22 Sep
2011
22 Sep
'11
10:49 a.m.
kinda sad witch is why we have decaying centers in cities and such
On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 12:19 PM, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
On 22 Sep 2011 at 17:16, Liam Proven wrote:
I treasure some of my middle-aged PC kit, things
like my 7YO Thinkpad
and my various 15-18YO Model M keyboards, which I use daily with
modern software and in the case of the keyboards on modern PCs. They
are legacy kit - the Thinkpad because it has a good keyboard and
multiple spare PSUs, which aren't the case with its modern successors.
Those model M keyboards came from a time when there were still a fair
number of people upgrading their own systems and places doing repair,
so the comparison isn't apt there.
Rather, consider today's keyboards--mostly junk and consumables. I
don't see any trend toward wanting to repair keyboards, even though
they've essentially been unchanged for the last 30 years. Mice are
just as bad.
I'm a backward sort of user, simply because upgrading creates a lot
of trouble and doesn't buy me anything that I can use. Given my slow
DSL connection (1.5Mbps on a good day), I can't really use my system
for much more than browsing, downloading documents and email. So the
system I'm sitting in front of here is a 2.4GHz P4 that I picked up
on Freecycle as junk. A pin was bent on the CPU, so it was
discarded. I do have a AMD 64 bit system, but I have 32-bit Linux
installed. I have plenty of older motherboards and for their
application, they're fine. I don't own a system that requires a USB
keyboard or mouse--or a PCIe video card, for that matter.
But I'm not representative of the consumer community at large, any
more than Tony is.
The comment from one reader about his microwave oven is more to the
point. I recently took a wall oven+microwave combination out of
service (32 years old) and replaced it with a 20 year old double
ovwn. The door spring in the old unit had broken, meaning that I was
going to pull the oven anyway; the "new" oven had better insulation
(more energy efficient) as well as being generally of better quality,
so it was worth it. That left me with the old unit and a 32-year
old functioning microwave (doesn't use the membrane buttons, but
rather a glass panel with capacitve pickup). No takers, offering it
for free on Freecycle and CL. People want the "consumable"
appliances. (I already have another microwave that fits my needs
better).
At any rate, the basic idea is that people prefer new things, whether
it's a pair of pants or an automobile--and that's not likely to
change.
--Chuck