Denys writes:

>As a matter of fact, virtually all business and home applications are not
>developed to take advantage of MMX, MMX2 and the Katmai instructions of
>the Pentium III.  There is really no reason for them to use such things.

Makes sense to me.

>Since the late 1990s, there has been no
>reason, no software reason to buy a faster processor, because there is
>simply no software that demands higher performance than late 20th century
>computers.

Excepting, of course, things like Photoshop, Maya, and other
multimedia-creation types of software.  And [log in to unmask] ;)

>This past year, the desktops have passed the Gigahertz mark, and nobody
>gives a hoot.

I noticed that as well, and was surprised by the non-reaction.

>Currently, the only things that are selling briskly are laptops and
>high-end PDAs, such as the Jornada or the IPAQ.  The latter is so great,
>it's out of stock virtually everywhere, I have been searching for one for
>many weeks.

Starting at

   http://shopper.cnet.com

there seem to be several places with an iPaq in stock, depending on what
specific model you're trying to find.  The "Compaq iPaq H3650 Pocket PC"
shows as being in stock at several places, though not at any of the
big name cataloguers, and always at some premium over list price.

>I still use Office 97 because there has been
>no compelling reason for me to move to Office 2000 or XP when it comes out.


Be aware, though, that you're just one upgrade away from having
to pay full price.  That is, MS announced on Tuesday that Office 95
users do *not* qualify for "upgrade pricing" for Office XP; if they
want the product, they have to pay full price.

   http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-5640103.html

>This is why the latest graphics card is based on the GeForce 3 with
>64 MB or SDRAM.  These cards have more transistors than Pentium IV and
>will cost about the same.

The 64MB GeForce 3 card is currently a $250 option on high-end PowerMacs
($350 on low-end machines), but what a card!

Remember the Pixar short called "Luxo, Jr."?  It showed a "mama lamp"
and a "baby lamp."  The baby lamp bounced around on a rubber ball until
the latter sprung a leak and went flat.  (There's more to it, but you
get the idea.)

Anyway, Steve Jobs noted at the Macworld Tokyo conference in January
that the original short was rendered using a Cray, and took three HOURS
per frame.  As it was shown at 24 frames per second, that movie took
over 75 hours to render just one second of the movie!

Using the GeForce 3 in a PowerMac, the chief scientist of NVIDIA
displayed an *interactive* version of the same movie.  "Interactive"
because the entire movie was rendered *on the fly*, with him changing
the "camera's" point of view on a whim!

The card packs some serious computing power:  over 57 million
transistors, and up to 76 gigaflops.  One can easily imagine
Tim Allen grunting his way through the specs. ;)

John Carmack noted at the same conference:

  "It wasn't too many years ago when we were looking at three
   triangles for a nose for our characters.  Now we've got pores
   and moles."

No question:  gamers push the limits.

> The software we have and use everyday just doesn't need all this power.

That's pretty much by definition for us business software
developers/users.

Thanks for the response, Denys!

--Glenn

* To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
* etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *