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Date:      Wed, 17 Apr 2002 20:37:10 -0500
From:      Mike Meyer <mwm-dated-1019525830.931e6a@mired.org>
To:        Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr>
Cc:        Bob Bomar <bulldog@fxp.org>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   RE: overclocking and freebsd
Message-ID:  <15550.9030.396432.30948@guru.mired.org>
In-Reply-To: <20020412144054.GB2610@hades.hell.gr>
References:  <20011110215343.C961@bsd.alexe.org> <20020411182041.H45395@darius.2y.net> <20020411200534.A25472@ns.museum.rain.com> <20020412042041.GA80748@peitho.fxp.org> <20020412144054.GB2610@hades.hell.gr>

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In <20020412144054.GB2610@hades.hell.gr>, Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> typed:
> That's a highly subjective metric though.  My FreeBSD machine feels a
> lot more responsive than those Windows XP machines with faster CPUs a
> and larger amounts of RAM I've seen friends work on.  But how does one
> define an objective metric of 'responsiveness'?

Easy - to describe, anyway. First, get a large enough group of users
for each system to be statistically significant, and watch them work
for a week or so, noting all their activites and how many each one is
done. Sort out the activities that are relevant to the question at
hand, and see if the relative frequencies of them are reasonably close
to each other. If they are, make up a sequence of events that hits
those frequences. If not, make up three sequences, one for each group,
and one for the two groups combined. Now measure how long it takes
each member of each group to perform the sequence(s). After you've got
the data, you can start running two-variable tests for the
sequence(s), and see if there's a statistically significant
difference.

The tricky part will be when the timing is warped by the window
manager. I.e., if I've got a WM set to follow the mouse and not raise
the active window, then activating a window is one action for me
(point), but two (point and click) for a windows users. On the other
hand, raising a window is easy for a windows users, because they can
point anywhere in the window, whereas I have to point at the frame. If
I'm using a pointerless window manager, it starts getting really
complicated.

	<mike
--
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

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