Opinion: A shining moment

An interesting thing is going to happen this year, and (correct me if I'm wrong) I think it might even be unprecedented. Both of the major commercial desktop operating systems are due to receive major updates, and neither of them is going
to require a new computer to run.

Ever since the dawn of the personal computer (even before IBM joined the PC game) it has been the rule that the hardware will get faster and cheaper and smaller and more powerful - and the software to run it will make sure it never actually feels any faster. There will always be new features, new graphical doodads, new bells, whistles and kazoos that make the computers look better and do more than they ever could before - but they never actually feel like they're getting better at it.

Twenty years ago, in 1988, I purchased an Atari 1040ST. It had an 8MHz processor and 1MB of RAM. I later added a 20MB hard drive. In 2008 I purchased an Apple MacBook Pro, with a 2.8GHz processor, 4GB of RAM and 320GB of hard drive space. I'll let you do the maths to work out how much bigger, faster and stronger my new computer is compared to that trusty
old Atari.

But know this: both machines take roughly the same amount of time to start up. Hopping into a word processor is actually (and I timed this over the

summer) a tad quicker on the Atari. Does anybody even make a word processor that could run in 1MB
of RAM anymore?

As I'm writing this I have a web browser window open, in which an animated ad for something-or-other is playing over and over again in Flash. The Atari would have no hope of running that - but
so what?

The past 20 years have seen computers and operating systems blow out of all proportion to what people needed them to do. We long ago left the point where computers were fast enough and powerful enough to do everything we wanted them to at a reasonable speed. Instead of making them so they do those things better, faster and more stably, we've pushed to find other things for them to do. Every hardware advancement has been matched by a bloating of software so that the core things you do with a computer - starting up and getting some work done - never get better.

Did I ever ask for an animated ad to be running in my web browser? I don't think so - but I've bought a computer that has that capability - lucky me.

This year it stops. This year, Microsoft will release Windows 7 which, almost as an apology for Vista, will not require more powerful hardware to run.

It includes few new features, but emphasises instead refinements to the existing code.

Things users have not liked about Vista are out, and things they wished for are in.Likewise, Apple has made no secret of the fact that this year's iteration of Mac OS X, Snow Leopard, will offer few features that are not already in Leopard.

Instead, Apple is focusing its efforts on making it run better on the hardware you've already got.

If you're in the business of selling computers (as, I imagine, some of you probably are) this will likely not be a banner year.

However, for those of us who buy them, this is a moment to be treasured: when new software we install will actually make our computers better.