Tektronix terminals and terminals in general (Re: CDC 6600 - Why so awesome?)

[Pete Lancashire]

Not Tek but I've seen directly two instances where simple terminal
UI's where very much missed by the end users.

The one I remember the most was a nationwide auto parts company who I
wont mention who. The stores used
80x25 ASCII terminals with forms and fields and just about every
function key did something.

Once the UI was learned watching a counter person was quite amazing,
someone with an account would walk
in ask for a price on something and if say ok you would in less time
it would take for one to move a mouse and
click a button on a modern UI, a dot matrix printer had printed out
the three part NCR paper invoice. Other then
going to get the part and rip the 'holes' off the invoice paper the
guys hands never left the keyboard.

After conversion that simple terminal became a PC with a mouse, a
fancy gui front end, blue screens of death,
virus scanners, and software contract for the O/S, the fancy gui
client, etc. etc.

Not to mention pissed off customer because it went from a few seconds
hit half a dozen of F keys, hit the tab
key a few times to a good dozen mouse moves, clicks, open windows,
wait for a megabyte or two of data
to go back and forth, reboot the PC in the back room because the
Printer Spool crashed, and ......




On Fri, Jun 24, 2016 at 7:50 AM, emanuel stiebler <emu at e-bbes.com> wrote:
> On 2016-06-24 08:23, Swift Griggs wrote:
>>
>> However, I think most folks these days would faint if they were forced to
>> work on a terminal.
>
>
> Just don't tell them, that they do ;-)
>
> If you really think about it, the terminals just got faster and
> got more colors. (and you call them smartphone, thin clinet, tablet, win PC,
> ...)
> Otherwise:
> a.) most data is somewhere in the cloud (before it was called mainframe)
> b.) a lot of applications are running in the cloud (before, mainframe)
> c.) you connect now via wireless internet (before: modem)
> d.) ...
>
> So, just Emperor's new clothes ;-)
>
>