las wrote:
> Stainless Steel Rat wrote:
>
> > One could say the same thing about metre, litre, gram, Newton, or any
other
> > unit of measure that we use.
>
> That may be true, but in the case of cps, we had something in place that
was
> descriptive. Just because we use non descriptive terms for many things
does
> not make dropping the one descriptive term that we had excusable.
For the umpteenth time, cycles per second might be descriptive *to you*, but
it isn't necessarily descriptive to anybody in the world. The world != USA,
and not everbody on the planet speaks English.
Hertz is an _international_standard_unit_ for frequency, and as such is
understood by everybody who knows anything the world over.
> There used to be only two different types of gasoline to choose from.
Regular
> and hi test.
>
> If you drove into the gas station today and asked for high test, the kid
would
> look at you like you are nuts.
Boo-hoo, the world is changing. Puh-lease.
> But what does "extra", "premium", "super",
> "ultra", etc. mean??
Nothing. That's marketing for ya.
> In the use the term metre is not used (unless they changed that too while
I was
> sleeping) it's meter). Metre is used in Europe.
So is meter. Depends on the language. but "m" stands for meter/metre, in any
language. ISO international standard.
> Using any word to describe the processor of a computer is really useless,
I dunno, "processor" seems to do quite well...
> because there isn't always a true relationship between the "processor
speed and
> the actual speed of the computer.
Actually, there is. Take a CPU at 33MHz, and the _same_ CPU at 1GHz. I'll
bet you that the 1GHz one will be faster.
But this doesn't hold when they are used in differently built computers, and
especially doesn't (necessarily) hold when we are comparing different CPUs.
A 500MHz Motorola PowerPC 7400 (G4) will be faster than a 1GHz AMD Athlon at
*certain* tasks, and a 33MHz MIPS R3000 will outpace a 66MHz Intel 80486DX2
quite comfortably.
But this is not the place for this discussion; there are ample Usenet groups
and mailing lists to slug this one out ad nauseam.
> It's one more way to fool the consumer.
Not necessarily; there is no lying involved, and clockspeed is an indication
of speed, and can be used to compare systems, provided you know what other
factors to take into account.
The fact that some consumers blindly go for the biggest number is their
loss, not mine.
> There should be a standard that reflects the true overall benchmark of a
> computer that is listed on each computer.
There are many benchmarks to choose from, and all of them will yield
different results, depending on how they are constructed/conducted. The
trick is to weed out the benchmarks you're interested in and that hold any
real world relevance to the tasks you perform with the computer you are
wanting to purchase.
> The benchmarks for the processor, hard drive, video card, memory, etc. all
have
> to be considered.
Yep, I know. And no doubt the Stainless Steel Rat knows that, too.
But clock speed is a major factor in the speed of any computer system.
,xtG
.tsooJ
--
Joost van de Griek
Applications Developer
Yacht ICT
http://www.yachtgroup.com/
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