Talk:Personal computer/Archive 3

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Disconnect

There seems to be a disconnect between the term "personal computer" and the history behind it. Right now I'm reading: Fire in the Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine (Paperback - Nov 29, 1999) Its a start for info. The problem was that many of the small office/home office computers were already called microcomputers (down from PDPs and Vax "Mini-computers") "Home computers" was another popular term when Commodore64, Apple II series, Tandy TRS-80 and others were out. "Personal Computer" was a marketing term deliberately introduced by IBM when they introduced their microcomputer. They wanted to differentiate their product as a serious business machine, not just another hobbyist "home computer." So Apple fans and other "workstation" brands got very defensive about how their computer is NOT a "PC". "Personal Computer" was specifically an IBM marketing effort back then. Nowadays it is a generic term like keelnex, and other Genericized trademarks. But certainly the older "workstations" did NOT want their computers called PCs, no matter how well the term fits. Cuvtixo 19:40, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

There is extensive evidence that the term 'personal computer' was in usage in the late 1960's by Hewlett Packard and others 15 years before the introduction of IBM's 5150. Of course the workstation developers don't wish to have their machines called PC's because that's an instant loss of 1000% profits to 'drop' to that classification. The PS3's abilities as a mathematical modeling machine rivals some workstations but is only $300. 'Workstations' is just as much a marketing term as IBM's PC phrasing Alatari 20:07, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Workstations are simply not PCs. Wikipedia's article on workstations lists some very fundamental differences between the two classes of machines. I think the correct usage for both terms should be promoted, instead of what everybody is familiar with. Rilak 03:10, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

It does not say they are distinct, just that workstations have differences from an average personal computer. These days there is much overlap between the terms, especially since now many workstations are PCs. Mdwh 23:31, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

There is much overlap between the terms these days, I agree, but we were originally discussing machines from the mid 1990s. The distinction was much clearer back then. As for many 'workstations' these days being PCs, you are right as well, but thats only because some computer shops are selling them as such because they are misusing the word, linking the 'work' in workstation with office usage. You can still find true workstations from companies such as BOXX Tech (3DBOXX, APEXX) or Apple (Mac Pro). Rilak 10:33, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I' in seeing your point of including the evolution of the term in the article. It's not clear to me why there's such a large section on Mainframes and huge lists of individual machines. Mainframes have there own article and a compilation of all personal computers now to present is beyond the scope of an encyclopedia. If an external source has such a list we could link it. Instead the top definition can be the best most recent while we expand the article to cover it's meanings since 1960 going decade by decade or at obvious turning points. Some people aren't even buying typical desktop's and are using their cells and PS3/ Wii's for many functions. Can you buy a printer for a PS3? I need to do some reading. Alatari 10:43, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I think that covering the evolution of the term and the computer itself is a good idea. It is going to be a major task expanding the article, but one that I'm willing to help out with. Perhaps this should be proposed and a clear concensus regarding how to achieve this be determined. Rilak 13:12, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Image not showing up

The first image is NOT showing up in my computer. (MSIE7 on MS Windows XP) --Do not click me! 14:54, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Image must have been modified. Won't Size to under 260px now. Fixed. Alatari 13:48, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry to say the problem still persists, and it is not browser dependent, I'm using safari on a Mac. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that it's a .SVG image, maybe it is corrupt. Strange thing is that the picture sometimes does appear, and it always appears in commons, (by double clicking on the image). Mahjongg 15:00, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Changed the sizes and they seem to work now. A good source is Image --Statsone 17:19, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

It was a global problem. Wikipedia had a banner describing the details. Alatari 11:15, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Illustration

The "modern personal computer" in the illustration doesn't look very modern. Perhaps a laptop would be more appropriate? How many people use those boxy tower CPUs today? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.219.251.216 (talk) 10:36, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Me! Anyway please read WP:RS and then read WP:SOFIXIT. --Kubanczyk 20:17, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

I do, but in some ways (my taste in computers included) I'm the quintessential minority, so that proves the original poster's point! 71.242.43.9 (talk) 23:00, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

important health risks?

Hi. Obviously, too much time on the computer can pose health risks. The radiation and strong EMFs can cause things such as cancer, tumours, heart problems, etc. I don't think this needs to be overly sourced, as it is common knowledge. In fact, I get headaches sometimes because of too much Wiki-time. Any kind of screen will do this if there is too much exposure. Just search for health risks associated with computers on a search engine. Please mention some of this in some of these articles. Thanks. ~A H 1^{(T C U)} 18:11, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

This is not a place for storing data from search engines. Please read WP:RS and then read WP:SOFIXIT. --Kubanczyk 20:18, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Those health risk concerns would have to be heavily sourced as they are not common knowledge and are actually quite controversial. Alatari 07:06, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Article organization

The lead in is nice but the article is getting very long. PC as a term could be sprinkled thuout as it is commonly interchangeable. Some of these items could be moved to other articles. A list of important personal computers article or some similar name. The proposed merger with Home Computer and some of the history moved to an article History of computing hardware (1960s-1990s) and History of computing hardware (1990s-2000's). There's a push by industry to eliminate the open source component box approach in favor of smaller PDA, Tablet, Cell and other devices so a discussion on the open component approach versus proprietary might be important soon. Alatari (talk) 21:50, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that PDAs or tablets are replacing PCs, nor do I think that the industry is doing so. Intel has been making a push to make PC hardware more powerful lately in an effort to promote multimedia and entertainment on the PC platform and so has AMD with its purchase of ATI and the possible fusion of processor and GPU technologies in one product. Many people do things such as image processing and video editing, and these tasks are a common use for PCs, and cannot be replaced by PDAs or tablets. Rilak (talk) 03:55, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

But the all-in-one box will be more proprietary and not as easily modifiable by the end-user. I don't believe the box will disappear in the near future but the Play Station inroads into the distributed computing model on Boinc projects is an interesting turn of events. The ability to load Linux and a front is it almost possible to call a PlayStation 3 a PC? This convergence of systems is going to make editing this PC page interesting endeavor. Alatari (talk) 05:37, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

While I do think that the PlayStation 3 and the Cell BE are interesting, I do believe that they are not what many people are saying that they are (supercomputers and PC replacements). Reports on the PS3 and Cell BE such as the Scientific Computing on PlayStation 3 (SCOP3) from the University of Tennessee seems to suggest that the PS3 are still very specialised gaming consoles. For example, the report states that the lack of branch prediction, the lack of IEEE compliant floating point number support, a relatively low performance (to single precision) double precision FLOP/s count, the lack of a faster clustering interconnect and the small size of the main memory. All these are not desirable in a PC or a supercomputer. Perhaps what is desirable is the PS3's low cost and high value. Further more the Linux on PS3 is not what it seems either, for the PS3 restricts the operating system from accessing parts of the console such as the GPU and media subsystem, which a general PC would not do. As for the convergence of systems, I do agree that it will be interesting, for example, AMD's future merge of the CPU and GPU. Rilak (talk) 13:03, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Proposed merger with Desktop computer

I don't think this merger is advisable, just as it wouldn't be good to merge Laptop into this article. Such articles should exist to describe the characteristics of those particular forms of computer; there is no need to generate a mega-article here. While the current content of those articles may not be best, that can be revised. The existence of articles with those subjects separate from this one should continue, IMO. -R. S. Shaw (talk) 22:19, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

I ask you to reconsider. There's virtually nothing in the current desktop computer article that's not already better written in Personal computer. Laptop looks to be a fairly strong article and talks about the peculiar problems of laptops, and I agree that it stands on its own merit. But the desktop computer article is quite redundant with personal computer. Have a look at the desktop computer article again and ask yourself if there could ever *be* anything in it that isn't already covered in personal computer? --Wtshymanski (talk) 16:27, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

I believe that some content should be moved here. However, there is some content that should remain in the desktop computer article. For example, this pretty much justifies why there should be a desktop computer article: "There are four types of desktop computers: home computers, or personal computers; workstations, Internet servers, and special communications computers." OK, so it isn't too good at the moment, I might replace 'Internet servers' with a more generic term such as just 'servers', but my point is that if all of the article was merged, then where would this definition be covered? Just to make sure I'm clear, I agree some content should be merged, but not the whole article. The section which deals with hardware looks pretty much like an exact redundant duplication, and it isn't appropriate to discuss hardware in this article as home computers, PCs, workstations and servers are quite different. Rilak (talk) 06:29, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Four types? Not very accurate, is it? A poor and unreferenced "definition". A data center serving a non-trivial number of clients uses rack-mounted servers or possibly virtual machines running on a mainframe, not desktop boxes. You don' thave *room* for desktops - surely there's an article at blade server and if not, there should be. A tower case is literally not a desktop case. What's a "special communications computer" ? I don't know, and I've been around since the wire-wrap pencil days. If that's the only sentence that anyone can find to justify this article, then I'd feel quite confident that a merge is in order. --Wtshymanski (talk) 15:01, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I never said it was accurate - I even offered one possible way to make it better. The data center servers you refer to is not what the statement in question discusses. Servers have multiple definitions and one of them is any computer that serves clients. There are many low end desktop servers available for simple office tasks and other miscellaneous purposes. As for a special communications computer, it refers to those that handle non-consumer or 'professional' communications. There are niche computers for those sort of things. But this is not the point of my posting, it has to do with that I think some of the desktop article should be merged, I do not know why this has dragged on for so long, into discussions about what is a server and etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rilak (talk • contribs) 06:14, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Separating History into another article

We need to move the History section into another article (maybe History of personal computer?). This is not a historical article, rather it should always hold the latest data. The History section is too long for this article and its information has very little value for someone who wants to know what "Personal computer" is today!--Kozuch (talk) 19:31, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Moved the History section to History of personal computer as I saw a revamp request in to do list. It is needed to write new History section.--Kozuch (talk) 21:19, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Thankyou for this work. It was my intent in January but I grew deeply discouraged with the amount of work I was putting into Wikipedia that could be used in profit making activities. Alatari (talk) 14:48, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Article major overhaul

I gave the article some major overhaul - hopefully, it will be positively viewed. However, there might still be some work left in the "Hardware" and "Software" sections. General little clean-ups might be also needed across whole article.--Kozuch (talk) 15:47, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Peer review request submitted.--Kozuch (talk) 23:30, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Turn PC off, or leave on?

I'd really like to see Wikipedia address the issue of whether it is wise to leave computers on, or to periodically turn them off and on. Specifically, what are the energy costs of leaving a computer idling constantly, and, are there any losses to the computer's lifetime incurred by powering on and off? Harkenbane (talk) 23:20, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Hi. Well, I think this would be a good question for the reference desk, and they might give you some gook sources too. However, I myself prefer to turn the computer off as soon as I stop using it. I'd think the computer would be desined to take repeated ons and offs, and maybe leaving it on for too long might cause it to overheat, and over time it also adds up to a big impact on your electricity usage. Besides, leaving it on may allow it to be prone to malware. However, I suggest you get others' opinions too. Hope this helps. Thanks. ~A H 1^{(T C U)} 12:44, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

It was once good to turn computers off when you were done with them. However, the longer boot times (and indeed, the higher energy requirements when booting) mean that leaving it idle is now preferable except if you are leaving for long periods of time (more than 12 hours between uses at least). An idle computer doesn't draw as much power as one that is processing at capacity. Also, most computers today have "hibernate" and/or "standby" functions which doesn't turn them off, but reduces the power consumption of the computer even further, and allows for a shorter startup Toad of Steel (talk) 14:53, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Hybernation works well for most laptops, but for most Wintel desktop PC's I would still recommend turning them off completely when not using them for more than say 15 minutes, to save energy. The power needed to boot is rarely that much more than regular use, actually it's mostly the spinning up of the hard-disk that draws a little more power, but the difference can't be much more than a few seconds of power that is used during normal use. A 150 Watt power supply, that supplies say 50 Watt of power during normal use can't magically use 150 million Watt for a minute or so during boot time, it can at most draw a few times the normal power, so it's nonsense to speculate that booting uses so much energy that its better not to turn the PC off. Real hybernation (as can be done in a laptop etc) is another matter, as it can draw as little as a few milliwatt, to keep the system hybernated, unfortunately a normal PC's power supply isn't built to use that little power in "standby", it will still draw several watts, so its much better to just turn the PC off. Startup power is simply not a factor of importance. Mahjongg (talk) 23:21, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

How does a desktop not have real hibernation? Hibernation is saving RAM to disk and shutting down. The power se is almost identical between desktops and laptops: system clock and waiting for the startup signal. A hibernated system needs precisely 0 watts of power to maintain hibernation. And an idle computer mostly devotes power to light desktop tasks. And a computer in (S3) sleep mode does pretty much nothing but maintain the data in RAM (which takes almost no power). So a desktop uses a tiny amount of power in S3 mode. Why would a power supply not be able to use less power than normal? It is. So, a desktop in sleep mode uses barely any, if not no, more power than a laptop. Generalcp702^{user talk} 19:38, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Technically indeed there is little difference between how desktop and laptop systems hibernate, however laptop systems often have parts and power supplies that have optimized hibernate functions. Desktop power supplies are not built for hibernation and often still use a significant amount of power even when "hibernating". Laptops have a specific secondary "frugal" power supply to keep the systems "hibernate power" up, but desktop systems simply use the primary power supply which is much less frugal. Mahjongg (talk) 16:54, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Soled PCs/Laptops per year

It would be really interresting if all segemnts could get a rough number of the sold devices/year. I recently read something like

Twenty or more other [ultra low-cost PC] designs are expected to enter the market over the next six months, and Microsoft expects 10 million to 13 million of the devices to sell this year, according to the documents.

[1]

How many PC's were sold in 2007? How does it stack against these numbers? Would be cool to have some basic numbers, or even a timeline/chart. --141.84.69.20 (talk) 23:57, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Wiki advert on handeld PC

Take it off. Shameless.

-G —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.24.150.62 (talk) 20:50, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Work on article

I beautified the article to place the thin images to the left and tall to the right to ease the formatting plus sorted chronologically/spatially when picture formatting allowed. All Section headers should touch the left margin and the right->left->right image flow pattern is now followed. Keyboard and pointing device images are missing as is a section on the DVD/CD peripherals and Internet connection peripherals. Also very common are 5.1 speaker systems, Web Cams, Wireless cards and memory stick readers. Alatari (talk) 14:56, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

The current article and seperation of much of the history into History of personal computers I'm very VERY pleased with. This article's scope is now defined as a discussion on the concept of the personal computer and it's general incarnations instead of focusing too heavily on specific machines. It brings a tear to my eye ;) Alatari (talk) 14:56, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

OK, OK I was admonished for using <br>'s for format control to keep headings left justified and sentences from scrolling oddly around pictures. Instead the heading control is by turning of floating attribute using the {{-}} template. Now the only idea I have to control sentence flow better is to create tables with the picture in right or left columns and text opposite which too heavy handed. The Laptop section with two lines of text is barely acceptable but the Home Theater section with a single sentence floating on right violates the style guide from my journalism classes.

Anyone thinking "who cares?" featured articles are not judged only on content but on easy of reading, picture and paragraph formatting. We're still at B-level but maybe someday... Alatari (talk) 20:16, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Criterion for Peripheral Inclusion

Do we only list the peripherals that a personal computer must have to function or list the peripherals that have the largest volume of sales (thus measurable notableness to the readers) or has someone another suitable criterion? Alatari (talk) 15:06, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

shouldn't we let this depend on what we are actually talking about?

the peripherals article has this to say about the definition of peripheral A peripheral is a piece of computer hardware that is added to a host computer, i.e any hardware except the computer, in order to expand its abilities. More specifically, the term is used to describe those devices that are optional in nature, as opposed to hardware that is either demanded or always required in principle.

So a peripheral is per definition a component that is not necessary for a computer to operate. Also, further obscuring the issue, is the question of when a peripheral is must for a computer to function. In principle a computer without a mouse will work perfectly, but without it (or another pointing device) a computer that depends on a GUI to function would not be very useable without it, even though it technically not a part of that PC. Mahjongg (talk) 23:46, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Is this a needful discussion? I have an EPROM burner plugged into my PC, does this need to be described in the article? Doubtless someone out there is running his PC without a monitor, does this mean we should leave it out of this article? Talk about the most common classes of peripherals (including how they've evolved in the last 30 years), but keep it generic...we don't need a catalog of video boards here. --Wtshymanski (talk) 03:09, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

I am not sure why we need to define a new criteria for peripheral inclusion. After going through the article, it seems that the peripherals described are very common to a large number of PCs. I think the current criteria, which I am going to assume (correct me if I am wrong) is that only common peripherals are described is perfectly fine. Rilak (talk) 08:44, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

In order to prevent future long winded heated arguments about why isn't peripheral X included in the article a sales based criterion representing common usage/commonness of a peripheral can be adhered to. Thus no mention of EPROM programmers are necessary for they are very uncommon devices but SDRAM readers and USB pen memory are coming with most new machine sales and could be added to the article. The peripherals article is a bit inaccurate if the lead-in declares demanded but not required hardware non-peripherals. Commonly bought and preferred peripherals in the common usage of the typical PC user is what is notable to include in the article but to define the 'commonness' of a peripheral it would be good to have the number of machines sold along with the most common peripherals as a criterion for inclusion. Again this can alelievate future arguments. Not many computers are sold now without a 5.1 sound system, internet connection (DSL/Cable modem), web cam or headset that I suggest they be moved to the primary peripheral list. Alatari (talk) 12:03, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

"mac" is not an operating system

Within the introduction, "The most common operating systems are Microsoft Windows and mac, while the most common microprocessors are x86-compatible CPUs." should be: "The most common operating systems are Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X, while the most common microprocessors are x86-compatible CPUs." though the "X" may be excluded if it is better to refer to the general line of Macintosh computers. Lord Destros (talk) 22:26, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Corrected. Was a major faux paus of the anti-vanadlism bots watching the page. Took a little work to restore. Alatari (talk) 20:03, 2 September 2008 (UTC)