There are a lot of angles to consider in assessing the impact of loosing the floppy, and the standard serial along with the SCSI and ADB ports. The message to large installations is that there may be sufficient differentiation to warrant across the board upgrades of old Macs. After all, there is no going back. Floppies, standard serial, ADB and SCSI will soon be associated with older, slower and less desirable. Right now, they are still somewhat valuable. Getting the most for their old equipment while shifting into the newer, faster, sleeker G3s and iMacs must have some weight in the decision process.
Plus there's the fact that the optimal replacement machine for most desktops in a Distributed Area Network is a diskless iMac. It has speed, 10/100 connectivity, reliability, security, functionality and eye appeal. And relative to the "new" price of the machine being replaced, it's CHEAP!
Add to that the relative advantage of a convergence with Wintel peripherals, faster USB, faster Firewire, faster 10/100 as standard equipment, faster processors, faster OS 8.5 and you have a lot of reasons to upgrade the whole house.
And let's face it, the cost of replacement peripherals would have little effect in a network environment with shared printers and TCP/IP connections.
The one computer at a time guy may look across his desk and cringe at the thought of bringing everything up to snuff, but if he wants to, he will. Some will, as is always the case, ignore the current upgrade cycle. Reasoning may have something to do with the lack of indigenous peripherals connectivity. Others may just decide to become two computer guys until the old peripherals have lived out their life cycle.
HerbVic |
