[mdlug] Parallella: A Supercomputer For Everyone by Adapteva — Kickstarter

[Adam Tauno Williams]

>>My issue is that comparing the performance difference perceived
>>between a 1980s platform and its applications and a 20xx platform and
>>its applications is very apples-and-oranges.  There are many
>>significant both technological and philosophical differences.
>> I also don't believe there is a performance problem;  I'm very
>>satisfied with the performance of the devices and applications I use. 
>>In my experience performance, on the same hardware, has noticeably
>>*improved* in the last several years.  LibreOffice, for one example,
>churns through my data an order of magnitude faster than it did a
>>couple of years ago.  The big Java app I use all day (DbVisualizer) has
>>gotten perceptibly faster with every release.  The start up delay I
>>used to see with .NET apps like Monodevelop and F-Spot is simply gone.

>How much memory was in your system back then, and how much now?

My spare/backup/around-the-house laptop is unchanged from the day I installed it in ~2006. It has 4GB of RAM.  That laptop is what I use for performance evaluation as I'd consider anything older than 6 years to be junk (at $20 a month that is 20x6x12=$1,440 - twice replacement cost).   I use it for all my book keeping, a lot of online research, and LibreOffice work.

I suspect adding an SSD could add a few years of service to that laptop as the only slow drown is when the drive light is flashing.  The initial boot up and login is quite slow - but once the apps are open performance is very good.  Adding the latest GNOME 3.6 version of gnome-shell helped it noticeably,  the old i915 family GPU handles it gracefully.

-- 
Adam Tauno Williams, LPI1 / NCLA