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At 01:10 AM 2/28/2007, Ray McKnight wrote:<br>
<br>
<blockquote type=cite cite><font face="arial" size=2 color="#000080">Maybe
so.<br>
</font><br>
<font face="arial" size=2 color="#000080">But for us, Hams, is this
important?<br>
</font><br>
<font face="arial" size=2 color="#000080">Do most Hams run out and buy a
new $2000 laptop just to play APRS?<br>
</font><br>
<font face="arial" size=2 color="#000080">No.<br>
</font><br>
<font face="arial" size=2 color="#000080">Do most Hams, tens of
thousands, have laptops 3-5 yrs old?<br>
</font><br>
<font face="arial" size=2 color="#000080">Probably.<br>
</font></blockquote><font size=2 color="#000080"><br>
There is a thing about keeping up with the times. And actually
knowing what things cost. <br>
<br>
First off, you can buy a brand new laptop for under $800 these
days. I'm typing on an HP Pavilion DV5215 Turion 64 with 1gb of
RAM, price at Fry's was $750 with a $50 mail-in rebate (which I
got).<br>
Even the Core Duo Fujitsu A6020 laptop with 2GB of RAM and a 120GB
hard drive was only $1200. Both have a PCMCIA slot, because I did
my research. That was my point. Someone going out and buying
a new laptop may just ASSUME that it will have a PCMCIA slot in it.
One may even look and see the 54mm slot that looks like PCMCIA, but
instead it may be Express Card 54.<br>
<br>
Furthermore why would you design a NEW product that was already
obsolete? That makes no sense, whatsoever. How long is
a laptop 3 to 5 years old going to continue to work? And please,
people, let's not start a whole discussion about your Zenith 286 laptop
that still works. Every year ups the odds that old hardware
will fail. Ham Radio is supposed to be about emergency
communications. Do we really want to place trust in products
that are superannuated? And if it breaks can you get
replacement parts easily and locally.<br>
<br>
As for older equipment - several years ago (like 2001) I acquired several
dozen computers from a local TV station and tried to sell them at a
hamfest. We couldn't give them away. Not a single HAM
in a tri-state area wanted a free working computer with OS (Win98), up to
256MB of RAM and PII & some PIII processors with mouse, keyboard, and
SVGA Monitors. We had some of them up and running ham radio
related programs (APRS, Trunker, SatTrack) as demo
units. Even the Boy Scouts wouldn't take them for their charity
auction. <br>
<br>
73,<br>
<br>
Mark<br>
<br>
<br>
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