🚀 go-pugleaf

Jim Frost writes:

>>>>> In terms of features PCs have generally
>>>>> lagged far behind the competition.  Performance?  Intel-based PCs
>>>>> didn't start seeing good performance until just the past few years,
>>>>> and they're still not the fastest things around.

>>>> They're still not the most expensive things around either.

>>> I guess the best way I can respond to this is "neither was a Yugo."
>>> Or Hyundai.  You get the drift.

>> A better way to respond would be to talk about price to performance ratio.

> You miss the whole point -- price/performance only matters when the
> performance is acceptable.  Most people didn't think the Yugo
> performed acceptably, so they didn't buy it.

And therefore they bought something with higher performance, but paid a
higher price as a result.  Make sense.

> Would you buy a PC do to bill generation if you were Nynex?  Probably
> not, because it would take longer to generate the bills than the
> billing period.  So you buy ES/9000s, one of the worst
> price/performers on the planet, because nothing else does the job fast
> enough.

Depends on whether they're set up to generate bills with multiple PCs,
rather than a single mainframe.  If speed is the only issue, then more
speed can be obtained by using more machines.  Furthermore, one can
only wonder if the particular billing cycle period was chosen due to
hardware constraints.  They could change the billing period to two months
instead of one.  Why not bill daily, to use an extreme example that
ought to bring the point across vividly?

> The same was true of many desktop applications (eg CAD/CAM).  It took
> too long for a PC to do the job that it was worth the money to buy
> something faster.

And therefore they bought something with higher performance, but paid a
higher price as a result.  Make sense.

>>> Anyway the last few years has seen an explosion in PC performance and
>>> features, enough that I can no longer justify spending money on a
>>> workstation.

>> Does that mean you won't be investing in Windows NT Workstation?

> Sorry I wasn't clear enough for you, but I was talking about hardware.

So was I.  Doesn't NT Workstation run on a workstation?

> I pick the OS based on what I need to get done.  Sometimes NT is the
> best choice, sometimes it isn't.  I use a mix of several different
> OS's on a daily basis for this reason.

So do I.  How many times have I advocated using the right tool for the
job?

> Today's inexpensive PC hardware has exceeded the performance levels of
> most workstations that were available as recently as four years ago.
> Assuming that the performance level of those workstations was
> acceptable for a particular task, the PC should be acceptable too, and
> may be the best buy where it wasn't a few years ago.

Then the label "workstation" should be applicable to PCs as well.