I agree except that "you can't fight city hall". I started out with VM/CMS, DOS, Mac, OS/2, Windows, various flavors of *nix (Solaris and Aix especially) and Red hat (and Centos) and back to WIndows. Work and project requirements dictated my choices. With age and experience and the frequent updates, it's tough remembering details. I'm almost at that stage where I am again tempted and feel like I just want to use computers 'that just works'.
Yes new super-duper features are cool, but it doesn't harm if you can also use some old features when needed. For example, I hate it that new graphics cards do not provide a VGA output and you need an HDMI-to-VGA adapter to connect old monitors. If several years pass and you do not need these features any more (eg floppy disk drive). then fine. But when they are still applicable (eg DVD-RW drive) it is very annoying if your computer doesn't support them. So I try keeping my PC as backwards compatible as I can. I even have connected my old ATAPI DVD-RW drive using an IDE to PCI card, just in case I will ever need to use it besides my SATA BD-R drive, for example.
Hi there
I believe it´s called "Planned Obsolescence"
Ah the benefits of World Wide Capitalism !!!!
I like progress but why on earth should we be forced to junk perfectly good operating hardware - exception of course if the old hardware is heavily energy inefficient and horribly polluting.
I still have some studio hardware for cutting Vinyl Discs and MD (minidisc) recording -- works absolutely fine so still run it on XP Virtual Machine -- I'm 100% against the "Throw away" society but eventually stuff won't work any more. That should be OUR choice when to stop using it rather than have it forced on us.
Cheers
jimbo
Remember Windows Vista? They made system requirements way too high to force everyone upgrade their systems, and they failed! They were literary begging us to buy Vista while we were staying with Windows XP. I am a computer technician and I remember formatting new laptops with Vista preinstalled to install Windows XP. They even gotten so far as to use some SATA controllers Windows XP did not had build-in driver, so a typical user could not install XP. We had to create a special Windows XP CD-ROM with the driver included and then there was no XP driver at manufacturer's site. We had to manually find and download all drivers from component manufacturer's site (Intel, AMD, Realtek etc). Of course we did that and finally we managed to install XP at a Vista laptop.
Fortunately they learned their lesson and Windows 7 are much lighter than Vista on the same hardware. So between the two I always install 7.
This getting far off topic, but...
I'd invoke Hanlon's Razor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
One version is "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
I also believe that to MS, the OS is the PC. The hardware exists only to run the OS.
@jimbo, planned obsolescence ... let’s tslk about printers too.
Not to veer too much off topic but what should I do with perfectly working 20 GB drives and perfectly working 5 year old iPhones and iPad.
This reminds me of that old Microsoft mantra... “Ms Excel is not done until Lotus 123 is gone,..”
Hi there
@bofhlusr
Music files - you can get a decent amount of Music on a 20GB drive. iPad's if they have decent internet access can be used to watch NETFLIX etc. As far as phones are concerned - they are still PHONES -- so they should still work -- there isn't a mega amount of difference between an old 5 year old smart phone and a new one other than processor might be a bit better and better screen resolution. Camera technology will also be better but I LOATHE camera in phones -- especially say going round an art exhibition and you can't get near the pictures because of all the bozos with camera phones taking snaps. Don't even start me off on "Selfie sticks" -- I'd love to attach them (and their owners) to 132 KV High tension power pylons !!!!.
I was in Vienna just recently at the BREUGEL exhibition -- absolutely brilliant but spoilt a lot as so many people were messing around with their wretched phones rather than just enjoying the art.
Largest ever exhibition on Pieter Bruegel the Elder opens in Vienna | The Art Newspaper
cheers
jimbo
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