 2000 and 2003. I'll probably like longhorn as well, but I haven't yet felt like trying any betas. However, based on what I've heard about it, it's going to be very interesting indeed.

[WMD]

bet you'd regret that decision when you saw the source, it's apparently really solid stuff and very high quality.

I have it.  There's a couple spots of good code, but most of it is poorly organized and filled with goofy code.  And the comments are hilarious.  One thing in the Notepad code says something like, "Then pray we can allocate enough memory for this to actually work."  And that's just the text editor. :o

[muzzy]

The portions I've seen have been very good. Honestly, I can't quite trust your judgement as a programmer, not knowing how competent you are. Reading code is always a lot more difficult than writing it, and reading something as large as Windows without deep insight into how the system works, it's not going to make any sense. AFAIK the source is well organized and the code is good and straightforward. You've only been searching for 'goofy comments', because everyone can understand the humor in them while not everyone can understand OS design.

I don't see anything wrong with "Then pray we can allocate enough memory for this to actually work". While it's not very serious, it might be proper in the context it is in. Most applications just die when memory allocation fails, so having an allocation failure check sounds like a good practice despite what you think of the associated comment.

[BobTheHob]

Most applications just die when memory allocation fails, so having an allocation failure check sounds like a good practice despite what you think of the associated comment.

Stop talking out you're ass, you know damn well that they didnt put that comment in a serious nature. Of all the apps deserving memory allocation checks, notepad wouldent be of highest priority.

[Aloone_Jonez]

Even though Windows isn't as stable or secure as BSD it has a better desktop and I'm not talking about the user interface either. I'm talking about the the way different Windows programs can interoperate with each other. For example OLE is consistent across the Windows platform this isn't the case with UNIX, and the clipboard is another example, lets not forget drag and drop. Yes I know KDE/GNOME might solve some of these problems but KDE applications don't communicate with the GNOME desktop very well, and dependences also aren't a problem with Windows. But these are the only two advantages of Windows, personally I'd rather use a more secure and stable operating system.

[BobTheHob]

Even though Windows isn't as stable or secure as BSD it has a better desktop and I'm not talking about the user interface either. I'm talking about the the way different Windows programs can interoperate with each other. For example OLE is consistent across the Windows platform this isn't the case with UNIX, and the clipboard is another example, lets not forget drag and drop. Yes I know KDE/GNOME might solve some of these problems but KDE applications don't communicate with the GNOME desktop very well, and dependences also aren't a problem with Windows. But these are the only two advantages of Windows, personally I'd rather use a more secure and stable operating system.

I actaully happen to agree with you on that. Although, I have to admit, I am quite biased as my first computer experiences were on UNIX at a very young age. This also leads to me not even minding about some of the lacking features in *nix, since I started without them in the first place. All in all, I love UNIX and I couldent do without it. I actually still love to surf the web with lynx and use the console all the time. For some reason, i feel calmer when I'm in console or ncurses. I think it has something to do with me only having to deal with the task at hand, nothing in the way.

[Aloone_Jonez]

Your 1800mhz PC isn't much faster than your old 200mhz machine? You been drinkn' the green kool-aid today?

Normal people don't go on clock speed, RAM, and hard disk speed, they go on responsiveness. With my first PC I had to wait hours to print of large colour documents then when I bought my p200 they would print in miniutes but its no quicker with my current machine. With my old p200 I had to wait for the Word 97 to load, I still have to wait just as long for OpenOffice Writer to load. Opening up a Windows Explorer window takes just as long. The only really significant improvement is boot up speed but this is mainly because of an improvement in Windows XP.

In five years time when all new PCs come with Longhorn I'm not going to buy one because it won't be any fucking faster. Yes I do know there's UNIX and hopefully there's decent simulation software on the platform or Wine is good enough to run the Windows stuff. Either way I won't upgrade unless there's a real reason too.

What you were saying about relaibility is bullshit as at work we still have an old 386 that still works, we use it to run old DOS software on.

You are the exception to the rule. The vast majority of people buy news PC's on a 3-5 year basis. That's how it's been for as long as I can remember and I've havn't seen any sign of it changing. Sure, lots of people save old machines for as long as they can, (I have a 500Mhz machine that serves as my router, and my wife uses my old 750mhz machine) but your average consumer wants all of the new whiz-bang features of new PC's and they end up buying new computers - regardless of the usefullness of their current machines. Oh - and I still stand by my assetion that X86 PC's are junk, and are NOT designed to last more than 5 years.

At work most of the general purpose PCs have only have 128MB of RAM.

Like, I said before, I've seen this prediction made over and over in the last several years, yet it is consistently been proven wrong by the market. Do you have any evidence to show that people are upgrading their machine less often nowadays?

My last hardware purchase (athlonxp 2800/asusMB/512 memory) was over two years ago. I did recently buy two hard drives, bu that was because my six year old hard drives were going bad.  In computer terms, mny hardware is "middle-aged".
 Most peopl's machines are five years old? Again, do you have any data to prove that claim?

Sorry I don't have any data apart form my personal experiance and the people I know.

PC sales growth stumbles in US but global demand keeps orders strong

This says a lot.

PC sales in the US have stumbled!

Why do you think this is the case?

Because this US is one of the richest nations with on average the most computers per person and the best computers too. Do you not think it's likely that they're now happy with their PCs? The rest of the world are still useing crappy computers so they're not as happy so they need to upgrade.

[Duo Maxwell]

I agree totally, Aloone_Jonez. theres no real reason to upgrade for most ppl, in fact the 3-5 year figures are more consistent for older versions of windows on slower connections getting totally fucked to the point of the Joe Newb to go and buy a new one instead of finding a repair man. I see allot more ppl tho thrashing their XP boxes on their cable connections than I did a year ago. I know this because I get asked to fix ppls comps pretty regularly and many are on their 2nd windows comp on their first high speed line.

[Orethrius]

[OFFTOPIC]Hey Duo, if you know anyone in the East Bay (California) area that just got a new PC and are tossing the old one, give me a heads-up.  Oftentimes the hardware is fine, the only thing that ever went was the $5 watch battery used for the CMOS settings.  If worse comes to worst, I can always find a spare PSU from quite a few places.[/OFFTOPIC]

[Shiver]

I also think fewer and fewer people need to upgrade, except for gamers and hardware freaks.

Even a quite old PC is well enough for surfing, office applications and watching DVDs. Not that I can say anything admiring about Windows XP, computers haven't come bundled with Win 9x for several years either, which ought to reduce the need for something better. I have a computer bought in spring 2002 (Athlon XP 1800+, 512 MB of RAM) and it's still good enough for everything except games, although the latest games aren't exactly unplayable, either. The video card has been upgraded from Radeon 8500 LE to 9600 XT, though.

I couldn't care less about Longhorn. Since its GUI is hyped so much, I doubt there's anything else worth mentioning (maybe more DRM and restrictions). Repackage the old shit with a new, bloated "good-looking" cover and sell it to the sheep again.
And once again a brand new PC runs just as fast or slow as the old one with the old version of Windows. When Longhorn is released, I'll probably still be using the same computer running Linux if anything doesn't break.