Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/04/14
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> Wolfe, does the word "snob" come across as readable? How much did you pay
> for "your" Unix machine? Oh, it's not yours? It belongs to the university?
>
> Someday, when you've stepped out into the private sector, you'll realize
> that not everything revolves around .edu domains. The net and the www are
> now largely privatized. Unix, you'll find has not kept up with the advances
> that the rest of us dummies enjoy.
I work in the private sector as a computer systems manager. I predominantly
use UNIX machines (Sun workstations mostly) and I use a mail package called
exmh which deals with the 8bit characters of Swedish and German (etc)
perfectly well - it would have to as this is a multinational company with a
Swedish HQ! The UNIX machines we have are far more usable for most things
than the PCs (Pentium 166's running NT) so yes they have at least "kept up
with the advances" of PCs etc.
In any case, this is very like a Leica vs Nikon argument! Everybody knows
that they both perform well in their target markets. Likewise, I wouldn't
dream of getting rid of my Canon EOS system, or my medium format gear now that
I own Leica equipment.
There is however a lot of snobbery on this list - take the responses to the
review of the R8 in Practical Photography for example. As that magazine was
reviewing the camera compared with other cameras of similar price, they are
bound to come to the conclusion they did. They couldn't possibly say that it
would work wonderfully in the hands of an experienced photographer, because no
doubt any camera would. What annoys me about the equipment reviews in UK
magazines is that they put more emphasis on the cameras and rarely do accurate
and scientific comparisons of the lenses which are far more important in the
production of the final image.
That's enough whinges for one day!
Simon.
______________________________________________________
Simon Ogilvie - UNIX Systems Supervisor
Ericsson Data Ltd., Guildford, UK
simon@guildford.ericsson.se