Miscellaneous

Hardware and software are locked up in a sort of arms race: even for the most advanced computer there is an application that demands too much of the machine. Up-to-date software packages — already suffering from the “featuritis” disease — get bigger and bigger with each release number because memory and CPU chips decrease in price from year to year. For printers the situation is similar. The processing power of a current PostScript printer equipped with a RISC CPU would have been enough for a department mainframe not so long ago. Conversely, the first LaserWriter printers’ main memory is just enough today for a pocket calculator.