Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!aplcen!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!rpi!uwm.edu!ogicse!blake!milton!aipdc@castle.edinburgh.ac.uk
From: aipdc@castle.edinburgh.ac.uk (Paul D. Crowley)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Re: Brain/Environment "bottleneck"
Keywords: bottleneck
Message-ID: <2558@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 2 Mar 90 09:36:18 GMT
References: <2193@milton.acs.washington.edu>
Sender: hlab@milton.acs.washington.edu
Reply-To: "Paul D. Crowley" <aipdc@castle.edinburgh.ac.uk>
Organization: Edinburgh University Computing Service
Lines: 24
Approved: hitl@hardy.u.washington.edu


In article <2193@milton.acs.washington.edu> jtm@cs.cornell.edu (Jan Thomas Miksovsky) writes:
>Think for a minute about how fast you can type or manipulate a mouse 
>when you're processing at top speed.  When I'm really flying, I can keep 
>maybe eight or ten operations in my Mac's buffer: I'm pounding away on 
>command keys, and dialog boxes that begin to pop up on the screen are 
>blown away before they can ever be completely drawn.  I can keep this up 
            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>for maybe a minute or so; then I have to step back and figure out what 
>I'm going to do next.

I too find that desktops work too slowly, and that this affects how
useful they are. Has anyone out there used a desktop so fast that they
would't notice if it got ten times faster most of the time (i.e. it is
already too quick for the time of most tasks to be noticed). What
difference does it make?

I ask because I once had the opportunity to word-process on a 386
machine. The wp loaded within half a second and remembered where it was
before. It was also called "m" so it didn't take much effort to call up.

-- 
\/ o\ "I say we grease this rat-fuck son-of-a-bitch Paul D Crowley
/\__/ right now. No offense." - Aliens.             aipdc@uk.ac.ed.castle