I agree with Bobs analogy as far as buying or building a new PC is
concerned.....if you are starting from scratch you might as well get a P II
.....but I also think that most people do not need the power of a P II on a
typical single user desktop business or personal computer and a inexpensive
socket seven motherboard / CPU upgrade for 100 to 200 hundred dollars makes
a lot of sense. You certainly don't need a P II for business applications
or Internet access or the vast majority of the applications that have come
out in the 20 months since the P II premiered.

 Winstone 98 benchmarks are now measuring how fast the CPU is waiting for
the user to do something.  If you do desktop or web publishing on a
professional level.....or you are a graphics or design professional and
routinely work with 100 meg plus files ....or you are a data base
developer.....or a scientist running complex calculations that run for
hours or days...then you want the fastest P II you can afford but for 99
per cent of the personal or business desktop users the only reason they
might actually <need> a P II is to run the hottest games.

This has the CPU manufacturers worried because business is not doing what
they have always done......upgrade their PCs in the thousands because it
produced a productivity increase and was in the end a cost cutting move. A
Pentium Classic 133 runs Office 97 just fine and with a P 200 MMX it flies
thank you very much. I realize that MS and others are writing huge hard
drive filling CPU crunching applications and suites but that doesn't mean
people need them and business managers won't upgrade to them unless it can
be proven that beyond all the promotional hype they will in fact be a cost
cutter.

m



>>I have a 133 that I would like to replace the motherboard by buying
>>mail order.
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>My only concern would be that you understand that this is a
>socket7 motherboard, (a standard pentium board with the addition
>of an AGP slot for the video card).   You are not accomplishing as
>much as you realize with this upgrade.   It is much like the period
>when the industry was moving into Pentium motherboards a few
>years back.   Many companies were selling 486 motherboards that
>supported 4X technology, claiming they were as fast as the new
>Pentium CPUs.   But, you still had a 486 motherboard with the slower
>bus speed and no more room for upgrade...

>Bob Wright  -   The NOSPIN GROUP

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