C h r o n i c l e s ...

Then and Now in IT

The second weekend of next month is the IT show at Suntec City. There never has been such a good time to buy systems than now, particularly desktops. Current prices are real peanuts when you think how much you have to fork out in the early years. I reckon what I've spent in aggregate, beginning with an antiquated IBM-compatible, could conservatively buy a 1000 cc car today.
Note-books, however, are still holding firm. They know that people who acquire them can afford it in the first place, and they are more than like expensive toys and status symbols than anything else. I never like note-books. Spec for spec, they can never complete with desktops for ease of use and computing speed.

It has never been so easy nowadays with Windows as the OS. (What many may not realize is that Windows is not truly an OS by itself. It is still dependent on DOS to run in the background, hidden). I remember the exasperation .........

in learning and executing DOS commands, the flimsy floppy disks, the monochrome monitor and the dot-matrix printer emancipating a sound like a dentist is having a drilling session. But the sound of success (of a print-job) was sweet music to one’s ears. That one could do away with the typewriter, make instanous corrections and see your printed page was quite gratifying notwithstanding the tears that Wordstar as a word processor could bring. Thankfully a new programe emerged. WordPerfect. But it was still DOS-based.

We didn't have the ability to drag and drop or the convenience of a dump bin:

What a pity local names like Datamini, ACS, Aris and Ranger have folded up. Too many players in a small market. Datamini was always the first to come up with the best configuration in the market then and abandoned the lead as quickly as they come up with the next. Never buy a Dell thinking you have the best deal in town. They source for the cheapest components or peripherals in the market to put in their desktops and you risk incompatibility like I did even within the warranty period. Their out-sourced after sales service sucks. You'll find you're dealing with an invincible form from cyberspace. Their motto is “We sell only systems”. Go figure out what that means. Looking for good freeware utilities? Loook no further than this cool site.

Finally, the truth behind why some men spend hours net surfing....

posted by Victor Lai @ 1:52 PM