[Tfug] Cheap Memory

[Bexley Hall]

--- "Bowie J. Poag" <bpoag at comcast.net> wrote:

> It happened today.
> 
> I was reading some message board, where someone
> actually said "It only has 1GB of RAM."
> 
> Thats a sad, sad statement when you think about it.
> Just how horribly 
> bloated an simple desktop-centric operating system
> has to be to not 
> manage or utilize such a resource correctly.

<grin>  Now you know how I feel when I hear folks
peddling embedded systems that *only* need 1MB...
(I've worked on systems that used KB  :<  )

> Not to get Paul started on the elegance of OS/2,
> but, I can recall not 
> too long ago seeing my mid 1990's Amiga absolutely
> fly on 4MB RAM.  
> Thats 1/512th the memory.. With no such thing as
> virtural memory, it 
> forced application writers to create healthy,
> relatively fat-free code. 

Yup.  For the longest time, you could run FreeBSD
on a 386SX with 4-5MB of RAM.

If you want to see just how much of your machine
you are "giving up" to code bloat, etc., try running
old apps on "today's hardware".

E.g., I used Brief (by Underware) as my text editor
under DOS on a 16MHz 386 and it *flew*.  On a *50*
MHz machine it was so fast that it was UNUSABLE!
I dread to think what it would be like on a 3GHz
machine (i.e., you could edit files BEFORE you
started typing!  :> )

> Now, the only qualifying factor is "does it run?"

And, just as unfortunately, many do *not* run.
Or, run *poorly*.
 
> Sad.

<shrug>  Not likely to get better since folks have
given up control of their codebases to "economic
interests"...

--don


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