[dogscoff]

Dragging the thread back off topic again (Sorry) but I had to challenge what I call the BIG NUMBER mindset.

QUOTE:
My point was never that Microsoft was better than Amiga. I was simply trying to point out that the growth of computer hardware over the Last 15-20 years is in large part due to the widespread acceptance of MS as a standard in the industry.
/QUOTE

I think your so called "hardware growth" is over rated. It's an artificial growth driven by the people selling hardware, not the people using it. A little conditioning and a lot of human nature has led to the unquestioning belief that BIG NUMBER=BETTER. It doesn't. Or at least, it does to a certain point, and then it doesn't.

Take soundcards for example. The human ear's capacity to differentiate between differing quality sounds stops at around 12-14 bit. Therefore a 16 bit soundcard is better than an 8 bit soundcard. A 32 bit soundcard, though, offers no useful upgrade. It would be better for the user if soundcards were to evolve in a different direction instead - offering new functions or improvements in cost/efficiency or something. However, it takes less effort and imagination to just go down the BIG NUMBER path, so they make them and people who were perfectly happy with their 16bit soundcards all have to get 128bit or whatever the hell is available now. If they're upgrading from a 16 bit soundcard, they're being ripped off.

The drive towards ever faster processors
is the same. Apart from games (which are a special case), what can a 1.6ghz machine do for your average computer user that a P90 / Amiga1200:040 / comparable mac can't? Not much. A few whizzy graphical bells and whistles, and you now meet the requirements to run the other pointlessly inflated bits of hardware and bloatware, and that's it.

Driving forward "hardware growth" at an artificially accelerated rate has done more harm than good:
-It has caused needless obscelesence (ie ppl forced to spend their hard- earned money on upgrades they don't need)

-Think of the waste: How many millions of tons of perfectly good 486s, Pentium Is, Amigas, Macs and so on are currenly rotting in landfill sites? How many of them were replaced with 1.5 ghz PCs even though their owners only want to run a word processor and an internet connection?

-Ignorance and techno-fear: by the time you learn how something works, it's obselete. Easier to stay ignorant, feed the premium rate helplines and upgrade every 2 years hoping for an improvement.

-lazy programming: why take time to make it efficient when you can just up the hardware spec? I was unable to run a simple 2D desktop character (the kind of thing that ran smoothly on my 7.14mhz Amiga with 5 other tasks on the go) because the minimum spec was quoted as P200MMX or something. Should I dump my P133 and buy a 1.6ghz machine? If SE4 was that badly programmed, I'd have to.

-Bloatware: If everyone were to realise that the computers they have on their desks are actually 10 times more powerful than they could ever need, the entire industry would disappear up it's own arsehole. Therefore programs have to expand to fill up the capacity of the computer's hardware. They fill up hundreds of megs of data so you have to buy a new hard drive. They burn off CPU cycles with gimmicks and lazy coding so you'll long for a new procssor.

Of course I'm not saying that hardware should stay still. There's nothing wrong with having faster processors and quicker 3D game cards and everything else, but I would like to see these advances driven by the needs of the Users, not the shareholders of the manufacturers. It would mean a more stable market, a longer useful life for computers and probably more creative and useful advances than the simple BIG NUMBER increments we see now.

</0.02>

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"Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"
"I think so Brain but, if you replace the P with an O, my name would be Oinky, wouldn't it?"