I don’t mind the cost of renting my damn software all that much. I can afford it. What I mind is the prospect of the corporation going out of business or just deciding they no longer support that software package and all of a sudden I can never again install that software on anything, anywhere, because there’s no waiting server ready to declare that I’m authorized to do so.
I look forward to my first Apple silicon computer. It’s like the failed promise of the PowerPC chip finally made good on, a lower-power more efficient chip. But I don’t need it yet and it’s short on the kind of backwards compatibility that strongly prefer. I’m also deeply unhappy with the notion that I can’t make a bootable backup very easily and that I may find it difficult to boot from anything other than the built-in SSD that can’t itself ever be swapped out. Could just be that I’m misinformed. It will be $eriously expen$ive to upgrade and do it right: I always buy my computers in identical pairs so that if I have a hardware problem I just switch to the other one, boot from a clone of the first computer’s startup volume (see previous comment though) and keep going. Always max out the drive storage space since there’s no upgrading it later. Quadruple previous computer’s RAM, unless the RAM is hardwired and unswappable, in which case octuple it or beyond. Get it with a chip that can let the computer juggle a lot of tasks simultaneously. Since I’ll probably keep them forever and use one as my primary computer for approximately a decade, it makes sense to buy them used when they’re three or four years old. Time doesn’t seem ripe yet.
I continue to have an “I still don’t need” attitude towards cell phones. If Apple would put out an iPhone with a 3-inch display and a high enough resolution on it to run 1680 x 1050, it would fit comfortably in a shirt pocket or jean jacket pocket, but they don’t. The main thing I use it for is two-factor authentication for my computer to be allowed to connect to things. The main thing I take it out of its charging cradle for and actually tote it around outside the house for is Uber, and in second place is when I go out on long urban hikes and might need to actually make a phone call. I imagine in the future I’ll hit more and more situations where if you don’t have a cell phone with you you can’t go into this venue or can’t buy a ticket or won’t be allowed to go into this public space or whatever. Hasn’t happened to me yet.
I don’t think of myself as a luddite so much as an “I do this technology MY way dammit” kind of person.
Thank you. I’m not entirely sure what the OP is on about or what group of “grumpy Luddites” has set him off, but speaking for myself, I should maybe again clarify a few things that the OP is obviously unaware of.
I’m not pushing back against the need to migrate to Windows 11 when functionally necessary, though I’m not happy about it because I don’t think it’s a good OS. I currently have three freaking laptops, FFS, and the newest one runs Windows 11. So the OP can fuck right off with his suggestion of a cheap Chromebook, which would be almost useless to me for my purposes.
I happen to really like this Optiplex desktop and the relatively large Dell Ultrasharp IPS monitor it’s attached to. It’s fast, reliable, extremely quiet, and I have a whole ecosystem set up around Windows 7 that I’d like to keep going as long as possible, and I believe I have it well secured. The OP can, again, fuck right off if he doesn’t like it.
I’m not averse to new tech. I can get pretty enthusiastic about it when it actually has benefits. As I mentioned before, I was an early adopter of Windows XP, running a beta version before it was even officially released. What I object to is being constantly forced to migrate to newer platforms that bring no benefits, or are actually worse than their predecessors, solely because “what you have is no longer supported because it’s old”. I feel the same way about computing environments as I do about my home. Some people can pack up and move and hardly give it a second thought. I tend to grow roots, like a tree. If the OP doesn’t like it, well, he can fuck right off.
The complaints about the browser features that will be mandatory next month in order to continue to use Discourse were largely based on the relatively frivolous and apparently unnecessary nature of those features. But while I may have sounded critical of this decision, I can understand that if it wasn’t this set of features that prevented older browsers from working with Discourse, inevitably it would have been something else. So while I’m not thrilled about it, I do understand it, and I do have several workarounds – a more modern browser, and of course the new Win 11 laptop. But I’m hopeful that it’s the former that will prevail, because neither Windows 11 nor a laptop is anywhere near as nice as my beloved Windows 7 desktop. If the OP doesn’t like this attitude, well, he knows what he can do.
I’m retired these days. But I used to work as a systems software engineer; I know all the common Internet protocols very well and keep up with new developments.
But a lot of changes just seem to be gratuitous.
Illustrative point: I’m a fairly serious musician and songwriter.
And while I would probably find working on music software very interesting in some circumstances, when I’m wearing my musician hat, I want something that Just Does The Job.
I don’t want to take time out from the creative flow to ‘fix’ the tools…
We are not Luddites. We are content. We were once the leading edge - building our own computers from the parts the gorgeous Russian ladies sold at the monthly computer shows. We went through all that so you don’t have to. If we had transmissions the shift pattern would be Park, Reverse, Neutral, Drive and Coast. Ahhh… “Computah, open WordPerfect”.
No Russian ladies at the shows I went to, but the building our own computers was a fun hobby for a while. I think I gave it up around 2010. So maybe a 12 year run for me.
I also use to enjoy working on older cars, that stopped being a hobby when I bought my first new car around 1992.
DIY home repairs and improvements I guess is my thing now, but not even a lot of that. This house is thankfully in very good shape. The projects it needed were big ones beyond my abilities or strength. Bathrooms and Kitchen was too much for me. Adding a hosebibs, garage door openers and the like are all done already.
I never got into building my own computers, but my son did, and since I helped him with both of those projects, I feel as if I did.
The second one he built was (??) maybe around four years ago, maybe five. It’s still running the Windows 10 Pro install that was free because it activated with a spare key I still had for Windows 7. He pulled all the stops to build it with the most advanced tech available at the time, but, in the spirit of the kinds of complaints that this thread is about, I’m having a hell of a time verifying that the motherboard supports TPM 2.0 which is required for Windows 11. There’s a motherboard with the same model number still being sold that says “Windows 11 ready”, but it may be a subtle variation or, at least, have a newer BIOS. I don’t think it’s unrealistic to complain that sometimes this tech just moves too freaking fast and puts up annoying roadblocks to those just trying to use it to get a job done.
If someone has some moral objection to AI image gen then fine. I don’t share their concerns but whatever.
What rolls my eyes each time is the people who have to pipe in with “ACK-shually, that’s NOT artificial intelligence but merely…” as though anyone gives a fuck. AI is the term used for that stuff and has been for 50+ years. Your semantic argument lost decades ago, get over it and go home until you can join 2025 like the rest of us.
I strongly disagree. It’s not like I play online games and need the fastest CPU and the most RAM possible. For what I need to do on a laptop, everything works fine for me. It may not be suitable for you, but it’s not a “walking dead zombie”. I’m as productive as I ever have been, and I don’t need a faster CPU or more memory. Will Microsoft eventually stop supporting it? Perhaps, and at that point I may have to get a new laptop. As far as my old iPhone goes, it does everything I need it to do. Do I need the best possible camera on it? Not in the least. Why spend hundreds of dollars to upgrade to a new phone that does the same thing my current iPhone does only a little faster, and with more storage for pictures and videos I will likely never look at again.
I used to upgrade components so often that I stopped bothering even putting the cover back on the tower. But that was because computers back then needed every upgrade they could get to move from glacially slow to sloth slow and the hardware didn’t exist yet to make it run adequately. But computers reached the point of adequate for most things without additional changes years ago. (Not that I wouldn’t like to have a Grace Hopper 200 or two.)
No doubt people said the same of photography, that it was not nor ever could be, an art form. And we know where that went, once the technology was there to produce better results. I have no problem with AI art. It is just another kind of medium. I think one needs to be more creative with it bc it can have its limitations. But so does a sketchpad and pencils.
I keep my stuff updated, and I live with someone who knows this stuff backwards and forwards, but I need to inform myself and keep up with it. I have sympathy for the elders in my past nowadays, whenever they were required to handle any new technology, no matter how simple it seemed to us. My grandparents hated giving up their rotary phones. Punching buttons seemed too fake to them.
I think it is funny how AI detractors can simultaneously say that all AI art looks bad and that it needs to be watermarked so that people don’t mistake it for a real photo.
Tell that to my copy of Office 97. I’ve got the disc, the software still works on my Windows 10 desktop (will probably replace the desktop before October, but it works just fine now), it isn’t updated or supported, it just is. And apparently is in no hurry to die.
It has all the properties of something I own, even if I technically don’t. Nobody’s going to show up at my door saying, “you loaded Office 97 on one computer too many, we want that disc back now, thankyewverymuch, or Microsoft will sue your ass off.”
A 1997 version of Word or Excel is “locked in a past and unfit for modern times”? I’m sure a lot of bells and whistles have been added to both over the decades, but so what? Can I write stuff in Word 97? You bet. Can I do the usual spreadsheet stuff in Excel 97? Darn tootin’. Can I send such a doc or spreadsheet to someone using this year’s $129 version of Office, and can they open it? Yes. Well then.
I can’t make myself care about the people who say all AI images are poopy garbage trash. It’s like people who say that all superhero movies are bad or all [genre] video games suck. I can’t objectively prove them wrong 'cause opinions but I also know there’s good stuff that I enjoy so if they want to cross their arms and sulk, that’s a “them” issue and they can safely be ignored.
Earlier than that for me. I was there in the days of 8 bit micros like Z80 and 6502, where it was possible for one person to completely understand both the hardware and software of the system.
Those days are gone forever, over a long time ago…