I have production clients where they only run one app all day – inputing, editing, and retrieving data with periodic reports.
Other people do nothing but word processing.
It’s an awful lot of overhead for the few people who might actually use it.
]]>As to the processor power used by the UI (in any of the major OS’s), I’ll be happy to debate anyone on its utility, taking the position that for the vast majority of users, that power is well-spent. I’ve taught a lot of people to use a lot of computers over more than 25 years, and I can assure you that while command lines are great for tech people like us, ordinary business users acquire skills far faster on those processor-intensive interfaces.
DRM is another matter. Don’t get me started. Excuse me a moment while I put a vinyl disk on the “record player” …
(Aside: one of the museums on the Mall in DC has one of the original Xerox PARC computers on display. It was designed for use by kids. There was no screen saver, so the main screen image… two cartoon pigs with curly tails… is burned into the screen, all these years later. Hey, I found that amusing; so sue me! 🙂 )
]]>If the university has a deal with Dell or whoever, they have an account rep at the vendor who will “make it happen”. Getting product out the door is the name of the game, so check with the university IT people, or the bookstore if they handle computers.
Microsoft and Adobe have been PITA forever. When they get something right they seem to make a point of destroying it with their next update. The government pays to have a program written and never plans for operating system upgrades or compatibility, so if something changes the guys who wrote the program would have to re-bid for any upgrades.
The government tends to lag everyone on computer upgrades so I would assume they don’t see the problem because none of their machines can run Vista, and they certainly own few, if any Macs.
]]>The man hours that are wasted waiting for the processing of “look and feel” rather than the actual work you are trying to accomplish is amazing.
]]>I need a new laptop, since I’m just about out of disk space, memory capacity, and patience with my current four- or five-year-old Dell. But since I often use my laptop to work on proposals when I can’t get to the office or when I’m traveling to conferences, etc., I need to be able to work with Grants.gov. Which has meant hunting around in the basement of Dell’s website (since they seem to be the only manufacturer that’s still offering XP boxes for sale, albeit just a few of them and without doing much in the way of advertising). I can’t get a lot of the good deals, I can’t get a certain number of options I’d like, and I don’t have much choice in the way of models.
Maybe the better route is to buy a Vista box, download the tool, and reinstall XP on it before I load it with anything else. Of course, Micro$uck being Micro$uck, that will probably involve no end of problems and cause more headaches than it solves…
]]>Well, I guess half that for the windowing system, you have to figure. But really, a sixth of the memory will be available to your application, and a third of the processing power you might expect, which will help us sell you more hardware upgrades.
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