The Pentium was NOT renamed from the 586 because of fancy marketing. It
was renamed because someone already had a patent on the name "586",
knowing that IBM would be adding more transistors to its 486 chip.
[ Actually, the 80486 and Pentium chips are designed and manufactured
by Intel. The fact that IBM does *not* hold the rights to the chip
is one of the reasons it lost billions (with a "b") of dollars last
year - another is that it does not own the rights to MS-DOS, which
was designed by Microsoft. --Gary ]
The Power PC is not as spectacular as one would think. For MAC people, it
is the same old MAC. It EMULATES a Pentium based DOS system.
No EMULATING is different than the real McCoy. EMULATING is immitating
and consequently, in DOS mode, the Power PC is much slower than the
Pentium. We recently did a demonstration comparing the Power PC and the
Pentium using Adobe Illistrator and scanners running DOS 6.2. The Pentium
beat the Power PC into the ground on graphical speed - essential for
today's multi-media applications.
The DOS emulation is nothing new to MAC. The Performa 650, the top of the
line in Performa MACs emulates a DOS 286 processor. With the emulation,
it clocks a 286 at 20MHZ. The power PC acually clock a 486 at 33 MHZ.
THose are the facts beyond the marketteers who want you to buy their
products. The Pentium has been around for about the past year. The Power
PC just came out recently.
But the Pentium is taking the same path as the 486 (which is what I
have). THe 486 started as a very expensive platform, running between 2500
and 3000 dollars. Within a year, it was down to 1500, and I bought my
high end 486 (with all the trimmings) at a whopping 1200 dollars, which
INCLUDED an injet printer. The Pentium will soon be as cheap.
Dave
[ One of the problems with the Pentium chip, though, is that it is very
power-consumptive, and generates lots of heat.
Again, I suggest we terminate this discussion of computers, and get
back to the matter of language. --Gary ]