Technology should have progressed faster...

[El Greco]

...in batteries. We should have better batteries by now.

...in loudspeakers. Those made 20 years ago pretty much sound as well as those made today.

...in printers and home publishing. I still find the printers to be very slow, of bad quality and with expensive replaceables.

 

[Ziggurat]

...in batteries. We should have better batteries by now.

I don't really see why people think batteries should have advanced significantly. We don't complain that gasoline hasn't advanced significantly. It burns cleaner now, but it really doesn't contain more energy to any significant degree. But nobody complains about that. In comparison, batteries have advanced quite a bit, but people complain, because the uses of batteries have grown so quickly in recent years. But energy storage will always be a fundamentally difficult problem, and there's no reason to think progress is ever going to be rapid. There are physical limits to energy density you can store in chemical bonds.

...in loudspeakers. Those made 20 years ago pretty much sound as well as those made today.

Because they sound about as good as you can make them. And there isn't any possible way to make speakers significantly better without also fundamentally changing the way you record sound as well.

...in printers and home publishing. I still find the printers to be very slow, of bad quality and with expensive replaceables.

I disagree. Ink jets are crap, but you can buy a black and white laser printer for under $200, they're fairly fast (mine has basically no warmup time and starts printing within a few seconds of sending the print command), and they work reliably and with cheap replacement ink (at least, cheap for how much printing you can do with a toner cartrige). In contrast, when I was growing up, we had a dot matrix printer. It was loud, slow, expensive, and needed that special paper with the perforated strips on the sides with holes to feed through the thing. Quite a difference.

 

[Red Siegfried]

Re: Re: Technology should have progressed faster...

I disagree. Ink jets are crap, but you can buy a black and white laser printer for under $200, they're fairly fast (mine has basically no warmup time and starts printing within a few seconds of sending the print command), and they work reliably and with cheap replacement ink (at least, cheap for how much printing you can do with a toner cartrige). In contrast, when I was growing up, we had a dot matrix printer. It was loud, slow, expensive, and needed that special paper with the perforated strips on the sides with holes to feed through the thing. Quite a difference.

Have you seen color inkjet photo printers lately? Most of them are under $450 and the quality is amazing! Speed leaves a lot to be desired, though, so IMHO a b/w laser printer still takes the cake any day for printing text. Next step up would be dye sublimation printers but they are still fairly pricey unless you are seriously into digital photography or are a professional photographer, in which case you probably have better equipment for making prints anyway.

 

[Hellbound]

Re: Re: Re: Technology should have progressed faster...

Have you seen color inkjet photo printers lately? Most of them are under $450 and the quality is amazing! Speed leaves a lot to be desired, though, so IMHO a b/w laser printer still takes the cake any day for printing text. Next step up would be dye sublimation printers but they are still fairly pricey unless you are seriously into digital photography or are a professional photographer, in which case you probably have better equipment for making prints anyway.

You can get a color laser printer with a 1200 dpi resolution for $499.

He's right about inkjets...the vast majority of them are throwaway junk. For the price you'd pay for a good-quality inkjet, you can purchase a similarly priced laser that gives similar quality and longer life, faster printing, as well as a lower TKO. If you want to sacrifice speed, quality, color, print size, or other factors, then inkjets will be cheaper.

 

[Red Siegfried]

For everyday printing, yes, I agree with you. If you are talking photos however, keep in mind that most of the latest generation of home-use photo printers do somewhere in the area of 4800 dpi. If you want a 4800 dpi laser printer you can definitely get them, and from what I know after they warm up they are faster than inkjets but they are more than most people want to pay.

As for myself, I have both. I have a b/w hp laserjet 1300 for text, which chugs out pages really quickly and I have the photo printer for photos.

But I tend to agree somewhat that you'd think that printing would have come further in the time we had with it.

On a side note, I've been hearing a lot about those "thing maker" machines aka rapid prototypers that work on inkjet printer technology. I think that's a field that has a lot of potential, given time to refine.

 

[jj]

Re: Re: Technology should have progressed faster...

quote:
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...in loudspeakers. Those made 20 years ago pretty much sound as well as those made today.
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Because they sound about as good as you can make them. And there isn't any possible way to make speakers significantly better without also fundamentally changing the way you record sound as well.

I don't really agree with this.

Speakers are a difficult proposition, and they are unquestionably the weakest link in the mechanical chain from recorded material to playback (Notice, I did not say "recording" but rather "recorded material", and, yes, that is important.)

Speakers, however, have improved in the last 20 years, due to people finally applying the same analysis to them that was applied nearly 100 years earlier to circuits. (i.e. Theil-Small and followup work for bass radiators, for instance.)

Speakers can, and hopefully will, improve more due to the use of more signal processing.

Finally, more enlightened (and more channel) capture of audio signals may eventually lead to better reproduction as well. Very often, loudspeakers are called upon to reproduce things like direct/reverberant ratio that are not captured inthe original recording.

 

[geni]

...in batteries. We should have better batteries by now.

considering how far ahead of the rest of solid sate chemistry batteries already are why?

 

[RussDill]

...in printers and home publishing. I still find the printers to be very slow, of bad quality and with expensive replaceables.

Printers have made huge advances in the past 10 years, and momumental advances in the past 20. Can anybody say, dot matrix?

BTW, if you are looking for a high quality inkjet, get an HP, preferably commercial grade. The printheads are part of the print cardridge. These printers last for many, many years. Heck, my printer is an HP600 I bought at a garage sale.

 

[Red Siegfried]

Re: Re: Technology should have progressed faster...

Printers have made huge advances in the past 10 years, and momumental advances in the past 20. Can anybody say, dot matrix?

BTW, if you are looking for a high quality inkjet, get an HP, preferably commercial grade. The printheads are part of the print cardridge. These printers last for many, many years. Heck, my printer is an HP600 I bought at a garage sale.

This message brought to you by an HP stockholder! Just kidding ...

I also own an HP 600C inkjet that still works. As a matter of fact, my wife just used it the other day. Slow as the dickens, but still works and frankly, I'm amazed that we got that much use out of it. I think I bought it in 1996 or 97, if I remember right.

But today's inkjets beat the pants off the old ones, no question.

 

[Robin]

Re: Re: Re: Technology should have progressed faster...

Speakers, however, have improved in the last 20 years, due to people finally applying the same analysis to them that was applied nearly 100 years earlier to circuits. (i.e. Theil-Small and followup work for bass radiators, for instance.)

So do we have this to thank for that farting sound that passes for bass these days?

 

[Hellbound]

For everyday printing, yes, I agree with you. If you are talking photos however, keep in mind that most of the latest generation of home-use photo printers do somewhere in the area of 4800 dpi. If you want a 4800 dpi laser printer you can definitely get them, and from what I know after they warm up they are faster than inkjets but they are more than most people want to pay.

Be very very careful when reading the dpi declarations, especially on inkjets.

While many inkjets offer 4800dpi, they do it by using offset color dots and other "extrapolation" methods. The 4800 dpi those inkjets offer is about a 1200dpi true quality.

I used to print my photos on a 600 dpi color laser in our office, rather than the 2400 dpi photo inkjet I had on my desk. The quality was better, regardless of the dpi setting.

You're going to get what you pay for, and a $150 or $200 inkjet won't compare in quality with a $500 color laser. A $400 professional inkjet is comparable, but the cost will catch up with you when you're on your 10th ink cartridge at about the time the laser needs it's second.

The only advantage the inkjets have is a low buy-in cost. You're actually better off purchasing a laser for double the price on a payment plan...you'll spend less in the long run.

I do have to agree that the HPs are a better buy, if you really want an inkjet. Having the heads as part of the cartridge increases the cartridge cost, yes, but I've seen many inkjet printers, especially with users who don't print often, with heads so clogged up it's actually cheaper to purchase a new printer than pay to have it serviced.

I worked for a professional printing company for a while, and we used to go over many of these same issues. We used color lasers for almost everything...the quality was far better than inkjet and after a year or so the costs swung in favor of the laser. The only exception was an electrostatic we used for transparencies, posters, and vinyl banners.

I've has serious issues with inkjet printers, ever since my first one. With all the money I've spent on inkjets, I could've bought a nice laser printer with better quality, and probably still only be on my second or thrid set of toner Of course, now I have bought a laser (little bw Samsung with scanning and copying, $150) and am looking at an HP color laser soon (got a bonus coming from work).

 

[SezMe]

...in batteries. We should have better batteries by now.

...in loudspeakers. Those made 20 years ago pretty much sound as well as those made today.

...in printers and home publishing. I still find the printers to be very slow, of bad quality and with expensive replaceables.

I don't want to quibble individual technologies but with the question itself. Why should any of these, or any other, technologies have progressed faster. How much faster?

It just seems to me to be asking "how many hamburgers run five cows in under Jupiter"

 

[EdipisReks]

i think most color laser output looks like garbage, but i'm not a fan of obvious dithering so there you are.

 

[EdipisReks]

Re: Re: Technology should have progressed faster...

t just seems to me to be asking "how many hamburgers run five cows in under Jupiter"

6.

 

[SezMe]

Re: Re: Re: Technology should have progressed faster...

6.

You're just trying to get Jambo into this thread. Shame on you. As Interesting Ian will confirm, the answer is 7, you skpetic.

 

[SezMe]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Technology should have progressed faster...

Duh, hit the wrong button.

 

[El Greco]

By "should" I mean that these technologies have advanced much more slowly than what people (and even experts) were expecting 20 years ago.

Batteries: We've had two batteries threads IIRC, I think that what has been mentioned over there about the expected breakthroughs in battery technology rather supports my current disappointment.

Loudspeakers: I don't think anyone really disagrees with me. There is a list of advances (crossover materials, ribbon and plasma tweeters, etc) but their contribution to the final result is rather questionable. Many audiophiles are still looking for 20 year old Spendor speakers...

Printers: I would expect more people would agree with me on that one. I'm not talking about printing your resume, I'm talking about printing photographs really fast and making your own business cards and glossy leaflets with speed and quality comparable to printing houses. That day will certainly come, some have been expecting it much earlier.

 

[SezMe]

By "should" I mean that these technologies have advanced much more slowly than what people (and even experts) were expecting 20 years ago.

So, people "(and even experts)" were wrong 20 years ago! And? Did you expect them to garner the Randi $1 mil when their "expectations" were wrong?

In the commercial sphere, technological innovation is not driven so much by capability as by demand. If I can produce a new printer that can print at 10^6 dpi but will cost a gadzillion dollars, that innovation will not progress at all.

 

[El Greco]

So, people "(and even experts)" were wrong 20 years ago! And? Did you expect them to garner the Randi $1 mil when their "expectations" were wrong?

No, I'm just pointing that out. Sue me. I don't understand what your problem is. Do you think that technology always progresses at an optimal rate ? Or maybe that we don't have the right to be disappointed because we expected more ?

In the commercial sphere, technological innovation is not driven so much by capability as by demand. If I can produce a new printer that can print at 10^6 dpi but will cost a gadzillion dollars, that innovation will not progress at all.

Yes, so ? There is a demand for better and affordable products like the ones I mentioned. They just can't make them yet, at least not affordable. Did I say anything different ?

 

[SezMe]

No, I'm just pointing that out. Sue me. I don't understand what your problem is. Do you think that technology always progresses at an optimal rate ? Or maybe that we don't have the right to be disappointed because we expected more ?

Yes, so ? There is a demand for better and affordable products like the ones I mentioned. They just can't make them yet, at least not affordable. Did I say anything different ?

Let's not get nasty. If I came off hostile or sarcastic, sorry. My problem is I don't understand your OP. You mentioned how technical progress "should" be. Here you talk about an "optimal" rate of progress. I just don't think technical progress "should" be anything. It just is. And certainly the concept of "optimal" technical progress is undefinable.

But if your point is you are disappointed because we don't have fancier, cheaper toys, that is fine. But it is a totally different discussion.