Re: If you want a general purpose computer ...
And Apple gives you a choice? Gosh their brainwashing is very effective.
44 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Jun 2020
Why are you putting in an ageist comment in your post? There are many people of all ages who are not technically very competent, and equally there are many older people who are very technically competent. I started my career in IT in 1969 and am still active in the industry.
Gosh you really have swallowed the propaganda continually being pushed out by the fossil fuel industry and the right wing press haven't you? EVs don't catch fire anything like as much as ICE vehicles - check it out with the Fire Brigades or the breakdown companies, batteries don't die - my 6 year old EV hasn't lost a cell yet, chargers, including superchargers are very fast, and long waits are reducing dramatically with the fast roll out of new chargers. Check it out with the Zapmap App. And if you've ever driven an EV you will probably be like me and never want to go back to a dirty, inefficient, air poisoning ICE vehicle.
Our infrastructure is improving daily (check out ZapMap), making it easy to own an EV. And prices are coming down, particularly so with the Chinese manufacturers, but also Citroen have jus announced a £20,000 model, Dacia have a £16,000 model, and of course there are second hand models coming on the market. My six year old Nissan Leaf still has 100% of its battery available, not a worry for second hand. Governments putting tariffs on Chinese EVs is yet another crazy way they are delaying the transition to net zero.
I've been on self catering holidays where there are no chargers within miles, but have always come to an agreement that I can plug the car into a 13amp plug which gives me 3Kwh. Overnight the car is charged. Used to do it quite often in the early days, not such a problem these days.
"So, great, those will soon be like rocking horse poo since the chances of new build charging infrastructure being backwards compatible with the existing user base is approximately zero." Actually not so. I've had my Leaf for 5 and a half years and am delighted with how much easier it is to charge on the public networks now. Invariably the new charging stations are including Chademo chargers.
Change is everywhere and rightly so, whether its your new car, your latest visit to the supermarket etc. You should realise that the problem is your (and many on here) irrational dislike of Microsoft. Its not unusual, I have an irrational dislike of Apple, not because the technology is bad, I just dislike their business model so I stay away from it. I have used Microsoft since day 1, it has had some bad stuff, but it has also set worldwide standards that make the world go round. I'm happy to cut them some slack, they are a good 9 out of 10 for me.
As a Cobol programmer in the late sixties and early seventies I definitely used the two digit date. It certainly wasn't laziness, I was working on an IBM 360 mainframe with 32K of memory, with the operating system taking 13K. Efficient programming with minimal record sizes was the order of the day, wasting 2 bytes for every occurrence of the date was an obvious saving. And no, the thought of what might happen if my programs were still around in another thirty years or so never crossed my mind.
My Leaf is 5 years old, nearly 30,000 miles (not used much during the pandemic), and the battery is still showing 100% availability. There is still a lot to learn about how well the batteries will last as EVs are still a relatively new technology, but for sure they are a lot better than originally expected. And at end of its life in the car there is still likely to be 75 to 80% available which can be reused as a powerwall. There is a burgeoning industry in recycling batteries with 95% recoverability of the components. Have you ever seen petrol or diesel being recycled? Face the reality, burning fossil fuels is bad on every matrix you look at.
How far is it to work? Most daily trips are less than 30 miles each way. 5 hours on a home charger - typically 6 or 7 Kw means 30 to 35 Kwh into your battery. Average distance per Kwh is 3.8 miles, is between 114 and 133 miles. That's based on my 5 year old Nissan Leaf which still has 100% of the battery cells operative. None of the comments I have read so far has mentioned how much better it is driving an EV, not to mention the zero emissions which is what it is really all about.
I've had an EV for nearly 5 years, not lost a single cell yet. There are companies waiting to start recycling but there is limited product available as they are so reliable. And with vehicle to grid, vehicle to load and vehicle to home technologies they are much more than just a car. There are many reasons why EVs are so much better than ICE vehicles, check out the Fully Charged You Tube channel or visit one of their shows.
I've got half way down the comments and not seen any mention of the main reason for EVs. We have to stop using fossil fuels in all aspects of our lives as fast as possible to mitigate the already catastrophic levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. And as an aside, owning and driving an EV is so much better than ICE vehicles with features that simply aren't possible in the old technology.
As the crow flies I live just over 19 miles from Sellafield in Keswick in the World Heritage Lake District National Park. Having battled with BT many times during my career I have avoided them since retiring. Having had some experience with Sellafield professionally and as a concerned neighbour campaigning against underground nuclear waste disposal sites in inappropriate geology, the thought of them teaming up with BT doesn't thrill me at all!
Corporations deal with corporations. There needs to be a business conversation about how your technology is going to improve my business, and do you have the capability to keep it working successfully for the foreseeable future (maybe decades). Having managed large datacentres for international companies my role was to understand the technology and translate that into reliable, secure business solutions. Techies who are only interested in the technology are extremely useful, but not all are willing to understand the business context. Linux simply doesn't have the clout as business solutions at corporate level.
My career in IT started as a trainee operator on a 360/30 with 32k memory and 2311 disks. It was running a manufacturing plant in Trafford Park, Manchester (quite close to Old Trafford so very convenient to go and watch United). I progressed through programming (Cobol), leaving millennium bugs all over the place as two bytes were very precious, into management roles - Director of Computer Services, Head of Business Development etc, and now retired. Still remember the 360/30 with affection.
The article says 143 miles range only ok for local. I have had a Nissan Leaf with a range of 155 miles for over 3 years now and last summer holidayed on the Isle of Wight which included a 320 mile drive from North Cumbria to Southampton. No problem, there are over 18,000 charging locations which is more than there are petrol stations, with over 48,000 connectors. Source: zap-map.com. Sure I have to stop a little longer to charge, but its not a problem, I only have a 120 mile bladder.
There are 16,377 charging locations in the UK, (not including the over 250,000 home chargers). They have 26,058 devices with 44,686 connectors, and 569 new devices were added in the last 30 days. That is more locations than there are petrol stations. Source: https://www.zap-map.com/statistics/#points. What has also changed is that fast chargers have now been upgraded from 50Kw to 350Kw, meaning 100 miles range in 10 minutes. And the range of the cars have increased to an average of around 230 miles, but over 300 miles is not uncommon. Can your bladder last for 230 miles? The grid is on top of planning for the necessary expansion, and technologies such as vehicle to grid and vehicle to home will revolutionise the energy market. Oh, and driving an electric vehicle is a real pleasure with features such as single pedal driving and semi autonomous driving technology. Its all out there, take a look, and it will last, nothing else comes close.
Having started work on an IBM 360/30 in 1969, some of us have actually made Granpa status, still keeping up (to a degree!) on technology and supporting lots of our age group. Windows 10? No problem, fast and easy to use, and despite what's said above none of the people I support have had Edge change the default browser. Lots of folk have an inbuilt dislike about anything Microsoft. I understand the feeling, except with me its anything Apple.