🚀 go-pugleaf

James Hague (exuhag@exu.ericsson.se) wrote:
: Not to mention that very few people actually need a 586 (aka Pentium).
: How many people--excepting ray-tracing fanatics and people who do
: serious number crunching--have had any speed problems with a 33 MHz
: 486?  For the mass-market, the Pentium is a solution waiting for
: a problem (like CD-I).  I can't see people scrambling to buy them,
: unless they are one of the rising number of buzzword addicts.

I don't think that the "solution waiting for a problem" applies to
computing horse-power, ever.  PCs are now beginning to compete with
high-end workstations, and there a plenty of applications that can
always chew up just about any amount of computing horse-power you
throw at them.  Besides, with OSes like WNT the presentation level
alone (never mind the actual application) benefits enormously from
any additional throughput you can give it (although in this area
accelerated graphics boards are an alternate and probably more 
approriate solution.)

Personally, if I can get a Pentium based machine I can run Linux
on in the price range of current high-end 486 systems, I'll buy
it.  It's likely to be less than half the price of a comparable
RISC-based system, and plenty of people are buying those.

Of course running Messy Dogs on an Pentium would be the equivalent
of running CP/M on a Cray...  ;-)
--
Jurgen Botz                  |   Internet: JBotz@mtholyoke.edu
Academic Systems Consultant  |     Bitnet: JBotz@mhc.bitnet
Mount Holyoke College        |      Voice: (US) 413-538-2375 (daytime)
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