Nine Ingredients Essential To The Modern PC Experience

[cleeve]

What technologies go into making a modern PC? We've identified nine fundamental components and capabilities responsible for shaping today's desktop computer experience, from networking to mice. Do you remember when each of these became important to you?

Nine Ingredients Essential To The Modern PC Experience : Read more

 

[esrever]

What about a modern OS?

 

[Onus]

If the mouse belongs there, the QWERTY keyboard certainly does too.

 

[demonhorde665]

I though the article was about fundemental components of pc's not want's. MP3's is NOT fundemental to modern pc experience. in fact most people i know don't bother with mp3 on a pc , and rely on mp3 players or cell/phone players. also like esrever said , what about modern OS's , namely windows , with out windows its plausible that PC would never have caught on as a main stream part of life.

 

[ta152h]

he AT released in 1984 was the 139, and ran at 6 MHz, not 8 MHz. The 339 came out later, and ran at 8 MHz.

The next release after that was Microchannel, not PCI, and came out in 1987. The most popular computers in the world used it; it wasn't a fringe technology. It ran, originally, at 10 MHz with 32-bit bus, and allowed for bus masters, and pretty much everything a modern bus would.

 

[sanilmahambre]

Eyfinity is modern pc's first impression

 

[skyline4727]

I'm surprised they didn't include CD or other removable media like floppy disks. How did you get programs on a computer without those.

 

[mayankleoboy1]

"mouse driven desktop paradigm"

Fuck windows 8, right ?

 

[InvalidError]

About LCDs... "even with a 60 Hz refresh, they're easier to look at for long periods."

The reason LCDs are easier to look at has nothing to do with refresh rate, it has to do with how CRTs have to use phosphors that fade fast enough to clear the screen between refreshes since there is no other way of clearing it while LCD pixels are continuously lit by the backlight, the active matrix can hold an image for over a second between refreshes without significant fading and can be adjusted at will either way (brighter/darker), no need to wait for fading unlike CRTs where the electron gun can only make pixels brighter.

Active matrix LCDs can technically operate at close to 0Hz refresh and mobile LCD manufacturers have recently announced new LCDs supporting partial screen updates to avoid wasting power refreshing static parts of the screen all the time.

Refresh may become an issue again with OLED which behaves a lot more like phosphor: needs a refresh rate high enough to avoid noticeable fading. Unlike phosphors though, OLED pixels can actually be turned off on demand, so longer fade times are not as much of an issue beyond using more power to turn pixels on/off.

 

[memadmax]

Apple will never get #2, and so be it's undoing....

 

[ojas]

The arrival of Windows 8 presents us with the first major departure from the input scheme created for the Alto four decades ago.

And it's half-assed, not to mention that it's not even designed with PCs in mind.

 

[Guest]

what about portability? portability and small form factors that can be carried upon your person are also major ingredients to a modern experience

 

[Guest]

[citation][nom]Skyline4727[/nom]I'm surprised they didn't include CD or other removable media like floppy disks. How did you get programs on a computer without those.[/citation]
flash drives and mainly downloads, CDs and DVDs for most enthusiasts are already in the past

 

[belardo]

"The next major step in the evolution of the expansion bus came in 1993 with the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus. Thirty-two bits wide and clocked at 33 MHz, PCI could move up to 132 MB/s, and it was the first bus conceptualized with plug-and-play in mind."

PCI was NOT really the first. Microchannel (MCA) in 1987s with IBM's PS/2 line of computers... as IBM tried to create their own standard since they threw together the "PC" with standard parts and couldn't patent it like Apple, Amiga or even Atari.

But before then, Amiga's ZORRO slots were PnP in 1984 (before Plug N Play had a name) - autoconfig bus which came out in 1985 and soon after, the Mac II with its NuBus also in 1987. These were 16bit. In 1990, Amiga ZORRO III was released that was 32bit... years before PCI.

There was also VLB (Vesa Local Bus) which was created by the PC industry to go against IBM's Microchannel... it was short lived as PCI quickly and rightfully killed VLB and MCA. VLB cards were all huge as the slots were quite long. Something that most people do NOT miss.

Again... the PC market was always substandard to others. Hence using a "PC" until Windows95 was always a pretty sub-standard experience.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]mayankleoboy1[/nom]"mouse driven desktop paradigm"Fuck windows 8, right ?[/citation]

You actually read the page, right? It's covered.

 

[voltagetoe]

I'd like to see more developement on highres monitors. The current backwards step of being forced to buy lowres 1080p monitors is ridiculous (maybe I should go back to my ten years old 2560x1600 CRT). One other backwards step is the unbearable noise that highend components cause.

THERE IS NO MODERN PC - TOO MUCH HAS GONE BACKWARDS !

 

[Fokissed]

[citation][nom]voltagetoe[/nom]I'd like to see more developement on highres monitors. The current backwards step of being forced to buy lowres 1080p monitors is ridiculous (maybe I should go back to my ten years old 2560x1600 CRT). One other backwards step is the unbearable noise that highend components cause.THERE IS NO MODERN PC - TOO MUCH HAS GONE BACKWARDS ![/citation]

Those CRTs were super high-end, and very few people owned such screens. 1024x768 was the most popular resolution until at least 2009. Even in 2012, low resolution screens are still the most popular. Is it really surprising that a high-end niche product from the past is better (arguably) than a current, affordable, mainstream product?

If you think high end PC components are loud, then you've never used a computer with vacuum tubes, floppy drives, early model CD drives, a dot matrix printer, a tape drive, certain CRT monitors, ancient hard drives, or been anywhere near a mainframe (which seem to be cooled by industrial hair dryers). Computers are getting quieter, with the exception of a few very high-end niche products (6990/690). Even then, most people going that far will have water cooling, which is nearly silent.

Edit: forums ate my links

 

[Soda-88]

I still use my old Samsung SM757DFX 17" CRT as a 2nd monitor

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]voltagetoe[/nom] (maybe I should go back to my ten years old 2560x1600 CRT). One other backwards step is the unbearable noise that highend components cause.THERE IS NO MODERN PC - TOO MUCH HAS GONE BACKWARDS ![/citation]

No need to go to the past. I'm using a 30" 2560x1600 LCD monitor right now...

Dell sells 'em.

 

[enewmen]

You will need to pry the CBM PET computer out of my cold dead hands.

 

[mcd023]

[citation][nom]Onus[/nom]If the mouse belongs there, the QWERTY keyboard certainly does too.[/citation]
idk, ever since I switched to Colemak, I can't say I'm thinking good things while using qwerty. though, for the keyboard itself, I agree.

 

[voltagetoe]

[citation][nom]Cleeve[/nom]No need to go to the past. I'm using a 30" 2560x1600 LCD monitor right now... Dell sells 'em.[/citation]

It's very expensive to get a Dell monitor to my country as none of the local firms import Dell products here nowadays. Nearly all the monitors are crap 1080p resolution here (a couple 1920x1200 models but nothing beyond that).

 

[Nintendo Maniac 64]

I like how Tom's shows a picture of a single-core Athlon 64 for "Multi-Core Processors".

 

[RedJaron]

I though the article was about fundemental components of pc's not want's.

Um, no, notice the title? See how it talks about the experience? Yes, components have something to do with that, but at least half is the software and protocols the hardware runs. And I'm not sure what "want's" is/are.

MP3's is NOT fundemental to modern pc experience.

Oh, so you mention "experience" here, so I guess you did read the article title? Still this has to be the most asinine statement I've read today ( but it's still early. ) Go back and read that page. Notice the title is "Entertainment and Digital Media"? How can you say MP3 ( and by association other compression protocols, ) isn't essential to the modern computing experience? Do you listen to music on your computer? You watch YouTube, DVDs, or Blu-rays on it? Stream some TV shows or movies or Netflix? Without digital media and compression, how does any of that happen?

flash drives and mainly downloads, CDs and DVDs for most enthusiasts are already in the past

For some enthusiasts, maybe. Myself and many others I know still use physical media for backups and other purposes ( and we don't plan on giving them up anytime soon. ) I think a page on removable media would be in order here. But I do understand that right now, removable media isn't crucial to modern computing anymore.

Do you remember when printers plugged in to the parallel port, mice hooked up to the serial port, joysticks employed a game port, and keyboards attached to a DIN connector? To top all of that off, nothing was plug-and-play.

Oh, you mean back when I was editing my config.sys and autoexec.bat files, setting my video card to be VESA compatible, messing with sound card IRQs, praying it had SoundBlaster or Roland emulation, and using a VGA pass-through cable for my Voodoo2 and TNT2 cards? Ah yes, good days . . . good days.

 

[techinator9000]

And typing win at a DOS prompt to fire up Windows 3.1?