| If you look in any American newspaper tomorrow morning,
you will see large chain retailers selling what they commonly hawk as "Internet
Screamer" or "Blazingly Fast" personal computers for one thousand
to three thousand dollars. Well, these are the Mercedes-Benz of the
computer world. Just as a twelve year old Toyota can get you to the same
destinations, so can a $200 computer.
The above heresy explained: One of the most strenuous tasks (and design goals) for a computer is graphic animation. A computer screen typically has close to a million phosphor dots (pixels) that are lit up individually to create images and written fonts. An animation (such as a video game) requires the computer to redraw these million dots 10 to 30 times per second. So, very fast computers are very nice to have if you're working with animations (admittedly, also with large-scale business/scientific applications). If you don't play video games or design airliners you might not need a $3000 computer. Don't I need a lot of power to surf the Web? No, because even that obsolete 486 (even a 386) computer you forgot to toss out of the attic can get you there in style and comfort. The crux of the matter is this: Everybody (read: Everybody) has to wait for the phone line. The working innards (sorry for the technical talk) of even the slowest computer typically work thousands of times faster than the phone lines that deliver the web page pictures/text to you. Which brings to mind a maxim of computer engineering: All computers wait at the same speed. The guy with the $3000 computer doesn't get his web pages appreciably faster than the person with the $200 computer. And to boot, in a world without fences-- who needs Gates? There exists technically superior operating software that was developed by a loose (make that: "progressive, eclectic") consortium of software professionals and enthusiasts who wearied of a certain used-car salesman who told the world he was a software visionary. The software is Linux. It has the seemingly paradoxical characteristics of being available for FREE, and yet offering more technical support than Windows. It can run for weeks and months without crashing. It even gives you a cleaner, brighter wash ;-) So, don't give that used-car salesman any more money. Money is power and he has amply demonstrated that he will use it against the public interest. So, for $200 (give or take) you can get connected to the "Greater Mind," the greatest leveraging and liberating tool since the stone axe. Sounds like empowerment to us. P.S. There is even software out there that will let you surf the web with a computer running DOS (MS-DOS, DR.DOS, etc), see... |