November 18, 2007

Need for a new Trash 80

Jack Lail talks about the search for a new Trash 80. I liked the test for a computer's strength:
The "Trash 80" or as Tandy labeled it, the TRS-80 Model 100, 102 or 200, was completely able to survive the dreaded "sports reporter" treatment, which should be de rigueur testing for all laptops billed as durable.
I'm assuming that would be drop, kick and ....

Some would rather die then change

"Postmodernism is a change-or-be-changed world. The word is out: Reinvent
yourself for the 21st century or die! Some would rather die than change."

Leonard Sweet, cultural historian.

Food for thought on downsizing

One of the unintended consequences of downsizing is that we're sending capable people into the world to compete against us on the Web rather than creating new media options for them from which we also benefit. In this sense, traditional media companies may be supplying a two-by-four that will  one day be smacking them over the head.

Terry Heaton shares examples and says "So now these former employees are competing with their former employer as freelancers for a start-up". Do you see a pattern developing here?

Heaton points to Glenn Reynolds who in his book, An Army of Davids talks about “the triumph of personal technology of mass technology.” Despite this new reality, mainstream media companies continue to lay people off instead of exploiting the tools and energy of the personal media revolution to better serve their communities.

(This trip started for me through Jack Lail's Downsizing Old Media)

random thoughts to start on computers

TRS 80 - first computer used after leaving Michigan State; late 1970s
At Michigan stae - Cobol! Fortran! Crashing system at Lyman Briggs, mainframe 1972 - 73

Before that - IBM cards turned into wreaths

one of the first "home computers" for me was in 1983 - PFS file to do bluegrass festival; larry used for classwork; we dialed into university.

The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer released by Commodore International in August, 1982, at a price of US$595. Preceded by the Commodore VIC-20 and Commodore MAX Machine, the C64 features 64 kilobytes (64×210 bytes) of RAM with sound and graphics performance that were superior to IBM-compatible computers of that time.[citation needed

At work, I used the "Trash 80" or as Tandy labeled it, the TRS-80 Model 100, 102 or 200. It was completely able to survive the dreaded "sports reporter" treatment, which should be de rigueur testing for all laptops billed as durable (Jack Lail).