Can there be room for another system?

[GreggBz]

The Amiga had such a tight integration between it's OS and it's hardware. I was really the first of a few modern home computer operating systems. The next real innovation/evolution in my mind was networking. Amiga OS had none and was a single user OS, which have all but disappeared these days. A new, from the ground up multi-user OS would be neat, but not groundbreaking.

It's interesting that the Internet came along and networking became so vital that we had to engineer things around multi user systems such as VMS and UNIX.

When home computers were in their infancy things were much more exciting for everyone involved! Now, we've kind of grown up, seen so much more and it's not so exciting anymore.

We've hit a sort of plateau on so many consumer technologies.
Everyone is doing it, and when that happens you get lots of noise and less innovation. So, the real question is, what comes after this information age? I think we need to imagine a change from somewhere outside of "networking" or "cpu power" or "better graphics" to realize what the technological future really holds. I'm ready for the real space age myself.

Some alternative operating systems:
Microsoft Singularity
SkyOS

[GreggBz]

However, the real reason is simple: multitasking. Something the PC of today still has difficulty with.

I'd have to differ on that point. At work (I'm a Linux admin) I routinely have about 20 windows open. 6 xterms shelled into different systems, a spreadsheet or two, e-mail, xmms perhaps, 13 browser tabs, mysql testing, etc..etc.. I reach critical mass before my workstation does, although firefox has a bad habit of barfing.

Same goes for Windows, which I use at home for development.
I find myself with VS.NET (A real monster), iTunes, Firefox, FTP clients, email, and system folders everywhere. Not usually a problem.

I think *games* modularization of the components and good competition are the catalyst for hardware development, whether we need it or not.
I've heard "Do you plan on playing 3d games" asked by many PC salesmen. If the answer is no, then subtract 600 dollars from the system price.

[GreggBz]

alewis wrote:
stick a floppy in an XP rig an format it.. and watch the system come to a halt

Seriously, I just tried it, (formating a floppy, it took some real digging to actually find one here at work) it wasn't that bad. I could still browse use openoffice etc.. And I'd say my 2.5Ghz PC did it at least 5%-6% faster then my A1200 :lol: