Jan-Rens Reitsma wrote: > Bob Proulx wrote: > > If my laptop had a slot to insert another dimm that would be great. I > > would happily stuff several more gigs into it. But I can't. My > > ThinkPad T60p is already max'd out at 4G. I could buy many more 4G > > dimms but I can't get them into the machine. Most laptops from > > generations before can't install 4G of memory. > > The T60p was released more than 8 years ago. Moore's law predicts the > performance of hardware doubles every two years. So on average the > performance of laptops will increase 8-fold every eight years.
Most of the time the cpu in my laptop is idle waiting for me to type the next key. Doing this faster does not give me anything visibly faster or better. It is still idle waiting for me to press another key. I am not bitcoin mining on it. The only stress is playing videos which it does fine. Small nit: Actually Moore's Law says that the number of transisters doubles. This increase in hardware density does usually produce more performance. But it isn't quite the same. > > The problem with this is that it basically invalidates any system > > after a couple of years. Sure we could all buy brand new computers > > every year or so. That isn't very green friendly to the planet. > > Think of all of the e-waste it creates. > > I think you're remark is true if you substitute 'nearly a decade' for 'a > couple of years'. I think you're right when you state that most people have > to buy a brand new computer every two or four years. Don't forget that only > a minority of users wants to stay at the cutting edge of development for > more than a decade. Note that the original poster's machine was only a few years old, much newer than my machine. He posted that he had an i5 with 4G ram with 1G nvidia graphics. That puts my older Core 2 Duo to shame. And yet even with his much newer hardware, well within your newer hardware limits, he was still complaining about lack of memory problems. What say you to that? I didn't buy my machine a decade ago. More like five years ago. The biggest benefit was that I replaced my T43p IDE drive with a much bigger and faster SATA SSD in the T60p. Plus the T43 always ran hot. The T42 was a much better machine. I guess relatively speaking I both am a hard user of equipment and also I take care of my equipment such that five years using a laptop seems like the blink of an eye. I am still using it and it is still going strong. But really I have been eyeing the lower power cpus and lighter weight laptops with envy. The problem for me is that they all have low resolution displays as compared to my T60p. I am sure if I spent *enough* money I could buy a better display. I keep waiting thinking that eventually resolutions will increase again. But can I get a better display and also get a good keyboard at the same time? That has been a challenge. Plus I hate to spend the money on a new machine that won't be as good as the previous machine. By as good I can list all of the important items to me. For all of those on my list a new machine wouldn't be better for me. Mostly because the display isn't better. The only two items that I see so far that a newer machine would be better for me would be better battery life and lighter weight. I can only get almost four hours now. I eye some of the 12 hour ARM laptops with envy. But their keyboards are not as nice as my ThinkPad. And for the ones I have looked at I am not joyous about their more restrictive hardware. > I asume Debian GNU/Linux is at least twice as fast and powerful as Windows > Vista or Windows 8.1. Installation of Debian on a three year old, second > hand laptop, may mark the beginning of a machine's very productive second > life! :-) Yes! Most definitely. That is one of the best things. The ability to remove bloat. Running a lean and efficient system is one of the best things. However note that he original poster in this thread was complaining that his 4G ram machine wasn't large enough. I still think 4G of ram is quite a lot. Or at least it should be. It is still sufficient for me. If Debian at this time can't fit in 4G then that is bad. And I said why because there are many smaller ARM machines and I think they are the future. But I think the problem is most likely heavy desktops and heavy web browsers. Those are the traditional biggest bloat items on today's systems. > > Also ARM systems are very efficient on power and resources. They are > > becoming quite popular. My favorite right now is the Banana Pi. I am > > thinking that perhaps ten years from now the defacto standard system > > will be an ARM core system. Time will tell. But most ARM systems > > today have a gig or less of memory. And it will take 64-bit ARM > > before we can get more than 4G into them. > > What do you think of the development of odroid pc's with exynos CPU's? (see > hardkernel.com) I think they look interesting. I don't have any experience with them. I don't know if that is a "yet" or not. I have been maintaining that the best thing about the Raspberry Pi is that it forced the price of these types of systems down into the affordable range. The Raspberry Pi isn't a great system. But it has created a good market for much better systems. That's great! Bob
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