Comments on: The Race for Unplanned Obsolescence

By: _iCeb0x_

_iCeb0x_ — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 14:53:53 +0000

Oh, I forgot to mention that FireWire is still supposed to reach a 3.2Mbit bandwidth. So, USB 3.0 will not kill it at all, at least in those niches I cited in the previous post.

Not to mention that USB is not really efficient and never, ever, ever reaches the advertised top speed! For that matter, FireWire also doesn’t, but gets much closer!

By: _iCeb0x_

_iCeb0x_ — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 14:50:21 +0000

I don’t believe FireWire is going anywhere that soon. Eventually, it’ll be phased out, as everything does, someday.

But, in the meantime, it will be a niche-specific technology (mostly professional audio and video).

Don’t believe me? ATA and Serial-ATA never truly killed SCSI (even if they were not meant to do it). SCSI is still used in servers (some new “entry-level” servers use hot-swap SATA disks, but SCSI still is the leading technology). SAS will make SCSI keep its position for some time to come.

By: Old gamer

Old gamer — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 11:56:12 +0000

I still need a 3.5″ drive in my not so old desktop (6 years) in case I need to re-install XP since it does not have the appropriate SATA drivers. These come on a seperate 3.5″ disk which I have to load during XP’s installation.

By: Billy_Bob Joe Ben

Billy_Bob Joe Ben — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 02:07:24 +0000

The one and only piece of tech to replace a keyboard should be – http://tiny.cc/oiod1

it’s so bad

By: TheNet411

TheNet411 — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 01:08:29 +0000

I am afraid that every single one of you are wrong about your ideas about SSDs. They will not be taking the place of anything in the next several years. While it is true that some netbooks are coming with SSDs and SSDs do outperform a lot of HDDs, they are absolutely not a viable alternative to good old HDDs yet. SSDs have a fundamental problem that prevents them from being candidates for long term storage. The more they are used, the more likely they are to fail. The “thrashing” problem that occurs with all operating systems has not been overcome and is not likely to be overcome anytime soon. To get beyond that problem would require the operating system makers take the issue seriously which they have yet to do. There are some promising new technologies on the horizon that may help with these problems but they are several years away from being used in consumer-grade products. HDDs are here to stay for quite a while. SSDs are a nice toy but nothing else.

By: Nate

Nate — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 00:00:38 +0000

Serial ports :: I would be lost without them, and I would never, ever, buy a laptop that didnt have one. They may not be used by everyone, but if your in IT like I am, they are still a requirement for configuration of many IT systems.

Ethernet Ports: What makes you think that these are going away, the technology behind Ethernet is still coming out in faster speeds (10G anyone?) — Once again, I would have a real hard time doing a lot of my job if my laptop didnt have it’s ethernet port. Wireless is great for many things, however many corporate environments avoid it with good reason.

Maybe these types of things are what seperate a business machine from a typical home machine, which is where Apple falls for the most part. Also the attitude that has kept most businesses away from Apple.

By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 22:37:15 +0000

You, sir, have obviously no idea what you are talking about.

By: JEDIDIAH

JEDIDIAH — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 22:28:51 +0000

Hard drives are safe for the forseeable future. People will always find
new way of filling up RAM or Disk. There will always be room for cheaper
random access persistent storage.

One of the first things that was added to netbooks (besides Windows)
was disk storage. The ability to have 20x the space is usually hard
to resist.

My 2 desktops have 11TB of storage between them and I use every bit of it.

By: Mike P

Mike P — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 21:07:05 +0000

Wireless electronics is like pipeless plumbing…if you really need it, it kinda works…but wired is always better.

Serial ports are still VERY widely used in lots of things other than mainstream computing. They will be around for a VERY long time.

By: Scott B

Scott B — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:17:08 +0000

Keyboards safe for the foreseeable future. As long as software needs to be written, code will have to be typed. Most code is not pronounceable, and programmers will not sit and spell every command and parameter into voice recognition.