[Scottish] Computing Power debate

[Kevin McDermott]

* ObjectWiz <objectwiz@lycos.co.uk> [Sep 27. 2002 12:59]:
> On Fri, 2002-09-27 at 12:07, Kevin McDermott wrote:
> > Still doesn't really answer where our power is going.
> > 
> > If a 4.7GHz machine is 1000 times more powerful than a 4.77Mhz machine, why don't things go 1000 times faster?
> > 
> > Memory has increased even more, and storage devices too...
> > 
> > If you consider that the Motorola 68000 series of processors were developed for use in Mini-computers, and nowadays pretty much any modern processor can emulate the chip very quickly...I still get left feeling that somewhere, someone's consuming processor power for no gain.
> 
> The answer is much simpler. The more power is available, the more people
> put into the programs and the more resources they need. Just look at the
> size of Excel or Word on disk now compared to a few years ago and most
> of the users use it in exactly the same way.
> 

Are you suggesting that Excel/Word are close to 1000 times more powerful?

Don't they perform the same basic task as Lotus 1-2-3 was managing on those self-same 4.77MHz processors, with some graphical bells and whistles, can those bells and whistles really be accounting for the 10000% increase in processing power?

Kevin