Bad Technology – Are You Tired Of It?
I just got finished reading an article by Jesus Diaz, in which he claims about the sloppiness of todays hardware and software. He complains about products such as the iPhone, Vista and other stuff being rushed to market. That we consumers than end up with unfurnished or half-baked products that need to be fixed on the fly. Overall his article has a ring to truth in it.
But the fix is simple. So simple that we won’t do it. Stop buying the first generation of any product and quit being a guinea pig for big corporations. Easier said than done. I’m just as guilty as those who are reading this. I usually enjoy the latest toys as well.
But one thing I have learned over the years. It is usually better to wait and let others be the testers. Let others anguish over trying to get fixes, updates, repairs, service packs and so forth. As I recently wrote, I just got a new laptop with Vista on it including SP1. It works fine for me. I could of been a first generation tester, but I chose to wait. I believe it paid off in the long run waiting until fixes were in place.
Diaz states:
On the other side, my parents have a Telefunken CRT TV and a Braun radio from the ’70s which are still in working condition. They were first generation. They never failed. Compare that to my first plasma TV from Philips, which broke after less than a year of use. Mine wasn’t the only one. The technology was too young to be released; it was still in beta state. Philips wanted to be the first in the world with a flat TV and beat the competition, so they released it. This probably wasn’t a good move: Today, Philips’ TV business is struggling, and is nonexistent in the US. Meanwhile, my Sinclair ZX Spectrum and Apple IIe from the 1980s still work like they did from day one, perfectly.
So what do you think? Is it worth it getting the latest technology or software, knowing that there might be issues?
Comments welcome.
3 Comments
the oracle
November 22nd, 2008
at 4:26pm
It reminds me of something I was told as a child – There’s never enough time to do something right, but always enough time to do it over.
It really has less to do with 1st gen products than the willingness of people to put up with inferior products, and the wait for fixes. If, when something with a problem is released, everyone who buys it takes that product back, instead of waiting for the promise of a fix, the problem is solved. The manufacturers would quickly change the way they bring things to market.
I have had several things, especially motherboards with BIOS problems, that never got fixed. Promises were made, and the expectations were high, then the product was discontinued, and that was that. It reminds me of ATi back in the days of the Mach 8 and Mach 32 chipset cards. They were buggy as could be, and there were always drivers, released to fix the problems, but then, after about 6 months, a newer product was released. The word from ATi was that the newer revision WAS the fix. That turned me off from ATi products for many years.
Ron Schenone
November 22nd, 2008
at 5:45pm
Hi Marc,
Good points. I hope you have a great Turkey Day.
Confessions of a Netrepreneur » Blog Archive » Bad Technology - Are You Tired Of It?
November 23rd, 2008
at 4:10am
[...] Bad Technology – Are You Tired Of It? I just got finished reading an article by Jesus Diaz, in which he claims about the sloppiness of todays hardware and software. He complains about products such as the iPhone, Vista and other stuff being rushed to market. That we consumers than end up with unfurnished or half-baked products that need… [...]