Henry Norr talks about the introduction of Intel's 2GHz Pentium 4 processor and its significance to computer users: "These milestones no longer tempt me to whip out the credit card and order up a new machine, and from a bottom-line perspective, that's the heart of the matter."
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if ihad a 1ghz computer why would i go out and get a 2ghz adding to my debt since the average peecee user wouldnt know what to do with the speed. the average peesea user is on aol and emails and faxes mb and plays some games here and there. they wouldnt use the 2ghz even remotely. its like all intel has left to offer is a bigger number to push its failing market trying to propel peeseas out of this slump. the only problem is this isnt a slump, this is the norm. personal computers are getting so fast there is no reason to upgrade. how fast does a computer need to be to run word excel and exploder. and game makers who really push the limits are going to find less sales. its way past time to pull the reigns in to make better slimmer quicker smaller quiet products. whoops thats anti peecea.
@yahoo.com
He does make a valid point; it doesn't just apply to the 'older generation'. The consumer market might ooh-and-ahh over the mHz numbers, but as long as it runs IE, Eurdora/Outlook, Word/AppleWorks, can support a fast 'net connection, responds well to the OS, and can play games with a punch (ie framerate), then their computer is good. This is what has always been, in my view, the difference between the consumer market and the professional market; a point that Apple is trying to demonstrate (pretty well, so far) with the i-line, vs. the TiBook and Quicksilver configs. I will admit, the market has definitely changed a lot since ten years ago, when you did need a computer that you had to shell out for to run decent apps. Now, you have a host of computers that you can buy to run those apps; those high mHz computers are beginning to slowly really be for the 'truly needy' - the professional line, not the consumer.
The second post nailed it. Everyone I know (outside of design / tech circles) who use Wintel boxes use them to type letters, send email, surf AOL, use ICQ, play a few games, balance their checkbook with Quicken, etc, etc. They don't need, nor do they CARE about more mhz.
Although, if they were shopping for a new machine, it would suddenly become very important, and wrongly so. I'd predict 9 out of 10 people would be happier with a slower system paired with a crisp, beautiful monitor, than an overpriced fast machine.
Grunt is good BUT Mhz does not directly correlate to grunt. Intel Milked this for all it's worth & now we have a lot of justifyably cynical users. Is there any detectable naked eye difference between a 1.2Ghz PIV & a 1.7Ghz PIV - answer no - just a bigger price tag - beneficiary therefore is Intel & it's shareholders. I believe most users will always desire better performance but they are heartily sick of these minor increments in clock speed. 1Ghz, 1.2Ghz, 1.4Ghz, 1.7Ghz, 2.0Ghz - gee I'll bet we are all holding our breathe for the *NEW* 2.2Ghz Intel coming real soon...
It's satisfying to see a mainstream article finally point out what I (and of course others) has been saying for a while--all that speed is essentially meaningless for the bulk of users. The difference between a 400Mhz PII and a 2Ghz PIV (even neglecting the abysmal performance per clock of the PIV) for the stuff that most people do is minimal. And even if you're in the small consumer (not pro) group that speed matters for--hardcore gamers willing to fork over thousands for the best hardware--faster graphics cards are where most of the difference happens anyway--the $300 you spend on a GF3 is going to make a lot more difference than that same cash put toward a new CPU.
And this isn't the same as the past--that extra 20Mhz did make a difference when an app took many seconds to launch and even copy and paste took a perceptable amount of time. But when most "everyday" tasks take a tiny fraction of a second, even doubling speed doesn't make a noticable difference.
As it relates to Macs this is a particularly big deal: lack of optimization in X aside, even a G3 at 400Mhz is plenty fast for the average user. And therefore, even if people complain about the 500-600Mhz iMac speed range, they're more than fast enough for the average consumer.
The only people who speed will make a real difference for (not just the ones who care for no reason) are pros in certain areas--those who repeatedly compile large programs, work with video (though a G3 can even do that quite well for prosumers), do 3D rendering, or run scientific simulations. Those people are the ones buying Apple's fast machines, and not only are they the ones most likely to use and benefit from AltiVec optimized software, but they're the ones who are smart enough to realize that clock speed doesn't mean much. (Besides, they're buying the "slower" but faster AMD chips anyway.)
...oh, and by the way, to wlonh:
I agree that I'd jump all over a 1.2Ghz G4... but you can already buy a 1.6Ghz G4. It's called a Dual 800, and if you use OSX or hardcore software, it's scary-fast. Can you say 6 GigaFLOPS in the AltiVec fractal test, and 14Mkeys/s in RC5?
While it may be nice that the iBook has a 500MHz processor, my own tests vs a Wallstreet found that there was little to choose when it came to some real-world work - like copying files to an external disk and so on. Reason: slow bus (66MHz, same as my Wallstreet). It's the reason why I'm not buying an iBook - yet.
Rather than "faster chips", I want more self-contained appliances I can hook together. I want a central server that'll WLAN to a little box to convert MP3s to sound input to my hifi, while a couple of computers hang around the house doing other stuff, and hook into the DVD and show films and...
The digital hub idea is correct, but it's too limiting to think of it all as one PC and stuff connected to *that* PC with cables. That's just 20th-century thinking.
Charles
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of course, but...
if there was a 1.2 GHz G4 out there, the dollars would fly outta my pockets so damn fast as to be impossible to focus on...