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Responsiveness over 17" touch screen over time

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NicolaiKD

New Member
Jun 21, 2012
1
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I am worried that the 17’’ inch touch screen after a few years will seem slow and “laggy”!

Here is a little story to put things into perspective:
My dad keeps insisting to use his 7 year old HP laptop - even though it VERY slow. Sometimes he waits a minute or more to load a program or a page on the internet. It was a great computer 7 years ago but because the software we use and the internet have evolved the machine seems very slow.

My concern is that this will happen to the Model S as well?

Another example is my friend’s old iPhone 3G. He can’t even search the internet with it anymore because it is so slow due to the all the software upgrades!

Because the touch screen is the central unit of the car and provides you all the functionality it needs to have a great responsiveness - otherwise the whole experience of the great car will be ruined! :eek:

I hope the Tesla design team has giving this some thought and will make it possible in the future to buy an upgrade of the nVidia Tegra processor in the car.

What do you guys think? :smile:
 
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A fair question; that's the nature of computer software (Operating Systems in particular) - over time, older hardware cannot keep up with it.

Now, unlike say, Microsoft who'd like folks to adopt their latest Windows avatar (and implicitly buy the latest partner hardware) or Apple who'd want you to buy the latest iDevice to keep up with the latest iOS update, Tesla would be conscious of the fact that one cannot buy a new Model S every 2-4 years so, I think they'd throttle the complexity and resource demands of updates that they make to their platform and native apps to maintain a good user experience.

Having said that, at some point in the future, they'd want to make the touchscreen console software more feature-rich and powerful so, I'd assume that they'd provide a hardware update option at some reasonable cost at that time.
 
There's also performance degradation over time simply from the OS getting bogged down. Take an old computer, do a fresh install of windows and very often it performs like new. I did this recently with an old iPhone 3G we had as well and saw a big boost in performance. Hopefully when the customizations and apps come down the pipeline, Tesla finds a way to keep the OS clean and snappy.
 
There's also performance degradation over time simply from the OS getting bogged down. Take an old computer, do a fresh install of windows and very often it performs like new. I did this recently with an old iPhone 3G we had as well and saw a big boost in performance. Hopefully when the customizations and apps come down the pipeline, Tesla finds a way to keep the OS clean and snappy.
That is really up to the guy who is maintaining the software.

My laptop is running a Linux installation from 2007 and has been updated ever since.

Software doesn't get slow over time, nor does hardware. Computers get slow when you add more software and start utilizing more memory. That happends to Windows due to people installing all kinds of software.
 
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You beat me to it, and said it more succinctly as well. :)

That is really up to the guy who is maintaining the software.

My laptop is running a Linux installation from 2007 and has been updated ever since.

Software doesn't get slow over time, nor doesn't hardware. Computers get slow when you add more software and start utilizing more memory. That happends to Windows due to people installing all kinds of software.
 
That is really up to the guy who is maintaining the software.

My laptop is running a Linux installation from 2007 and has been updated ever since.

Software doesn't get slow over time, nor doesn't hardware. Computers get slow when you add more software and start utilizing more memory. That happends to Windows due to people installing all kinds of software.

Especially since Linux runs fast on anything... well, almost.
 
..., Tesla would be conscious of the fact that one cannot buy a new Model S every 2-4 years so, I think they'd throttle the complexity and resource demands of updates that they make to their platform and native apps to maintain a good user experience.

...so, I'd assume that they'd provide a hardware update option at some reasonable cost at that time.

Hope for the first part.

Doubtful of the second.
 
If you find an old computer that runs slowly it very likely has anti-virus software, adware or malware on it. I once came across a PC that was ridiculously slow, it had two completely different anti-virus products installed and they fought each other.

There was talk of Tesla allowing an SDK to make apps for the touchscreen but hopefully they are very careful with that.
 
Slow is relative to time and the products it compared to previously.
7 years ago that computer was probably wicked fast compared to other PC's. Compare it to modern hardware, and yes, it feels slow.
The problem is two-fold: crap installed that slows things down, and perception based on current standards
 
If you find an old computer that runs slowly it very likely has anti-virus software, adware or malware on it. I once came across a PC that was ridiculously slow, it had two completely different anti-virus products installed and they fought each other.

That, or a webpage with flash on it running in the background. Flash makes all my computers run really slow after a while.
But my 3 year old iPhone 3GS is good as new. No speed problems at all there.
 
That, or a webpage with flash on it running in the background. Flash makes all my computers run really slow after a while.
But my 3 year old iPhone 3GS is good as new. No speed problems at all there.
You're lucky then...mine is a DOG...some features are fine, but sometimes when trying to open apps they start to open, then abort and spontaneously close. Some apps take forever to open up. and I've deleted all my music so it's not a memory issue (was an even bigger dog when iTunes Match had filled up all my available memory with music). If anything finally pushes me back to a contract with a provider it'll be that the 3Gs is finally just not keeping up with the software.
 
There shouldn't be "OS decay." It is not fair to compare a rigorously-controlled and checked production system to a home-based computer operating system with no change control or QA process done.
When they start allowing customers to add applications, then that gets a little more dangerous - it could turn into that. I would recommend that Tesla look into only allowing those "apps" to run in virtual environments within the car's main OS, so that they can be killed when they start to exceed their performance limits.

I'm personally guilty of applying updates ad hoc to my home server, and know exactly how it affects performance negatively. Because I am impatient, and because I know I'm not applying rigor to my upgrade process.
Tesla's attention to detail and quality in their delivered products - which they don't exhibit on their web site!!! - means this computer with four wheels and a mondo-sized battery is going to be fine.
 
Unlike a cell phone or computer, Tesla knows that any upgrades has to work on the existing hardware and will be very protective of the whole thing, will be careful about the approved software running on it and making sure it's always running zippy. If they offer hardware upgrades down the road at a fair price (maybe ~$200 every 4 or 5 years), I would be OK with that if it also adds additional features worth the upgrade.
 
I like the idea of an upgradeable car.

Since so much of this car is electric and so much of that is software, I am looking forward to upgrades in a variety of areas. This has not only to do with the look of the screens, but also with the feel of the ride.

Check some BMW (and others) cars that offer a choice of ride settings. These include the steering characteristic, the gas pedal characteristics, the shock absorbers and other things.

I would like to use these opportunities to limit the handling of the car when my teenagers drive (limit speed and acceleration).
 
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Part of the reason that Windows computers tend to get slower is just "junk" being left around.
In particular, lots of temp files in the temp directories & lots of entries left behind in the registry "hive" from old software you uninstalled, but didn't completely clean up.
Basically if you know how to give your PC a thorough "housecleaning" once and a while you can keep it from slowing down over time.
Then there is hard disk fragmentation.

Newer apps also start to assume that PCs are likely to have more standard memory available so your old PC might be inadequate for the new apps.

So, hopefully the screen OS has "self cleaning" provisions to keep everything optimized. Also, apps made for future versions need to take into account the old hardware.

--

Yeah, when I had iPhone 3 with iOS 4 the app-store "auto-update" would fail sometimes because some of the app updates were only for iOS5.
When I updated the iPhone 3 to iOS 5 some things seemed to run more slowly. So now I have iPhone 4 and can run the latest apps without worry.

Try putting Windows 7 on an old PC designed for XP. It may run slowly due to low memory, non-optimized VGA GPU, etc.

Someday you may feel compelled to upgrade just so you can run newer apps.