Trouble with all this advocacy of new devices, is, that their
manufacturers don't intend you to use them above 2 years - their rated
lifecycle, at best.
They expect you to buy something ever-newer, bi-ennially. Which keeps
'em in business. They realized that servers, towers & laptops were
lasting too long ( MAC: 8-10 years, at best; M$ WinDoze boxes, up to 4-6
years ). Support contracts were a loss-leader, too: stock costs were
absorbing space and costing them money they wanted spent on chasing
rainbows ( new projects ). A market glut resulted, so manufacturers
coped, by withdrawing from the shops, the availability of spare parts,
forcing new sales on, using Just-in-Time management practices. Clever -
but transparently obvious.
Software isn't really the focus of the problem. Hardware is. The
revolution in new device ranges, is to keep the money coming in from the
public. And to ensure the devices exasperate users, as new developments
outmode them .. Device lifecycles are being progressively shortened.
It happened at first with cars, then household appliances, and now,
e-machines. If you buy top-of-the-range, in new devices, you can only
get short-life products. SUN boxes were the best in the world, after
the Apple Mac Pro range. So Oracle killed them off -- dispersing the
Solaris development teams. Same with the older IBM tall towers: the
engineering quality, far surpassed the plastic casings of today.
Built-to-last, has almost completely disappeared from IT
There are too many boxes out there, and the pressure is on, to force
their withdrawal, as obsolete. But many of them aren't. They can be
recycled, with good software ( Linux/BSD ), extending their useability
on, until the motherboards fail. All this portable-device mania, is
simply scraching an itch of anxiety. Its not an optimal operating
environment for serious work, research, design, copywriting etc. The
devices are too small, fragile, insufficiently robust for prolonged
usage. Laptops overheat, and burn out drives. SysAdmins are told not
to support models the manufacturer deems obsolete on their corporate
networks. BYOD is a hackers' paradise, so eavesdroppers can hook in,
remotely, reading screen emission broadcasts, onto their own.
No, mate. No i-devices or clones thereof, for me. Give me a G5 Apple
Mac Pro, dual-partitioned with Linux, any day. I'll still be using it,
reconditioned, long after the Chromebooks, i-Pads, Androids/i-Phones &
and OEM lookalikes, are gone and forgotten. As for phones, there's one
on my wall ......
Les
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