Originally Posted by
Rory Blyth
I’ve been quiet all week because there’s already plenty of blogging about the PDC going on, and I’ve been spending my time trying to experience it this time. I barely remember the last PDC. I was so busy trying to write up every minute of every session I was at that I had to read my own posts to know what happened. It’s like people who record every moment of their child’s development from birth until age three, only to wake up one day and realize that they’ve never seen their own kid outside the camcorder CCD.
While working hard on this not blogging thing, I’ve been talking to a lot of people. Microsoft people, Sun people, Mono people, and customers. Plenty of interesting conversations (and arguments), but one thing that’s been getting to me is what I’m starting to think of as the “Vista Hardware Tax”.
I’m hearing a lot of people complain, or at least express concern, about the somewhat steep hardware requirements of Vista. This needs to stop.
Before becoming a paid geek, I worked “normal” jobs. Warehouses, restaurants, and stuff like that. One job in particular was as a valet at a Marriott.
I spent my summer afternoons and evenings driving other people’s cars in and out of the Marriott garage. It wasn’t very intellectually stimulating, but this was offset by the perks of getting to breath exhaust for eight hours a day while wearing a pseudo-naval uniform complete with ceremonious epaulets. What the job lacked in pay, benefits, and prestige, it more than made up for in humiliation and exposure to carcinogens. I also learned that most Mercedes from the mid 70s smell like raisins on the inside. Don’t know why that is.
Speaking of Mercedes, it was always an interesting experience driving all the cars I did. I got behind the wheel of everything from the lowest of the low, barely running, filled to the brim with trash luxury cars from the 70s, to the latest and greatest bits of high-end sleekness coming out of Germany.
Often when driving a twenty-five year old Benz, I tried to imagine what it would have been like to have driven the car as new. These were the top of the line luxury cars for their time (aside from the uber luxury vehicles like Rolls Royces, Bentleys, etc.). It was hard to believe. In the late 90s, a car without a CD player, flashy lights, onboard computer, and electric windows was not what most people thought of when they thought of luxury.
But it was. It was luxury for the Saturday Night Fever generation.
You know what else? Those cars are good enough. They don’t have the creature comforts that a modern Benz does, but they’ll get you from point A to point B. Driving one is simply a matter of accepting that your car is going to smell like raisins. Aside from that, it’ll get you to work just as well as a brand new model.
There’s something missing, though, for the people who are driving the raisin-smelling Mercedes. There’s no GPS. There’s no DVD player. There’s no super automatic climate control system for each passenger in the car. Advances in ergonomics are missing – we know more than ever now how to make people comfortable, and it shows in newer cars. Basically, there are tons of features in a new Benz that you aren’t going to find in an old one.
See where I’m going with this?
Vista is the new luxury car. That’s all. It has new features, it’s more reliable, it’s more stable, and it has a lot more going for it in terms of user experience than our current offerings.
To be able to deliver these improvements requires a bit more in terms of hardware. Just as you can’t expect your 1973 POS Benz to direct you to the nearest hotel by GPS, you can’t expect your old POS computer to be able to handle all the advancements in Vista.
You’re lucky you aren’t all Apple customers, by the way. This business of hardware obsolescence happens much faster Over There. I paid almost $3,000 for an apple a couple years ago, and within a year I was reading about all the UI features in the next OS that I’d be missing out on because my computer was more than three minutes old.
This could have happened in the Windows world years ago, but it’s happening next year instead, and next year is the perfect time for it. High end video cards are becoming ubiquitous, and if you’re computing with less than 512 MB of RAM (on any modern platform), then you should be dragged kicking and screaming into the future.
Sure, this is all going to cost money, and not everybody is making craploads of dough, but by the time Vista comes out, you ought to be able to get a Vista system for fairly cheap. If you want to buy a system now that can run Vista, then you’ll pay a premium. But, wait until the OS is actually out, and I think you’ll find it’s a very different story.
But that’s progress, and it’s always been like this. For Vista to do what we want it to simply requires beefier hardware.
I’m sure there’s still some poorly washed Berkeley dropout in his basement somewhere, flipping switches on the front of his Altair, complaining about all these advances in computing like “keyboards” and “storage devices”.
I’m excited about the hardware requirements. I’m ready for all the fancypants crap that Vista’s going to be able to do. I’m ready for applications that take advantage of the expensive hardware I’ve been buying for the past five years.
I’m happy to pay the Vista Hardware Tax, and I encourage naysayers to invest in the competition.
LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
Reply With Quote
