Peeves, misc. topics

[GKushmerek -at- INFONET -dot- TUFTS -dot- EDU]

Question for all of you out there:

Do you work in an area that suffers "Versionitis?"  This is the
uncontrollable urge to upgrade to a new release of a product as
soon as it comes out.  I sure do.  Last year our department spent
gobs of cash getting Lotus 4.0 (and then 4.01) on everyone's PC.

Now there's a strong push from some people to get Lotus 5.0.  I just
can't wait until Windows 95 comes out: I guarantee that the same people
who see absolutely no benefit to having OS/2 today will want Windows95
the _moment_ it comes out.

>Pant, pant<

On a different issue: I'm with the crowd who wants the machine that does
the job well (concerning the thread about the PC you use).  I use a
486-33 here, but I have 24 megs of RAM.  The 24 megs is overkill for
most environments, but I've also got TCP/IP running with OS/2.  Between
this, one or two Win-OS2 sessions, and my network stuff, I use the
RAM.

Now, I could go home and write material on my 386sx-25 with 12 megs of
RAM, but that starts to be an exercise in frustration after I've worked
on my system at work (with coprocessed graphics to boot).

Too many people think that they can get the performance boost they want
bu sticking a faster CPU on the machine.  However, if you have a 4 or
8 meg 486-33 and then get a four or 8 meg Pentium, you may not have chosen
the optimal path to faster processing.  Co-processed video takes a lot
of work off your CPU; RAM caches can give you a boost, or getting
a better bus can make a big difference.

For those of you with a car: you can go faster by staying in second
gear and getting a bigger engine, or you can change to third.  The
computer industry's problem is that it doesn't explain how the different
parts of a computer work all that well, and people get misinformation
about the kind of computer they need.

Which makes me think of versionitis, hardware style.

Thanks for listening,

--gk

Greg Kushmerek
gwk -at- world -dot- std -dot- com
(alter-ego in trunk)