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Paavo Viilup
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Erik-Silver Toomere
A short paragraph on Specs
ARE SPECS RELEVANT?
For a normal computer user? No, not really.
What I mean is, that the most important question for a normal user usually is “Can it run Word?” or they just buy a MacBook Pro and use Pages all day long. There is no actual need for specs since they will not be using the device to its fullest potential.For somebody that call himself a gamer? Hell yes.
Personally, I’m in a situation where I have to through the games specs and see if my CPU or graphics card can handle the game. You just lost the game.That is all.
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Paavo Viilup
There’s not much to evaluate here, unfortunately.
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Joel L
Also, I would say that the Internet is a much much more important application than Word. 400 million people use Facebook every day.
HD video, flash ads, animations, real-time web apps, etc require a lot more resources than word processing does.
“Can it run Word?” has been replaced by “Can it run my favorite web sites?”
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Sander
Are computer specs important for the everyday user?
Yes, they are. But why? As most gamers would tell you that it would be for playing the latest videogames. Apple advertisements would have you believe that an extra powerful processor will make your computer usable. While all of these are true to some extent, yet is all this techological splendor really important to your average everyday Joe?
On one hand, the fact that technological specs are central to the user experience is absolutely true. Computers are not like people, they do not evolve. Therefore, buying a computer which has specs suiting your need does make for a better user experience. User experience, in our times, can basically be defined as having a smooth loading, fast interface which never crashes or fails. And in most cases the secret to providing this is having good technological specifications. By being aware of a product’s specifications and choosing exactly the right tool for what the user needs, the average Joe will enjoy his computer use much, much more.
Yet how much is decided by a computer’s specifications in our modern times? Decidedly not much. We live in an age, where the evolution of technology is most probably reaching somewhat of a plateau. Specs don’t rule the playfield anymore, the GUI and the operating system do. So, in terms of the experience of the end user, having a smooth running and easy to use operating system may be of greater importance. As defined by apple, a good product is the meeting point of technology and innovation. In an age where the technology is highly developed, the focus turns to the innovation. More and more can be achieved by having a better OS. For example, the Apple iOS is capable of making even older phones run smoothly, whereas Android OS can crash even the most advanced of telephones. Therefore, picking the most innovative product may guarantee a better experience than a product with the best specifications. It just comes down to a user’s needs.
As with most questions in the world, there is no definite answer. If the average Joe wants to run five copies of a new game at once, and play at a hundred FPS, then the specs are of course necessary. Yet for most people, who require usability from their products are not as dependent on the nitty-gritty of technical specifications.-
Joel L
I’m a bit late to this party, but:
“Apple advertisements would have you believe that an extra powerful processor will make your computer usable.” -> What alternate universe Apple ads have you been watching?
“User experience, in our times, can basically be defined as having a smooth loading, fast interface which never crashes or fails.”
No. Based on this definition, a super-fast-loading app that doesn’t help the user at all (ie. is useless) provides a great user experience.
Or a text editor that – by design – doesn’t allow you to type certain (randomly selected) letters. Would be extremely frustrating and unusable in practice, but lovely based on these criteria.—
You use a “one one hand / on the other hand” structure, but the statements in the “on one hand” are incorrect, and the combination of the two is very confusing. One one hand, Hitler loved jews. Yet he wanted to kill them all.
Godwin’s law. -
Paavo Viilup
Furthermore, the “one the hand / on the other hand” is also stylistically faulty. It’s a classic really – the one hand is there, but the other one doesn’t really make an appearance at all.
Otherwise, I do not really get the whole usability debate. You need optimally chosen hardware to support the chosen interface, but you don’t really need it?
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Silver
Y U no load game in 5sec?! You piece of s***!
Our generation often finds ourselves in a position where a computer bought a couple of years back is not able to cope with the extreme requirements of contemporary media such as video editing and
gaming. Why do we find ourselves in these situations?The “guts” of a computer, when broken down have remained as they are from the very start. We have the motherboard, processor, graphics card and cooling system among others. The difference between computers is thus drawn by the measurements done on these parts, determining what and how much information the parts can process.
On one hand the every-day text editing and web browsing computers can remain unchanged for several years, not suffering from serious speed decreasing due to the lack of change in the requirements of text editing and web-browsers. This does of course not mean that every application can and will run similarly on a “fast” and “slow” computer.
On the other hand, 3D media editing is highly demanding on the computer hardware, requiring several upgrades over the course of a couple of years to stay competitive. Computer gaming is a prime example of this process. Newer games are highly demanding on a system and many of them require high end processors and graphics cards to run smoothly. Due to this, game developers publish minimum and recommended requirements of their games, letting their customers make necessary changes to their systems where needed.
Overall, it can undeniably be seen that computer specifications have a great impact on the capabilities and experience of the user. Time is crucial and faster processing helps us save time, allowing us to attend to other important duties (9gag), using the time otherwise lost in the process. The relevance of specs is only due to change if we can meet all of the limits of technological improvements (speed, compactibility).
PS: Sadly no one will ever see the day, because if we can’t go any smaller, we start going larger again.
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Paavo Viilup
A solid, if somewhat uninspired, effort.
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Brent
Are specs relevant.
When going to the store to buy oneself a new piece of computer hardware one has to always consider specs. Technological specifications are that, which show us what the machine is capable of and does it provide us everything that we need. So this kind of answers the question that, are specs relevant, because they are. So to develop this question, a add-on should be introduced, that are higher specs always needed, does the machine have to the best of the best all the time, according to specs?
As mentioned before, the power and capabilities expected from the machine purely depend on the needs of the user. For a work PC the specs can be quite average. Though it should be reminded that some level of power should always be met, so that the computer would not be slow and would a few years a head of it, so that when a new windows comes out for example, one wouldn’t have to buy a new computer. Also the computer should be fast enough, so that the user wouldn’t burn their nerves while waiting for that damn D*ll to fire up and start up the internet and then crash….so to avoid situations like that.
For playing games, well specs are very important. Not just to have the ability to play the game with good graphics, but also to not overstress the computer and likewise with the work computer, be ahead of its time, so that one could play never games after a few years also. This is specially important with gaming computers, since specifications for games grow much faster than overall specifications needed for a good work computer.
So far the spotlight is on PCs in general, but a good example to show, that specs are not always the most important things, would be the iPad(2) vs. all other tablets. When comparing the specs on these devices and then the user experience or popularity, then one can see that though specs are quite relevant, they surely don’t mean that a device with lower specs must perform lesser compared with the device with higher specs.
Specs therefore are quite relevant because nowadays there is probably every kind of PC(including Macs for sure) to suite the need of a person. But the need to have the highest specs is quite trivial, since higher specs do not always mean better experience.
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Paavo Viilup
“Specs are relevant, because they are?” -??!!??
Your English is particularly horrible in this post, it impacts the understanding of piece severely. Correctly used grammatical structures also help you make your point more efficiently, as the reader does not have to make your text coherent in his/her head.
Also, do you know your iPad’s specs off the top of your head? What about your PC/laptop? What do you conclude?
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Joel L
maybe he was drunk.
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Brent
Damn….aga kui hinnete vahetamiseks läks, siis viitsid ja vahetad äkki selle nulli ka lõpuks ära? @ Paavo
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Paavo Viilup
English. It’s a language.
Anyway, I’m not certain as to what the mark for this should be. It tries to be more than Erik’s effort, yet somehow it ambles around without any focus or aim.
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Brent
Mayhaps, I’ll try harder next time
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Joel L
My personal (i.e. not influenced by Paavo) opinion follows –
I tried reading your post, the first 2 paragraphs were so confusing that I stopped reading.
Basically, the sentence structure is almost impossible to understand, and if you submitted this is a non-school context, nobody would bother reading it.
I’m not saying that the content is crap, just that it shouldn’t take more effort to read than to write.
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Taavi
Are specs relevant?
Specifications often abbreviated specs are an explicit set of requirements to be satisfied by a material, product, or service. In IT world specs are often associated with technical specifications a.k.a. tech specs. It is known that if a product does not fulfil the necessary specifications it cannot operate pleasingly. However the question is whether this is also true for IT world and are they really relevant?
Computer gaming is an increasingly growing phenomenon. It is known however that year by year all the games require more computing power. If it did not need this extra power the game would be pretty much like its predecessor. This extra power is an expense needed to be taken in order to have better graphics and more volatile game play. If to compare Battlefield and Call of Duty franchises it can be seen that the specs of these two games have not changed at the same rate. This is because Battlefield franchise is constantly improving the game play and making it more and more volatile. Call of Duty however has concentrated on a larger audience and make minor changes to the game play keeping the specs of new releases relatively similar to previous ones. Both of these games have sold millions of copies but it is a known fact that COD has been always more successful. This brings out the question whether the specs are really that relevant. Considering better game play they are but considering the success of the company they are not as more people have access to the product.
More is always better. When a person is asked how he would change the length of a day the answer would almost always be that a day needs more hours as he could manage more in a day that way. This is also true for specs as the more demanding the requirements the better the output would be. Usually better tech specs is directly related to better speed. This however leads to less time spent on computing and leaves the user with more time to deal with the things he actually needs. Therefore it can certainly be said that specs are relevant when it comes to saving time.
In conclusion specs are relevant when it comes to better experience and time saving. When new products are made they usually have the most recent technical requirements to represent that they are indeed fresh items. When it comes to companies then keeping the specs similar and irrelevant will be more successful as more and more users could enjoy their product. It is however difficult to pick which is more important: the success of a company or the development of the genius of mankind.
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Paavo Viilup
A solid, focused piece. Some of the others here should take a close look and try to emulate.
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Joel L
Remark re: “Computer gaming is an increasingly growing phenomenon.” – maybe most of the growth in gaming is not on the PC anymore? Casual games on iPhones and other smartphones probably get much more combined play (total hours played by all users).
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alex
Are specs relevant?
Nowadays I believe specs are relevant and apart of every computer users life. If to consider the fact that a huge amount of people use their computer for gaming then specs are exceedingly important for them. I mean you cannot play MW3 20 fps. This is just blasphemous. Also with the advancements happening in everyday programs like Microsoft Office, Windows Live and so on then better specs are needed to run those programs smoothly.
If people want to watch videos on their computers then they have to have good specs in order for it to run normally without any lag spikes. I mean sure it is obvious that you need good specs if you want to play games, watch videos, make movies or 3d objects but a user needs good specs anyways. If you just hold on to your computer for ten years then the programs that you used to run really fast ten years back will now probably run really slow.
The problem here is that the hardware is just outdated and the programs and processes demand more because they are all becoming better and fancier. The best examples of this would be with iPhones and iPads. When the iPhone 4 came out then iPhone 3G become practically obsolete because the processor was so weak that it could not keep up with the advancements that came with the iPhone 4. The same story is with the iPad. As soon as iPad2 came out all of the apps were made better for the new and improved screen and processor of the iPad2. The iPad then started to encounter some lag issues with some apps.
When software evolves then it is only logical that technology needs to develop as well and vice versa. My personal opinion is that specs are very essential nowadays and should be kept up to date. Without good specs there is no development, there is no progress and there is no productivity.-
Paavo Viilup
Windows Live – it’s not really a separate program, is it? More a set of tools. Also, one wonders about the relevancy of specs when running Messenger.
Otherwise, there’s a point in there somewhere.
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Joel L
But the question is not really about “Should things get better over time?” (this is obvious).
It’s more about whether people should know/care about their phone having a 2GHz dual-core processor, or should they care about postimees.ee loading quickly.
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Joel L
“it is obvious that you need good specs if you want to play games, watch videos, make movies or 3d objects”
Watching videos is a “Pro” thing? Watching videos. Really?
Also, there are many different kinds of games. You don’t need a hardcore gaming PC to play Machinarium or Tetris.Nitpicking – It’s not software vs technology. It’s software vs hardware.
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Paavo Viilup
Are specs relevant?
Post your opinion by November 17.
Joel L and 
Brent, and 
Reply
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