frostedflakes
Diamond Member
- Mar 1, 2005
- 7,925
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I set my parents up with an old P3 650MHz @ 866. Seems to run YouTube videos pretty well, but I haven't tested anything other than that. At stock I think it was a bit choppy, though.
OP's 20 years is unrealistic IMO (do you know anybody running a computer from 1989?), but especially if it's only basic usage, 10 year old PCs can still be usable. Using a light OS like PuppyLinux can breathe new life into outdated hardware. The P3 mentioned above was pretty pokey in XP, but is very fast in Puppy.
IMHO I believe it to be a realistic possibility. The 1989 comparison is a little out of wack. Twenty years ago PC technology was still finding a purpose. Advances made real life improvements to your everyday usage. An upgrade might mean shaving considerable load times off applications, saving meaningful amounts of data to your machine, giving you more than two colors to look at, etc.
Spending $500 on hard drives buys you 6 terabytes of storage. Assuming consumer level formats won't need to handle media that's beyond the quality human eyes and ears can detect that's still a hell of allot of pictures and songs assuming file sizes go up 10x. Call it 120,000 pictures or songs at 50MB per file for easy figuring. HD video cameras might pose a problem at 328GB/hour but optical/biological/unforeseen external storage will likely take care of permanent external archival. E books, applications, and email already pose no problem for current storage technology. My biggest email abuser at work has 15 gigs of email since 2004.
I read some where that we typically overestimate technology in the short term and underestimate it in the long term. Using keyboards, mice, voice, and a 2D monitor I'm confident 10 and 20 year useful equipment lifetimes are here. When you can interface your brain in real time all bets are off but I'm guessing more than 20 years before we see that on a "PC".
C'mon ochadd, you yourself say that we can't use developments since 1989 to predict 20 years into the future - and it's obvious that we don't know what the future holds 20 years from now. Furthermore, most of us don't have the imagination to dream anything like the technology we'll be using in 20 years time (that used to be field of visionaries like Philip K. Dick).
I think you can look at what people want right now and translate that into a reasonable timeline of what manufacturers will try to acheive. Most people on this forum, I'd guess, do not fit the bill of a normal user. Most of us are likely power users, IT/computer people, or otherwise have an active interest in technology. Give me 100 core processors, petabytes of RAM, and a 100 GigE internet connection and I'll start replacing servers all over town.
I'm hoping to get some predictions on where people think we will be in 10-20 years. Ray Kurzweil has some pretty interesting ideas for anyone interested.
In less time than it takes me to eat dinner I can access news from around the world, while listening to a song, while sending/receiving messages from friends and family. While I sleep my computer can encode 8 hours of videos to work on my portable devices. My bet is that humans will still be reading, listening, and watching 20 years from now and computers today can provide more data per second than a human can process. Technology might make the data shiny and pretty but the substance doesn't change.
- Oct 25, 1999
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The topic and the way the post is presented have an Oxymoron aspect to it to begin with.
The world existed for very long time without Cars, TVs, Computer, etc. There are Millions of people and do not have them even today.
I can give a list of things that enable my friends and family to do that they cannot do with 20 years old computers, most of them are Not power users, gamers, or use the computers for HTPC.
What the OP is basically saying, I know people that their current use of computers is so that if their use and needs would not change they probably can use the same computers in 20 years too.
Yes you are right there are people that if what they do today works well and they are not going to change (and current outside services that they use will not drop) there is No reason to upgrade their computers.
However making over swiping statement from a specific rather narrow population into a general technical rule is Not valid.
The world existed for very long time without Cars, TVs, Computer, etc. There are Millions of people and do not have them even today.
I can give a list of things that enable my friends and family to do that they cannot do with 20 years old computers, most of them are Not power users, gamers, or use the computers for HTPC.
What the OP is basically saying, I know people that their current use of computers is so that if their use and needs would not change they probably can use the same computers in 20 years too.
Yes you are right there are people that if what they do today works well and they are not going to change (and current outside services that they use will not drop) there is No reason to upgrade their computers.
However making over swiping statement from a specific rather narrow population into a general technical rule is Not valid.
- Oct 25, 1999
- 29,553
- 430
- 126
Tautological verbal Analogies are very common in use in Internet postings.
Let say that I gave Jack $1; I can say I gave Jack Money.
Let say that I gave Jill $1000; I can say I gave Jill Money.
In both cases I described my action as: ?I gave X Money?.
That does not make $1=$1000.
I.e. you can state that your own typing skills are the same whether the computer is a Cel 766 or Core 2 based, but that does not mean that a computer based on Cell CPU's speed is equal to one based on Core 2 CPU.
I agree there are tons of things that are possible now that could not be done 20 years ago. I've also tried to press the point I'm not inferring that Anandtech readers would be satisfied with todays computers two decades from now.
It's all about communication. I look at it as the difference between a cell phone and POTS. You can now take that phone to hell and back with you but the real reason you have it is to communicate with people. We can now send streaming video, text, pictures, etc but the end result is the same. My grandmother shows me faded pictures from 60 years ago that are no more or less important than if I had seen them on my blackberry. It's the same reason video doesn't go along with every phone call. It's a neat feature and serves a purpose but most people don't need it when hearing a voice works fine.
Until you can convey a thought directly or send a physical object there doesn't need to be anything more. We have nothing but pictures, voice, and text to communicate with. More is good, but more is not necessary.
Absolutely not.
The computer we have now will (IMO) not be usable for I would guess maybe even 5 years, let alone 10.
I don't think that speed will be the issue, but the whole concept of a computer.
What we are using now (desktop wise) and what we will be wanting in 5~10 years will be quite different to due a number of factors. The way we interact with our computers, where we interact with them, what we use them for, integration of computers with other things etc etc.
While a computer might be fine to keep using for 10 years in the way we use them now, in 10 years we won't be using computers the way we do now (I would say), so what we have now won't really fit in that environment.
Compare it to the evolution of cassette tape recorders/players for portable music to current portable music systems. In some ways they are the same (they both play music, they are both portable), the amount of music, way we approach our music, ease of use, and other features are completely different.
Up to now, computers have just (really) been getting faster and faster more than anything else. When you reach fast enough (as this thread implies maybe we have), you see a change in the application of that speed, which is what I think we will get in the coming years (see netbooks for a current gen change in the way we are mobile, and also wireless internet etc on the go).
The computer we have now will (IMO) not be usable for I would guess maybe even 5 years, let alone 10.
I don't think that speed will be the issue, but the whole concept of a computer.
What we are using now (desktop wise) and what we will be wanting in 5~10 years will be quite different to due a number of factors. The way we interact with our computers, where we interact with them, what we use them for, integration of computers with other things etc etc.
While a computer might be fine to keep using for 10 years in the way we use them now, in 10 years we won't be using computers the way we do now (I would say), so what we have now won't really fit in that environment.
Compare it to the evolution of cassette tape recorders/players for portable music to current portable music systems. In some ways they are the same (they both play music, they are both portable), the amount of music, way we approach our music, ease of use, and other features are completely different.
Up to now, computers have just (really) been getting faster and faster more than anything else. When you reach fast enough (as this thread implies maybe we have), you see a change in the application of that speed, which is what I think we will get in the coming years (see netbooks for a current gen change in the way we are mobile, and also wireless internet etc on the go).
I still run a P3 1 Ghz with 640 megs PC133 RAM, ATA66 HD. some ABIT mobo from '98 or so, cant remember offhand. surfing is fine although flash is a bit slow. youtube runs well. AVIs can sometimes be choppy. Office Pro 2007 (mainly Word and Excel) runs fine. print previews are a bit slow though. mostly no name parts, even the PSU. I have replaced the HDs a couple times on it along with a couple fans that seized. even still I would up throwing the odd upgrade at it (memory, HD, video, optical) over the years.
I have a P2-400 with 384 megs, 98SE, 8 gig HD and voodoo 2 card I use for old games. still useful to me for the very specialized use its for (old games). but more or less useless for day to day stuff to me.
oldest thing I currently use (on occasion) is a Pentium 200 notebook with 64 megs RAM and Win98SE that surfs the web but thats about it. flash brings it to its knees, so I uninstalled all browser plugins.
10 years seems about as far as I personally can stretch a PC and still actually have it remain useful in day to day stuff like surfing, WP, email or mild server duties.. even then some mechanical parts usually need replacing.
20 years ago I think I had a 386-16 with 4 megs and DOS/win 3.1 (or maybe a 286-12 with 2 megs).. hard to imagine doing anything useful on that hardware today. I can see building for 10 years easily, maybe 15 for really simple use, but 20 seem like a loooong time
I have seen some folks currently happily running a P2-450 w/ 192 RAM, win98 and dial up, and a P3 700 celly with XP, 384 RAM and broadband. they are happy enough with it. but still thats what about 12-15 years old tech?
Dude have you ever done any video work?
Not even a Core i7 can do standard def video in After Effects very well. Wait until High Def becomes mainstream, it will utterly destroy your computer.
But if you're talking about grandpa checking his email and probably most all consumers, a core 2 duo is overkill. Most consumers can probably stick with a pentium 3/4.
Not even a Core i7 can do standard def video in After Effects very well. Wait until High Def becomes mainstream, it will utterly destroy your computer.
But if you're talking about grandpa checking his email and probably most all consumers, a core 2 duo is overkill. Most consumers can probably stick with a pentium 3/4.
Originally posted by: Zap
P2-450 was a Deschutes core, dating back to around 1998.
Celeron 700 was a Coppermine core dating back to 2000.
Hardly 12-15 year old tech.
oops
I was going to try and check the dates but didnt have time. serves me right , heh.
OK my Pentium 200 notebook is around 12-13 years old tech (give or take, the 200 came out in '96 I believe). I still use it as an emergency inet/email machine. 64 megs RAM, 2.1 gig HD and win98se. still useful in a way.
Ill pull it out again in 7 more years and post back to this thread with it :laugh:
Consumer it the key. Productivity for a video profesional is important when your main bottleneck is the downtime waiting for hardware. Someone who edits a few clips a year probably won't complain about waiting a little longer.
Maybe I should have titled the post "PC usage in 2029".
What kind of applications do you believe we'll be after at that time? I think you are absolutely correct. If there is a shift in usage who knows what will be required. I'm thinking humans will still be using their own machines in a fairly similiar way.
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