3 Aug
2006
3 Aug
'06
11:28 a.m.
William Donzelli wrote:
OK, I'm sitting here staring at a GUI that has faded menu bars. Now I don't
*need* those - I'm not going to suddenly find it hard to use an application if
that effect were to disappear. Yet someone's decided to code them in anyway,
increasing disk footprint, memory footprint, and display redraw time
unnecessarily.
That's the sort of stuff I'm talking about - there's an awful lot of extras
thrown into modern software that just isn't required, and even more that isn't
required *all the time*.
I don't have anything against a well thought out UI - but so often modern
software seems to be about adding frills, or rolling several applications into
one and increasing bloat that way when not all users want everything that's in
the bundle.
It's perhaps cheaper now that so many printer manufacturers have gone down
that route. But the level of complexity of a point-to-point parallel system
must be a lot simpler than a serial bus, surely?
cheers
Jules
--
A. Because it destroys the natural flow of conversation.
Q. What's wrong with top posting ?
How much has
the sales side changed? I mean, I suspect for a typical
user just
doing some word processing etc., a simple bitmapped display is fine -
they
don't *need* the high speed of a card that has a lot more features.
People, including me, want some sort of polish and shine to
applications. This is something that most hardcore computer people
do
not understand. The polish and shine are the things that take up the
computing resources, and generally make using the machines a bit more
pleasant.
See, it doesn't matter if my menus are a single colour or 523 shades of grey.
It's a tool, not a work of art. Providing it's easy to use with a little
learning, I'm happy.
Printers are a
case in point too - a parallel port does that job just
fine,
yet it's hard to find a machine that doesn't have more complicated USB
interfaces on it, and a printer's now expected to use that.
I suspect one reason for this (and a big one as well) is that a USB
printer is probably cheaper to make. Most of the cost is in the cable
and sockets, and clearly the USB stuff wins there.