It occurs to me the in the recent thread, in which I somewhat pooh-poohed how amazing current software is, I may have given the impression that hardware has progressed along. Not at all. In fact, it is in much the same rut that software is. There's virtually nothing on my computer today that wasn't on my old SUN workstation 30 yrs ago -- everything today is faster and smaller (and monumentally less expensive), but not much different [as I type on the same keyboard, have a similar mouse, similar display, running from a harddrive not much different in concept from the disks and drums of the 50s and 60s, etc].
I think that the most 'amazing' bit of recent hardware is the cell phone. That whole technology, coupled with the aggregated-functionality in the cell phones, qualifies as 'amazing' to me. Both in itself (as an incredible bit of technolgy) and in the changes it has wrought in the way we do things. I haven't had a chance to play with one, but I think that the combined LCD/graphicstablet displays also qualifies: it allows some exciting things to be done in software that really couldn't happen very effectively if your 'pen' input had to be via a tablet on your desk down vherev while your display was up ^there^. I confess that not much else in the hardware world impresses me very much, at least not on the 'amazing' scale [in terms of "breaking ground amazing" not "awesome feat of engineering amazing" -- almost everything to do with hardware is "amazing" in that latter sense, but it is really still just making the hardware of the past better, faster, smaller, cheaper, rather than blazing any new directions. Overall, though, even if we're just looking at engineering/technology (that latter sort of amazing) I think that hardware is miles ahead of software. The hardware world has progressed forward at a dizzying pace, from a Winchester HD [that held, what, 20 or 30 megs and was the size of a small washing machine] to terabyte drives that is about the size of two decks of cards. From systems where 64K of memory was considered a lot to 1gig systems being only-modest. From integrated processors with 4 megaHz speeds to ones with 4 gigaHz speeds. All impressive bits of engineering, IMO dwarfing anything that's happened in the software world to *use* all that extra capability [but obviously, YMMV..:o)] /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <-- -- ---------------------------------------- WIN-HOME Archives: http://PEACH.EASE.LSOFT.COM/archives/WIN-HOME.html Contact the List Owner about anything: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Official Win-Home List Members Profiles Page http://www.besteffort.com/winhome/Profiles.html
