> Not really, no.
>
> Just chromatagrams. I gather that they're quite large... (Well, the data 
> is almost always very noisy.)

Exactly, almost every company has their requirements for something more than 
just plain text.  Whether it's specialist scientific diagrams, photos, fancy 
graphics or whatever.  Not many companies just produce reports and things in 
plain-text.

> My point is not so much that we should go back to using 32K machines, but 
> rather that we should go back to the days of programs only using more than 
> 32K if they *need* it for something. ;-)

If I load up a blank Word or Excel document, it uses 0.5% of my physical 
RAM... I can cope with that as being essentially "zero"...

What I'm struggling to cope with at the moment is my CFD simulation that 
keeps running out of RAM :-)

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scott wrote:

> Exactly, almost every company has their requirements for something more 
> than just plain text.  Whether it's specialist scientific diagrams, 
> photos, fancy graphics or whatever.  Not many companies just produce 
> reports and things in plain-text.

My point here is not "word processors shouldn't allow you to include 
graphics". My point is "running a word processor should not require 
several hundred MB of RAM" [unless you're actually loading something large].

>> My point is not so much that we should go back to using 32K machines, 
>> but rather that we should go back to the days of programs only using 
>> more than 32K if they *need* it for something. ;-)
> 
> If I load up a blank Word or Excel document, it uses 0.5% of my physical 
> RAM... I can cope with that as being essentially "zero"...
> 
> What I'm struggling to cope with at the moment is my CFD simulation that 
> keeps running out of RAM :-)

What I'm struggling with is that opening Firefox takes about 25 seconds 
because first the OS has to page enough stuff out to disk to make space 
to load the program image into physical RAM.

Seriously. It sounds like nothing, but do you have any idea how 
*annoying* it is when it takes 10 seconds to switch between windows? My 
lowly Amiga with 2 MB of RAM could do all that *instantaneously* 20 
years ago... WTF?

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On Tue, 16 Oct 2007 18:33:51 +0100, Orchid XP v7 wrote:


>> Exactly, almost every company has their requirements for something more
>> than just plain text.  Whether it's specialist scientific diagrams,
>> photos, fancy graphics or whatever.  Not many companies just produce
>> reports and things in plain-text.
> 
> My point here is not "word processors shouldn't allow you to include
> graphics". My point is "running a word processor should not require
> several hundred MB of RAM" [unless you're actually loading something
> large].

FWIW, I agree; further, though, if you are loading something large, a 
word processor is often times the wrong application to be using for it.

For example, developing course materials for training, the group I 
started in nearly 5 years ago all used MS Word with master documents.  
Horrible, horrible idea - when Word didn't crash, it was painfully slow, 
even with 2 GB of memory in the machines (Running 2KPro or XP).

Using the right tool for the job is very important.

Jim

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Orchid XP v7 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> What I'm struggling with is that opening Firefox takes about 25 seconds 
> because first the OS has to page enough stuff out to disk to make space 
> to load the program image into physical RAM.

  Strange OS you have. I have never experienced that in normal usage.
The only situation I have experienced that is when a buggy software
(sometimes my own, during its development) goes wild and starts eating
memory like mad (because of a bug), causing the OS to swap everything.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> Orchid XP v7 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> What I'm struggling with is that opening Firefox takes about 25 seconds 
>> because first the OS has to page enough stuff out to disk to make space 
>> to load the program image into physical RAM.
> 
>   Strange OS you have. I have never experienced that in normal usage.
> The only situation I have experienced that is when a buggy software
> (sometimes my own, during its development) goes wild and starts eating
> memory like mad (because of a bug), causing the OS to swap everything.

M$ Windows NT, 128 MB RAM.

Add more RAM and Firefox works just great. (The PC I'm sitting at now 
has 3 GB and Firefox starts almost instantly.)

Post a reply to this message

> My point here is not "word processors shouldn't allow you to include 
> graphics". My point is "running a word processor should not require 
> several hundred MB of RAM" [unless you're actually loading something 
> large].

They don't!  If I open a blank Word document, that's 10 MB.  Even if I open 
one of our spec documents that is 79 pages long with diagrams on most pages 
and company logos etc, Word uses up 33 MB.  It's not exactly causing even a 
slight impact on the 2048 MB I have.  Of course if I tried to import lots of 
multi-mega-pixel photos on every page it might start to use more RAM, but 
that is expected.

> Seriously. It sounds like nothing, but do you have any idea how *annoying* 
> it is when it takes 10 seconds to switch between windows? My lowly Amiga 
> with 2 MB of RAM could do all that *instantaneously* 20 years ago... WTF?

But what happened on your Amiga when you tried to use 2.5 MB of RAM when you 
only had 2 installed?  Seriously, if you are going to regularly try to use 
more RAM than you have installed then you must expect page-file swapping - 
and it's not fast.  You can set the page-file size to zero in Windows, then 
it will behave more like your Amiga used to.

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> My point here is not "word processors shouldn't allow you to include 
>> graphics". My point is "running a word processor should not require 
>> several hundred MB of RAM" [unless you're actually loading something 
>> large].
> 
> They don't!  If I open a blank Word document, that's 10 MB.

...which begs the question, "what are you using 10 MB for?"

There used to be word processors that would run inside less than 60 KB 
of RAM. Sure, nobody could argue they had the same features. And sure, I 
can see how adding lots more features would require quite a bit more 
RAM. But 10,000 KB? That's not "quite a bit more". That's 170 *times* 
more! What's it *doing* with it??

>> Seriously. It sounds like nothing, but do you have any idea how 
>> *annoying* it is when it takes 10 seconds to switch between windows? 
>> My lowly Amiga with 2 MB of RAM could do all that *instantaneously* 20 
>> years ago... WTF?
> 
> But what happened on your Amiga when you tried to use 2.5 MB of RAM when 
> you only had 2 installed?  Seriously, if you are going to regularly try 
> to use more RAM than you have installed then you must expect page-file 
> swapping - and it's not fast.  You can set the page-file size to zero in 
> Windows, then it will behave more like your Amiga used to.

...the point being that software for the Amiga was designed to not 
*require* more than 2 MB in the first place. (Because if it did, you 
just massively reduced your potential market.) Back then, software only 
used memory if it was absolutely, unavoidably necessary. Which is kind 
of my point...



(To actually answer your question, if you ask AmigaOS for 2.5 MB of RAM 
when only 2 MB of physical RAM exists, you get a message that amounts to 
"no, go away". One of the ways they kept the Amiga cheap was by not 
including the hardware necessary for implementing virtual memory...)

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v7 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> > They don't!  If I open a blank Word document, that's 10 MB.

> ...which begs the question, "what are you using 10 MB for?"

  Using the available memory in modern computers for eyecandy and useful
stuff as well (such as spellchecking, etc). Also WYSIWYG tends to consume
some memory.

  In some cases "eyecandy" is actually not useless, as it can make things
clearer and easier and more intuitive to use.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> Orchid XP v7 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>>> They don't!  If I open a blank Word document, that's 10 MB.
> 
>> ...which begs the question, "what are you using 10 MB for?"
> 
>   Using the available memory in modern computers for eyecandy and useful
> stuff as well (such as spellchecking, etc). Also WYSIWYG tends to consume
> some memory.

Hmm. Word's default dictionary might be 9 MB or so. (And it must load 
that if it does the "spell as you type" thing.) That leaves the rest as 
a larger executable (to implement more functionality) and a little more 
space... for... who knows?

>   In some cases "eyecandy" is actually not useless, as it can make things
> clearer and easier and more intuitive to use.

I won't argue with that. One could describe any GUI as "candy" (since, 
after all, it's perfectly *possible* to operate a computer that doesn't 
even have a graphics cability - and this requires vastly less memory), 
yet it clearly makes [almost] everything much easier.

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Orchid XP v7 wrote:
> ....which begs the question, "what are you using 10 MB for?"

It doesn't beg the question. It raises the question. </peeve>

> What's it *doing* with it??

All the COM stuff, perhaps?  Exporting the functionality of Word so you 
don't have to write your own mail merge and spell checker for every program?

> One of the ways they kept the Amiga cheap was by not 
> including the hardware necessary for implementing virtual memory...)

The CPU didn't even support it, just like pre-386 days.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     Remember the good old days, when we
     used to complain about cryptography
     being export-restricted?

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