"This is very important for newbies, especially when they read every single day about Pentium X 1024bit CPUs, with clocks at 10GHz , and 128MB cache, etc, etc, etc... Even more they forgot to say that you don't need a modern CPU to design a burglar alarm system, but even a 8bit micro can do the work. And finally, what the heck is embedded designing? Why do I have to learn about 8bitters? Several similar questions can follow from us, the newbies/students... "

It's very reassuring to hear this sort of thing coming from a modern student. We are already seeing the proverbial toasters with pentiums appearing all over the place.

My set top digital decoder box crashes if I press the buttons on the remote quicker that a couple of times a second. I haven't taken it to bits yet to find out what kind of CPU it uses, but I have read that it runs a so-called RTOS and this is the explanation for the regular crashes and software updates. It's a bit better than it was when I bought it 18 months ago but I have had to ugrade the software *five* times. It's tempting to think that the programmer(s?) is totally incompetent but I suspect the problem is really the unnecessary complexity provided by the OS. Let's face it, if you're trying to manage large amounts of data fast the last thing you need is an RTOS screwing up the timing.