And lo on Mon, 04 Feb 2008 15:52:02 -0000, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did  
spake, saying:

> Phil Cook wrote:
>
>> <major snip> I'm not saying things haven't gotten better, just a)  
>> cmparing the pace compared to software and b) would you expect someone  
>> who had no problem installing Acme Racing Game II to fit a new  
>> CPU/Motherboard/Video Card/Memory? 'Open up the case and look at all  
>> those wires, now just remember don't touch any of them else sharks will  
>> eat your granny'. You're still opening the case being confronted with a  
>> PCB and a bunch of wires and cables hanging about it's still more a  
>> preserve of your geek.
>
> Well... have you opened the bonnet of your car recently? I notice newer  
> cars have a big sheet of plastic under there, but beyond that it's still  
> pretty much a case of "if you don't know what a distributor is, you  
> probably shouldn't touch this - otherwise you might die". At least  
> computers don't physically kill you if you make a mistake. ;-)

Except vehicle manufacturers don't want their customers fiddling under the  
hood, computer hardware manufacturers should at least video  
game/processor/etc retailers should.

> I don't really see how the situation can realistically be improved much.  
> You could make all the components less fragile by using some sort of  
> casing, and make it to things slot together more easily, but that's  
> about it.

Well last time we had this thread I mentioned the motherboard  
daughterboard setup combined with a hot-swap facility. Simple slots on the  
back, press the button and the daughterboard disengages and you pull it  
out and slot the new one in place. Have a dedicated slot for the CPU, one  
for the memory, and one for the video card, with the rest being generic  
PCI-type slots. Similar generic front slots (with a dedicated boot slot)  
for extra hard drives, floppy drives, CD, DVD, tape, etc.

Think how it stands at the moment someone has a computer with one DVD  
player and a floppy drive, he's never used the floppy drive in his life  
and wants to replace it with another DVD rewriter or Blu-ray player.  
What's he got to do to make that happen?

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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