HP's -- slick stuff, high price. Great mechanicals

From: Roger Merchberger <zmerch_at_30below.com>
Date: Mon Nov 22 20:20:25 1999

Rumor has it that Eric Smith may have mentioned these words:

>Obviously HP must not have thought it was
>a particularly great technique, since they generally aren't using it today.

I disagree with the "obviously" part of things... Zip chips were a great
idea, but they're not in use anymore, as SMD parts offer greater density
(at the expense of replacability - you can socket a zip chip, but SMD
memory is swapped by the stick nowadays) EPROM's were a great idea and
were (and still are) in use for a *long* time, but Flash is easier to use
in the field or at the customer's site (not to mention flash-upgradable
BIOS's in PC's are a nice feature).

Model T's (both the car & the computer) set many, many records, yet very
few of either are in full use today because they've been superceded by
newer/faster/smaller equipment (note: "better" is not in that list.. ;-)

Just because something isn't in widespread use today, doesn't mean it
wasn't (or isn't) a great idea.

(Of course, a corollary to that might be: "Because WinBlows is so
widespread and is in use today, it must be a great product!" Hogwash.)

As always, IMHO...
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger   ---   sysadmin, Iceberg Computers
Recycling is good, right???  Ok, so I'll recycle an old .sig.
If at first you don't succeed, nuclear warhead
disarmament should *not* be your first career choice.
Received on Mon Nov 22 1999 - 20:20:25 GMT

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