PC World's latest TV advert has a saleman extolling the virtues of a dual core Pentium. Dual core? asks the customer. Yes, replies salesman, Let's you do more than one thing at a time.
At the very least misleading to the average punter. I have complained to the advertising standards authority.
ian
On Sun, 2006-08-20 at 18:28 +0100, Ian bell wrote:
PC World's latest TV advert has a saleman extolling the virtues of a dual core Pentium. Dual core? asks the customer. Yes, replies salesman, Let's you do more than one thing at a time.
I thought it was kinda funny. Reminded me of the old Amiga Vs PC days. "But the Amiga can multitask!".
On 20-Aug-06 Ian bell wrote:
PC World's latest TV advert has a saleman extolling the virtues of a dual core Pentium. Dual core? asks the customer. Yes, replies salesman, Let's you do more than one thing at a time.
At the very least misleading to the average punter. I have complained to the advertising standards authority.
ian
On the grounds that there's at least a suggestion, if not quote an assertion, that you need to buy a dual-core processor in order to do more than one thing at a time, I'd say it was more than misleading!
I've not seen the ad, so would be out of order if I complained, but perhaps there's a printed equivalent somewhere?
And I'm tempted by the thought of a "class complaint" to the ASA -- on the same lines as a class action in the courts.
Ted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 20-Aug-06 Time: 18:50:24 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
On Sun, Aug 20, 2006 at 06:55:43PM +0100, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
On Sun, 2006-08-20 at 18:28 +0100, Ian bell wrote:
At the very least misleading to the average punter. I have complained to the advertising standards authority.
It's not misleading at all, you can expect exactly the same quality of advice in any PC World store.
Nah - the adverts actually make PC World staff look *good* - which is damned worrying.
On Sun, 20 Aug 2006, Ian bell wrote:
PC World's latest TV advert has a saleman extolling the virtues of a dual core Pentium. Dual core? asks the customer. Yes, replies salesman, Let's you do more than one thing at a time.
At the very least misleading to the average punter. I have complained to the advertising standards authority.
ian
But as an accurate depiction of a technically inept PC World member of staff, it's spot-on. The only thing missing is the ruthlessly relentless hard-sell of the useless crappy coverplan.
MTM - PC World Sept 05 - Mar 06
MT Morton
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School of Computer Science | Everything is linear if University of East Anglia | plotted on log-log with Norwich | a fat magic marker.
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On Sun, Aug 20, 2006 at 06:28:42PM +0100, Ian bell wrote:
PC World's latest TV advert has a saleman extolling the virtues of a dual core Pentium. Dual core? asks the customer. Yes, replies salesman, Let's you do more than one thing at a time.
At the very least misleading to the average punter. I have complained to the advertising standards authority.
Why? Technically it /does/ allow you to do more than one thing at a time (taken in the right context obviously) as you can execute 2 instructions at once (one on each core al-la smp) currently multi-tasking isn't /really/ multi-tasking as you are switching between things very fast so it appears you are doing more than one thing at a time. Granted it isn't the most technical of explanations, but then PC World customers don't tend to be the most technically minded people. I'd still guess that if you were buying a new computer you would want a dual core over everything else when you consider the price/performance.
Thanks Adam
On Monday 21 August 2006 10:52, Adam Bower wrote:
On Sun, Aug 20, 2006 at 06:28:42PM +0100, Ian bell wrote:
PC World's latest TV advert has a saleman extolling the virtues of a dual core Pentium. Dual core? asks the customer. Yes, replies salesman, Let's you do more than one thing at a time.
At the very least misleading to the average punter. I have complained to the advertising standards authority.
Why? Technically it /does/ allow you to do more than one thing at a time (taken in the right context obviously) as you can execute 2 instructions at once (one on each core al-la smp) currently multi-tasking isn't /really/ multi-tasking as you are switching between things very fast so it appears you are doing more than one thing at a time. Granted it isn't the most technical of explanations,
I think the bloke says,
"It allows you to do two things at once, like, I dunno, downloading an email while you're uploading a tune."
"Cool", says the hip, young customer.
R.
On Mon, Aug 21, 2006 at 10:56:54AM +0100, Richard Lewis wrote:
I think the bloke says,
"It allows you to do two things at once, like, I dunno, downloading an email while you're uploading a tune."
"Cool", says the hip, young customer.
Aye, and it does allow you to do that, so it isn't really a misdescription of the capabilities. I've not used Outlook for some time so I don't know how many cpu cycles it uses to send an email but I could suspect it needs many more than my copy of mutt does ;)
Thanks Adam
On Mon, Aug 21, 2006 at 11:20:58AM +0100, Adam Bower wrote:
On Mon, Aug 21, 2006 at 10:56:54AM +0100, Richard Lewis wrote:
I think the bloke says,
"It allows you to do two things at once, like, I dunno, downloading an email while you're uploading a tune."
"Cool", says the hip, young customer.
Aye, and it does allow you to do that, so it isn't really a misdescription of the capabilities. I've not used Outlook for some time so I don't know how many cpu cycles it uses to send an email but I could suspect it needs many more than my copy of mutt does ;)
Well, depends on you MTA dunnit - as mutt basically fires off sendmail to send the mail... So, if you've got a heavy evil sendmail then it might take more CPU cycles than LookOut. *grin*. (Either way, there's no way in hell that I'm moving from mutt -> LookOut, ThunderBroken, Evilution, KantMail or the other evil graphical clients ;) If mutt's broken, less, grep and sed are your friends :)
Cheers,
Brett Parker iDunno@sommitrealweird.co.uk wrote: [...]
might take more CPU cycles than LookOut. *grin*. (Either way, there's no way in hell that I'm moving from mutt -> LookOut, ThunderBroken, Evilution, KantMail or the other evil graphical clients ;)
mutt is a graphical client, but a dog of one drawn on a terminal in colours and lines. If you want fast, use /usr/bin/mail like me.
On Monday 21 August 2006 16:07, MJ Ray wrote:
(Either way, there's no way in hell that I'm moving from mutt -> LookOut, ThunderBroken, Evilution, KantMail or the other evil graphical clients ;)
mutt is a graphical client, but a dog of one drawn on a terminal in colours and lines. If you want fast, use /usr/bin/mail like me.
But then you could use a (supposedly) cross platform client that will run anywhere like ICEmail. <time to duck and run>
Regards, Paul.
See: http://java-source.net/open-source/mail-clients for links to other alternatives ;)
On 8/21/06, MJ Ray mjr@phonecoop.coop wrote:
Brett Parker iDunno@sommitrealweird.co.uk wrote: [...]
might take more CPU cycles than LookOut. *grin*. (Either way, there's no way in hell that I'm moving from mutt -> LookOut, ThunderBroken, Evilution, KantMail or the other evil graphical clients ;)
mutt is a graphical client, but a dog of one drawn on a terminal in colours and lines. If you want fast, use /usr/bin/mail like me.
What's wrong with using "less" on the mail store? ;-)
Tim.
On Mon, Aug 21, 2006 at 04:07:23PM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
Brett Parker iDunno@sommitrealweird.co.uk wrote: [...]
might take more CPU cycles than LookOut. *grin*. (Either way, there's no way in hell that I'm moving from mutt -> LookOut, ThunderBroken, Evilution, KantMail or the other evil graphical clients ;)
mutt is a graphical client, but a dog of one drawn on a terminal in colours and lines. If you want fast, use /usr/bin/mail like me.
Having used mail for a while, no thanks - I quite like actually having some functionality in my mail client ;)
Brett Parker iDunno@sommitrealweird.co.uk
On Mon, Aug 21, 2006 at 04:07:23PM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
mutt is a graphical client, but a dog of one drawn on a terminal in colours and lines. If you want fast, use /usr/bin/mail like me.
Having used mail for a while, no thanks - I quite like actually having some functionality in my mail client ;)
That depends which /usr/bin/mail you're using. Berkeley mail has nearly no functions, but GNU mailutils (header regexping, MIME decoding, POP, IMAP, scripting and other fun) and Heirloom mailx (that plus bayesian filtering, UTF-8, MIME encoding, formerly called nail) both have more.
Hope that helps,
On 21-Aug-06 Richard Lewis wrote:
On Monday 21 August 2006 10:52, Adam Bower wrote:
On Sun, Aug 20, 2006 at 06:28:42PM +0100, Ian bell wrote:
PC World's latest TV advert has a saleman extolling the virtues of a dual core Pentium. Dual core? asks the customer. Yes, replies salesman, Let's you do more than one thing at a time.
At the very least misleading to the average punter. I have complained to the advertising standards authority.
Why? Technically it /does/ allow you to do more than one thing at a time (taken in the right context obviously) as you can execute 2 instructions at once (one on each core al-la smp) currently multi-tasking isn't /really/ multi-tasking as you are switching between things very fast so it appears you are doing more than one thing at a time. Granted it isn't the most technical of explanations,
I think the bloke says,
"It allows you to do two things at once, like, I dunno, downloading an email while you're uploading a tune."
"Cool", says the hip, young customer.
R.
I have to go along with Richard on this! Without being aware of the "like, I dunno, ... " followup (which wasn't quoted first time), it seemed clear to me that the "customer" is supposed to interpret "do more than one thing at a time" as "carry out more than one task at a time" where "task" is to be understood in the usual consumer's mindset of editing a Word doc, doing email, reading a website, etc., so "doing more than one thing at a time" is the likes of listening to streaming radio while writing a letter. The fact that a single core CPU at any one nano-second moment is involved in only one of these is beside the point for the general user.
As to the technical quibble that a dual-core processor does do "more than one thing at a time" by virtue of executing different CPU instructions simultaneously in its two cores, the only effect this would have on the user's perception is that things would appear to go that much faster, for the same nominal CPU speed.
If the 75MHz CPU on which I'm composing this mail were dual-core, I'd presumably get up to somewhere near the speed of a 150MHz single-core CPU. I could (and on another machine do) do much better than that by upgrading to a 733MHz single-core processor.
I still think that PCWorld are misrepresenting the matter by the clear suggestion (though not quite the assertion) that you *need* dual-core in order to multitask.
Best wishes to all, Ted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 21-Aug-06 Time: 11:57:46 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
(Ted Harding) wrote:
I still think that PCWorld are misrepresenting the matter by the clear suggestion (though not quite the assertion) that you *need* dual-core in order to multitask.
My view too because of all the possible ways to answer the question 'What's dual core?' they chose not 'it goes twice as fast as a single core' nor 'you get the same computing power for less electrical power' both of which are pretty much unique properties of dual core, they gave an answer which a) is not unique to dual core b) implies it does something new all of which seems to me to persuade the customer to buy it for erroneous reasons which makes it misleading in my book.
Ian
On Mon, Aug 21, 2006 at 05:58:18PM +0100, Ian bell wrote:
My view too because of all the possible ways to answer the question 'What's dual core?' they chose not 'it goes twice as fast as a single core' nor 'you get the same computing power for less electrical power' both of which are pretty much unique properties of dual core, they
Except, if you'd said dual core is twice as fast as a single core you'd be lying, you're more likely to see a maximum performance benefit of ~70% by the time you've taken into shared access of other components into account.
Thanks Adam
On Mon, 2006-08-21 at 17:58 +0100, Ian bell wrote:
My view too because of all the possible ways to answer the question 'What's dual core?' they chose not 'it goes twice as fast as a single core' nor 'you get the same computing power for less electrical power' both of which are pretty much unique properties of dual core, they gave an answer which a) is not unique to dual core b) implies it does something new all of which seems to me to persuade the customer to buy it for erroneous reasons which makes it misleading in my book.
Ahh but this highlights the problem with bringing down technical facts to a level that anybody can understand, they are then two easy to misinterpret.
Both of the alternatives you provide can be misleading and in some ways they could be interpreted are as (if not more) factually incorrect.
'it goes twice as fast as a single core'
It doesn't if you are running one task that doesn't thread very well..even if it did you are sharing common I/O and resources so overall performance will not be twice as fast.
'you get the same computing power for less electrical power'
This is sort of tied in to the first statement and fails for the same reasons. A single faster core will give you more computing power in some instances. Theoretically two slower cores could be better than one single core that is twice as fast, in reality it rarely actually works out that way. A dual core CPU draws more power than a single of the same clock speed and maybe more than one of higher performance.
A better was PC World could have put it would be to change "it allows" to "it Helps".
Wayne Stallwood wrote:
On Mon, 2006-08-21 at 17:58 +0100, Ian bell wrote:
My view too because of all the possible ways to answer the question 'What's dual core?' they chose not 'it goes twice as fast as a single core' nor 'you get the same computing power for less electrical power' both of which are pretty much unique properties of dual core, they gave an answer which a) is not unique to dual core b) implies it does something new all of which seems to me to persuade the customer to buy it for erroneous reasons which makes it misleading in my book.
Ahh but this highlights the problem with bringing down technical facts to a level that anybody can understand, they are then two easy to misinterpret.
Both of the alternatives you provide can be misleading and in some ways they could be interpreted are as (if not more) factually incorrect.
'it goes twice as fast as a single core'
It doesn't if you are running one task that doesn't thread very well..even if it did you are sharing common I/O and resources so overall performance will not be twice as fast.
'you get the same computing power for less electrical power'
This is sort of tied in to the first statement and fails for the same reasons. A single faster core will give you more computing power in some instances. Theoretically two slower cores could be better than one single core that is twice as fast, in reality it rarely actually works out that way. A dual core CPU draws more power than a single of the same clock speed and maybe more than one of higher performance.
A better was PC World could have put it would be to change "it allows" to "it Helps".
Which simply illustrates how carefull you need to be in describing such new technology - care which I feel PC World did not take.
Ian
On Mon, Aug 21, 2006 at 06:21:46PM +0100, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
out that way. A dual core CPU draws more power than a single of the same clock speed and maybe more than one of higher performance.
The way I understood it with the Intel Core Duo 2 was that it pulls significantly less than any other (single or dual core) Intel CPU since the Pentium IV was introduced, and is a very good reason as to why my next machine will probably be Intel and not AMD. I even worked out if I was to leave my current Athlon XP on 24/7 it'd cost somewhere in the region of 131 quid in electricity per year (not counting when i've got the monitor on etc, that's just with the machine idle) but a newer style Mac Mini with the core duo cpu (running Linux of course) running 24/7 would cost in the region of 35 quid a year. Which nearly almost justifies buying one as it will /nearly/ pay for itself in 3 years.
A better was PC World could have put it would be to change "it allows" to "it Helps".
That certainly seems to fit better than their current tagline, ever thought about a career in advertising? ;)
Thanks Adam
Adam Bower wrote:
On Sun, Aug 20, 2006 at 06:28:42PM +0100, Ian bell wrote:
PC World's latest TV advert has a saleman extolling the virtues of a dual core Pentium. Dual core? asks the customer. Yes, replies salesman, Let's you do more than one thing at a time.
At the very least misleading to the average punter. I have complained to the advertising standards authority.
Why? Technically it /does/ allow you to do more than one thing at a time
Because the implication is that you were not able to do this before;, which clearly is misleading.
(taken in the right context obviously) as you can execute 2 instructions at once (one on each core al-la smp) currently multi-tasking isn't /really/ multi-tasking as you are switching between things very fast so it appears you are doing more than one thing at a time.
This is incorrect. It may 'switch between things very fast' some of the time but that is not the essence of multitasking - it is the efficient utilisation of all the computers resouces so that many tasks can be undertaken at once. This is clearly not limited to the CPU but includes resources like the hard drive, USB ports and so on.
Granted it isn't
the most technical of explanations, but then PC World customers don't tend to be the most technically minded people. I'd still guess that if you were buying a new computer you would want a dual core over everything else when you consider the price/performance.
A mott point. Depends what you want to do. For most people sual core is overkill.
IAn
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Adam Bower -
Brett Parker -
Ian bell -
Mike Morton -
mjr＠phonecoop.coop -
Paul -
Richard Brooklyn -
Richard Lewis -
Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk -
Tim Green -
Wayne Stallwood