Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Outside "*sizeable* number of 'basic everyday' functions" category.

I think the argument is about what is "sizeable". A *sizable* number of 
people plug third-party printers into their machines, read email, surf 
the web, and play with digital photos.

> And we're talking about software bloat here, not hardware performance. 

I think that was Warp's point: The title is wrong.

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

Post a reply to this message

On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 18:08:51 +0100, Orchid XP v7 wrote:

> Fa3ien wrote:
> 
>> Of course, the comparison is unfaire to some extents.  However, it
>> shows well that, in everyday situations encoutered by many people, not
>> much has really be gained, and hungry OS's and office apps tend to
>> spoil the availiable resources.
> 
> I tend to agree. It sadens me that nobody seems to bother trying to
> write efficient code any more...

I've been saying that for *years*.  :-)

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 18:37:09 -0300, Nicolas Alvarez wrote:

> Outside "*sizeable* number of 'basic everyday' functions" category.

Which logically *could* be defined as "anything that meets the criteria 
that makes the older system look to perform about the same as the modern 
system".

I know what you're saying, that thought just struck me.  By definition, 
it would exclude anything a high-powered computer would use.

So the bottom line *really* is that the average person's use of a PC 
hasn't changed in almost 20 years - and as the machines tend to spend 
most of their time idle, it's a question largely of who's machine is 
idling faster and what benefit that idling provides...

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Warp a écrit :
> Nicolas Alvarez <nic### [at] gmailisthebestcom> wrote:
>> The point is: the AMD is thousands 
>> of times faster, yet it doesn't feel a thousand times faster because the 
>> OS is a thousand times more bloated.
> 
>   Try running povray in both systems and then repeat that.

The article focuses on what is everyday computing for a majority
of people : office applications.

Fabien.

Post a reply to this message

"Fa3ien" <fab### [at] yourshoesskynetbe> a écrit dans le message de news: 
470c6e52$1@news.povray.org...
> The article focuses on what is everyday computing for a majority
> of people : office applications.

And this is where the article is patronising and dumb, because it's 
completely clueless about the way people use office applications in 2007.

G.

Post a reply to this message

Tim Cook wrote:
> but 'everyday computing for a majority of white-collar office workers'. 

No, more like "everyday computing for a majority of white-collar office 
workers 10+ years ago."

Because, you know, nobody nowadays uses shared calendars, 
SalesForce.com, or Microsoft Exchange. Virtual no business serves 
dynamic web pages based on a database. Indeed, most businesses don't 
even have inventory or personnel records in a computerized database at 
all. Nobody would *conceive* of actually having all their customers, 
sales, and scheduled deliveries in electronic format, and it's 
mind-boggling science fiction to think maybe such a database would be 
shared between employees. And banks will never get to the point where 
you could use computers to reconcile your accounting with theirs...

A deeply stupid comparison indeed.

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

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:

>   Ok, fine: Try running a web browser in both systems.

Also done that.

Running IBrowse on my 20 MHz Amiga is... not amusing. If you thought IE 
was slow on a 133 MHz laptop, think again! :-S

Post a reply to this message

Tim Cook wrote:

> There's a lot more to office computing, and 
> always has been, than just word processing and spreadsheets.

Not in my office.

(Hell, we're still using M$ Office 97 - because our customers ask us to...)

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> ... and if the application writer understands not only the application 
> but also the machine details, and if the application is not signficantly 
> larger than the compiler ...

When I did assembler, I usually had my C compiler generate an assembler 
listing.  I could then pick through the assembly code, and eliminate 
instructions that didn't add value to the function, or replace them with 
shorter or quicker sets of instructions that accomplished the same 
thing.  Maybe my compiler sucked, but I could often reduce a function by 
50% in both size and execution time by whacking code that compilers need 
to put in, but which isn't really required by the algorithm.

I generally did this only for sections of code that got executed a lot 
in a given period of time; otherwise it wasn't worth it.

Regards,
John

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v7 wrote:
> Tim Cook wrote:
> 
>> There's a lot more to office computing, and always has been, than just 
>> word processing and spreadsheets.
> 
> Not in my office.

Don't you complain that NT4 doesn't support USB?  And don't you run lab 
equipment and everything as a normal part of your office environment? 
With links to computers in the USA? Or am I misremembering who has that 
job??

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

Post a reply to this message

>>   Ok, fine: Try running a web browser in both systems.
>
> Also done that.
>
> Running IBrowse on my 20 MHz Amiga is... not amusing. If you thought IE 
> was slow on a 133 MHz laptop, think again! :-S

Don't forget that displaying a webpage usually involves a huge number of 
inverse fourier transformations :-)

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>>>   Ok, fine: Try running a web browser in both systems.
>>
>> Also done that.
>>
>> Running IBrowse on my 20 MHz Amiga is... not amusing. If you thought 
>> IE was slow on a 133 MHz laptop, think again! :-S
> 
> Don't forget that displaying a webpage usually involves a huge number of 
> inverse fourier transformations :-)

...wuh?

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:

>>> There's a lot more to office computing, and always has been, than 
>>> just word processing and spreadsheets.
>>
>> Not in my office.
> 
> Don't you complain that NT4 doesn't support USB?

Yes, that's me.

> And don't you run lab 
> equipment and everything as a normal part of your office environment?

No. Our normal *lab* environment. ;-) The *office* just runs Word and 
Access. (And the guys in the lab insist on using Excel a lot...)

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v7 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> > Don't forget that displaying a webpage usually involves a huge number of 
> > inverse fourier transformations :-)

> ...wuh?

  I can't believe you don't know what he is referring to.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote
> somebody wrote:
> > "Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote

> >> And if a compiler already generates optimum code, you obviously can't
> >> improve on it.

> > Since *humans* write compilers, your argument is self defeating.

> Only if you assume all humans are equal, and/or your compiler is your
> biggest and most complicated piece of code.

Doesn't matter. Absolute faith in compilers isn't warrented in any case.

> > be achived with careful low level coding. "Hello World" windows
application
> > in Delphi, for instance, takes several hundered kilobytes. Don't tell me
> > that an assembler version can not be more optimized.

> Sure. But the fact that small programs are bloated doesn't mean large
> programs can effectively be cut down.

If you write effectively to mean economically, I agree. Of course one can
not, in that sense, effectively go against the grain. The industry has
chosen a particular path, and all of us pretty much follow it.

> The comments on the web page are pretty amusing too. Nobody seems to
> notice much that large programs don't take up more memory than small
> programs. Features you never use never get loaded and don't occupy memory.

That begs the question of why those features are there to begin with. More
importantly, OS's memory management brings yet another level of layering
into the picture. Ideally, only the application programmer is in a position
to make informed calls about such matters. Compilers, OS, virtual
machines... etc are making decisions without having an "understanding" of
the intent, and are a source of inefficiency. Yet, that's a price we pay for
modern, bloated, multitasking OSs. Add to this AV software that can take up
to half of your raw processing power. I'm not saying we should go back, but
pointing out that much of the performance gained through hardware is
"wasted" through these channels.

Post a reply to this message

> No. Our normal *lab* environment. ;-) The *office* just runs Word and 
> Access. (And the guys in the lab insist on using Excel a lot...)

And I expect the guys in the office often want to include fancy graphics 
into their Word documents, perhaps just company logos on a letter, or 
photos/diagrams in a report.  All of which rapidly use up memory and which 
would slow down hugely on a very slow machine.

Sure, they could use a plain text editor on an ancient machine with 32K of 
RAM, but it's not going to look very professional.

Post a reply to this message

"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message 
news:470e9285@news.povray.org...
> Orchid XP v7 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> > Don't forget that displaying a webpage usually involves a huge number 
>> > of
>> > inverse fourier transformations :-)
>
>> ...wuh?
>
>  I can't believe you don't know what he is referring to.

JPEGs, I presume.

Post a reply to this message

Brian Elliott wrote:

> JPEGs, I presume.

Oh, yeah. I forgot that normal web pages have images on them...

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> No. Our normal *lab* environment. ;-) The *office* just runs Word and 
>> Access. (And the guys in the lab insist on using Excel a lot...)
> 
> And I expect the guys in the office often want to include fancy graphics 
> into their Word documents, perhaps just company logos on a letter, or 
> photos/diagrams in a report.

Not really, no.

Just chromatagrams. I gather that they're quite large... (Well, the data 
is almost always very noisy.)

> All of which rapidly use up memory and 
> which would slow down hugely on a very slow machine.
> 
> Sure, they could use a plain text editor on an ancient machine with 32K 
> of RAM, but it's not going to look very professional.

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. ;-)

Post a reply to this message

somebody wrote:
> Doesn't matter. Absolute faith in compilers isn't warrented in any case.

Nah. Nothing absolute about it.

> That begs the question of why those features are there to begin with.

Firstly, it doesn't.  "Begs the question" doesn't mean what you think it 
does. ;-)

Secondly, while it's true that 90% of the time you use only 10% of the 
features, it's a different 10% for everyone. Which leads to some rather 
dumb arguments on this list too about compatibility and such.

> importantly, OS's memory management brings yet another level of layering
> into the picture. 

Well, yeah, that's kind of what I was talking about.

> Ideally, only the application programmer is in a position
> to make informed calls about such matters.

I'll disagree. I think many programs are in the middle - too high-level 
to be hand-coded efficiently, but too low-level to let software improve 
on what the programmer asked for.

Consider, for example, an SQL interpreter that can look at the balance 
of values in the tables being joined and decide, on a day by day basis, 
the order in which to join them. Sure, obviously, someone coded this 
behavior, but it wasn't the application programmer.

 > Compilers, OS, virtual
> machines... etc are making decisions without having an "understanding" of
> the intent, and are a source of inefficiency.

Partly, yes, but you can also, for example, save memory and disk I/O by 
using shared libraries that the application programmer can't possibly 
predict at compile time whether they'll already be cached in memory or 
sharable with another application, for example.

> modern, bloated, multitasking OSs. 

Not nearly as much care is taken with modern OSes, I'll grant. It used 
to be the OS would lay out on disk your files, accomidating rotational 
latency and even how long it took to process the interrupt for the next 
sector to be loaded. Nowadays, you can't even figure out how many actual 
cylinders the disk has.

> Add to this AV software that can take up to half of your raw processing power. 

Well, yes.

And using languages like C means you need address translation and memory 
protection on your hardware in order to support multi-user machines, 
which is also a drain on speed.

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

Post a reply to this message

> 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 :-)

Post a reply to this message

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?

Post a reply to this message

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

Post a reply to this message

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

Post a reply to this message

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

Post a reply to this message

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.

Post a reply to this message

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?

Post a reply to this message

>> 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?"

I couldn't really care less.  10 MB is nothing on modern machines.  My 
digital camera generates 10 MB per shot, it's not really making me lose any 
sleep.

> 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!

You have more than 170 times more RAM now though.

> ...the point being that software for the Amiga was designed to not 
> *require* more than 2 MB in the first place.

What if you had an Amiga with only 512K or 1MB RAM?

What Windows software requires more than 1 or 2 GB of RAM anyway?

> (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...

Because you only had 2MB to spare, of course you couldn't include 600K of 
fancy bitmaps in RAM, a thesaurus, dictionary and grammar checker, you made 
a "bare bones" word processor that basically did the bare minimum to produce 
documents.  Now you can do all that cool stuff and of course it uses more 
RAM.  What's your 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...)

So what if you take an AmigaOS program that tries to use eg 1.5 MB of RAM 
and run it on an old Amiga that only has 1MB?  It doesn't work.  What 
happens when you try to run a modern piece of software on an older PC?  It 
works ... but very slowly.

If you prefer the Amiga option, then just switch off virtual memory in 
Windows.

Post a reply to this message

chromatograms? what kind of chromatograms?
I regret not getting to this thread sooner. We do have lab equipment
connected to PC's that use older interfaces.
There is an old Dell Inspiron 7000 (366MHz, 256mb RAM) running WinXP
connected to a Sartorius SC2. We used this old laptop while new Dells don't
come with rs232 ports. 
We also have a couple of Pentium IV machines with equipment connected via
ISA-slot GPIB cards. These also run WinXP, but one has 512mb RAM and
another has 1GB. All of these have far more RAM than they need for what
they do, but they have never had access to the internet, never had any
Windows updates, and aren't as bloated as typical office or personal
computers as a result of that. We even had to call in our registrations for
the Windows software just to avoid the risk of plugging into an ethernet
port to register.


Orchid XP v7 wrote:

> scott wrote:
>>> No. Our normal *lab* environment. ;-) The *office* just runs Word and
>>> Access. (And the guys in the lab insist on using Excel a lot...)
>> 
>> And I expect the guys in the office often want to include fancy graphics
>> into their Word documents, perhaps just company logos on a letter, or
>> photos/diagrams in a report.
> 
> Not really, no.
> 
> Just chromatagrams. I gather that they're quite large... (Well, the data
> is almost always very noisy.)
> 
>> All of which rapidly use up memory and
>> which would slow down hugely on a very slow machine.
>> 
>> Sure, they could use a plain text editor on an ancient machine with 32K
>> of RAM, but it's not going to look very professional.
> 
> 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. ;-)

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:

>> 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.

Correction: The Morotola 68000 series *does* have an optional MMU. And 
that's just it - optional. There was a special board you could get to 
install a replacement CPU with an MMU fitted, and software to go with it 
to add virtual memory to your Amiga.

So there. :-P

Post a reply to this message

scott 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?"
> 
> I couldn't really care less.  10 MB is nothing on modern machines.  My 
> digital camera generates 10 MB per shot, it's not really making me lose 
> any sleep.

A digital camera uses 10 MB for a reason - it's capturing a highly 
detailed digital image. That kind of thing requires storeage space. I 
have no problem with that.

>> 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!
> 
> You have more than 170 times more RAM now though.

...so it's OK to waste 170 times more RAM?

And that's just my point. Just because we have all this stuff available 
does *not* mean it should just be wasted on inefficiency. Just think 
what the hell we could do with all this stuff if it wasn't being wasted 
all the time...

> What Windows software requires more than 1 or 2 GB of RAM anyway?

Apophysis. ;-) Not that that matters here...

>> (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...
> 
> Because you only had 2MB to spare, of course you couldn't include 600K 
> of fancy bitmaps in RAM, a thesaurus, dictionary and grammar checker, 
> you made a "bare bones" word processor that basically did the bare 
> minimum to produce documents.  Now you can do all that cool stuff and of 
> course it uses more RAM.  What's your point?

My point is that 20 years ago I had a word processor with a spell 
checker and it didn't require 10 MB.

> So what if you take an AmigaOS program that tries to use eg 1.5 MB of 
> RAM and run it on an old Amiga that only has 1MB?  It doesn't work.  
> What happens when you try to run a modern piece of software on an older 
> PC?  It works ... but very slowly.
> 
> If you prefer the Amiga option, then just switch off virtual memory in 
> Windows.

Apparently you still don't understand what I'm trying to say...

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Orchid XP v7 wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
> 
>>> 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.
> 
> Correction: The Morotola 68000 series *does* have an optional MMU. And 
> that's just it - optional. There was a special board you could get to 
> install a replacement CPU with an MMU fitted,

Right.  A replacement CPU.  I.e., the 68000 didn't support virtual 
memory. The 68010 did. So you replace the 68000 with a 68010, and you 
can do virtual memory.

And the 68020 supports 32-bit addressing.

-- 
   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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Darren New wrote:
> Orchid XP v7 wrote:
>> Darren New wrote:
>>
>>>> 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.
>>
>> Correction: The Morotola 68000 series *does* have an optional MMU. And 
>> that's just it - optional. There was a special board you could get to 
>> install a replacement CPU with an MMU fitted,
> 
> Right.  A replacement CPU.  I.e., the 68000 didn't support virtual 
> memory. The 68010 did. So you replace the 68000 with a 68010, and you 
> can do virtual memory.
> 
> And the 68020 supports 32-bit addressing.

I emphasise: The Morotola 68000 *series*. (Of which different Amigas had 
varying versions.)

My point is, the hardware supports it if you pay extra money. It's just 
an extra-cost option rather than standard like these days. (There was 
also a big performance hit, IIRC...)

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v7 wrote:
> I emphasise: The Morotola 68000 *series*. (Of which different Amigas had 
> varying versions.)

Really? I thought they were all 68000.  OK.

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

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Orchid XP v7 wrote:
>> I emphasise: The Morotola 68000 *series*. (Of which different Amigas 
>> had varying versions.)
> 
> Really? I thought they were all 68000.  OK.

For example, the Amiga 1200 shipped from the factory with the 68020 
running at 14 MHz. (Actually, the 68EC020, which lacks the MMU.)

IIRC, I later upgraded mine to a 68030 + FPU...

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> (There was also a big performance hit, IIRC...)

So, asking a program to use 3MB of RAM on a 2MB Amiga with the VM support is 
different to you trying to use more than 256MB on your Windows machine how?

Post a reply to this message

> Apparently you still don't understand what I'm trying to say...

That you'd prefer 99% of your RAM to be left unused, while sitting at very 
basic and streamlined versions of the OS and all applications (that the 
developers have spend years optimising RAM usage to a bare minimum and so is 
generations behind what is normal today and 5x the price)?

Perhaps I don't understand then...

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scott wrote:
>> (There was also a big performance hit, IIRC...)
> 
> So, asking a program to use 3MB of RAM on a 2MB Amiga with the VM 
> support is different to you trying to use more than 256MB on your 
> Windows machine how?

95% of all Amigas are factory standard. If your software requires custom 
hardware, you just lost 95% of your market.

All PCs on the market already have VM hardware.

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> Apparently you still don't understand what I'm trying to say...
> 
> That you'd prefer 99% of your RAM to be left unused, while sitting at 
> very basic and streamlined versions of the OS and all applications (that 
> the developers have spend years optimising RAM usage to a bare minimum 
> and so is generations behind what is normal today and 5x the price)?
> 
> Perhaps I don't understand then...

No - I'd like 99% of my RAM available for doing *useful work*, not just 
wasted because lazy programmers couldn't be bothered to fix their code.

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Orchid XP v7 wrote:
> No - I'd like 99% of my RAM available for doing *useful work*, not just 
> wasted because lazy programmers couldn't be bothered to fix their code.

Code doesn't even get read off the disk these days unless you use it. 
The amount of data in control structures is tiny compared to the amount 
of RAM in a modern computer, and the amount of RAM occupied by actual 
data. Why do you think enough of it is wasted that it's worth spending 
the time and effort reducing the amount used?

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

Post a reply to this message

>> So, asking a program to use 3MB of RAM on a 2MB Amiga with the VM support 
>> is different to you trying to use more than 256MB on your Windows machine 
>> how?
>
> 95% of all Amigas are factory standard. If your software requires custom 
> hardware, you just lost 95% of your market.
>
> All PCs on the market already have VM hardware.

So it's ok for Amigas to be slow with VM, but for Windows PCs you expect 
them to magically use VM as fast as normal RAM?

Post a reply to this message

> No - I'd like 99% of my RAM available for doing *useful work*,

You could always install a minimum Linux build and use a plain-text editor 
instead of MS Word.

What's your definition of useful work btw?  I think it would probably be 
quite different to most other users of Windows.

> not just wasted because lazy programmers couldn't be bothered to fix their 
> code.

Why on Earth should they optimise a program for minimum-RAM footprint that 
uses only 10MB in the first place??!?!  It would be a total WASTE of time 
and money for precisely ZERO benefit.

Sure, if your program is using a huge chunk of RAM then it would probably be 
worth spending time trying to make sure it is optimised, but for something 
that is only using 10MB in the first place it's a total waste of time.

In fact, I think the whole MS OS and Office apps have probably been 
optimised for speed, not RAM usage, as todays machines have many times more 
RAM than you could ever use by loading even 50 copies of Word and 
PowerPoint.

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Chop the tails off the Cathedral mice!  Their tails take up too much space!!

  :-D

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>>> So, asking a program to use 3MB of RAM on a 2MB Amiga with the VM 
>>> support is different to you trying to use more than 256MB on your 
>>> Windows machine how?
>>
>> 95% of all Amigas are factory standard. If your software requires 
>> custom hardware, you just lost 95% of your market.
>>
>> All PCs on the market already have VM hardware.
> 
> So it's ok for Amigas to be slow with VM, but for Windows PCs you expect 
> them to magically use VM as fast as normal RAM?

No, that's not what I'm saying.

What I was saying was that on the Motorola 68000 series, turning on the 
MMU (regardless of whether you use it to implement VM or whatever) 
imposed a largish performance hit on all running code. And that is all.

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> No - I'd like 99% of my RAM available for doing *useful work*,
> 
> You could always install a minimum Linux build and use a plain-text 
> editor instead of MS Word.

It's surprising how much RAM even that requires... You'd think it would 
be a few KB, but apparently not.

> What's your definition of useful work btw?  I think it would probably be 
> quite different to most other users of Windows.

Why? Because I want to use the RAM for surfing the Internet or holding 
that document I'm working on, rather than storing some useless annoying 
animated paperclib?

>> not just wasted because lazy programmers couldn't be bothered to fix 
>> their code.
> 
> Why on Earth should they optimise a program for minimum-RAM footprint 
> that uses only 10MB in the first place??!?!  It would be a total WASTE 
> of time and money for precisely ZERO benefit.

It saddens me that these days people think producing a superior product 
is "a waste of time".

> Sure, if your program is using a huge chunk of RAM then it would 
> probably be worth spending time trying to make sure it is optimised, but 
> for something that is only using 10MB in the first place it's a total 
> waste of time.

You say "only" as if 10 MB is a small amount of RAM...

> In fact, I think the whole MS OS and Office apps have probably been 
> optimised for speed, not RAM usage, as todays machines have many times 
> more RAM than you could ever use by loading even 50 copies of Word and 
> PowerPoint.

Given how badly many of the PCs at work struggle to run Word, I doubt 
that...

I guess it just comes down to how frustrating it is that my PC takes 30 
seconds to load or close any given application. I mean, 20 *years* ago 
computers could do that instanteneously with a fraction of the RAM and 
CPU power. Why are we not coding like that any more??

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v7 nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2007/10/23 13:19:

> I guess it just comes down to how frustrating it is that my PC takes 30 
> seconds to load or close any given application. I mean, 20 *years* ago 
> computers could do that instanteneously with a fraction of the RAM and 
> CPU power. Why are we not coding like that any more??
20 years ago, a striped down version of a document you use today may not fit on 
your HD, if you where lucky enough to have one, or would need several floppies.
20 years ago, applications where still in the "stone age", with only a small 
fraction of the functionality you have today, making them much smaller. 20 years 
ago, there was no "what you see is what you get"! It was white text on black 
with formating codes breaking your text. You had to actualy print your document 
to realy know how it will print.
At that time, there was already some programms that needed almost a minute to 
get up and running...
When you only have less than 64K to play with, you often had to do some 
acrobatics to cram the programm AND it's data on your machine.

-- 
Alain
-------------------------------------------------

You know you've been raytracing too long when you've converted POV-Ray into an 
operating system; now you've got all the system resources to do your renderings.
Vimal N. Lad / Gautam N. Lad

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"Alain" <ele### [at] netscapenet> wrote in message
news:471e6036$1@news.povray.org...

> When you only have less than 64K to play with, you often had to do some
> acrobatics to cram the programm AND it's data on your machine.
>

I have un-fond memories of the hoops I had to jump through to get X-Wing
running. TSRs had to be loaded in precisely the right order, or there
wouldn't be enough memory.

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