Re: [ProgSoc] New ITD Computer Laboratory Equipment (fwd)

[Christian Kent <ckent@nospam.socs.uts.edu.au>]

On Sat, 13 Jun 1998, Ben Reardon wrote:

> > > > sticking around for its full potential life.  The day 100MB becomes
> > > > useless is a long way off. 
> And we hear the famous words.....
> "640k RAM is plenty of memory, why would you need more?"

Well fine -- pardon me for missing the hidden <sarc> tags again -- but if
you want to refuse to use a computer or a disk drive until it meets your
standards, then what are you going to use?  Buy a 100MB drive today.
It'll last a =while=.  If you think it isn't enough to justify your
purchase, then you're welcome to wait until 10GB 3.5" removables become
available.  But don't disparage the Zip drive, or a lab computer with 32MB
RAM, just because it won't be useful in the future.  It's useful today,
and a bit.

> "Multitasking cannot be done in under 4 meg RAM"

You're welcome to take a broad meaning with that ... but you also have to
consider what GUI and APIs you want too.  I've seen Win95 run Word95 kinda
okay on a 386 with 4 megs, and I used to run OS/2 in 4 megs myself (since
it was better than Windows 3.1 at any rate).  MacOS will take up around
2.5MB in its latest incarnation if you hack off all the interesting bits.

> 
> Can someone please remind me when these words were spoken (with serious
> intent)?

Bill Gates ... 1983?  That's the 640K one.  I don't think the quote is
accurate though.

CK.

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