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Geek Eye for the Average Guy
Yxes writes "Fortune designed an experiment: give three geeks US$15,000 and three days to bring a family of four up to date with technology. The average family doesn't know which DVD player to buy or how to setup a wireless network. What happens when even the geeks can't get it to work?"
Heistad grilled them on their tech needs--really, all they wanted to do was send digital pictures of the kids to Grandma. Heistad came back with a shopping list that would get them that, plus a home theater, a wireless network, new computing, a tricked-out music system, and GPS positioning capabilities.
Not only did the family not want the technology but had what they didn't want "forced" on them. This is the problem with mass consumerism of entertainment technology. You don't need it. It isn't even cool if you think about it.
- Crappy pop music doesn't sound any better on outrageously huge speakers and expensive audio system.
- The TV show "Friends" certainly isn't any funnier on a 90" plasma HDTV.
- GPS is only helpful if you don't know where you and you know where you want to go. Besides, who needs to know the lat/lon of the dry cleaners?
- Computer and console games like Grand Theft Auto X, Everquest, Star Wars Galaxies, and Sims still suck and disconnect you from society whether on a slow computer or fast one.
The parents should do their kids a favor and sell all that crap. Keep a decent notebook and digital camera around for the pictures to grandma and email. Buy the kids some books, take them to the parks, get them involved in their community.All of that useless tech is going to kill your culture.
Speak truth to power.
Agreed. I think most of the fans of the 30 sec skip feature haven't really used Tivo, or somehow think even seeing flashes of commercials will corrupt them. Heck, FF twice, count to 8, and hit play works shockingly well, but often I spot a comercial I WANT to see and go watch it. Often times, its more entertaining than the show I'm watching. (Say, last nights Monday Night Football)
But make sure you get them DirecTiVo with a 120GB drive upgrade. Ah, the joy! (and cheaper, too :)
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
I didn't know about 30 second skip for the first year and a half that I owned a TiVo. I turned it on and for me there is no going back. It is much easier to skip over the commercials with it. No counting, no being annoyed when TiVo changes the fast forward speeds with an update (yes they did this once). With the replay button, it is easy to go back if you overshoot, so accuracy isn't a huge issue for me. I don't see any of the commercials, but then there are none that I want to watch. None. Whatever works for you, I'm glad there is a choice in the matter. Three cheers for configurability.
I bought a 53" widescreen HDTV (not plasma) about eight months ago, after much bribery and pestering of my wife.
It was the greatest thing since sliced bread for a month or two, but now it's just a TV and I wish I still had the 5 grand and say a 30 inch regular tv.
We don't watch any more TV or movies than we ever did. Turns out that the programming is just as lame and pointless with a high def picture and cinematic surround sound. "The Hot Chick" was a retarded movie, even in its full 16:9 progressive scanned format. Who could have imagined such a thing.
While it was cool playing video games on the big screen for awhile, I realize now it just gives me eyestrain and a headache. My consoles have all moved to another room with the displaced 29" set.
I spend more time laying in bed watching the little 17 inch I have in our bedroom. The HDTV is a neat toy that impresses guests, nothing more.
If you gave someone a plasma, but they had no way to know its value, and you told them it was worth 400 bucks instead of 8-10 grand, would they be as impressed?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
In short, I looked at plasmas about 18 months ago, and they were in the $15k range at the "high-end" store down the street. I figured about $7500 to $12500 at a more reasonable retailer. They've definately come down considerably since then.
There's so little difference between politics and jihad lately...
What happens when even the geeks can't get it work?
You know they didn't buy a Mac, that's what.
Seriously, get 'em DSL, an AirPort base station, iBooks and iSight for each family member, and now they have high speed wireless internet with videoconferencing.
Pile on a TiVo, any DVD player, and a $1000 30"+ CRT TV, and a decent sound system.
Total cost: way under $15k.
The key is, don't buy the best of everything, buy the stuff that's proven to work.
I have a total of 20 of them that I reccomended in service and they all work still...
in fact a couple of them have been in use for 3 years now (APEX brand)
I have seen no troubles with them and everyone has been very happy.
$15K? No Problem!
Hello, B&H? I'd like:
D2H
WT1-A
+5 Diopter eyepiece corrector
SB800
SB29
20mm f/2.8D
50mm f/1.4D
105mm f/2.8D Micro
80-400mm f/4.5-5.6D ED VR AF
Oh, yeah--Some POS computer with USB & a dialup modem.
THERE Now you can send her some pictures!
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
The point is that these guys were SUPPOSED to go overboard. Hell, on Queer Eye the only thing really wrong with the guys are that they're messy and slobish. All they really need is a maid to swipe through and vacuum their apartment and do the dishes. Is that where the show stops? Of course not, where's the fun in that? It's more entertaining to see a guy's guy get totally redone by a bunch of flamboyant fashion kings/queens going the whole nine. New pimpish wardrobe, new interior decoration, a preplanned meal that rivals most 5-star restraunts', etc.
Sorry for the rant. It just seems that a lot of people read too deeply into the whole purpose of this "experiment". Have fun, enjoy. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go find the family's address so I can sniff their wireless traffic and blackmail 'em for that plasma tv.
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for SEGA. ..."
I tried Dvorak for a few weeks in college. I popped off all the keys on my keyboard and put them back in the Dvorak both-hands layout. It did seem to be faster, once I adjusted, but I never got to the point where it was easy to switch back and forth to QWERTY, which is essential because we live in a QWERTY world and you'll eventually (often) have to use someone else's keyboard. I ended up switching back to QWERTY.
Today it would be harder for me to switch. It's not that I'm so set in my ways, although I'm a much faster typist than I used to be. No, today I do most of my work on a laptop, and those keys are NOT so easy to remove and rearrange. They are actually quite difficult to get back on if they ever accidentally get pryed off. Plus now I use Emacs, and the Ctrl-key commands would really be awkward using a Dvorak layout.
Well, yeah - but does it *ever* really work out well when you send a group of people into someone's house (on a tight schedule, no less), and start making buying decisions for them?
This was money spent for the sake of writing a story... not for the sake of ensuring the family's goals are achieved.
It's no different than the shows where they remodel your house for you. People following up on it later find that at least 50% of the time, the homeowners undo all the remodeling work shortly after they're done being on TV.
I think, all things considered, they didn't do TOO badly. I mean, almost anyone can enjoy a large screen TV set, "technology-impaired" or not. They were already using the net for email, so they'll at least use the DSL connection for the same things as before. (Yeah, they might not need the speed, really, but it's nice having an "instant on" connection, and none of the dropped carriers in the middle of sessions.) It looks like they'll mess around with the digital camera too. I don't think I've ever met someone who got a digital camera, learned the basics of using it, and then let it collect dust - opting to go back to the film camera instead. They're not THAT tough to figure out, really - unless you dig in to the advanced features, and saving hassle and money on film developing is usually motivating enough to keep people using them.
I don't think that meets any of the above requirements for the typical home user.
Sure in the hell meets more of those requirements than Windows does. Lets see...
Need any other reasons to use LInux over windows?
Like what I said? You might like my music
I'm going to suggest "mug". It seems to have gone unused since the 40's--"Hey, you mug!"--so we might as well dust it off. Plus, it suggests "Muggles".
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
... you can do your average family's house for 1/3 of that maybe less... these are not geeks/audiophiles/experts we are talking about by definition... wal-mart and kmart grade stuff would do the job... or generic taiwanese stuff... come on people be realistic!
[what?]
Keymaps don't cost anything. ;)
I switched in June, I believe, and I'm already faster on SVORAK (swedish Dvorak) than QWERTY, although I have to admit writing common words like "QWERTY" can be almost as hard as writing the uncommon word "minimum" and such on QWERTY.
The Apple IIc had a switch on it to kick its keyboard into Dvorak mode...presumably, the keycaps could be pulled off and shuffled around if that's what you wanted to use. Other than that, I've run across bugger-all since that uses Dvorak.
If I were so inclined, I could pull off and shuffle the keycaps on the IBM Model M I'm using right now...but I'm not about to take the huge hit in typing speed that a switch away from QWERTY would entail.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
I was bored this summer and bought like 4 or 5 low-end DVD players to see which really is the best and could play VCD/SVCD/XSVCD/wmv and my findings were in general, cheaper was better.
/rant off
My friend has an expensive Toshiba piece of crap which only plays SVCDs and barely at that, it doesn't even attempt to play any other format.
My parents thinking they were smart or something.. went out to get the cheapo APEX/MinTek and thought they'd get the next model up cause it looked better.. Turns out the processor is crappier and won't play any VCD/SVCD without major artifacts.
The latest to market cheapo has the latest asian low-end technology to bring cost down and end up playing more formats and doing a better job. Oh, and *SCREW* Sony if you want it to play anything other than DRM, special-branded media, licensed DVDs from your region.