Link Logger
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-29
Calgary, AB
 ·Shaw
| Computers and the 'experienced' user
Now I'm getting a little older and more experienced then some, have far less hair and what I do have is a little whiter then it used to be and as the years have pasted I've noticed my hardware/technology needs have changed. Once there was a time when I couldn't get a high enough resolution screen to pile gobs of information on my screen, now I find the high resolution screens have micro sized text that I wish was bigger. Now for me keyboards, mice etc are all fine, but the reality is as you get older your eyes change and monitors have been evolving in somewhat the wrong direction for older folks and their eyes.
Now development technology I think is aware of the issues as it is trying/starting to use the evolving power of hardware to better adapt technology/hardware to the needs of the user, so we are seeing the evolution of things like WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) which allows developers to write application which will scale, in the sense that a user can make the application bigger such that the text will get bigger and the graphics will get bigger etc and the app will still look 'correct' and 'complete', but really this is a 'new' technology and is taking some time to evolve and become implemented. The question of 'scaling' isn't as easy as people think as there will always be a possibility of at least two types of scale, for example make what is visible more visible and second, make more of what is visible, visible and ultimately this is the difference between old and young eyes, so the problem isn't necessarily trivial.
Now my old laptop finally packed it in as the graphic subsystem finally fried itself, but I can tell you I will likely spend more time looking at the visibility of the screen then I have in the past when deciding on my next laptop and so I hope that hardware and software technology will also experience a change in motivators to something other then how many pixels or how much stuff we can cram onto a screen. I realize lots of pixels are great, but the software has to be able to use those pixels in a fashion that works for me and my eyes.
I think that people need to talk about how their computing needs change so that those driving technology can keep in step with those that use technology, so I'd love to hear comments etc as to what you think is needed, hardware wise, software wise, whatever to make your computing/technology experience better.
Blake
I might be older, but I still love building apps
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Vendor: Author of Link Logger which is a traffic analysis and firewall logging tool |
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ironwalker
World Renowned
Premium,MVM
join:2001-08-31
Keansburg, NJ
clubs:
·Optimum Online
| Cool topic...thanks.
I hate the fact that video cards are getting to be the size of briefcases and taking two slots on a motherboard.
I hate that motherboards wont go up to a new standard in size...like big enough to handle more slots and those briefcase videocards.
I hate that the case makers wont go bigger for the motherboard maker to go bigger, so they can fit those briefcase size videocards in there with room to spare of course.
I know small seems to be in these days, but, I can care less about size if the pc is my home pc/server. Not that I want a central air conditioning unit as a home pc.
Even with todays technology getting better at packing everything one would need into a motherboard today, I still feel more comfortable with seperate cards in various slots though I cannot do this today as easily as I mentioned above 3 times.
I also/ultimatly hate that todays corporations went the route of less is more of an update/upgrade. Give an inch every year around christmas, over charge the hell out of it, slowly make it come down in price by next christmas, until the next upgrade, which only has miniscule of upgrades, repeat.
I don't like the whole pc hardware industry being dictated by gamers..........I dont game anymore. Its not fare for the consumer to be sucked into the latest and greatest hardware, paying full overblown prices to be lowered later for the latest and greatest pc game releaseing when the latest and greatest hardware was released yet the hardware cannot keep up with or play the game.
I am getting frustrated writing this but I am sure some are as they try and figure out what the heck I mean. 
For bigger screens and such being the big thing now, I myself still use a 19in lcd. I will only go bigger if I watch dvd movies on my pc, which I don't. For my wife, 2 19in lcd is fine for the varied windows she has open at once for work.
Now why can't the tv's get such high resolution like pc monitors?
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Live Free or Die!
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Juke Box
Free From Marketing
Premium
join:2001-01-29
Bar & Grill
·Comcast
| reply to Link Logger
I am glad I have an iPhone and am not racing to a pc to get on line to collaborate with family or friends, play games or just want to surf the web. Now we have laptops with wireless even. I don't have a problem with looking for WiFi but looking for free WiFi. Sigh - Things have changed.
I don't game as much and as long as I have my iPhone, I am free from being indoors and enjoying the things outdoors long before the proliferation of computers.
The beach is calling my name. 
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If you are having half as much fun as I am, then I must be having twice the fun than you are. Do The Math! |
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Dryden
join:2002-07-26
Bensenville, IL
| reply to Link Logger
As an old geezer myself I have to use a 22" LCD to be able to see what I'm doing. No problem there though.
What I would like to see is more ergonomic mice. I HAVE to use an ergonomic mouse as the fingers are getting a bit stiff. Makes a big difference when using one.
I have an MP3 player that'll display movies but I never use the function as the screen is far too small. I don't forsee a tech solution to this situation though. |
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natedj
Elected
Premium
join:2001-06-06
Columbia, SC
·Earthlink Cable Mo..
| reply to Link Logger
I'm with the OP on the screen resolution, even though I consider myself relatively young .... in my mid thirty's, and currently have no problem with tiny fonts, I can see and have seen it become an issue working in an office full with tech savvy coworkers thirty years my senior. I would like to see LCD's that are not pigeonhole to one native resolution without having to long-suffer with distortions and other inherent problems.
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Good judgement comes with experience...Experience comes after bad judgements |
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Link Logger
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-29
Calgary, AB
·Shaw
| reply to ironwalker
Graphic cards are the new arms race because it generates money as gamers seem willing to spend the bucks on funky graphic technology and your right it does seem to border on insanity given the limited time any card spends on the top of the heap before being tossed into the yesterday's news bucket. Sometimes I find it rather funny that people pay massive amounts for graphic power they never even scratch.
I only game on consoles really so my desktops and laptops are CPU/Memory focused and perhaps a tuner card for recording TV, but the main purpose is coding, so often I just use the built in graphics capability of the motherboard. As I mentioned graphic usability of the monitor is becoming a top ranked priority and looking at stuff like WPF and such is definitely an interest while coding. I've always tried to accommodate scaling of my screens but it can be a lot of work and sometimes very difficult to test, so sometimes the results are less then I'd hoped for.
Blake
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Vendor: Author of Link Logger which is a traffic analysis and firewall logging tool |
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pandora
Premium
join:2001-06-01
Outland
 ·ooma
·Future Nine Corpor..
·Comcast
|  reply to Link Logger
I used to look for performance, and my first home built PC's were not cost effective. I quickly learned our technology evolved very quickly and whatever I spent for a given level of performance would cost half as much or less in a year.
For the past few years, I value stability above about all else. My PC's must be stable. No blue screens, no surprises. Since about 2001, I've been mostly buying and using Dell PC's. They have been great.
The second thing I value is quiet. I can't stand noise. I don't know what sound level annoys me, but if I can hear a fan, I'm annoyed. I had a 4830 video card that made a soft fan whisper, and replaced it with a dead silent 3850 card. I am much happier now. I prefer the silent video card ten times more than the whisper quiet card.
As to high resolution. I've gotten good at setting dpi, resolution, and page magnification on Opera and IE. Overall Windows XP has worked out well. I have almost as good an experience with Vista and Windows 7.
My biggest gripe currently is Live mail. I can't get it to resemble Outlook Express. I don't want to group my mail by user, I want to see it in the order it arrived in one inbox. To view Live Mail requires too much wasted screen space compared to Outlook Express.
Supposedly Live Mail is an advance over Outlook Express. It may be technologically, but it isn't in terms of viewability and overall effective screen layout.
I wish Microsoft would be a bit more concerned with older users who want to have more control of screen layout when reading mail.
As an aging PC customer, I'm overall very happy with the state of hardware, and very happy with the cost, and overall aside from Live Mail, very happy with the current Microsoft Windows products.
I have learned that integrated devices are a nice place to start, but to keep a PC around a few years longer, eventually a quiet, powerful, newer technology video card is helpful. Large monitors are great, everyone should have one. Higher resolution is a mixed blessing to me, it can be helpful, but is also an issue when I need to scale stuff up to match my eyesight.
Finally, my most recent learning 'experience' was that not all integrated NIC's are created equal. The ethernet interface on some of my old PC's was less efficient and effective than I realized. Installing better ethernet cards helped create an overall improved internet and LAN experience.
I wonder what changes my kids will experience over their lifetimes? I hope they are as happy with their hardware as I am with the stuff today.
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"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use." |
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Matt
Take me down to the paradise city
Premium
join:2003-07-20
Jamestown, NC
 ·North State Commun..
|  reply to Link Logger
I agree, very cool topic Blake.
I've found that I don't game on the computer nor enjoy it as much when I do. Although I think (read: hope to god) Diablo 3 may be the exception. As such, I don't need the latest and greatest whiz-bang computer. I still upgrade every 6 months to a year, but I find I shop around for the components that are reliable, but offer value. I am running my first Intel brand motherboard because I don't need to overclock and such and holy cow what a difference in stability. I constantly had trouble with Asus, Msi and others. I also love not having to drop $399+ on a video card. I grabbed a 9600GT during my last upgrade for $149 I believe and I've been running it for a year now.
One area that you touch upon where I have increased my spending is screen resolution. I definitely can't run insanely high resolutions, so I now run dual monitors. One 1920x1080 (1080p) and one 1680x1050. The default DPI increase with Vista/Windows 7 allows me to run those resolutions, but when I ran XP with the 1680x1050 monitor, I noticed I constantly leaned toward the monitor.
On the laptop side of things, I also wanted something MUCH more portable than my 15" Thinkpad, so I grabbed a 13" Dell. The screen resolution isn't that great (1280x800 I think?) but the WLED screen makes the text so clear and sharp, especially when coupled with the DPI increase of Vista I mentioned above. I've found that my laptop has been relegated to very light use, as I am much more productive on my desktop. |
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dave
Premium,MVM
join:2000-05-04
not in ohio
·Verizon Online DSL
 ·Verizon FIOS
| reply to natedj
said by natedj  :I would like to see LCD's that are not pigeonhole to one native resolution without having to long-suffer with distortions and other inherent problems. This seems to confuse 'resolution of display' with 'size of image'. There's no reason why a higher-rez display needs to result in smaller images.
Suppose a comfortable character size for you is 3mm high on-screen. If you double the linear resolution, then you have 4 times as many pixels involved in that same 3mm high character. This makes the character easier to read, not worse.
Thus, the problem is not 'force the screen to display fewer dots than it is capable of', but 'beat up programmers who think that higher resolution requires them to display the same number of pixels but smaller'. |
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kingdome74
Emotionally Unavailable
Premium
join:2002-03-27
Syracuse, NY
·RoadRunner Cable
| reply to Dryden
said by Dryden :As an old geezer myself I have to use a 22" LCD to be able to see what I'm doing. No problem there though. Same here. Right now I waiting for the 26" monitors to come down in price because I know within a couple of years I'll have to move up from my 24/22's.
One thing I would like to see are keyboards with larger letters. I'm sure they might already be making them but I haven't run across them in my travels.
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Aren't ya glad obama is finally killing America? We deserve it.
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