I find it amusing when there’s a mismatch between things that are apparently hip and modern and up to date, and things that definitely aren’t.
Take this shop for example:
Cool laneway location
Grungy warehouse basement position
Daggy antique 80’s blue-screen DOS-based Point Of Sale system (on a flat screen)!
My fellow geeks are probably nodding. All you “normal” people are probably wondering what I’m on about.
PS. More geeky posts over at www.geekrant.org
12 replies on “Chic, not geek”
What’s normal? I’m surrounded by ‘geeks’ and there seems to be nothing wrong with being a ‘geek’ or a ‘nerd’ nowadays. When I was young it was not a good thing.
What I’m seeing is a POS system that probably works perfectly because it doesn’t rely on a powerful computer weighed down by Windows.
Fair point Phillip, though it’s not like you could go and buy a computer these days that is weighed down by recent-but-usable versions of Windows like XP or Win2K.
heh. Maybe it’s deliberately retro!
What I find amusing is that when you watch a tv show like ’24’ or some other suspenseful show where computers are involved they always have these DOS based programs running LOL…
. . . and computers in TV shows always seem to require the actors to hammer away on keyboards with their commands, even in a graphical user (WIMP) environment. Then the computers responds with all sorts of cute clisks, beeps and whirrs that indicate it’s thinking about it, then spitting out the data.
I guess it’s all part of exaggerating a point to convince viewers? A bit like stage makeup and acting.
Heh! Read something about computers in film the other day – hope it wasn’t on here.
It talked about the huge “Access Denied” dialogue boxes…. or even more stupid – the huge “Access Granted” (imagine being an every day user of a system that wasted your time saying you had gotten access everytime you logged in??)
lol, you know it’s only ‘us geeks’ that would even take notice! I still support a couple of old Clipper / Foxpro DOS-based systems – thankfully I don’t have to touch them very often now..
Did anyone else here use Enable on DOS?
Honestly I wouldn’t have thought that a regular PC would cut it in Degraves Street. If they were really “that” cool they’d have a an iMac or Mac Book Air chained to the desk.
Not DOS but ncurses on *nix? With your choice of SQL backends.
No BSOD’s, instant responses, no surprises. You can be sure the the “new and improved” windows version is seen as a step backwards by the staff required to work with it.
This is reverse trendism.
While we’re sniggering at their antiquated POS system, they’re sniggering at us in our 3 season old K-Mart kit.
Different strokes for different folks.
If it ain’t broke, why fix it?
heh.
Ben’s right though. Definitely would have expected a Mac, given the surroundings.
(It’s Manchester Lane though, not Degraves St.)