Your Computer Hardware???

[rob-ward]

Hey all,

As part of a group Project for my MEng Software engineering course a piece of software is being produced. As part of the research we need to determine a baseline for the type of hardware that people are using, I was wondering if any of you could spare a couple of minutes(literally only a minute or so) and fill in a questionnaire relating to the computer hardware that you use.

The questionnaire is located at http://questionnaire2.anntt.org/

Feel free to fill it multiple times if you have multiple computers,

And if anyone is interested in what we are actually doing for the group project then feel free to visit http://www.anntt.org (http://www.anntt.org/) it's still under construction but does have some information. Or post a question in this thread and i'll answer it if I can.

Thanks,

Rob

[blueshiftoverwatch]

Wow, I was expecting a lot more questions.

[rob-ward]

Told you it was simple and only took a minute :-) thanks for the reply

Rob

[Khakilang]

Simple but is the info enough for your project?

[rob-ward]

Simple but is the info enough for your project?
Thats a hard question to answer, this questionnaire is only one of a number of questionnaires and is simply about finding out(a large amount we already know but need evidence) the basic specs of computers that people have, the reasons that we need to do this is to establish what level of hardware the software has to be tested at and proved to work. So the information about CPU speed and memory is so we can get a computer a the low end and at the average and test it to prove it works. The questions regarding the HDD space are there to determine what type of information we can store, simply because if we stored it all it would take several gb of storage. The question regarding the number of CPU cores is there to determine at what level threading should be implemented in the application, for example there is no point running 64 threads doing calculations on every machine because most(if any personal computers) will not have 64 CPU's.

The question regarding screen resolution is again to make sure our software works on the baseline that people are using.

and the question about OS is simply to show that not everyone uses windows so the choices with regard to programming languages, libraries etc... have to reflect that it will be needed to run on multiple OS's

and like I said this questionnaire is only one of a number of questionnaires and is designed to be simple to gather as much information from a variety of people as possible, if the questions were any more complex we wouldn't get as many responses as most of the population won't know the answers, the hope is that by keeping it relatively simple(I know there are still people that won't know the answers) a large number of people can answer.

Hopefully that answers your question, if you want any more specific info then feel free to ask, and thanks for the reply.

Rob

[hessiess]

You don't give any options for multiple hard drives.

The vast majority of people will have a monitor at least 1024*768, with an ever increasing number of people who have larger monitors.

Why must processor clock speed be given in megahertz, when gigahertz is the standard, and has bean for a long time.

[rob-ward]

The reason that there is not option for multiple HDD's is because we wanted to keep the questionnaire simple, we assume people will give us there largest or summation of the HDD's, the question is designed to isolate more specifically people with the smaller HDD's, basically we want to know how many people have the 40gb or less(which isn't many)

Why it's in megahertz, hmmm good question, I don't actually know cos gigahertz would be how I would expect it, not really sure, i'm going to have to ask if there was a reason now and get back to you cos I really don't know.

Rob

[rob-ward]

OK, well I asked about why the question asks for megahertz and not gigahertz, and apparently it's because the person that wrote the question used megahertz and no one bothered to question it. So ye, not a particularly good reason but it's cos that how it was written and no one asked for it changing. Made a mental note to check all future questionnaires though and make sure that they are using more standard units.

anyway, hope that answers your question.

oh and a big thank you to everyone that has replied, it's greatly appreciated, and if anyone hasn't filled it in then there is still time and the more data we get the better :-)

Thanks,

Rob

[CharlesA]

Added my 5 machines. Didn't include the RAID array on my server tho.

[NoaHall]

I added my two main computers, I have too many to add the rest.

[Странник]

Added my laptop and my desktop

[rob-ward]

I added my two main computers, I have too many to add the rest.
Two is fine, thank you


Added my 5 machines. Didn't include the RAID array on my server tho.
That's great thanks, and ye we thought having options regarding raid arrays might be a bit confusing to non computery people, and yes computery is a word :-)


Added my laptop and my desktop
Thank you.

and Thanks to everyone else that has answered but not responded, all replies are much appreciated.

regards,

Rob

[markp1989]

I added my main desktop to the list, i think you should include ssd in the storage question, it made me cringe having to select the bellow 40gb option

[blur xc]

D'oh! My brain didn't even compute on the clock speed question! Maybe you can run a script or something to weed out 3mhz clock speeds, since NOTHING being made (probably not even a calculator) that runs that slow anymore... (automatically x1000)...

BM

[cariboo]

I added my 6, I thought Mhz was a good choice as a couple of my system are running on sub 500Mhz cpu's

[lisati]

Done done and done!

No shame in having a "low spec" machine in the system. One of my machines runs @ 133MHz, has ~ 64Mb RAM and has a 3.2Gb hard drive. And yes, it does have Ubuntu on it - 6.06, no GUI - and is set up to be an emergency backup to my main desktop's website hosting facilities. It's a bit slow and flaky in comparison to my other desktop & laptop, but, hey, it's still usable!

[Eldera]

I put one computer in twice because I am dual booting Jaunty at 32 bit and Karmic at 62 bit.

You ask my reasons for such a weird set up? Short story is I was messing around with something that was new to me, did not quite understand what I was doing, and don't want to change until I have learned more about the new grub.

Have a wonderful day, Eldera

Edit: I did put that other computer in, too, 3 total.