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Technology Stocks : Disk Drive Sector Discussion Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Z Analyzer who wrote (2434)	2/4/1998 9:47:00 AM
From: set	Respond to of 9256

interesting bit of news, not strictly DD. just sharing: BANGKOK, THAILAND, 1998 FEB 3 (NB) -- By Sompit Potipattanakorn, The Nation. The computer industry will soon be divided into three classes: basic, performance, and high-end. And those classes will depend on the degree of customization, according to the country manager of Intel Microelectronics (Thailand) Ltd., [NYSE:INTC] Accharas Ouysinprasert. Each class will be divided according to customer requirements. PCs in the basic class will be suitable for new users, those in the performance class will be designed for users who require more features such as graphic design, while high-end machines will include workstations and servers. It seems probable there will be some overlap between the basic and performance classes because both focus on home users. However, they will remain divided by price and capability. "Most computer beginners do not want high performance PCs because they cannot use all the computer's functions, so they are concerned about lower prices. However, some computer beginners may be concerned about performance rather than price," he said. Such diversification has occurred because of the competition to keep low-end PC prices below US$1,000. Pilot computers in all three classes are expected to be released by mid-year. "Currently, Intel and computer providers are developing these PCs. In the future, Intel will have to develop specific chips for all three classes. Computers in all classes will be developed based on PII technology," he said. Apart from performance and price, software will be another major factor creating diversification. All new software will have to support the latest hardware, so basic PCs will be unable to run some new applications. Furthermore, the lifecycle of chips will also change. At present, old chips become mainstream after the release of higher-performance chips, but in the future, each class will have its own mainstream level and high level. After a new advanced chip for each class has been delivered, the entry-level chip will disappear from the market. "The mainstream PC in the performance class will no longer be the high-performance PC in the basic class," he said. He said the economic crisis may delay the acceptance of the Pentium II by the mainstream market until mid-year. However, if PII-based PCs are affordably priced at Bt35,000 to Bt40,000 they will not have much difficulty breaking into the market.

To: Z Analyzer who wrote (2434)	2/4/1998 2:04:00 PM
From: Frodo Baxter	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9256

There are a few downsides to disk compression. Because it's a kludge, support on Win 95 is not so great. It's much easier to screw up the entire volume rather than individual files (I've destroyed Stacker and Doublespace volumes more times than I care to comment). Also, fragmentation is more of a problem and defrag utilities tend not to fully defrag it. Finally, it's not compatible with FAT32, so you can't really double large partitions. On WinNT and NTFS partitions, compression is designed in, so you have none of these problems. However, because of its onerous security model, destroying an NTFS volume is much easier than a FAT16 volume, compression or no. I have never noticed a performance increase in compressed volumes. On NT, I only compress text and data files, due to an imagined performance penalty that may or may not exist.