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Is customization key?
Is customization key?
Posted Mar 27, 2007 5:23 UTC (Tue) by nlucas (subscriber, #33793)In reply to: Is customization key? by drag
Parent article: Bake-Off: 4 Linux Desktops Tackle The Enterprise (CRN)
Yes, but you forgot to mention the use touchscreens are now having.
Nothing would beat the speed of work with the old text terminals (and DOS machines), but touchscreens are giving a new live to old programs, by being ported to a minimal linux system and a new graphics interface.
With touchscreens they can have an even easier user interface. Instead of learning to associate function keys to actions, they can just select the actions from the screen (and without having to move a mouse, many time standing and sideways, which makes it difficult).
And now they are pretty cheap, too.
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Is customization key?
Posted Mar 27, 2007 15:02 UTC (Tue) by marduk (subscriber, #3831) [Link]
I've witnessed something similiar. When I worked for a major company in the U.S. healthcare industry in the 90s I was shocked that their main application was VT-based and in the "field" they all used DEC VT220s. I felt like I was taking a big step backwards. Yet the people who used them, most of which had little or no PC experience could navigate through the roll-and-scroll app so fast it was unbelievable.
The thing about the app was that everything they used was there and nothing else. Everything was key-stroke driven and repetetive; if you were using it long enough you could do it with your eyes closed.
The user interface of today is full of distractions. Don't get me wrong: I love distractions. But in the workplace it seems that they want just the opposite. I worked for a Windows shop for a while last year. This was pretty much my first (and hopefully last) Windows job. And in my experience a lot of time was spent actually "locking down" the desktop: making it so that users can't change wallpaper, fonts, install apps, burn cds, plug in USB keys, access web sites, etc.
Of course not many people want to go back to the roll-and-scroll days (though the health care company mentioned above still uses it, though they've migrated from VMS to Linux), wouldn't an alternative be a "web" terminal or perhaps some other kind of thin client? I always wonder why those never really took off.