News Invensas to present xFD DRAM breakthrough

Because most people don't have the money for a computer that does what you do, and generally people would be daunted by how much you do at a time. Its also slow to navigate so many programs at a time, even with multiple monitors. I'm not really sure what that link has anything to do with this.

Theres a website that helps you test that stuff without actually opening any of those browsers (except the 1 to view that website). Generally if you're a good web designer, if your website works on 1 browser on 1 platform, it will probably work on the same browser on another platform. A proficient designer will remember what codes work on what browsers and can often depict what it would look like. I'm not saying you don't have these skills, but presumably you don't if you NEED all those browsers running at the same time, all the time. It's much easier and more efficient to use a popular browser like Firefox to initially develop the website, then check it out on another browser later that day to ensure compatibility.

That right there proves a hectic workstyle (if it works for you then fine, I don't care). It is highly unnecessary to be editing a video while you're also editing a website and then running a virtual machine to see that website. Just because the video or picture may appear in the website, it doesn't mean you need the website stuff opened at the same time.
For an analogy, thats like saying you like to make chicken pot pies for a living but you want to make cookies for a special occasion, but you feel the need to make a pie when making those cookies, when you already have enough pies. Sure both the pie and cookies go in the oven, but putting them in at the same time is not making your life any easier.

Why don't you just add more RAM and turn off the page file? That's what I do and it works great for me. And no, it doesn't take less than a second to alt+tab unless you're switching between the same 2 or 3 programs. It takes much longer to alt+tab a long list of programs than it would to start up a program that is already cached.

Uh... what is YOUR point? You were saying that today's games can run better if you have more than 4GB. Well, DOS games can run better if you have more than 16MB. My point is nobody well-informed is going to buy more than 6GB of RAM for games when the games themselves can run perfectly fine and fast without that extra amount; why spend money on something you won't use? Going back to the baking analogy, that's like buying an extra jug of milk when you only need 1. Sure you could save it for later but what if there is no later? What if it goes bad (or for computers, what if you upgrade before using it). It'd be just as easy to have not bought it in the first place and get it when you need it. The only good argument against that would be "well what if the price goes up?" but thats clearly not a priority of yours considering that you probably spent a decent chunk of change for your setup right now.

I have noticed that Chrome is more memory consuming per tab, but Firefox has the memory leaks. I know they've fixed some of that but idk if its completely fixed.

You asked for it:
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_hive/2010/12/open_this_story_in_a_new_tab.html

Fair enough, it is very opinionated, however, your computer decides when there's too much when it decides to slow down and you already (relatively) have a lot of memory. It is possible to have too much of anything, no matter what it is.

Seeing as how you're working in a professional environment, 12GB is a normal amount for things like multimedia. In fact, its VERY normal. 12GB for virtualization in the way you do it is actually kinda low. But 12GB is not necessary for the average home user and 12GB is overkill for web design (unless you want to chronically multitask).

Actually, I didn't complain about this new tech, I think its great and something that needed to be done a long time ago. And you're right, people are entitled to do things the way they want. I don't have a problem with you having 12GB, because multimedia and virtualization need it, I'm just saying you could be doing things a lot more efficiently.

 

I have 25 tabs open right now on my work PC, pretty much do every day, sometimes more when researching things.
Currently using ~1gb of ram for firefox but increases a lot when multiple tabs are running flash. (bad flash, bad!)

 

Well, let's take my browser for example: I use Chrome for general browsing, my window currently has 16 tabs, pretty average for me. Every time I close and reopen, each of those tabs has to refresh. While this may only take a few seconds, if I were to close this window every time I opened another significant program I might find myself having to wait a few seconds 15 times in an hour. The actual time lost is minimal, but it has the same effect as dropping your pen on the floor 15 times an hour would have; annoying me. Switching windows that are already open takes me almost zero time because I am so used to having the same host of programs open.

My browser eats up about 1gb of RAM right now, so to avoid being slightly annoyed every day all I have to do is buy another gigabyte of RAM, about $10USD. This purchase lasts 2 years; seems worthwhile to me.

Of course, everyone will have their own preferences. You probably work faster because you keep your work-space focused on a single task, I work faster by having many options open to me at once.

 

lol, could you give a different example? Because web browsers (and I suppose games that make you lose progress when you quit them) are one of very very few programs that tend to be very slow when you restart. I don't blame you at all for wanting to keep your browser open.

On my linux setups, I usually have 3 or 4 workspaces (if you don't know what they are, they're kinda like having multiple monitors but all on 1 screen - great for multitasking). On 1 workspace, I usually have something like pidgin and a web browser open at all times. On another workspace I have a terminal, a file browser, and an IDE open. The 3rd workspace might be a text document I'm working on, software updates, and a calculator. and the 4th I keep open for whatever.

 

lol, don't get me started on workspaces. when I run my Ubuntu virtual machine to do some work in GDB I find myself switching between workspaces on dual monitors to access a few PDF's a calculator, two browser windows, and two tabbed terminals (one running GDB on my machine, with tabs for moving files about and such, the other SSH'd into a remote server for testing purposes.) all this piles on top of my host system's multitasking, even I start to get a bit overwhelmed at that point.

I don't find many of my applications to be worth shutting down, the ones that are (catalyst control center, dropbox, steam, and a few others) all sit in the background and i'm prone to forget them if I close them. So in part I guess I'm just too lazy to be efficient, and when my PC is as fast as it is (pretty darn fast) I don't have much motivation to do so.

In the case of the average user I don't think most people will ever use more than 2gb of RAM when you ignore bloatware and memory leaks, but then again, bloatware and memory leaks are in many ways the topic of discussion here, programs that eat excessive amounts of RAM for no good reason are far too prevalent (I don't want to spend time minimizing the footprint of my code, but letting a runaway data structure through the testing stage is unacceptable), and that's a poor reason to start packing extra ram into PC's.

 

I was commenting on how you, a decidedly non-average computer user, were attempting to say what was required for an "average" computer user.

Assume you know all of the above. Now go work around an incumbent "CMS", and I use the term lightly, and give yourself a timescale of say, oooo, about 3x too short. There ya go, there's a use case right there. Everything's different, very rarely are things ideal.

Well, I'm good, but I'm not that good. I wouldn't be actually editing the video at the same time as those other thing. But I do have to react to client changes very rapidly at times and it's a lot easier if the video is already loaded, cached and in the correct place. Also, rendering of HD video still takes an age, even with the fastest of current tech on a single machine, so that needs to run int eh background whie you can get on with other work. Bring on faster EVERYTHING for video still!

Seen the memory requirements for ZLMA2? I believe that's not isolated to Windows.

But why would I close everything to do withthe website so that I have to sign into the back end again, and reconnect to the remote machine, etc, etc. if I just leave it open, up and running, then it's just an alt-tab away.

Wait what?! I thought you had ti try really hard to fill 512MB. Now I'm just confused.

Or it's a Windows key combo (Win+1-9) or one of my own custom key combos (AHK) or I can click on the icon in the windows task bar (it's actually very good). Either way, it is quicker than having the program startup again. CS5.5 programs are big intensive programs, they take seconds to load. If you have a several hundred MB file to load over even a gigabit network, it takes seconds again. If it's already loaded...

probably the bit that takes longest is actually getting the files open that you need to be working on to the part you want to be working. If you know you're going to be working on something throughout the day on and off as more information comes through, why keep closing it down and having to go find it again?

That was my point

You're assuming that they're never going to be running anything other than a single game at a time though. No multi-tab browser in the background. No VoIP application, no virus scanner, no IM, no email, no music, no downloads. I'm sure there are some people (right?) that single task on a PC as a games machine - but I certainly don't see them when I go to the iSeries LANs each year.

Also, how many other programs could you get DOS running in the background while you gamed, if you could convince the swine to free up enough EMS *shudder*? Windows multitasks pretty well. DOS - not so well People used to single task on computers a lot because they sucked at multitasking (or just plain didn't do it!). Nowadays, because the tech's improved, you *can* do more - if you have enough tech. Of course, if you only have a little bit, you have less choice.

But surely, you could just close Firefox when you're not using it and then the leaks don't matter? Just saying.

Still hypothetical. The "Average" user does not exist. Unless you can show me how to open 3.2 tabs of course

Agreed, but that should be for the individual to decide - yes, there's a much longer possible debate surrounding that, so I'll leave it there...

Yeah, I didn't used to use VMs because I didn't have enough memory when I had 8GB. Instead I had to use those damned browser testing sites that were (at the time) slow, visually poor and expensive. Things my well have improved by now, but it's still generally easier to test local things using local services, especially when you're limited by poor net connections.

Average again huh? Didn't I mention they don't exist? You realise that your "average" Smartphone now records 1080p video right? And that many, many "average" people post video to YouTube every second? I guess some of these might even be "average" home users... There might also be web designers who do other things, like print, or photography, or video as well as web design. Very few things happen in total isolation, so it's pointless viewing only isolated use cases.

Fair enough - I just interpreted it that way because I see it often enough to irritate me when I'm feeling weak

And yeah, if I had a moment to actually think about things I'm sure I could figure out more efficient ways to do things - unfortunately there are times in the real world when you don't have time and you have to make do.

Sweet dreams.

 

Dick Crisp. lol.

 

I didn't say anything was required, but if I were to say that, I'd say that MS should be required to do a better job at cleaning up their code.

...What?

I've heard of LZMA compression (which does work on multiple platforms) but haven't heard of ZLMA2. I've used it and it works fine on low-memory systems, obviously slower than higher-memory systems.

I don't have a problem with leaving things open that take a long time to prepare, because its common sense to do that. What I have a problem with is having a bunch of little programs that only take a second to prepare, like a calculator or text editor. This is just a preference of mine, but when you have a bunch of things like that opened at the same time, it slows down your navigation, shortcuts or not.

Yes, on my NETBOOK I struggle to fill up 512MB. Your presumptuousness is not getting you anywhere. I don't have a problem with needing more RAM (when it's necessary). Many people don't have a system as optimized as my netbook, so I can't blame them. You're the one whining about your 12GB not being enough and your paging file getting filled. That's kinda the whole point why I'm arguing with you - maybe if you didn't do so much at a time, you wouldn't have performance drops, you wouldn't need need a paging file or even extra RAM. If you REALLY think you've got everything down perfectly, IIRC, you admitted RAM was cheap, so why not save your SSD's resources and get another 4GB?

Yes I completely agree with that, I don't have a problem with keeping slow-to-prepare and chronically used programs open at all times, it'd be stupid not to. It is retarded to open something like photoshop, make a few changes, and close it when you know you're going back to it. The thing that I think is nonsensical is (to keep) running the program when you know you won't be using it for several hours. If you actively switch between EVERYTHING you have running (meaning, you monitor them within 15 minute intervals) then fine, apparently you really do NEED all those things open.

No, I'm not assuming that. Most of those things you mentioned (not all) are things that the average person would run and are not going to make much of an impact on performance. That's why consoles today offer some of those features - they're nice bonuses that don't slow down anything.

What?! Close a program!? I thought you didn't like doing that!

How hypocritical of you, since you're the one who sent me a link to a statistic first.

I'd find another statistic for you but you suddenly don't seem to like them when they prove you wrong and all that "average people don't exist" nonsense.