Has anything changed since 2003?

laissez-faire

laissez-faire

laissez-faire

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I can't help but notice computer development seems to have stopped in the last 5 years.

Battery life seems to be worse than it was 5 years ago!

So there was Vista, but that isn't really hardware.

Other than say, Blu-Ray replacing DVD, solid state drives starting to creep in, computers are pretty similar to those rolling off 5 years ago. Indeed my 5 year old box would still cut it. What's caused the slowdown?
 
I'm inclined to disagree there, only for the reasons that R&D departments will always be developing, but it would take years for the end user to see new products if they are ever introduced into the market, and only then, it would perhaps be a new generation of an existing item. In other words, dont reinvent the wheel. For instance, the mouse was 40 years old this year, and companies continue to release newer and refined designs of the same product because it works. You could argue that someone could design a new device but I cant see any point (no pun) when you already have a mouse that works, or some people may use tablets or trackerballs etc. Or like the PSP having several models doing the same thing.
Touch screens are coming back into fashion again what with iphone, Surface and also virtual/augmentation environments being redeveloped.
In terms of new development, there has been the Intel i7 or the Atom.
Dont forget the side items that may not be directly IT related but still have chips in - like HD, HDMI, plasma, OLED, PS3 and other games consoles and what mobile phones can do now that they couldnt years ago. Oh and draft-N wifi as opposed to 801.22b/g. Progress may not be as quick as you like, but frankly I'd rather not be upgrading every other month if I can help it.
PS Developers will compete against each other on demand, so there are times when they dont need to rival each other unless they have to.
 
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There must have been some developments in hardware, because Vista now runs on my new machine without appearing to be the slowest OS ever. Mind you, all that extra processing grunt is likely wasted pushing bloated gobbets of Vista code from one memory location to another...
 
Its mainly because there havn't been any major changes... We've just got 4 cores instead of 2, more ram, larger hdd's...

Although now we are starting to see more innovative items coming through, like SSD...

Give it some time and i'm sure there'll be some more interesting items in the coming years.
 
dan^uk said:
They were.. just.. 23rd September 2003.
Click to expand...

Even then, we've still come a long way.

That was when it was acceptable to have 512mb of RAM, we still ran AGP graphics cards, and a 9500pro was considered a beast.
 
At the consumer level machines are perceived easily powerful enough to do the tasks we need them for. Most people are stuck behind dog slow internet connections and poorly functioning home wireless networks. The computers 'speed' is not really the limiting factor.

This is also seen in the rise of the laptop and netbook markets. Which will continue for a couple of years.
Most people don't need 'power' and with the saturation of the market coupled with downturn we will see some interesting times.

It could just bring to life some vastly more interesting ideas other than 'ramp up the clocks' in the near future.
 
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yashiro said:
At the consumer level machines are perceived easily powerful enough to do the tasks we need them for. Most people are stuck behind dog slow internet connections and poorly functioning home wireless networks. The computers 'speed' is not really the limiting factor.

This is also seen in the rise of the laptop and netbook markets. Which will continue for a couple of years.
Most people don't need 'power' and with the saturation of the market coupled with downturn we will see some interesting times.

It could just bring to life some vastly more interesting ideas other than 'ramp up the clocks' in the near future.
Click to expand...

+1
 
Apart from the obvious massive increase in CPU processing power and graphical progress (Atleast a 50% increase in both areas if not more) you've got the areas mentioned above, smaller more powerful laptops and phones. Smarter cheaper HD TVs.

In fact battery life and OS are probably the only two areas that have remained the same for the past 5 years. Laptops still die after 2-3 hours and most people are still on XP.
 
yashiro said:
This is also seen in the rise of the laptop and netbook markets. Which will continue for a couple of years.
Most people don't need 'power' and with the saturation of the market coupled with downturn we will see some interesting times.

It could just bring to life some vastly more interesting ideas other than 'ramp up the clocks' in the near future.
Click to expand...

Totally right - you only have to look at terminal services/citrix too. Back to the world of thin client (dumb terminals) which is having a new lease of life = less cost of ownership and maintenance overheads. Google already hosting apps online and I am sure MS is already looking to go down that route too, probably more from an anti-piracy route I gather, but again, almost like a mobilising strategy towards some sort of greater plan.
Look at it another way - broadband speeds are getting broader - more media streaming etc...
 
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so 5 years ago, roughly around the time I built my first pc, in fact about a year before tbh we had..

single core P4/athlon XP cpus
9700Pro/5800 gfx
512mb/1gb of pc2700/3200 memory
crt monitors
20-40gb hdds
cdrw if lucky

all for probably best part of £1k or more..

now we have multi multi core CPUs with HT in some cases giving effective 8 CPUs each one running significantly faster and pulling less power from the mains.

64 bit OS using as much memory as you can throw at it with 4GB rapidly becoming the standard.

terrabytes of storange for well under £100

wifi everywhere

multi GPU cards, even entry level cards sporting HDMI and mid range cards with serious clout

GPU being used for folding

multi card setups

bluray, dvdrw dual layer as stardard for £20

24" flat screen monitors starting not much over £200...

Add to that full colour mobiles with 8mp cameras attached and gps all replacing those god awful ipaqs, mobile broadband, multi core laptops, netbooks with more processing power of a 2002 desktop for £200, vista, 160gb ipods, PS3/360, social networking, 16MB+ broadband..

Yep.. they've been sat on their hands.. lazy b******s

;)

nearly forgot... 16GB flash cards that are an 8th of the size of the old 256MB compact flash cards and a fraction of the price

I could go on..
 
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oh and before anyone goes on about the technology being similar in lots of that, yes, i guess it is but look at the prices.. my 128mb 9800pro cost me what you can get a 216-GTX260 for, my 1GB of decent memory would get you 8GB nowadays etc etc... its not all about jiggaherzts.

Frankly i don't feel I'm unlocking a fraction of what my pc can do now so if what I have halves in price over the next couple of years (exchange rate notwithstanding!) then fabulous.. just leads the charge of my entire house bing networked and computerised. I can't get enough of it.
 
i think your wrong about computer/hardware development, its been chugging along nicely.. infact its way ahead of media being put out, i.e. games taking so long too make. All games can now be maxed out something that wasnt possible a few years ago, just look at my sig/spec some components are a few generations back and i can still max any game at the moment. Media is slowing down i think not hardware.

The big breakthrough i think would be 'Battery technology', it really does need to improve. when someone invents a new reliable battery that last x10-50 longer, thats really going to be huge event in so many areas. I know theyre working on in hard in their labs.. but also thinking how the oil and car industry feel about it, cos it will mean massive change.
 
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Computers have become significantly more powerful since 2003. Yes things were good in 2003 but things have taken a leap since then. Maybe the development in more powerful hardware is driven by the software requirements of windows, but this has its benefits. I'm currently running a Q6600 quad core @ 3ghz and it doesn't even break a sweat when running vista x64.

This leaves a large amount of processing power available to run all sorts of tasks. Try playing HD content on a machine from 5 years ago or maybe playing crysis? Also distributed computing has benefitted greatly from this as we can now compute data in a matter of hours that would have taken days back in 2003. Graphics cards are now so powerful we can use them to compute data that will help cure all kinds of diseases and solve other mathematical and scientific problems.

IMO things are still moving forward as fast as ever. I agree that we are obviously approaching some barriers, such as clock speed. MY processor is running at the same speed as one from 5 years ago, except there are 4 of them. Next couple of years we'll be running 8 cores, with larger caches and faster fsb's. Intel spend millions of R&D and will look at increasing both clock speed and cores so I can't see things slowing down at all. New discoveries are being made all the time which allow for higher clock speeds and cooler components. Power consumption has also improved.
 
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