Nine Ingredients Essential To The Modern PC Experience
Nine Ingredients Essential To The Modern PC Experience
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What Is The Modern PC Experience?
If you are reading this, PCs are likely an integral part of your life. You may spend so much time with computers that you take them for granted. But what defines a modern PC? What technologies and innovations shape your experience? How has the personal computer changed since its inception?
From expansion slots to the screen, join us as we explore all the things that make PCs what they are today.
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Fuck windows 8, right ?
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.
Fuck windows 8, right ?
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.
And it's half-assed, not to mention that it's not even designed with PCs in mind.
flash drives and mainly downloads, CDs and DVDs for most enthusiasts are already in the past
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.
You actually read the page, right? It's covered.
THERE IS NO MODERN PC - TOO MUCH HAS GONE BACKWARDS !
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
No need to go to the past. I'm using a 30" 2560x1600 LCD monitor right now...
Dell sells 'em.
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.