I've been thinking about this for several days now, as I recently built
a new computer. Buying the individual parts from places like
NewEgg.com, I noticed that with a few exceptions (hard disk sizes,
monitor screen sizes) everything is metricated, right down to processor
temperatures. Even on the NewEgg.com forums, Americans routinely talk
about their processor temps in Celsius, stating things like, "Even after
overclocking it by 45%, the processor never got hotter than 38 C!
Awesome!". The processor cores are clearly described in nanometres,
such as a 65 nm Conroe chip, or a 90 nm Windsor chip. You even see RAM
measurements listed in mm.
Today I was reading this article from the University of Wisconsin, about
contact lenses with circuits included in them:
http://uwnews.org/uweek/uweekarticle.asp?visitsource=uwkmail&articleID=39100
It includes the line, "Researchers built the circuits from layers of
metal only a few nanometers thick, about one thousandth the width of a
human hair, and constructed light-emitting diodes one third of a
millimeter across.", with no customary translation to be found.
When the iPod Touch came out, Steve Jobs proudly declared it as, "Our
thinnest iPod yet at only 8 millimetres thin." Unfortunately, Apple
listed the customary measures first on the iPod touch website, an
awkward "0.31 inch" measure.
My point is, far more often than not, I see tech items described in metric.
Thoughts?
-Mike
