[rescue] Perverse Question

[Francisco Javier Mesa-Martinez]

> Like Dave, George, and I have said repeatedly, 64MB of 1996 RAM is 64MB
> of 2003 RAM.  Email is still, by-and-large, 7-bit ASCII.  The web is
> still, by and large, HTML and JPEGs.  Wordprocessing hasn't changed
> much.  Spreadsheets aren't much bigger.  Aside from video editing and
> audio editing (which most people -don't- do, full-time), the things we
> expect out of our computers haven't fundamentally changed in the last
> seven years.  So, why was 64MB of 1996 RAM "living large", but 256MB of
> 2003 RAM "just getting by"?  It's sure not because the software is 3 or
> 4 times -better- than it was seven years ago.

One word: GAMES. Maybe some multimedia stuff too. All that eye candy takes
its toll on computer resources. You can sure still do the same things that
you were able to do 6 years ago with a 6 year old computer, as long as you
freeze your environmet to the OS and applications that you were using
then. Nobody is really forcing you to upgrade :).

I am pretty sure that people who learnt stuff on an old time VAX or CDC or
whatnot machine would express the same level of fustration, except that
he/she would meassure the limit for ENUGH in Kilobytes.

Times change, and there is a need to justify sales. Same with cars for
example, or even to a bigger extent fashion for example..... it is the
whole basis of consumerism which keeps capitalism going and going and going....

Same with my father whenever I asked for allowance, in his days with
1/10th of the same money he had enough for a movie, treating his g-friend
to a tasty dinner, a dance, drinks, and had enough money leftover for
something elese which I always forgot. That same money was enough for me
to buy half a movie ticket.... oh, yeah and he had to walk barefoot on the
snow, and it was uphill (both ways)... :)