How much power do we really need?
When the Mac IIci was introduced in
1989, many people thought that it would last them for years. Who
could fill up an 80 MB hard drive when programs were typically
under 1 MB each and the OS used no more than 2 MB of disk
space?
You might have thought the same thing in 1994 when you bought a
Power Mac - what could ever be faster, and why would you ever want
more than 256 MB of RAM?
That's probably what every computer buyer thinks about when they
buy a new computer. "How is it possible that I could ever require
more than this?"
This raises the question: How much power do we really need in a
computer?
And the answer is no simple one. It's possible to be very happy
doing spreadsheets on a Macintosh II
with a 21" monitor if you're running an older
application. But you will find the graphical Web unbearable on the
same Mac II, even if you have the maximum (128 MB) amount of
RAM.
I am writing this on a Power Mac
9600/233. In 1997 and '98, the 9600 was the top of the line.
Right now it comes well below the current low end with its
relatively slow (compared to today's 500 MHz and faster G3 & G4
machines) 233 MHz 604e processor.
But I still use my 9600 for some basic tasks. I run OS 9.1 and
do a great deal of typing in Word 2001, quite a bit of Internet
browsing with IE 5.1, some instant messaging, and even a bit of
photo editing with Photoshop 6. Everything that I do on this
machine feels pretty fast. The only slowdown that I have observed
is that browsing the Internet slows down slightly when I'm also
playing MP3s. Everything else works fine. Word 2001 runs at a very
comfortable speed, and even Photoshop isn't bad.
One thing you may have noticed is that all of these applications
came out at least two years after the computer was
introduced. If it still feels fast today, imagine how fast it must
have felt in 1998 with System 7.6.1 and applications such as Office
98 and Photoshop 4.0.
On to my G4. It is considerably
newer, could be considered over four times as fast, has almost
three times the RAM, and has six times the hard drive space of the
9600. It will run almost anything I want it to very quickly with no
slowdown whatsoever. QuickTime movies play perfectly, screen
redraws are instant, and applications load quickly. I can't
complain; it does everything I want and more.
Give it two years and things will start feeling slow. It will
take a while to open newer, larger applications; new multimedia
standards will be slower than old ones; and even opening menus and
windows may start to feel slow.
Right now a 9600/233 does a very satisfactory job with the tasks
that most computer users do often. You might think that with a new
1 GHz G4 you could do more, but that's not necessarily true.
Yes, you will be able to run OS X and connect your iPod, but
Internet, email, playing music, and word processing aren't going to
be much faster, if at all.
In two more years, there will probably be only a few new
applications that will run on my 9600. In the meantime, almost
every application commonly used at home (aside from games) runs
perfectly fine on the 9600. The average user doesn't do anything
that actually requires a brand new G4. However, the benefit of
having a new computer is that it will last through several more
years of new applications and operating systems and will be more
compatible with future peripherals.
