Technology should have progressed faster...

[El Greco]

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.

It's not a different discussion, because that's exactly the meaning of "should" in this case. "Should" like "we expected them to but they didn't" or "we need them badly". How else can anyone interpret it ? Like we "should" put a gun on scientists' face ? What is different if we say "Microsoft shouldn't have released Windows Me" ?

What struck me is that you clinged to semantics when the meaning is more than obvious.

 

[jj]

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

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

You must then listen to speakers that are very different than I do, in specific, it sounds like you're listening to something wherein a port is way too small, ill-designed, or both.

Perhaps if you were more specific, one could address any given specific case, but it seems quite clear to me that you're talking about the classical audio problem, the use of theory by somebody who doesn't understand the practice.

 

[SezMe]

It's not a different discussion, because that's exactly the meaning of "should" in this case. "Should" like "we expected them to but they didn't" or "we need them badly". How else can anyone interpret it ? Like we "should" put a gun on scientists' face ? What is different if we say "Microsoft shouldn't have released Windows Me" ?

What struck me is that you clinged to semantics when the meaning is more than obvious.

No, the meaning was not obvious. If it was, I would not have pursued what you meant.

Aha, now I know that what "should" be is what you want it to be. Forget the "we". That is what you are saying in your first sentence. Fair enough.

I'm not particularly interested in talking about what you want so I'll bow out.

 

[EdipisReks]

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

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

 

[davefoc]

Batteries:

When I was designing battery powered equipment about ten years ago nicad AA batteries had a capacity of about 800 mah. Today 2200 mah nimh AA batteries are available and rechargeable lithium batteries are available that have even high energy densities (by weight) than the best nimh batteries and rechargeable lithium batteries were not even available much farther back than 10 years ago.

This sounds like a substantial improvement to me.

The big failure for battery technology improvement was in cheap, large capacities like are required for car applications. I don't know of any substantial improvement in lead acid technology and no other technology that has been developed has been cheap enough to compete with lead acid in the car markets. I think a lot of the electric car development money was spent on the idea that somebody would invent a cheap high capacity battery and nobody did.

Printers:
When I started designing computers 25 years ago or so the state of the art printers were crappy dot matrix or really expensive daisy wheel printers. If you wanted color you could change the ribbon.

Today, for less than 100 bucks you can buy an inkjet printer that turns out very good text and nice color photos. For a little bit more you can buy a nice laser printer.

This sounds like substantial improvement to me.

Speakers:
The dirty little secret in the audio business is that it doesn't matter. Speakers got to the point of creating sounds that approach a quality that is indistinguishable from the original sounds a long time ago. That doesn't leave much room for actual speaker technology to improve. Of course, it leaves lots of room for audio marketeers to BS about it forever.

So there probably wasn't much speaker improvement in the last 20 years, but it doesn't seem like there's much room for improvement anyway.

 

[Hellbound]

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

Just out of curiousity, what was tha past color laser output you looked at?

Like I stated, we used them for color proofs of our pages, precisely because the color was much better than the inkjets we had (without obvious dithering). If you print at a low resolution them yeah, you'll have it. But I've not seen it at anything from about 600dpi and up.

Not to say inkjets can't print a good picture, but I still think buying a laser is going to be cheaper in the long run and better quality over all. I've certainly seen that in the tests I've run so far.

 

[Red Siegfried]

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 did not know that. Thanks for the info! See, skeptics really CAN be taught new things!

 

[Art Vandelay]

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.

Well, that's kind of a moving target, isn't it? Surely any progress in home printing will be accompanied by progression in professional printing, making it difficult for the former to ever catch up with the latter. Today's home printing is certainly better than professional printing of a few decades ago; a few decades, there wasn't really any homecolor printers. And typewriters were a viable alternative to computers because typing up a paper took less time than printing it out (plus you had to type it into the computer to begin with).

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

On the other hand, not enough dithering is very annoying. DVDs really need some dithering; thin, oblique lines come out looking much worse on DVD than VHS.