RE: 28.8 Modem Users

[KMcLauchlan -at- chrysalis-its -dot- com]

Bruce,

Well, part of my point should have been made 
a bit more explicit.  We can't keep our docs 
always retro-actively backward compatible to 
clay tablets and cuniform.
The world *does* move on, and those who slip 
further and further behind the mainstream eventually 
*do* feel pressure to update.

In this case, the pressure might be from seeing 
things they want, but can't afford [in the sense 
of connect time or bandwidth] to download.
My first point is that for the audience we are 
likely to court, "afford" in the money sense is 
a non-issue. 
My other point is that there is enough of such stuff 
out there now (juicy content), that what you and I 
produce for a computer-using audience is only part of 
a much larger body that such people would be 
nibbling at, around the edges.

I've got a perfectly-functional 9600 baud modem 
in a closet (alongside a 1200 and a 2400 baud). 
It won't come out except to go in the garbage. 
It's not broken, but it also can't 
be said to "work" in this day and age.

On the other hand, I've got a few power hand-tools 
(circular saw, drill, sabre-saw, sanders, etc.) 
that are ten and twenty years old and that don't 
have some of today's fancier bells and whistles, 
but they ain't broke and I won't replace 'em 
until Porter-Cable comes out with a portable 
laser drill-saw-planer-PDA...    :-)

Much of the computer, web, info universe was literally 
*not* out there, to be accessed (it hadn't been 
dreamed up yet) when 14.4 and even 28.8K modems were 
in vogue.  Those who want to stay with that technology 
are making a conscious (well many of them are conscious)
choice to limit themselves to what is available via the 
narrow pipelines.

Almost by definition, they tend to *not* be the people 
that *we* are selling product to.

I'm going home now.   :-)

/kevin

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bruce Byfield [mailto:bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com]
> Sent: Friday, January 05, 2001 4:28 PM
> To: KMcLauchlan -at- chrysalis-its -dot- com
> Cc: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
> Subject: Re: 28.8 Modem Users
> 
> 
> KMcLauchlan -at- chrysalis-its -dot- com wrote:
> 
> > 
> > These days, any business that uses personal computers
> > and has more than a dozen-or-so employees can surely
> > justify the cost of a T1 connection (or at least a
> > partial T1) into a 100MB/s LAN.  
> > 
> > A smaller company (single-proprietorships, etc.) can
> > hardly fail to justify AT LEAST 56k modems, given
> > that the ROI break-even is about three days, at
> > today's prices. 
> 
> True, but is justification an issue? For many people, something that
> still works as well as it always has doesn't need replacing. Not
> everyone lives on the borders of geekdom. For many people, a
> computer or a periphals are just a tool; until it breaks, people
> don't think about it.
> 

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