[rescue] Re: SMP on intel wasteful?

[Robert Novak]

On Mon, 24 Jun 2002, Michael Schiller wrote:

> Ok, it's real simple. Real machines are designed to last a LONG time.
> As an example, My mother had a Compaq PC that she bought a few years
> back, and it came with a 2 gig HD. after less than a year and a half
> the motherboard died, so they ended up replacing the whole machine,
> because the new mb wouldn't work with the old drive / memory, etc.

Oddly enough, I just voided the warranty on my mom's Compaq Presario 2200
last week. It's a little zero-expansion 200Mhz MediaGX-based PC that came
with 16MB RAM, 2GB IDE disk, slow IDE CDROM (same channel), Windows 95, a
SIIG modem, nice built-in speakers with an air channel for bass or
something, and a cdrom.

I got it for her about 5 years ago for $600. I wanted a brand name because
I didn't want to do phone support over the phone to Korea. When I
delivered it, we bought a Sampo monitor for it locally and she went to
work on it.

Here's the wild thing: It's still working today. And she didn't outgrow
it. Disk is about 50% full.

She took a P3-600 laptop off my hands when she retired, because it was
lighter than the Presario and a monitor and she didn't want to ship the
stuff. 

I am truly amazed that the only bad thing is it has lots of dust and
cigarette smoke in it. Once I clone the hard drive, I may put another OS
on it and use it myself.

But in short, some PCs can live. And not everyone outgrows computers all
that fast. Mom probably made more efficient use of her MGX200 with 16meg
than I make of my P4-1.6 with 1gig. Maybe I'll put Outlook and Putty on
the MediaGX and trade it for the P4. 

> Tell me, how many 486/66 machines can run the current version of the
> OS they were originally designed for? Any?

I could probably run Win2k on a 486/66. Haven't tried, but I might if I
get bored after vacation. It SMOKES on a Pentium 150 or 233 or P2-233.
I've done all three of those in the last 2-3 months, as well as XP Pro on
the P2-233 laptop in question (128meg/6gig). Darned thing boots faster
than my p3-650 laptop with half a gig of ram.

--Rob

Robert Novak, Indyramp Consulting * rnovak at indyramp.com * indyramp.com/~rnovak
	"I don't want to doubt you, Know everything about you
      I don't want to sit Across the table from you Wishing I could run."