On 3 Feb 2001, at 23:16, Stephan T. Lavavej wrote:
> >What about some of the new gaming platforms. I think some have computing
> >capabilities equivalent to P133s and they have modem hookups. However, I'm
> > not sure how feasible/worthwhile it would be to write progamrs to do this.
P133 isn't much by modern standards.
>
> Better yet, the Xbox. It will actually have a PIII-733 inside it, AND a
> hard drive, and a built-in broadband connection. All that would be required
> is the ability to run arbitrary code from the hard drive, and poof, you have
> something like a million potential boxes on which to run Prime95.
Assuming, of course, that PIII-733s are still available when the Xbox
goes into mass production. Intel's production strategies might force
use of a more powerful processor :)
I guess it will be running something that is recognisably Windows
"under the hood", as well. In which case, the programming overhead
might be _very_ small.
I also guess that there _will_ be some means of running third-party
code ... people are going to want to do things that Microsoft haven't
thought of ... the free market system usually manages to rectify
these sorts of deficiencies!
Furthermore, I'd guess that Bill Gates would be rather distressed to
hear your estimate of only one million sales. He probably hopes unit
sales will run into eight figures.
Regards
Brian Beesley
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