>...How can it be an " >ENDLESS " upgrade option if the Bus speed of a stock >Tsunami class 9500 is set at 50 mghz? I mean, its >great to have a 1 ghz RISC based chip, BUT, if your >bus speed is still locked at 50 mghz, well, arent we >looking at a Traffic problem for the Bus on the >Information Superhighway of your MAC?
Excellent question. The answer is yes *and* no. Everything has its limits. Upgrading your Mac has its limits. But so does the amount of speed one needs to get work done. For most of us who are not Supermen, we are limited to handling only a small number of tasks at one time. Furthermore, our eyes and ears are very slow, limiting us to real-time input. Writing and speaking are even slower than that, severely limiting our creative output. Computers also have limits when it comes to input and output. Back in the 1980s we were assured by marketers that 128 kilobyte and 512 kilobyte personal computers would be "the last computer you will ever need." Those computers could only stimulate the sense of sight. Computers today, however, can stimulate all of our senses together with gorgeous multimedia output including sound, text, and video. It is still beyond a mainstream computer's ability to stimulate touch, but I am certain the Internet pornography industry is quickly working to solve that problem. There are also some of us today who claim that such and such computer will be "the last computer you will ever need." Crass futurists always remind us that the same thing was said two decades ago, and that turned out to be false. Many, especially the PC manufacturing industry, now take the opposite stance that "no computer will ever fulfill your needs." In other words, you'll just have to buy a new one every six months to keep up. But economics is even more crass than the technology futurist. The Law of Diminishing Returns states that amount of value we place on a commodity can only go so high, no matter how many or few are made. This law also applies to personal computers. Computers already output more colors than the human eye can distinguish, more levels of sound than the eardrum can bear, and text can be transferred to us much faster than we can read. Once a computer can do all that, how much value is there in buying a new one? I will admit that some users have special needs. Hardcore gamers, creative professionals, programmers, and scientists all deal with massive amounts of data that require intensely fast computation. For them, the marketing mantra that "no computer will ever fulfill your needs," may well be true. But the vast majority of us only *need* to do several things: read, write, listen, and watch, all in real time. All four of these tasks are easily handled by every mainstream personal computer manufactured in the last five years. So in the vast scheme of things, there is very little difference between 2.4 gighertz and 300 megahertz, 128 megabytes of memory and 2 gigabytes of memory, 20 gigabytes of disk space and half a terrabyte, 10 megabits per second and 1 gigabit per second. Bus speed is even more dubious, because what really matters in computation is how fast the data travels between the cache and the processor. All G3 and G4 upgrade cards do this at around 200 Mhz. A 50 Mhz bus is nothing to lose sleep over. -- --Chris PM 7500/604e 200Mhz 4 gig SCSI 256 megs OS 8.6 (This machine rocks!) -- PCI-PowerMacs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- Sonnet & PowerLogix Upgrades - start at $169 | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> PCI-PowerMacs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/pci-powermacs.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive:<http://www.mail-archive.com/pci-powermacs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
