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Computer makers may put out new hardware every 6 months, but most users only upgrade every few years… and some folks hang onto older computer for far longer than that.
If an old machine still meets your needs, there’s no reason to upgrade — and there might be some good reasons not to, if you don’t want to deal with the learning curve, converting your old data to a new format, or managing with downtime.
PC World has a roundup of some individuals and institutions using very, very old computers… with no plans to upgrade anytime soon.
Here are some interesting stories from around the web today.
- Ancient computers still in use today… for accounting, gaming, national defense
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it… and if downtime could jeopardize national security then for goodness sake, don’t take it offline just so you can upgrade the hardware. What’s the oldest computer you still use regularly?[PC World] - First look at Toshiba’s KIRAbook ultrabook with a 2560 x 1440 pixel display
Toshiba’s new KIRAbook is a 13 inch thin and light ultrabook with a screen resolution almost as high as the Chromebook Pixel’s or MacBook Pro with Retina’s. Unfortunately Windows doesn’t play as well with high resolution screens as OS X or Chrome OS yet. [Gizmodo] - Amazon may have acquired Siri competitor Evi for $26 million
Amazon might be building a smartphone, adding natural language search and commands into the Kindle Fire tablet lineup, or just building a better shopping experience. But the company now has some of the best speech recognition and text-to-speech software in-house. [TechCrunch] - Evernote looking to partner with a hardware manufacturer on a branded Evernote device
You know how the first Facebook phone is really just an HTC phone with Facebook software running on top of Android? I suspect that’s what the first Evernote phone will look like too. [PC World] - Chromebook users — there might not be that many of them
Take this one with a grain of salt, because Google, Samsung, Acer, and other Chromebook makers haven’t provided solid numbers. But an outside analysis suggests that Chrome OS use is low enough to make Windows RT look like a popular operating system. [ZDNet]
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Yeah, you can always just upgrade the parts and the system! Easy enough.
Small businesses are especially vulnerable to the perils of transitioning to new technology. Small businesses can only afford to make so many mistakes, and
then they’re out of business.
I work for a company that sells, resells and repairs industrial equipment.
I have personally helped customers find companies to help them recover data from tapes that are breaking apart from age.
Customers will ride these systems right into the ground.
Hey, do YOU want to be the guy to propose the umpty-dollar replacement system, or are you going to make your budget work for the next quarter so that little old raise you want comes through?
I think we all know the answer to that question, don’t we?
Some years back i ran across a site selling floppy drive converters. These where devices that could slide into the same size fixture as a floppy drive, and had the appropriate ribbon connector on the inward facing end, but that offered a SD slot (and on more expensive models what looked like a RJ connector) to the user.
They were meant for the textile industry, to modernize computerized looms. the device would read patterns off the SD card and feed them to the aging 286-386 (or something similar) computer running the loom as if it was read off a floppy. The more expensive model allowed a single computer to feed patterns to multiple looms, meaning that a single operator could run a entire factory floor of looms from their desk.