Mine isn’t. It seems slower by the week. And while getting a new PC is always nice, the last two or three haven’t really provided the sort of speed jumps that have historically justified getting new kit. Getting a new PC (or Mac; I use both) wasn’t a transformational experience of computing – I couldn’t suddenly run the mind-bending applications I’d been denied in with my previous computer. It was exactly the same, but a little faster. I’ve just been playing processor keep-up with software. The same has been true since I had to update my 286 in order to cope with the demands of Wing Commander 2.
So Moore’s Law, according to my experiential evidence, has already failed: the software is demanding more at a faster rate than the hardware is improving. And those experiences are without the weight of Vista which, by all accounts, needs a bit more than I’ve got. My PC is less than two years old and was state of the art (they said) when I bought it. I’m sick of keeping up with software and I’m going to stick with what I’ve got and web software for the time being.
If you accept that Moore’s Law has already failed, what will be its successor as the metric of computer improvement? As a Web 2.0 nut, I’d have to say bandwidth, but that doesn’t quite work. I think some of the best Web 2.0 apps will have some client-side integration. The internet optimisation of computers (think SSE version 5-6) has only just begun.
Technorati: PC, Performance, Web 2.0
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Paul OFlaherty
3 years ago
Maybe Moore’s Law hasn’t failed! I think it’s more that as processor power has increased, programmers have become sloppier increasing more and more bloat. They should all be forced to code on a C64 for a few months to learn the value of optimizing their code.
Ian Delaney
3 years ago
I distinctly recall some games magazines saying exactly that about Wing Commander 2…
alan patrick
3 years ago
Interesting idea….as PC hardware reaches limits, have to move processing onto webservice.
Hello Amazon :)
I wonder whether apps will arise to allow me to make use of cycles on the other PC’s on my LAN?
Robyn
3 years ago
I have a theory that all hardware upgrades are game-driven.
I’ll also agree with the “sloppy programming” comment above — CivIV runs like a sleepy snail on my brand-new MacBook, and it’s not like it’s processing intense 3D graphics or somesuch. the availability of much less limited memory and processor resources is no incentive to keep code elegant and efficient.