Has IT plateaued to a certain extent?

MajorFubar

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Mrs Fubar is still happily hacking away at the world on a 2009 HP laptop, still running Windows 7, which was a spanking new O/S when she bought it. Ok the hardware specs aren't earthshaking by modern standards but there seems very little it can't do as a day to day laptop. The notion that a nine year old computer would still be contemporary enough to run modern applications and be good enough to use as an everyday computer was unlikely in 2008 and unthinkable in 1998.
 

Alantiggger

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MajorFubar said:
Mrs Fubar is still happily hacking away at the world on a 2009 HP laptop, still running Windows 7, which was a spanking new O/S when she bought it. Ok the hardware specs aren't earthshaking by modern standards but there seems very little it can't do as a day to day laptop. The notion that a nine year old computer would still be contemporary enough to run modern applications and be good enough to use as an everyday computer was unlikely in 2008 and unthinkable in 1998.

Windows 7, to date, has been The Best yet.

keep it up to date with all updates and use CCleaner/Malewarebytes Anti-Malware Free edition and AVG, you won't go far wrong. IF You Ever Get some pesky intruder/evil/thingy... then use Kaspersky on it.

Download this Kaspersky for free and keep it on desktop, just in-case it's ever needed..... ;)
 

Gray

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I'm an old git, new to computers. After fighting for a £50 cashback, I paid around £275 for a Windows 7 laptop and that was more than I wanted to pay. Before the offer expired, I took up the Windows 10 'upgrade' option.

My interest in computers plateaued at zero, but I appreciate the Boffins that have told a Raspberry Pi how to play my music through a DAC.

Isn't it more about phones these days? (not for me, still got my brother's hand-me-down phone, which was old when he gave it to me, 16 years ago - never had a new battery, charge lasts for weeks). New iphone for £1000?...mmm, let me think......f*** off.
 

MajorFubar

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Gray said:
Isn't it more about phones these days? (not for me, still got my brother's hand-me-down phone, which was old when he gave it to me, 16 years ago - never had a new battery, charge lasts for weeks). New iphone for £1000?...mmm, let me think......f*** off.

Same thing goes with phones IMO. The two year contract is up on my iPhone 6 in April and for the first time I have no desire to upgrade, whereas previously I was all over every biennial upgrade. I don't long for a screen so big I can't comfortably use it with one hand, it's a phone FFS, and suddenly there are no new must-have functionalities. Even wireless charging doesn't really interest me, and I couldn't care less about face recognition.
 

abacus

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The power required for day to day use applications (Web browsing, Office etc.) is not that great, however games, Video Editing etc. is another matter hence computers keep getting more powerful to make things easier for them.

Windows 10 takes no more power than Windows 7, and is much more secure and flexible (For both video and audio) than Windows 7, and is a worthwhile upgrade, however if you are happy using what you have, then providing you have up-to-date security (Which is limited in Windows 7) then carry on using it, just remember that support will be dropped for it just like it was for XP.

Windows 10 is the last operating system Microsoft will be making as they are now following the Apple route of providing large updates (In performance and features) on a continuous basis. (Currently twice a year, with a big update being rolled out this month)

Download virtual box and the latest build of Win 10 and run it within virtual box so you can see how you get on with it without affecting your Win 7 install. (It may seem a little daunting at first, but once you get the hang of it you will never go back to Win 7)

Bill
 

Benedict_Arnold

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CPU technology, as we know it, has probably plateaued. Probably did a decade ago. Hence no successors to the I-series from Intel.

They've just about reached the limit on how small, or narrow or however you want to measure it, the components within a chip can be; and / or current manufacturing technology to produce them. Apparently the size of an electron is the limiting factor!
Unless there's some sort of Star Trek moment, the emphasis will be on combining more and more CPUs in parallel processing with the operating system codes designed to suit. You already see that in the super-super-super computers from the likes of IBM and Cray.
Won't affect your Word document or your spreadsheet much, perhaps your video game experience, but it will produce astonishing results in medical / biological and engineering simulations.

FWIW I have a Sun SparcStation at home that I used to do finite element analysis with. I haven't even bothered plugging it in for 18 years...
 

Vladimir

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I don't think hardware has platoed as much as software has bloated. When you go for a newer version of Windows, you get nothing more, just complete waste of resources of your brand new PC. Same goes for browsers and Text/Math processors and and and.... it's like GM making bigger and bigger cars, trying to keep up with the evermore fattening nation.

There's a new idea of going back to old operating systems and browsers. The speeds one achieves on mediocre hardware is stunning! And you lose absolutely nothing in the process. If I didn't use my PC for work with software limiting how much legacy I can go with it it and the OS, I'd go back to Win 98SE.
 

MajorFubar

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Vladimir said:
I'd go back to Win 98SE.

Win XP for me :) But it can't run modern browsers and many modern apps. I don't know whether that's a genuine limitation of the OS, or more a conspiracy to make you upgrade. Those who know more than me tell me Win XP isn't nearly as secure and safe as modern OS's, but surely fixing that (or reducing the risk greatly) is just a patch or two away? Of course MS wasn't going to keep patching XP or issuing free Service Packs forever when their business model at the time revolved around selling fresh new shiny OS's to enterprises, home PC builders and OEMs. That's changed now, they've already said Win 10 will be the last windows, and from now on it will just be enhanced with what amount to free Service Packs and patches.
 

daveh75

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Vladimir said:
There's a new idea of going back to old operating systems and browsers. The speeds one achieves on mediocre hardware is stunning! And you lose absolutely nothing in the process. If I didn't use my PC for work with software limiting how much legacy I can go with it it and the OS, I'd go back to Win 98SE.

Why go back to old operating systems when there's modern/up to date/secure Linux distros that are tiny...

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/linux-distro-space/
 

Vladimir

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Simply to resell licenses. Do you feel like anything improved with Windows since XP (or even further back)? I certainly don't. Just like I don't care what version of Android my phone is using this week.

I don't want to sound like a Windows basher, this applies to EVERYTHING. I have no idea why I update every new version of Adobe Acrobat or Illustrator or Microsoft Word. I see practically no changes or improvements. I simply update to keep up with the industry requirements as a graphic designer. Oh, I can't open this newest AI file? Did they change the whole program core code? I now need to beg for a legacy file to be sent to me and look bad in front of clients. I sure don't want that. *clicks on Buy button*. Occassionally they throw us a new tool or move a button elsewhere to feel like we got something for our money's worth.
 

Vladimir

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daveh75 said:
Vladimir said:
There's a new idea of going back to old operating systems and browsers. The speeds one achieves on mediocre hardware is stunning! And you lose absolutely nothing in the process. If I didn't use my PC for work with software limiting how much legacy I can go with it it and the OS, I'd go back to Win 98SE.

Why go back to old operating systems when there's modern/up to date/secure Linux distros that are tiny...

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/linux-distro-space/

IDK. Some people for whatever reason want to stick with Windows OS.
 

chebby

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daveh75 said:
Vladimir said:
There's a new idea of going back to old operating systems and browsers. The speeds one achieves on mediocre hardware is stunning! And you lose absolutely nothing in the process. If I didn't use my PC for work with software limiting how much legacy I can go with it it and the OS, I'd go back to Win 98SE.

Why go back to old operating systems when there's modern/up to date/secure Linux distros that are tiny...

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/linux-distro-space/

Because it’s very difficult to tell the company who employ you (along with 220,000 other people) that you’d prefer the sack rather than use their provided laptop and OS.

It’s the same for many many others (not just in IT) who simply have never had the choice of OS in their work (and often not in education too).
 

Forever Young

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In terms of plateuing, they got a bit stuck on cpu speed. When that started to happen, the manufacturers started adding cores, essentially making PCs multi processor computers. They now have many. To begin with, Windows wasn't good with multiple cores, and applications didn't make use of the additional cores very well. Solid state drives made a big difference. Now things have slowed again.

The next really big thing is going to be moving away from 2 state digital. In 2 state digital, the two states are often referred to as 'on & off' or '0 & 1'. There are two voltages, one for each of these states. In 2 state digital, there is actually a third state. That's no voltage at all. No voltage is an error state. It's been this way since the early days of electronic computing. That's all about to change, and it's going to be huge. It will allow very powerful computers to also be very small.

I once put Linux on a work computer, in an office. It didn't go down all that well. Linux is great for some stuff. Windows is good for running software that you can't get for Linux. Windows is good for games. Linux was good for not getting malware. That's something that has improved with Windows of late. Linux is great if your computer is old and slow, if you want to run a server, and there's no messing around with licenses. The audio players in Linux are all a bit naff imo. I flit between Linux Mint and whatever is the latest Windows. Over the years, there's tended to be at least one thing that won't work for me, at all, on Linux, which makes me return to Windows. Though I do have a soft spot for Linux.
 

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