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All that old stuff running on DOS with no network stack is probably more secure now than many newer systems. Will likely outlast any current OS too.

SuperSpy wrote:

I always chuckle when I go into a mechanic's shop or a small business and see a text-only screen (or even better yet, one wrapped by a VirtualBox window) and a tractor-feed invoice printer.

Speaking of mechanics, until very recently, a mechanic friend of mine had to use Windows XP to use the GM-specific software that talks to diagnostic tools. Something about how the serial or LPT ports on the machine worked differently in later OSes, I'm not sure. More recently they finally let him use Windows 7. Those PCs are almost always offline so it's not a big deal, but on the rare occasion he needs to look up something on the web he uses a different PC.

I love the smartasses dissing "obsolete" government/industrial/corporate systems just because their SLI Titan XPs is soooo 1337 and expensive, when one system administrator alone easily cost an organization at least 6 figures a year, not mention the other small little things like regulatory etc.

I saw the comment about engineering departs and windows 7, my company is in similar situation as most of our CAD software is only validated and supported on Windows 7 64 bit. Most of the software companies newest versions support windows 10, but we are at the mercy of our customers. We need our customers to upgrade before we can, by customers I mean automotive OEMs.

I think I need to define a couple terms:

obsolete: discarded, outmoded, out of date. The Macs I mentioned in the original post qualify.

obsolescent: becoming obsolete. This is Windows 7.

End User wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

Corporate users typically do not upgrade until official support ends. (And sometimes not even then.)

Does not change a thing. Windows 7 is ancient and as obsolete as the headphone jack or a manual transmission (and I ******* love manual transmissions).

What is obsolete about the headphone jack or manual transmissions? Both of still work and work quite well in these modern times, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

jihadjoe wrote:

All that old stuff running on DOS with no network stack is probably more secure now than many newer systems. Will likely outlast any current OS too.

Yeah. Floppies mentioned in the original post may be horribly obsolete, but nobody on the internet is going to be able to steal the data off those with them sitting on the shelf.

Yup, there's an inherent security advantage to removable media, if it is physically taken offline when not being used. And not just from a resistance to data theft standpoint. A couple of jobs back, we used both external HDDs and tape for backups, stored off-site, in case the facility burned down or got hit by a tornado.

Tape still has many years of relevancy ahead of it, IMO... speaking of tech that has been proclaimed obsolete many times, and yet has managed to survive.

just brew it! wrote:

Tape still has many years of relevancy ahead of it, IMO... speaking of tech that has been proclaimed obsolete many times, and yet has managed to survive.

I attribute much of that to the some-what surprising lack of shelf-life of flash media.

End User wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

Corporate users typically do not upgrade until official support ends. (And sometimes not even then.)

Does not change a thing. Windows 7 is ancient and as obsolete as the headphone jack or a manual transmission (and I ******* love manual transmissions).

Yes, yes, every device needs to be completely swapped out for something newer on a 5 months cycle, 'cus... shiny!!

K-L-Waster wrote:

'cus... shiny!!

And, more important, thinner.

Usacomp2k3 wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

Tape still has many years of relevancy ahead of it, IMO... speaking of tech that has been proclaimed obsolete many times, and yet has managed to survive.

I attribute much of that to the some-what surprising lack of shelf-life of flash media.

I suspect we'll start to see similar issues with flagship capacity HDDs in a few years, once the helium has had a chance to leak out.

I was in a manufacturing plant and there was a huge IBM tower in the middle of a room with 200+ cables running to it.

I asked if it was a minicomputer cause it looked OLD.

Was told it was not a computer but a PLC! (programmable logic controller)

It had 48kb of "ram" in the form of programmable registers and this in turn controlled conveyor belts etc on the manufacturing floor.

I think the machine was built in the late 1950's.

Kougar wrote:

jihadjoe wrote:

All that old stuff running on DOS with no network stack is probably more secure now than many newer systems. Will likely outlast any current OS too.

Yeah. Floppies mentioned in the original post may be horribly obsolete, but nobody on the internet is going to be able to steal the data off those with them sitting on the shelf.

And likely they will be unreadable by the office.
Most floppy media out there is past the lifetime of the media.

Aranarth wrote:

I was in a manufacturing plant and there was a huge IBM tower in the middle of a room with 200+ cables running to it.

I asked if it was a minicomputer cause it looked OLD.

Was told it was not a computer but a PLC! (programmable logic controller)

It had 48kb of "ram" in the form of programmable registers and this in turn controlled conveyor belts etc on the manufacturing floor.

I think the machine was built in the late 1950's.

PLCs are much smaller now but still tend to have low ram compared to a PC.

Arvald wrote:

Aranarth wrote:

I was in a manufacturing plant and there was a huge IBM tower in the middle of a room with 200+ cables running to it.

I asked if it was a minicomputer cause it looked OLD.

Was told it was not a computer but a PLC! (programmable logic controller)

It had 48kb of "ram" in the form of programmable registers and this in turn controlled conveyor belts etc on the manufacturing floor.

I think the machine was built in the late 1950's.

PLCs are much smaller now but still tend to have low ram compared to a PC.

Still gotta be big enough to connect the 200+ cables to it though!

just brew it! wrote:

Arvald wrote:

Aranarth wrote:

I was in a manufacturing plant and there was a huge IBM tower in the middle of a room with 200+ cables running to it.

I asked if it was a minicomputer cause it looked OLD.

Was told it was not a computer but a PLC! (programmable logic controller)

It had 48kb of "ram" in the form of programmable registers and this in turn controlled conveyor belts etc on the manufacturing floor.

I think the machine was built in the late 1950's.

PLCs are much smaller now but still tend to have low ram compared to a PC.

Still gotta be big enough to connect the 200+ cables to it though!

Most here use a network infrastructure now...

Chrispy_ wrote:

So many lecture theatres, auditoriums, conference suites and other meeting spaces still provide a D-SUB VGA cable to an 800x600 or 1024x768 projector.

The problem there often isn't the front end connection, the projector or the backend equipment. It is a significant undertaking to replace the long cable runs used in those environments. The raw cabling cost for good digital runs isn't too outrageous: ~$1500 for name brand, 1000 ft. spool. The expense comes in the labor, equipment and time it takes to run everything. For example a project I'm currently involved in has a $3000 expense for just the mechanical lifts to reach the projectors.

If the place is lucky, the RGBHV cabling used for long VGA runs is high quality and could support a 3G-SDI signal. That saves tons in recabling expense but then you have to deal with breaking HDCP as modern digital output all have some form of protection which SDI does not support. Pick your poison.

Krogoth wrote:

Microsoft's bread and butter has always been SMB and Enterprise markets. They lost the mainstream market to Apple years ago.

Say goodbye to the Enterprise

"GE will standardize on iPhone and iPad for mobile devices and also promote Mac as a choice for its global workforce of more than 330,000 employees."

USB 3.1 Gen 1 in the new Surface Book 2

End User wrote:

Say goodbye to the Enterprise

"GE will standardize on iPhone and iPad for mobile devices and also promote Mac as a choice for its global workforce of more than 330,000 employees."

Yeah, OK. See, I don't deal with Predix, but I do routinely deal with its direct competitors and you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

"promote Mac as choice" = You need MacOS to develop for iOS.

This isn't remotely about replacing the Microsoft Corporate laptop/desktop, it's about developers working in Industrial Automation making apps with red/green lights relating to instrument readings on industrial devices so managers can look at them at home or on the floor. It's about how a minor division at GE are now being issued Macs because that's the only way they can build SDK to offer to those developers.

You're completely off-base with this.

End User wrote:

USB 3.1 Gen 1 in the new Surface Book 2

Now you're definitely trolling.

Concupiscence wrote:

I always beat this drum because it's always true: lab environments are a source of endless retro tech. A decade ago a firm I worked for had an emission spectrometer that ran all its software from a 5.25" floppy disk. Lots of electron microscopes in the real world rely on controller boards never updated to work past 32-bit Windows XP; while virtualization's probably becoming feasible at this point, in the old days your best bet was to grab up as much XP-compatible hardware as you could lay hands on and swap in parts when old hardware gave out. That doesn't even touch on the fun and magic of *really* old kit, like the ground-penetrating radar setup that ran in MS-DOS at my university, or the endless parade of RS-232 devices operating for the past 30+ years with no end in sight...

Lab equipment is the worst. Electron microscopes and scintillation counters are among the worst. The technology has been around for a long time, new machines are still rather expensive, but they not noticeably better than the old equipment. The real pain comes in trying to get the data off of these things and onto you laptop. A usb port is a very welcome sight. 3.5 floppies aren't a big issue becuase you can still by USB power external drives. I'm not sure what I'd do if I needed 5.25, i'm not sure the drive or the media is still available. you'd probably have to move the data through two three different machine to get it to something sufficiently modern. I'm convinced most burnable CDs are sold to scientist trying to move data. My new problem is Win XP machines not recognizing my 64gb exfat flash flahs drive. It's to big for fat32 and there are so many Mac users around I don't what to use NTFS. I keep a small flash drive around work with the patch file to enable exfat just this reason.

End User wrote:

USB 3.1 Gen 1 in the new Surface Book 2

I really don't understand this terminology. Wouldn't it be simpler and more accurate to refer to these ports as "USB 3.0"?

K-L-Waster wrote:

End User wrote:

USB 3.1 Gen 1 in the new Surface Book 2

Now you're definitely trolling.

Er, no. USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports have no business being on new hardware in 2017 (and beyond). USB 3.1 Gen 2 was released 4 years ago! The fact that the Surface Book 2 is limited to USB 3.1 Gen 1 is just appalling.

Vhalidictes wrote:

End User wrote:

USB 3.1 Gen 1 in the new Surface Book 2

I really don't understand this terminology. Wouldn't it be simpler and more accurate to refer to these ports as "USB 3.0"?

I'm following what the standards body has outlined. USB 3.0 morphed into USB 3.1 Gen 1. USB 3.1 became USB 3.1 Gen 2.

It gets even better with the next gen spec:

USB 3.2 Gen 1x1 - SuperSpeed, 5 Gbit/s (450 MB/s) data signaling rate over 1 lane using 8b/10b encoding, the same as USB 3.1 Gen 1 and USB 3.0.
USB 3.2 Gen 1x2 - SuperSpeed+, new 10 Gbit/s (950 MB/s) data rate over 2 lanes using 8b/10b encoding.
USB 3.2 Gen 2x1 - SuperSpeed+, 10 Gbit/s (1250 MB/s) data rate over 1 lane using 128b/132b encoding, the same as USB 3.1 Gen 2.
USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 - SuperSpeed++, new 20 Gbit/s (2500 MB/s) data rate over 2 lanes using 128b/132b encoding.

Glorious wrote:

End User wrote:

Say goodbye to the Enterprise

"GE will standardize on iPhone and iPad for mobile devices and also promote Mac as a choice for its global workforce of more than 330,000 employees."

Yeah, OK. See, I don't deal with Predix, but I do routinely deal with its direct competitors and you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

"promote Mac as choice" = You need MacOS to develop for iOS.

This isn't remotely about replacing the Microsoft Corporate laptop/desktop, it's about developers working in Industrial Automation making apps with red/green lights relating to instrument readings on industrial devices so managers can look at them at home or on the floor. It's about how a minor division at GE are now being issued Macs because that's the only way they can build SDK to offer to those developers.

You're completely off-base with this.

GE's statement is clear - iOS and macOS available devices available to their global workforce.

I'll post it again:

"GE will standardize on iPhone and iPad for mobile devices and also promote Mac as a choice for its global workforce of more than 330,000 employees."

End User wrote:

K-L-Waster wrote:

End User wrote:

USB 3.1 Gen 1 in the new Surface Book 2

Now you're definitely trolling.

Er, no. USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports have no business being on new hardware in 2017 (and beyond). USB 3.1 Gen 2 was released 4 years ago! The fact that the Surface Book 2 is limited to USB 3.1 Gen 1 is just appalling.

Why does that matter?

What matters for Obsolete is that it's old enough that almost no one is using it anymore. Not being super-super-new doesn't make it obsolete.

By that logic we need to stop using PCI Express slots. Never mind there's no replacement interface yet, just look how old they are.

End User wrote:

K-L-Waster wrote:

End User wrote:

USB 3.1 Gen 1 in the new Surface Book 2

Now you're definitely trolling.

Er, no. USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports have no business being on new hardware in 2017 (and beyond). USB 3.1 Gen 2 was released 4 years ago! The fact that the Surface Book 2 is limited to USB 3.1 Gen 1 is just appalling.

It might be that the back-end PCIe channel(s) feeding the port don't have enough bandwidth for a higher generation of USB regardless of what the motherboard does or doesn't support.

EDIT: Also, referring to the official standards body for *clarity* when under 5 figures of people worldwide know and understand that list is disingenuous.

K-L-Waster wrote:

End User wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

Corporate users typically do not upgrade until official support ends. (And sometimes not even then.)

Does not change a thing. Windows 7 is ancient and as obsolete as the headphone jack or a manual transmission (and I ******* love manual transmissions).

Yes, yes, every device needs to be completely swapped out for something newer on a 5 months cycle, 'cus... shiny!!

Why are you a member of a tech site whose primary purpose is to push the latest tech news?