200 Computers Installed In
50 years ago this year, this was the front page headline in Electronics Weekly's edition of September 21st 1960.
The story opens:
'Both computer manufacturers and users in
This is what Mr Sebastian Z de Ferranti, managing director of Ferranti Ltd, said at a one-day computer conference held in
"In the whole history to 1945, mechanical devices had only increased the speed of calculation by a factor of 100", said Mr de Ferranti, "but since 1945 electronic computers have increased the possible speed by a further factor of 25,000",
He added:
"The economics of modern computer working favour a large, fast machine. The usefulness of a computer varies approximately as the cube of its price."
A computer may be twice as expensive, he said, but in operation it would be eight times as useful.
A 40 times improvement of supposedly true predictions of the chairman of IBM and Popular Mechanics!
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
- Popular Mechanics, 1949
When lugging it around airports my widescreen HP laptop feels like it weighs 1.5 tons :-)
Well Mike, I don't suppose you would regard the suggestion of buying an iPad particularly helpful, but Netbooks do a lot of what you need to do on the road.
Yes an iPad is not the solution ! At least not until Windows is ported to Arm and someone gets it, or failing that maybe Linux, on the iPad so that EDA tools can be run there.
I do have a Netbook and it is up to many tasks and so saves my shoulders most of the time but some design tasks demand the larger screen.