Comments on: The Width of Men’s Ties and Waste in IT http://www.ciopedia.com/2009/09/15/the-width-of-men%e2%80%99s-ties-and-waste-in-it/ Pragmatic IT Management Tue, 26 Jan 2010 13:13:04 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=abc hourly 1 By: Mz http://www.ciopedia.com/2009/09/15/the-width-of-men%e2%80%99s-ties-and-waste-in-it/#comment-351 Mz Wed, 16 Sep 2009 11:46:51 +0000 http://www.ciopedia.com/?p=1479#comment-351 "Those with enough patience and a large closet can rest easy knowing that everything they have ever purchased will be in style again, if they wait long enough (well maybe not that particular tie.) Of course, this is style obsolescence, a variant of planned obsolescence, and its a big driver of product sales in our culture." I am humorously reminded of a passage in "How to Survive Without a Salary" where Charles Long talks about wearing the same wool winter coat for many years. Every few years, he would get complimented on his wonderful coat. On the years in between, he was plied with lots of sympathy and hot coffee. :) Not exactly IT related. Though I guess I do know some IT types who are generally resistant to the "ooh, shiny" phenomenon and stick with stuff that works reliably, if that makes sense. I suppose both things require the type of personality that cares less about public opinion/trends than functionality. <p><i>This comment was originally posted on <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=824260" rel="nofollow">Hacker News</a></i></p> “Those with enough patience and a large closet can rest easy knowing that everything they have ever purchased will be in style again, if they wait long enough (well maybe not that particular tie.) Of course, this is style obsolescence, a variant of planned obsolescence, and its a big driver of product sales in our culture.”
I am humorously reminded of a passage in “How to Survive Without a Salary” where Charles Long talks about wearing the same wool winter coat for many years. Every few years, he would get complimented on his wonderful coat. On the years in between, he was plied with lots of sympathy and hot coffee. :)
Not exactly IT related. Though I guess I do know some IT types who are generally resistant to the “ooh, shiny” phenomenon and stick with stuff that works reliably, if that makes sense. I suppose both things require the type of personality that cares less about public opinion/trends than functionality.

This comment was originally posted on Hacker News

]]> By: Peter Kretzman http://www.ciopedia.com/2009/09/15/the-width-of-men%e2%80%99s-ties-and-waste-in-it/#comment-346 Peter Kretzman Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:19:27 +0000 http://www.ciopedia.com/?p=1479#comment-346 Good post, Scott. I wrote a similar piece on "roof projects", as I call them: projects that are necessary, that consume resources, but provide no obvious direct value. (http://www.peterkretzman.com/2009/07/07/it-the-cio-and-the-business-need-for-roof-projects/) Your piece delves more specificially into one important aspect of these: forced software upgrades. In the end, the project is either necessary to do (business continuity, avoidance of even wider impact if skipped, etc.) or it's not. Keeping current on software is a wise thing to do in general (stability and security alone, not even counting new features), of course, within certain bounds of reason. Yet, I certainly wouldn't label it maintenance, and I'd push back on the vendors hard, letting them know the internal impact of too-frequent upgrades. And as always, as I contemplate new investments, I try to take into account how deeply I'm baking the potential vendor's product into everything else--which is what would force my hand into an upgrade on their time schedule more than mine. Good post, Scott. I wrote a similar piece on “roof projects”, as I call them: projects that are necessary, that consume resources, but provide no obvious direct value. (http://www.peterkretzman.com/2009/07/07/it-the-cio-and-the-business-need-for-roof-projects/)

Your piece delves more specificially into one important aspect of these: forced software upgrades. In the end, the project is either necessary to do (business continuity, avoidance of even wider impact if skipped, etc.) or it’s not. Keeping current on software is a wise thing to do in general (stability and security alone, not even counting new features), of course, within certain bounds of reason. Yet, I certainly wouldn’t label it maintenance, and I’d push back on the vendors hard, letting them know the internal impact of too-frequent upgrades.

And as always, as I contemplate new investments, I try to take into account how deeply I’m baking the potential vendor’s product into everything else–which is what would force my hand into an upgrade on their time schedule more than mine.

]]> By: skwiddor http://www.ciopedia.com/2009/09/15/the-width-of-men%e2%80%99s-ties-and-waste-in-it/#comment-345 skwiddor Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:06:39 +0000 http://www.ciopedia.com/?p=1479#comment-345 Only if you buy into it. We were on Windows 2000 until this year finally moving to XP for multi-media compatibilty (specifically Flash) reasons. I've been around since dos3.3, looking forward to upgrades went out of the window a long time ago :) The only interesting hardware innovation in recent times has been an interest in reduced power consumption / back to passive cooling. Then again, I'm a guy with a 486 upgraded to P54C with 32Mb RAM as my email server. <p><i>This comment was originally posted on <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=824260" rel="nofollow">Hacker News</a></i></p> Only if you buy into it.
We were on Windows 2000 until this year finally moving to XP for multi-media compatibilty (specifically Flash) reasons.
I’ve been around since dos3.3, looking forward to upgrades went out of the window a long time ago :)
The only interesting hardware innovation in recent times has been an interest in reduced power consumption / back to passive cooling.
Then again, I’m a guy with a 486 upgraded to P54C with 32Mb RAM as my email server.

This comment was originally posted on Hacker News

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