Less Might Be More

Quantum Skyline writes "Most of us are running on a newer Pentium 4/Athlon 64 box with lots of RAM and a 7200 RPM drive and a uber-sweet graphics card that pushes 100 FPS in Doom 3. Our parents are probably running an old Athlon 700 with half the RAM and a Rage128 videocard, and some think that's overkill while the parents think its not enough. Why debate this? DevHardware has an opinion piece on 'leaner computing' and the author thinks that less might be more." This reminds me of a modern desktop system I saw sitting in a store, running Windows XP just so that it could connect via a terminal to another server and run the store's application. It would seem that even an old VT100 would have sufficed, but someone was able to sell the store a full blown PC.

Article Summary in case of Recursive Slashdotting

[Anonymous Coward]

Quantum Skyline writes "Most of us are running on a newer Pentium 4/Athlon 64 box with lots of RAM and a 7200 RPM drive and a uber-sweet graphics card that pushes 100 FPS in Doom 3. Our parents are probably running an old Athlon 700 with half the RAM and a Rage128 videocard, and some think that's overkill while the parents think its not enough. Why debate this? DevHardware has an opinion piece on 'leaner computing' and the author thinks that less might be more." This reminds me of a modern desktop system I saw sitting in a store, running Windows XP just so that it could connect via a terminal to another server and run the store's application. It would seem that even an old VT100 would have sufficed, but someone was able to sell the store a full blown PC.

For those of you under the age of 30...

[PHPgawd]

This [vt100.net] is a VT100.

Re:It all depends on your needs...

[hawkbug]

Ok, putting a Celeron and Athlon on the same level is just stupid. I know what you're trying to say, but a Celeron has nowhere near the cache an Athlon has. For example, I have an Athlon XP processor in my work machine, the 2500+ and it has 512 K of L2 cache. It also runs at 1.83 GHZ, but because of it's shorter pipeline vs the current generation of Celerons, it absolutely smokes a celeron, they aren't even in the same class in my opinion. Just because a processor is cheaper it doesn't mean it's on the same performance level. It would perform equal to or better than a Pentium 4 @ 2.4 GHZ if you pair the Athlon XP with dual channel DDR @ 333 or 400. Like I said, I realize what you're trying to say, and I think you're on the right track - but I would never compare a celeron to an Athlon in terms of performance. Price - ofcourse, but not performance - an Athlon is a much better buy if you're not stuck on Intel and will evaluate all your x86 options.

Re:For those of you under the age of 30...

[red floyd]

No, that's a VT320.

THIS is a VT100 [vt100.net].

Terminals are not cheap

[JacobO]

This reminds me of a modern desktop system I saw sitting in a store, running Windows XP just so that it could connect via a terminal to another server and run the store's application. It would seem that even an old VT100 would have sufficed, but someone was able to sell the store a full blown PC

PCs are cheap enough now that they are competitive with terminals, consider the production volumes. I'm not talking about things you pick up from the dumpster around the back of the bank, but something that someone would pay for and get support for.

You also get some pretty good host integration features such as using the PC's local receipt printer without additional networking, not to mention the ability to change your POS software to something PC-based later on if you so choose.

Re:Passive cooling == silence

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out this passive cooling system:
http://www.helsinki.fi/~tptkarkk/ [helsinki.fi]

No fans at all. Not even a power supply fan.

Here's more pictures:
http://www.epiacenter.de/modules.php?name=Content& pa=showpage&pid=51&page=3 [epiacenter.de]

It's not just your university

[green pizza]

It's not just your university, this is happening at most universities. At my state university, the library has probably 200 public use PCs spread in out in groups of four thruout the building. They're currently 3.2 GHz P4 systems with 17" LCD monitors. Last year they were different PCs, 2.8 GHz with 15" LCDs. Nobody seems to know where exactly the old machines went.Unlike the lab machines you mentioned, our library machines are mostly used to access the card catalog software and hotmail.com

Most of the labs on our campus are updated to the latest and greatest Dell models every 2 years. Thankfully they usually have plenty of ram, but the hard drive size is usually insanely large. I think most of the actual deparment labs now have 200+ GB drives---that's pretty big for machines that get reimaged via Norton Ghost every Saturday morning.

And yet, we still have neglected labs. You know the type, the labs that look like what you find in most highschools---Pentium 1 systems running an unoptimized stock install of Win98, running slow. For some reason, our most neglected labs are those that get the most real usage.

Next time you pay your tuition, check the fees section. This semester my tuition included ~$400 "Campus Technology Fee".

Re:For those of you under the age of 30...

[Sloppy]

Hey cool. That website has a copy of my old vt100 odditities [vt100.net] page (original website defunct) that talks about some bugs 'n' undocumented features in the firmware. :-)

Ah, good ol' "Escape bracket 137 q." Ain't seen an emulator yet, that handles that one right.

Re:Finally a voice of reason

[garote]

You're not a digital music producer. Noise-filtering operations that took me five hours in 1998 take me five minutes in 2004 ... I benefit directly from a faster HD, a faster internal bus, a faster CPU, ... and with the adoption of the USB and Firewire bus, I am able to locate a workstation case thirty feet away in a closet, allowing more people to work with less noise. (A well-shielded 30 foot analog monitor cable can actually go the distance, too!) That, to me, has been the really big deal in the past six years -- USB / Firewire.

Re:um... I'd have a different perspective

[apdt]

Running a machine 24/7 will actually help with the lifetime of the hardware because it won't be constantly heating up and cooling down. This is what causes a fair proportion of hardware failures.

Tech Headlines of the Living Dead

[Mulletproof]

"Most of us are running on a newer Pentium 4/Athlon 64 box with lots of RAM and a 7200 RPM drive and a uber-sweet graphics card that pushes 100 FPS in Doom 3. Our parents are probably running an old Athlon 700 with half the RAM and a Rage128 videocard, and some think that's overkill while the parents think its not enough. Why debate this?"

Wait wait wait... First we need to learn how to construct a sentance before pulling something like this as a front page story. I mean, 'Our parents are probably running an old Athlon 700 with half the RAM and a Rage128 videocard, and some think that's overkill while the parents think its not enough'???????????

WTF are you trying to say? The parents are running inferior hardware and don't think it's enough? Some other people don't think it's enough? The parent AND these mystery people are in league with the demonic hardware from a 5th dimention paralell to ours? WTF are you trying to say????? And when did all of us stumble across these great uber-machines? I musta missed that boat, sadly enough.

Cripes, I know journalism isn't Slashdots forte, but how this one even made frontpage in shambled state is an amazing feat in itself.

Athlon-MP

[SanityInAnarchy]

You can put certain Athlon-MPs in a desktop. Socket A. I think they even do frequency scaling.

That said, I'd rather pay a lot less money for a lot less computer than buy a 3 ghz only to run at 200 mhz most of the time.

Rust

[Derf_X]

Here in Canada, cars sometimes rust before they wear out their engine. That's the consequence of having 4 REAL seasons.

Re:Here's a good example of 'lean and mean'

[thisissilly]

That proves everything. They have the same inode number -- they *are* the same file. Not identical streams of bits (which is all md5sum would prove) but the exact same magnetic spots on the hard disk.

But I do have a question -- the link count for the file is 3, so it's less, more, and what else?

Re:Why are they buying it?

[gfody]

$56 Athlon 2400+
$32 GeForce4 MX 440 64mb
$37 256mb DDR400
$31 40gb HD
$72 17" CRT monitor

why the hell would you want anything slower/smaller and why on earth would anyone complain about the quality of the low-end market being too great?

jesus the only car I can get for a dollar has 300hp and is insainly fuel efficient.. that is just TOO much car for me! I think I'll find something used at the junkyard

Please don't throw away old computers

[gramernatsi]

You tossed a 700mhz celeron PC in the trash? Next time, maybe you could think about donating it to a charity. All you have to do is drop a linux OS on it and it will be highly valuable for any number of uses. Think business startup, underprivileged college student, struggling charity. You could walk away with a clean conscience even selling it for $100.

BTW, I use a 400mhz PII, and the only thing I keep adding to it is RAM. Because I keep it clean and know its capabilities, it's more functional than most of my friends' newer computers.

Re:inevitable

[ElvenMonkey]

You must have started the installation a few years ago...

Distcc is your friend :-)
Don't even need to have a second machine running Linux to use Distcc, just use the Gentoo LiveCD, set your network card settings, configure distcc, and away you go.

Re:Here's a good example of 'lean and mean'

[TCM]

the link count for the file is 3, so it's less, more, and what else?

Yes, not only are more and less more or less the same, but there's actually more to it! And it's nothing less than page(1).

Thank you.