Doctor John wrote:
>>   So what do people need so many cores for? Not everyone uses them for
>> multithreaded rendering or video editing.
>>
> Who cares what they use them for? The more people buying them, the lower
> the price gets to you and me :-)


Besides, if history has taught us anything about resource usage, it's 
that usage will expand to consume all available resources.  If you put 
more CPU power in the hands of the public, they'll find more inventive 
ways to use it* :)

30 years ago, nobody dreamed that you would be able to run a webserver 
on your home PC, or that we could have hundreds of digitized movies in a 
package smaller than a VHS tape, or that there would be an iPhone app 
that helps catalog important information about your bicycle making it 
easier to identify if it gets stolen.  Yet, all those things are now a 
reality.

Let the masses loose at it :)

*In fact, the history of the PC is really about empowerment of the 
individual, making vast amounts of storage and computational power 
available to average people in their own homes.

This is one of the reasons I'm liking MS more these days... their XNA 
community is about getting as many people as possible developing games. 
  Sure, most of them will be crap... but there are going to be some gems 
in there that would otherwise never be made.

And this is also why Apple is scaring me lately, with their "walled 
garden" mentality.  If (or when) they implement a tablet pc (again), 
it's likely to be something akin to a 10" iPod, meaning you have to go 
through the App store (and, thus, get approval from Apple) to get 
programs for it.  How long after that until they implement such a 
draconian system for their laptops, and then their desktops?

Now, don't get me wrong: MS is not pure good, and Apple is not pure 
evil.  But, watching the direction the two companies are going, MS seems 
to be getting better and Apple getting worse (in terms of control).

...Chambers

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