Half the stuff he says "should" be done are already
being done. I haven't had a plastic case on a computer
in 10 years. I reuse the same aluminum case every time
I upgrade my computer, buying a cheaper, steel case to
throw the old parts into. Every component *is*
removable and "industry standard, off-the-shelf". I
see no reason why the motherboard should be slide-out,
the fact that it is screwed down now does not prevent
it from being changed easily. ATX motherboard fits in
ATX case, mini-ATX motherboard fits in mini-ATX case.
PCIx card fits in PCIx slot on motherboard. You're
never going to get the CPU manufacturers to agree to a
CPU socket, but they're pretty good within their own
product lines in sticking to a socket design for a
while.
And I have to take issue with his comment that
"Computers seem to be getting cheaper, but are they
getting better? ... certainly not!". The "good ol'
days" of computing never freaking existed. These
really are the best days for computing. Even Linux,
the poster child for difficult user experiences, is
easier to use today than Windows 3.1. Windows Vista,
for all of the flack it gets for being buggy, when
tracked against Windows XP's lifecycle has beat it in
every metric. OS X is several orders more powerful and
featureful than any Apple operating system in history
(probably because they finally gave up trying to write
their own 100% from scratch).
Even MS Word, the monolithic beast that is synonymous
with "buggy software" in most peoples' vocabularies,
is today a rock-solid platform. I haven't lost a
document to a generic "software just crapped the bed"
error since college, and I write more now than I ever
did then. 10 years ago, nobody had any concept of what
a "social networking" site would be, or how involved
they would be in our daily lives. 15 years ago, nobody
even knew what the Internet was, now you can't go a
single day without feeling the urge to check your
email, read the sports scores, etc.
Computers are far better today than they have ever
been. You see them as "worse" because you use them
more often now. 10 years ago, my mother was yelling at
me to "get a real life" if I spent more than 10 hours
a week on the one computer in the house. Before I
moved out, we had at least 6 microcomputers and 4
handheld computers that were each more powerful than
our original family computer.
My father probably uses computers the least of us
because he doesn't have a job primarily centered
around working with them (that is to say, in
delivering bread for a living, his handheld computer
with which he processes store orders is secondary to
his work). As a software developer, I probably spend
over 100 hours a week on computers at work, at home,
and on the go. That's 10 times more time, and 10 times
more opportunities to see the exceedingly rare bugs
pop up.
Computers today are hands-down better than ever. If
you work with them long enough, you'll eventually see
their quirks, but try working with an older computer
this long and you'd go crazy.
Discussion on:
Message 7 of 1
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