Comments

wcoxe1 wrote on 7/17/2004, 8:17 AM
The 1934 Maxwell was the car of my father's dreams. He never was able to afford one when he was young. As you can well imagine, a car that could never sustain 55 mph would be, by today's standards, considered obsolete.

Just before he died, we 4 kids managed to find him that car, in nice condition, and fixed it up for his birthday. He was never so delighted in his 83 years.

He went toodling around town, tooting his horn, waving at all the little old ladies and gents, having the time of his life. He hardly ever drove his nice new Lexus after that. We think that car added several years to his life.

Depends on what you mean by obsolete. If it meets your needs, as that car did, it is not obsolete. If you need to get from here to there at 90+ MPH, in a BIG hurry, well, officer, it is obsolete.

What BG is talking about is that there will be bigger and "better" things on the market that all the kids will be lusting after. Not necessarily us old timers. We will have to adapt to BOTH markets, but that doesn't mean that we will abandon the '34 Maxwells of our lives, as they still serve a fine and useful purpose for many years to come. And BG knows that. He is just "marketing."
Jessariah67 wrote on 7/18/2004, 8:29 AM
And actually, as producers of video, most of us have run into technology issues with end users -- from streaming for dialup connections, to those hair-pulling calls you get from people you just sent a DVD to..."I put your CD in my computer and Windows 95 couldn't read it..." I once did a job for someone who headed a college athletic department's marketing division -- he didn't even have speakers connected to his computer.

Problem with new technology is that many consumers take a long time to catch up. The DVD (from my experience) is now just becoming standard for people. If your job is to make a product as compatible as possible for the most people, you almost have to take two steps backward (or hire someone to answer your phone for you...)
BillyBoy wrote on 7/18/2004, 4:17 PM
I hope Windows is obsolute in ten years. Hopefully less. <wink>
VegasVidKid wrote on 7/18/2004, 5:33 PM
Yes, you always need to take anything Gates says with a grain of salt, because he is usually spinning his comments to MSFT's advantage. However, if the DVD is as we know it today is still the standard for Home Entertainment, it would be a surprise to me. By that time, they will have been around for 17 years. How many distrubution media have not become pretty obsolete after 17 years? However, to assert that there will be no physical media would probably also be incorrect. Remember the whole hot issue about the "network computer" a few years ago that Oracle was hawking? Larry Ellison was pushing for computer with tiny disk drives (or none at all), despite the fact that storage was getting so cheap that it was barely a factor. I guess there was some degree of merit to that fad, too, but who the hell wants to require a network connection to download a word processor java applet just to type a little note? His primary objective was to unseat Microsoft and buy a few more Oracle hotels on Boardwalk. Certainly there will be more content digitally available on demand, the DVD will seem a little dated, and solid state storage will probably take hold. Compression will contiue to improve, so you'll be able to carry a lower resolution copy of all your home movies in your wallet, just like our grandparents had a few wallet sized photos. My guess is that you'll probably be able to play them on that wallet, too!