Firefox consuming 3.5GB...well, there's your problem, must be a memory leak in whatever version you have. Upgrade/downgrade or try Chrome as alternative until the FF issue is resolved.
Agreed re: most users not requiring a high end quad core CPU to browse the net, listen to music, use an email client, etc.
Those cores do come in handy with virtual machines, however. With hyper threading your quad core turns into 8 virtual cores, which can then be dedicated to, and shared amongst, VMs -- very handy as a Linux user needing to test various flavors of Windows without requiring separate physical machines.
SSDs everyone benefits from, novice or advanced user, a useful upgrade (short of storage space of course). RAM, better too much than too little, 8GB with Windows 8 is probably a safe baseline.
and Windows 8 intro screen is a bit baffling at first, a bit like Gnome 3's WTF do I do, is there something wrong intro screen.
I have over a 100 tabs open in 15+ windows, plus all my addons, the only reason I haven't switched to chrome is my because how deeply extensions can integrate with FF.
I do love the fact that you can build a decent server with consumer grade products, I can deliver low cost servers for my customers using an i7 and setup remote desktop services. The extra cores are great for such uses, but the masses will probably never need that much power, especially when you add an SSD to the mix. The PC market is mature, unless something drastically changes sales are going to stay flat.
Agreed re: most users not requiring a high end quad core CPU to browse the net, listen to music, use an email client, etc.
Those cores do come in handy with virtual machines, however. With hyper threading your quad core turns into 8 virtual cores, which can then be dedicated to, and shared amongst, VMs -- very handy as a Linux user needing to test various flavors of Windows without requiring separate physical machines.
SSDs everyone benefits from, novice or advanced user, a useful upgrade (short of storage space of course). RAM, better too much than too little, 8GB with Windows 8 is probably a safe baseline.
and Windows 8 intro screen is a bit baffling at first, a bit like Gnome 3's WTF do I do, is there something wrong intro screen.