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Is the Save Button Obsolete?

Posted by Cliff on from the do-you-do-regular-system-backups-too dept.

Luther Blissett asks: "I've wondered this for awhile now: why do we still have a Save button? Why isn't it always automatic? Why isn't 'Save As' called 'Name and File'? I understand that in ancient history, when Save was a hit on system resources (e.g. when saving to your 5.25 inch floppy disk), we might give control to the user. Also, the average user then was probably more technically adept (out of necessity) and knew the difference between RAM and storage. But now? Why?"

1 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. Ever used MS Office? by toleraen · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Every day I work with word docs that are 30+ megs in size. All of our saving is done on network shares across a WAN link. Depending on network traffic, a normal save can stall the system for a quite a bit. Something tells me that if a few hundred engineers were constantly sending save data across that link, things wouldn't be looking so good. So, it is still very much a hit to system resources.

    Also, as far as the auto save feature goes, I don't want it to. Ever opened a MS Office file (doc, ppt, xls, etc), go to close it without touching a single thing, and it asks you to save? Not to mention that when you work with baselined documents, if they ever change it has to be sent off for approval, resubmitted to higher ups, etc. If the modified date shows anything other than the baselined date, ruh roh. No thanks on the auto save.