Re: Joy of this, Joy of that

On 08/12/2024 19:50, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

t drive me nuts when I watch J. Random Luser pointing and clicking and
pointing and clicking and dragging and dropping and... oops, where did I
drop that icon?  Hold on a minute...  And all the time they're proudly
proclaiming how_easy_  the system is to use, when I could get the job
done in a dozen keystrokes on a properly-designed system.
--

I never forget installing dial up Internet mail in a lawyers' office,. They had a SCO Unix server and a legal suite of programs to basically type legal stuff into, and run diaries and keep track of billable hours, all running on about 20 Wyse 50 serial terminals. Adminned by one lawyer in his spare time.
He related gloomily that 'next year the boss wants everyone to have PCs and I can't manage 20 Windows set ups. It will cost a fortune'
In the City of London apparently a PC/Windows set up was estimated to cost £3500 per desk per year, in term of hardware and software support, software  and hardware depreciation and admin time.
For so many firms Windows was a massive increase in costs and a massive reduction  in productivity.
And for many others it was simply a way to get a 80x25 screen working over Ethernet...Ive seen many PCs in use in banks simply running IBM terminal emulators  to good old COBOL based mainframes...
GUIS have their place, but not everywhere.
--
I would rather have questions that cannot be answered...
...than to have answers that cannot be questioned
Richard Feynman