4 ms·

You know, I'd think this would be an embarassment rather than a source of pride. I certainly would take my business elsewhere if I discovered the company was d

by na85 14y ago

You know, I'd think this would be an embarassment rather than a source of pride. I certainly would take my business elsewhere if I discovered the company was doing their accounting on a punch card machine because the 60-year-old white guys were too afraid to learn how to use windows.

qb45 14y ago
What's wrong with this machine? With typical Windows PC would come occasional hardware failures, crashes, data losses and viruses which all are serious trouble if you don't have somebody knowledgeable on site to mitigate and fix them.
- na85 14y ago
  I don't think anything is wrong with the machine, fundamentally. But seeing it in use just screams "I fear change" to me. In what other ways are these guys in the dark ages?
jff 14y ago
There are reasons to be more comfortable with them using a punch card system: * All their "software" (ha!) is stored in physical form, on a shelf, as a board full of wires--hard to mistakenly delete it or lose the registration key. * Their code has 60 years of testing behind it * Cards provide a physical record while also being machine-readable and, as I pointed out elsewhere, if a card gets mangled, well, you just sit down and type up a new copy * They'll never lose your credit card details to hackers * They're comfortable with the technology and have a very clear process. You'll never call them to hear, "Oh, well, they just updated the system and now I can't find the link to our invoice archives"
deleted 14y ago
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jarek 14y ago
> I certainly would take my business elsewhere if I discovered the company was doing their accounting on a punch card machine because the 60-year-old white guys were too afraid to learn how to use windows. With the average computer level skill in the society, the likely alternative is your order information being stored in an Excel file in a Dropbox account with password "files123." I'll take the punch cards.

by na85 14y ago

qb45 14y ago

What's wrong with this machine? With typical Windows PC would come occasional hardware failures, crashes, data losses and viruses which all are serious trouble if you don't have somebody knowledgeable on site to mitigate and fix them.

na85 14y ago
I don't think anything is wrong with the machine, fundamentally. But seeing it in use just screams "I fear change" to me. In what other ways are these guys in the dark ages?

jff 14y ago

There are reasons to be more comfortable with them using a punch card system: * All their "software" (ha!) is stored in physical form, on a shelf, as a board full of wires--hard to mistakenly delete it or lose the registration key. * Their code has 60 years of testing behind it * Cards provide a physical record while also being machine-readable and, as I pointed out elsewhere, if a card gets mangled, well, you just sit down and type up a new copy * They'll never lose your credit card details to hackers * They're comfortable with the technology and have a very clear process. You'll never call them to hear, "Oh, well, they just updated the system and now I can't find the link to our invoice archives"

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

jarek 14y ago

> I certainly would take my business elsewhere if I discovered the company was doing their accounting on a punch card machine because the 60-year-old white guys were too afraid to learn how to use windows. With the average computer level skill in the society, the likely alternative is your order information being stored in an Excel file in a Dropbox account with password "files123." I'll take the punch cards.