As the saying goes: 'nostalgia ain't what it used to be'. Some elderly technologies produce a sigh of fond recollection. Once-loved software programs, desktops and tech toys have all fallen by the wayside over the past 20 years. But there's a flip side to those fond memories: the products and technologies that went away because they were rubbish. And we're really glad they're gone.
Rubbish IT that proves change is good
In this article we cheer the demise of tech stuff that used to get in our way but no longer presents a barrier. These technologies remind us that times have changed, and that sometimes change really is for the better. The world has been improved, now that we don't have to explicitly mess with memory management or press RAM into the motherboard One. Chip. At. A. Time.
Just as we hoped, the industry gradually found better ways to solve hardware challenges and to integrate software that (we always knew) ought to just work without human - or divine - intervention.
My list omits technologies that started out clunky but got better over time. For example, early CD-ROM "solutions" were disasters whose correct installation could provide the sole income for a computer-consulting firm. However, everyone knew that CD-ROM technology inevitably would get smaller, faster, cheaper and integrated into the hardware and operating system.
I also ignore individual hall-of-shamers (yes, that means you, Microsoft Bob) to put my attention on general hardware and software troublemakers that are now blessedly unnecessary.
For a humorous look at the the 20 worst technologies of all time, click here
Hall of shame: seven late and unlamented technologies
Comments
zackxx said: dial up modems i still use one and im sure most of the developing world still uses them
Hazel said: Dot-matrix printers late and unlamented Tell that to the thousands of small businesses that are using very happily using these printers to produce invoices and management accounts
Chris Corbin said: Good riddance 7 technologies were glad are deadI heartily agree much is said in the above article but what I find equally frustrating about todays technology are the things that you either cant do or are incredibly difficult to fathom particularly for the general public2 Blindingly stupid areas are home networking and wireless tiechnology and where these trwo meet in the presence of different operating systems and anti-everything-ware Once upon a time not too long ago you could operate a peer-to-peer network at business or in the home or even a domain-based system and share CDROM drives tape drives etc across the system You could easily share printers and files with a minimum of fuss and still be protected from external influx via hardware firewalls Now it is almost impossible to share CDROM drives and even printers and files can be a problem due to the complexity of the security systems and the intervention of anti-everything-ware from whosoever you buy it
Adrian March said: Bill Gates was absolutely right Between 30 and 40 years ago I was automatically optimising optical systems calculating image brightness distribution and designing a half-tone mask to achieve uniform image brightness all with 24K of RAM Needless to say I wrote the software At about this time big corporations were running mainframes with 256K of RAM and I used to do optical ray-tracing on an HP65 What has precipitated the need for huge amounts of RAM is the bloated software which people like Microsoft churn out which needs a GB of RAM or more just to write a letter Of course this is part of the conspiracy to help computer manufacturers sell more and more powerful computers With good software design a whole PC could go on a single chip