The computer I'm writing this on is now over four years old. It's
been upgraded some, like most every computer I've owned, but its
far and away the most satisfied I've been with a four year old system.
At the moment I have two web browsers open, this newsreader, two
virtual machines,a media player, dozens of background processes...
and it's not even close to breaking a sweat.

On Sat, 4 Jun 2011, Trevor Smithson wrote:

> The computer I'm writing this on is now over four years old. It's
> been upgraded some, like most every computer I've owned, but its
> far and away the most satisfied I've been with a four year old system.
> At the moment I have two web browsers open, this newsreader, two
> virtual machines,a media player, dozens of background processes...
> and it's not even close to breaking a sweat.
>
>
I suspect a lot of people upgrade because they are told they need to.

I haven't bought a new computer since 1989. It made sense to buy a new
computer every few years, since there were dramatic changes and you'd get
a better boost by buying new than adding to the old. Of course, I went
from a KIM-1 in 1979, to an OSI Superboard in 1981 to a Radio Shack Color
Computer in 1984 (and then a Radio Shack Color Computer III two or three
years later), and then an Atari ST in 1989, a clearance item that was
always flakey, so most of those upgrades were leaping to a completely
differen computer, rather than today when you are buying a
faster/better/whatever version of the last computer.

After that, things had reached a point where one could easily do things,
and it slowed down. Plus, used computers had reached a point where they
were cheap and yet still pretty good, so I went with more widely spaced
new computers. A decade ago, I bought a used Pentium 200MHz with 32megs
of RAM, so I could run Linux, moving away from some years of an old Mac.
I got a hand me down 1GHz Pentium in December of 2003, and I'm still using
it. I had to change the DVDrom drive, so I put in a DVDRW drive, I moved
to a larger hard drive in 2005, though ironically I haven't filled it so
much that I really needed the higher capacity.

I am thinking about buying a new used computer, it's been enough years and
I can get something that's a fair leap forward for a hundred dollars or
so. I don't really need it, but they are now cheap enough to consider
making the leap.

Of course, I don't do anything much intensive.

Michael

Trevor Smithson wrote:
> The computer I'm writing this on is now over four years old. It's
> been upgraded some, like most every computer I've owned, but its
> far and away the most satisfied I've been with a four year old system.
> At the moment I have two web browsers open, this newsreader, two
> virtual machines,a media player, dozens of background processes...
> and it's not even close to breaking a sweat.
>
My machine is a Celeron 2.6 Ghz on an MSI board from 26 June 2004.
XP PRO SP3.
Failures: Power supply burnout 3 weeks ago. Replaced with a better one.
So 7 years.
Upgraded a year ago from .5GB to 1GB memory(made little difference).
Added an old dvd(R) player 3 weeks ago( A NEC DV-5700A).

Only a mayor disaster will make me replace the computer.

Only problem is the DVD, have not located a driver yet, only found
firmware upgrades.

This same computer of mine is not the same computer. I physically
upgrade ~something~ on it at least once a year.

The latest upgrade was from a dual-core to a quad-core CPU. I actually
noticed no real improvement in apparent performance, so maybe that
upgrade was a waste of money.

I have had the same case (a customized all-aluminum Lian Li) for years.
The FDD was purchased at the same time and still works. Everything
else inside has been replaced more than once.

It's kind of hard to say precisely how old this computer is, but the
motherboard (Gigabyte GA-770TA-UD3) is about a year and a half old.

Generally I am happy with it, but I am never completely happy for long.

Trevor Smithson <trevor_smithson yahoo.com> wrote:

> The computer I'm writing this on is now over four years old.
> It's been upgraded some, like most every computer I've owned,
> but its far and away the most satisfied I've been with a four
> year old system.

Not sure if my system can be considered old, but...

Upgrades have radically slowed down here over the years. At this
point, I can do about everything I want to do with a PC. Besides
voice-activated scripting, the biggest strain is a game called
Supreme Commander 2. Even though it is futuristic, it is classic
real-time strategy (RTS) game, making it a modern version of
chess. My quad core system is probably fast enough for anything I
might want to do in the near future. Definitely gone are the days
of regular upgrades.

My system can probably easily handle any dabbling with stuff like
electronics simulation, if it grabs me.

One possibility that might push the envelope is a good first
person shooter with jetpacks for full 3-D movement, like Tribes 2.
Such a game is certainly complex as RTS, but I'm not sure if the
complexity can be realized when acting as only one participant. If
FPS with full 3-D movement were nearly deep as RTS, it would be
awesome. Maybe some study would uncover complexities.

Plenty of power here, for now.

ToolPackinMama <philnblanc comcast.net> wrote:

> This same computer of mine is not the same computer. I
> physically upgrade ~something~ on it at least once a year.
>
> The latest upgrade was from a dual-core to a quad-core CPU. I
> actually noticed no real improvement in apparent performance, so
> maybe that upgrade was a waste of money.

You should have used Performance Monitor to observe the core
loads.

Trevor Smithson wrote:
> The computer I'm writing this on is now over four years old. It's
> been upgraded some, like most every computer I've owned, but its
> far and away the most satisfied I've been with a four year old system.
> At the moment I have two web browsers open, this newsreader, two
> virtual machines,a media player, dozens of background processes...
> and it's not even close to breaking a sweat.
>

My rule of thumb would be

P4 @ 3GHz (preferably, a cooler-running Northwood CPU)
Athlon 3200+ (S462 minimum, but any later socket would be better)

as minimum machines. I have about four motherboard/CPU combos that
meet those requirements, and any of the four pieces of
hardware is good for day to day usage.

I have a 1.8GHz P4, and the peripheral interfaces and memory are pretty
slow in that one. It would be interesting to test that processor,
in a decent motherboard, to see if in fact it would be acceptable.

Once you get back to older machines based on this architecture

Processor ---- Northbridge ------------+---- Southbridge --- disks
PCI Bus |
+--- Add-in PCI slot
|
...

that's pretty hopeless. Too much traffic through the PCI bus. Tends
to be sluggish.

Something like this

Processor ---- Northbridge ----------- Southbridge ----- PCI slots
Hub Bus ----- Storage interfaces

plus a 3GHz P4 equivalent (at least a single core), and then that is good
enough. The Hub bus can be anywhere from 266MB/sec to 1GB/sec on
some of the older machines with that design.

It takes a lot of bloated software (emulation upon emulation) to
make acceptable hardware, look like crap. I was reading today,
how some tablet or other, was using Java for some key functions,
and, well, I couldn't believe it. That's sheer torture. Java on
overpowered hardware, is almost acceptable. Java on top of
some marginal processor - who wants that ? If you're going to
run older hardware or weak hardware, you want "lean and mean"
software for it. One of the reasons you still like your computer,
is the older OS on it :-)

Even some of the latest Linux distros, are packing a bit too much lard.
It's actually hard to find a good distro with a 2.6 Kernel, where the
emphasis is on a lighter memory footprint.

Paul

On 2011-06-05 12:17:12 +1000, Paul said:
> It takes a lot of bloated software (emulation upon emulation) to
> make acceptable hardware, look like crap. I was reading today,
> how some tablet or other, was using Java for some key functions,
> and, well, I couldn't believe it. That's sheer torture. Java on
> overpowered hardware, is almost acceptable. Java on top of
> some marginal processor - who wants that ? If you're going to
> run older hardware or weak hardware, you want "lean and mean"
> software for it. One of the reasons you still like your computer,
> is the older OS on it :-)

Actually, Java is not slow at all. It is a common misconception that
it is slow, largely a result of ancient Java applets which were slow to
download and run. Modern Java uses JIT (Just In Time) compilation where
the virtual instructions are translated to X86 native code from the
virtual machine code, when a Java class is loaded the first time.
There is a small delay the first time the class is used, and then
afterwards it runs pretty much at machine speed. Microsoft use
identical JITting tech with their .NET platform.

There is no emulation. Java does need more memory than the equivalent
C++ or C code, because it uses a garbage collecting memory manager.

Trevor Smithson wrote:
> The computer I'm writing this on is now over four years old. It's
> been upgraded some, like most every computer I've owned, but its
> far and away the most satisfied I've been with a four year old system.
> At the moment I have two web browsers open, this newsreader, two
> virtual machines,a media player, dozens of background processes...
> and it's not even close to breaking a sweat.

I'm still using the one I built several years ago based around 4GB RAM and a
dual-core Intel processor. I even through in a $100 video card a couple of
years ago when I was gaming.

It's plenty fast for what I use it for, and until something breaks I don't
see any good reason for a new box.

Jon

On 5/06/2011 11:02 AM, Michael Black wrote:
> On Sat, 4 Jun 2011, Trevor Smithson wrote:
>
>> The computer I'm writing this on is now over four years old. It's
>> been upgraded some, like most every computer I've owned, but its
>> far and away the most satisfied I've been with a four year old system.
>> At the moment I have two web browsers open, this newsreader, two
>> virtual machines,a media player, dozens of background processes...
>> and it's not even close to breaking a sweat.
>>
>>
> I suspect a lot of people upgrade because they are told they need to.
>
> I haven't bought a new computer since 1989. It made sense to buy a new
> computer every few years, since there were dramatic changes and you'd
> get a better boost by buying new than adding to the old. Of course, I
> went from a KIM-1 in 1979, to an OSI Superboard in 1981 to a Radio Shack
> Color Computer in 1984 (and then a Radio Shack Color Computer III two or
> three
> years later), and then an Atari ST in 1989, a clearance item that was
> always flakey, so most of those upgrades were leaping to a completely
> differen computer, rather than today when you are buying a
> faster/better/whatever version of the last computer.
>
> After that, things had reached a point where one could easily do things,
> and it slowed down. Plus, used computers had reached a point where they
> were cheap and yet still pretty good, so I went with more widely spaced
> new computers. A decade ago, I bought a used Pentium 200MHz with 32megs
> of RAM, so I could run Linux, moving away from some years of an old Mac.
> I got a hand me down 1GHz Pentium in December of 2003, and I'm still
> using it. I had to change the DVDrom drive, so I put in a DVDRW drive, I
> moved to a larger hard drive in 2005, though ironically I haven't filled
> it so much that I really needed the higher capacity.
>
> I am thinking about buying a new used computer, it's been enough years
> and I can get something that's a fair leap forward for a hundred dollars
> or so. I don't really need it, but they are now cheap enough to consider
> making the leap.
>
> Of course, I don't do anything much intensive.
>
> Michael
>
Have a look at some of these ex-lease office machines. If, like most
people, all you do is some basic stuff, web browsing and the like, then
they will suit your needs adequately. The machine I am currently using
is a home built using an Intel D945GTP motherboard and a 3 GHz Pentium.
I put it in a different case because I needed more hard disks than the
original desktop case allowed me to squeeze in.
The machines that these boards come in typically are equipped with an
80-160 Gig HDD, 1 or 2 Gig of RAM and a DVD burner for around $100.
Quite adequate in my opinion.

Krypsis