*-* On Sun, 29 Jun 2008, at 22:11:30 +0200,
*-* In Article 2pudnWpryojvcfrVnZ2dnUVZ_h_inZ2d@mozilla.org,
*-* squaredancer wrote
*-* About Re: Firefox 3 still hogs memory

> On 29.06.2008 05:38, CET - what odd quirk of fate caused Ken Whiton to
> generate the following:? :
>> *-* Daniel wrote

[ ... ]

>>> Back in the days of 640kbytes of RAM, I could see why you might
>>> allocate heaps of HD as a swapfile, but when you've got 100's of
>>> MB or even GBytes of RAM, why should you then need to allocate any
>>> of your HD??

>> Two reasons: multitasking and software bloat. Back in the
>> days of 640 KB neither the CPUs nor the OSs were capable of much
>> (if any) multitasking, so there was little or no need for swapping.
>> Furthermore, back in the days before HDs were available in PCs
>> programs had to be able to fit on a 360 KB (or even a 180 KB)
>> floppy, so programmers had to write tight, efficient code. Compare
>> that with the size and complexity of (most of) today's programs,
>> which, by virtue of that size and complexity require much more RAM
>> to operate in.

> Ho, Ken - you also remember the 8" days of single and double-sided
> floppies?

No.

> those were the days when a floppy really *WAS* a floppy
> (and don't get your sticky fingers on the read-slot)

Actually, I don't even have any experience with the 180 KB
floppies. The first PCs we had where I worked had 360 KB 5 1/4"
floppies, and my first home PC had dual 720 KB 3 1/2" floppies (and no
HD).

Ken Whiton

FIDO: 1:132/152
InterNet: kenwhiton@surfglobal.net.INVAL (remove the obvious to reply)