Benchmarks

[Chuck Swiger <cswiger@widomaker.com>]

  From: 	Beech Family[SMTP:tobeth@lava.net]
  >A friend and benchmark maniac on our local mac user group list has sent me
  >a good page for *real* benchmarks..
  >
  >http://www.MacMissionControl.com/~MMC/Whetstone/Whetstone.html
  >
  >In addition to providing a number of benchmark "scores" for various
  
  This just reinforces my previous post about how, when doing a comparison, that
  economics completely flys out the window. It constantly amazes me, being a 12 year
  veteran of bulletin boards, that people get into these "my x is better than your y"
  with complete disregard to costs (I guess the "competing at the same price break"
  is assumed).
  And what does this have to do with antitrust and the problem of one company getting
  royalties for a de-facto os standard (i.e., buying a pc and getting  win95 & company
  whether you want it or not) just like buying a vcr and you get vhs.
  It seems that the implication is, again,  that a "better" product has lost market share due to some
  illegal market manipulations and machinations. In a very real sense, when marketing
  to the masses one does strive for the lowest common denominator, which means lower
  quality. It should be no suprise then, that a higher quality machine like a Mac
  (for the rest of us!) costs more, and sells to the classes. One may as well wonder
  why a Ferrari has a smaller market share than a Geo, why it's the technically
  superior machine! The difference is cost.
  
  Consider: The only 604 price I could find is this upgrade kit:
  
  http://www.macrapid.demon.co.uk/pmacsnew.html#xlr8
  
  at £290 X 1.6 or $464 (actually a plug in card, not just the cpu).
   
  The last upgrade I did here a vendor quoted 150Mhz pentiums at $102 and 166Mhz's at
  ~$150. So I got the slower 150Mhz's! I didn't get an inferior product because someone is
  manipulating the market, I decided it was the best "bang for the buck" value for our
  company, since we don't have an unlimited budget, and any money I can save makes
  me look good.
  
  That's another self reinforcing factor in capturing a market share and keeping it: a high
  volume of product can spread your cost and keep prices down, ensuring a large
  market share that's difficult to break into.
  
  Since this started with comparing Java VM's on different platforms - it may be a neat
  hack, but economics with prevail - is there enough economic advantage to "write
  once, run everywhere" making software cheaper, with the added cost of slower execution, to 
  appear as better value, or lower cost of ownership to end users and corporate purchasers
  than a much faster, more expensive native code product?
  
  That, my friends, an informed market will decide, not what the DOJ orders MS to produce.
  
  There also appears to be a clear need for a sort of "Consumer Reports" or govt run testing
  lab so there CAN be an informed market - we're drowning in advertising disguised as
  technical "facts", promulgated by untrustworthy media companies with suspicious motives
  and corporate loyalties.
  I'd as soon trust a benchmark published by "MacMissionControl" as a Mac fanatic trusts
  my quotes from "WinNT Mag"  :))
  
  
  Chuck
  cswiger@widomaker.com