12 ms·

One thing a lot of us underestimate is the flexibility of things like spreadsheets, and believe it or not, paper. The resolution of an A4 piece of paper is a c

One thing a lot of us underestimate is the flexibility of things like spreadsheets, and believe it or not, paper. The resolution of an A4 piece of paper is a crisp 3508px x 2480px. For comparison, my MacBook Air is about a third of that at 1440px x 900px. And, the processes companies have developed over years are tailored to that medium. While tech has gotten drastically cheaper in recent years, it still needs to get cheaper still for most businesses. I spoke about this recently at NYC.rb. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13446715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13446715

ianai 10y ago
I feel like the resolution thing is vastly under appreciated. I'm also probably not the only person sick of the tyranny of the backlit display.
- montecarl 10y ago
  I too am getting sick of backlight displays. I work all day in a dim office and if it wasn't for redshift on linux I'd go crazy. I change the color temperature to 4500 K and reduce the backlight to 65% of maximum brightness. You will think that 65% is too little, and maybe it is on your display, but try it for 30 minutes then try 100% again. redshift -l geoclue2 -t 4500 3000 -b 0.65
dogma1138 10y ago
In the US there are also tons of processes that require paper, since SMB's won't benefit and can't afford doing everything 2-3 times (digital > paper > digital) they might as well keep everything one paper. They pay suppliers with cash or cheques, they pay employees with cash or cheques, they take orders over the phone or via walk ins. There are a few companies like Sage Software that do have all in one solutions for self employed to SMB's but again they still require quite a bit of time investment to manage. It's also important to note that many SMB's at least usually "computerize" (jesus what is this the 80's) at least one thing and that's accounting primarily for tax reasons but most of them don't maintain their own books for this purpose and use an accounting firm so whilst tech is use the 500 SMB's that use a single accounting firm don't need to buy their own accounting software since most firms aimed at SMB's would offer a SAAS accounting platform or some way to upload your spreadsheets.
- ghaff 10y ago
  Heck, there are lots of small businesses that don't have a web page--maybe they have a Facebook page instead, if that--and, to the degree they do have a web page it's probably something just static and informational. Nothing wrong with the latter by the way but it does point to the general level of tech at a lot of local small businesses.
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    They don't need a web page if 90% of their customer base knows who they are and the 10% that doesn't still uses yellow pages. I would really want to know how much business would some car mechanic in pleasantville missouri would see from having a web page.
    - DenisM 10y ago
      Having a site with work hours, phone number, and current address helps in Google Maps. You can also add a "sign up for updates and coupons" thingy and at least some people will sign up. If it's cheap to setup, might as well do it. In particular with car mechanic I would like to know the cost of basic services like tire rotation. I know it's $20-$30 at a major brandname, but I could use a local shop so I don't have to drive out of my way. Some car dealers service departments now have online services to schedule appointments and such, I think half of that can be repurposed for a small car mechanic shop as well.
      - omouse 10y ago
        There are two ways to run a business after it reaches some profitability: always optimizing or just kicking back and relaxing. Some people are happy with just their Facebook page and others would optimize and increase sales further by funneling people in through Google Maps. (This is why I've taken photos of some restaurants in Google Maps and posted them; they aren't doing any advertising on their own so it's nice to help them along and get more visitors).
        10y ago
throwaway2016a 10y ago
> a lot of us underestimate is the flexibility of things like spreadsheet Even though I love using cool and new tech I often ask first, "can a spreadsheet do this?" Or as is often the case now, a Google Doc spreadsheet. For example, our office TV dashboard is just Chrome with an off-the-shelf plugin that cycles through open tabs that are mostly display Google Sheets. It has two benefits: - It took almost no time at all to set up and 0 code - Non-technical people can update the numbers easily Plus Google has an API so if we wanted to add data to the sheets programmatically we could.
- Bahamut 10y ago
  That's pretty much what my company does, and we're a SaaS company. Simple is better oftentimes.
- zitterbewegung 10y ago
  A company I used to work at got burned because their scheduling system based on a google doc spreadsheet broke due to google pushing a new change.
  - _coldfire 10y ago
    I've seen a few companies using google docs because no one knew excel also has a collaborative spreadsheet mode. All had MSoffice. Last place had about 60 users. Average load time for the gdocs page is ~90 seconds. Users access the page dozens of times a day, most leave it open as a tab but memory usage became an issue. Ever-increasing spreadsheet size eventually meant multiple computers were crashing/becoming unusable with the sheet open. I offered to migrate it to Excel/VBA, was an old tiny codebase for simple calculations. Management bought more RAM instead, made me laugh.
    - dgfgfdagasdfgfa 10y ago
      > Excel/VBA I don't believe this works on the mac; has this changed?
TeMPOraL 10y ago
> The resolution of an A4 piece of paper is a crisp 3508px x 2480px. For comparison, my MacBook Air is about a third of that at 1440px x 900px. Not to mention how infinitely more convenient paper is to handle than laptops, and while I can easily spread 10 A4 pages in front of me to look at them simultaneously, I doubt my company will buy me 9 more computers to do the equivalent "digital" thing... That's why I occasionally even print out code - usually when I know I'll spend a lot of time changing a particular file, and I'm having a hard time understanding it or maintaining focus. Paper + color pens facilitate thinking better than an open IDE.
- bsharitt 10y ago
  > Not to mention how infinitely more convenient paper is to handle than laptops, and while I can easily spread 10 A4 pages in front of me to look at them simultaneously, I doubt my company will buy me 9 more computers to do the equivalent "digital" thing... People nowadays laugh at how people in Star Trek always had multiple PADDs and sorted through them like a stack of papers or books, but at the end of the day trying to cross reference several sources to do work on a single iPad can be very frustrating.
  - chrishacken 10y ago
    There's probably a huge market for super thin portable (wireless) displays. If I could grab a handful of displays and wirelessly link them with my laptop while using gestures to move content between them, I'd probably pay a few hundred dollars per display. (I imagine the drawback of them being wireless would be a really slow refresh rate, so you likely wouldn't be able to watch video on them.) If you placed a magnet on the back of them you can throw one on the wall when you get home and it could detect it's location in the room and start serving as some other systems interface.. like a thermostat or something. Then pick it up on your way out the door and it connects to your phone or laptop.
    - jkaljundi 10y ago
      No reason more than 2 thin displays couldn't spread out of this laptop in the future: https://www.wired.com/2017/01/razers-project-valerie-insane-laptop-3-screens/ https://www.wired.com/2017/01/razers-project-valerie-insane-... :P
mycall 10y ago
It took me 6 months of .NET development to replace a single paper form. Do not underestimate the complexities that hide in paper forms.

ianai 10y ago

I feel like the resolution thing is vastly under appreciated. I'm also probably not the only person sick of the tyranny of the backlit display.

montecarl 10y ago
I too am getting sick of backlight displays. I work all day in a dim office and if it wasn't for redshift on linux I'd go crazy. I change the color temperature to 4500 K and reduce the backlight to 65% of maximum brightness. You will think that 65% is too little, and maybe it is on your display, but try it for 30 minutes then try 100% again. redshift -l geoclue2 -t 4500 3000 -b 0.65

dogma1138 10y ago

In the US there are also tons of processes that require paper, since SMB's won't benefit and can't afford doing everything 2-3 times (digital > paper > digital) they might as well keep everything one paper. They pay suppliers with cash or cheques, they pay employees with cash or cheques, they take orders over the phone or via walk ins. There are a few companies like Sage Software that do have all in one solutions for self employed to SMB's but again they still require quite a bit of time investment to manage. It's also important to note that many SMB's at least usually "computerize" (jesus what is this the 80's) at least one thing and that's accounting primarily for tax reasons but most of them don't maintain their own books for this purpose and use an accounting firm so whilst tech is use the 500 SMB's that use a single accounting firm don't need to buy their own accounting software since most firms aimed at SMB's would offer a SAAS accounting platform or some way to upload your spreadsheets.

ghaff 10y ago
Heck, there are lots of small businesses that don't have a web page--maybe they have a Facebook page instead, if that--and, to the degree they do have a web page it's probably something just static and informational. Nothing wrong with the latter by the way but it does point to the general level of tech at a lot of local small businesses.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  They don't need a web page if 90% of their customer base knows who they are and the 10% that doesn't still uses yellow pages. I would really want to know how much business would some car mechanic in pleasantville missouri would see from having a web page.
  - DenisM 10y ago
    Having a site with work hours, phone number, and current address helps in Google Maps. You can also add a "sign up for updates and coupons" thingy and at least some people will sign up. If it's cheap to setup, might as well do it. In particular with car mechanic I would like to know the cost of basic services like tire rotation. I know it's $20-$30 at a major brandname, but I could use a local shop so I don't have to drive out of my way. Some car dealers service departments now have online services to schedule appointments and such, I think half of that can be repurposed for a small car mechanic shop as well.
    - omouse 10y ago
      There are two ways to run a business after it reaches some profitability: always optimizing or just kicking back and relaxing. Some people are happy with just their Facebook page and others would optimize and increase sales further by funneling people in through Google Maps. (This is why I've taken photos of some restaurants in Google Maps and posted them; they aren't doing any advertising on their own so it's nice to help them along and get more visitors).
      - 10y ago

throwaway2016a 10y ago

> a lot of us underestimate is the flexibility of things like spreadsheet Even though I love using cool and new tech I often ask first, "can a spreadsheet do this?" Or as is often the case now, a Google Doc spreadsheet. For example, our office TV dashboard is just Chrome with an off-the-shelf plugin that cycles through open tabs that are mostly display Google Sheets. It has two benefits: - It took almost no time at all to set up and 0 code - Non-technical people can update the numbers easily Plus Google has an API so if we wanted to add data to the sheets programmatically we could.

Bahamut 10y ago
That's pretty much what my company does, and we're a SaaS company. Simple is better oftentimes.
zitterbewegung 10y ago
A company I used to work at got burned because their scheduling system based on a google doc spreadsheet broke due to google pushing a new change.
- _coldfire 10y ago
  I've seen a few companies using google docs because no one knew excel also has a collaborative spreadsheet mode. All had MSoffice. Last place had about 60 users. Average load time for the gdocs page is ~90 seconds. Users access the page dozens of times a day, most leave it open as a tab but memory usage became an issue. Ever-increasing spreadsheet size eventually meant multiple computers were crashing/becoming unusable with the sheet open. I offered to migrate it to Excel/VBA, was an old tiny codebase for simple calculations. Management bought more RAM instead, made me laugh.
  - dgfgfdagasdfgfa 10y ago
    > Excel/VBA I don't believe this works on the mac; has this changed?

TeMPOraL 10y ago

> The resolution of an A4 piece of paper is a crisp 3508px x 2480px. For comparison, my MacBook Air is about a third of that at 1440px x 900px. Not to mention how infinitely more convenient paper is to handle than laptops, and while I can easily spread 10 A4 pages in front of me to look at them simultaneously, I doubt my company will buy me 9 more computers to do the equivalent "digital" thing... That's why I occasionally even print out code - usually when I know I'll spend a lot of time changing a particular file, and I'm having a hard time understanding it or maintaining focus. Paper + color pens facilitate thinking better than an open IDE.

bsharitt 10y ago
> Not to mention how infinitely more convenient paper is to handle than laptops, and while I can easily spread 10 A4 pages in front of me to look at them simultaneously, I doubt my company will buy me 9 more computers to do the equivalent "digital" thing... People nowadays laugh at how people in Star Trek always had multiple PADDs and sorted through them like a stack of papers or books, but at the end of the day trying to cross reference several sources to do work on a single iPad can be very frustrating.
- chrishacken 10y ago
  There's probably a huge market for super thin portable (wireless) displays. If I could grab a handful of displays and wirelessly link them with my laptop while using gestures to move content between them, I'd probably pay a few hundred dollars per display. (I imagine the drawback of them being wireless would be a really slow refresh rate, so you likely wouldn't be able to watch video on them.) If you placed a magnet on the back of them you can throw one on the wall when you get home and it could detect it's location in the room and start serving as some other systems interface.. like a thermostat or something. Then pick it up on your way out the door and it connects to your phone or laptop.
  - jkaljundi 10y ago
    No reason more than 2 thin displays couldn't spread out of this laptop in the future: https://www.wired.com/2017/01/razers-project-valerie-insane-laptop-3-screens/ https://www.wired.com/2017/01/razers-project-valerie-insane-... :P

mycall 10y ago

It took me 6 months of .NET development to replace a single paper form. Do not underestimate the complexities that hide in paper forms.