But no ponies. A look at the near future of microprocessors.
I find it amusing that so many people will be using quad-core machines for word processing and email. On the other hand, we’ll probably need that kind of processing power to filter all the spam.
Dual-core machines are nice, even for the word-proc/email crowd, because it makes the computer more responsive, especially if you’re running a realtime AV. You probably already knew that, of course, but it is an advantage. Since I’ve gone to dual-core machines I almost never see the computer do momentary freeze ups any longer.
Given current trends in Windows, we’ll need multi-gigabytes of RAM and quad cores to run whatever follows Vista. We just about need it today. Windows is a CPU sink. It’ll absorb whatever computer power you can throw at it. When hardware advances to a certain point, Microsoft releases a new version of Windows to slow the computer down to the apparent speed of a 25 MHz 486 running DOS.