Why the economy is in shambles
One thing I've noticed on this board is that nearly every member has a much faster/more advanced computer for home use than for work, myself included (at least in my bookstore job). For my own use I have a fairly recent machine that is fast, efficient, and fun to use. I use voice recognition, I have a graphics tablet, a huge monitor that is set to a very high refresh rate so that it is comfortable to use - even when I am working 18 hours at a stretch. My machine has crashed once in the last two years, and that is because I forgot to put an exit condition on a recursive function, and then went to dinner. At work? Multiuser DOS, no GUI, disappearing data, crashes, only one screen at a time can be opened,and the behavior of the system is generally weird. Navigation is by F keys that have no intuitive connection to what is being navigated at all. The barcode scanners aren't even set up to read UPC codes, so when merchandise come through the register, we have to look for the code that the scanner can read. I forgot to mention, no e-mail, and no internet. On top of that the fax machine and the credit card machines are on the same phone line, so when someone sends a junk fax, customers have to wait.