(no subject)

[randomness]

People who think of technology as a panacea tend to be confused and irritated by expenses for training and maintenance.

Technology does not replace training or maintenance. Higher technology requires better trained staff to operate it and more expense for its maintenance. This will continue to be true until we reach the "say a magic word and it happens" level of technology. (Although, even then, training will still have to include teaching people which magic words to say, and when.)

Comments

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Windows is just lousy design. In any case, you're comparing Apples to oranges. (Couldn't resist.)

For a slightly better comparison, I would contend that a lot more work goes into maintaining a Macintosh-based computer network of 2009 than it did in 1984, partly because AppleTalk couldn't do very much. (Way, way back in the day, it was one of the things I administered.)

But that's part of the point: greater capability generally requires greater complexity, and greater complexity gives more chances and more ways for things to go wrong.

[tfarrell.livejournal.com]

I don't know that I agree. Better tech can be designed to be maintainable, and as such can be cheaper to maintain. I know a guy who works in a cube in Norwood, from which he maintains over 2000 computers located all over the earth. (by comparison, the usual standard is about 3 admins per 100 workstations.) This is possible because he carefully chose the technology and set up the environment with maintainability in mind. Yes, he's an expensive guy to employ, but he's a lot cheaper than the small army of inexpensive guys that would be required if the company had just bought systems with off the shelf software and hired cheap junior admins.