'My favorite platform' debate (was: Rack Mount Servers)

[Rich Cloutier]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Derek D. Martin" <ddm at pizzashack.org>
To: "GNHLUG mailing list" <discuss at gnhlug.org>
Sent: Monday, August 12, 2002 8:40 PM
Subject: Re: 'My favorite platform' debate (was: Rack Mount Servers)



> I have to disagree.  While I think they may have had an influence, I
> think the largest influence was by far had by the gaming industry.
> They're the ones pushing the graphics accelerators into the gagillions
> of pixels per nanosecond range... and the average home/business user
> STILL has no need of anything more powerful than a Pentium 200MHz
> running Windows 95.  Except for games.
>

...and I have to disagree to some extent with that.

While the gaming industry has forced hardware manufacturers to push the
limit on 3d rendering and animation speeds, which translate into fast GPUs,
and hardware acceleration, it is the GUI environment (Windows) that has
pushed for acres of screen real estate, ie., 1600x1280 desktops, multiple
monitors, and so forth.

And it is the fact that we do not really have a true Real Time Operating
System that has caused massive increases in CPU horsepower, disk speeds, and
gobs of RAM in order to play back audio and video files without skipping,
making it SEEM like we have real time capabilities, when in fact we do not.

Rich Cloutier
SYSTEM SUPPORT SERVICES
President, C*O
www.sysupport.com