My colleague joked that a CD player was old technology and that many of our younger colleagues wouldn’t even know what a CD was. Storing everything on a NAS device and connecting this to the home theatre is the way to go.
Though I enjoy the progress in this technology, my problem is that I first of all like my good music played lossless and therefore don’t want MP3’s for that. And for the same reason, I want a good quality CD player that transforms the digital to analog sound with a good definition and, due to my house interior, with a certain warmth. I don’t want to use a PC for playing my music with a mediocre quality. I already had that. (I am one of those people who still has a turntable and still play my old vinyl LP’s – have Bill Bruford’s Earth Works on it right now; also just love those album covers from the old days).
So I bought a new Marantz CD player at Len Wallis (in Sydney) and I am extremely happy with the results. I know many people, including my wife, won’t hear the difference but for me it similar as wearing glasses versus not wearing glasses. With glasses I can see things clearly, without things become blurry. Thanks to progress in technology, I think my Marantz gives me a better sound than my old Yamaha did in the past. Maybe it is old technology, but it is definitely improved technology and technology that can’t be beaten my the modern stuff (yet).
New technology is released with a rapid speed on a daily basis. The question is whether we need to acquire all this new technology. As a business you need to think whether an iPhone is that important and brings all the benefits. Don’t forget there are many teething problems. You want a collaboration system and social technology in-house. But is it so much better and how well is it developed? Wiki’s in SharePoint 2007 is rather primitive. But should you then implement other tools and how well does this integrate with other systems? Staff might spend a lot of time with the new technology, but what is the business benefit?
There is still so much you can do with plain old proven technology. If there is important information to be written down and communicated and relevant people are currently not doing it, would a new tool resolve this? MS Word or PowerPoint are very simple a proven ways to document information and there are usually already many ways to communicate it to stakeholders.
Another issues with new technology is that you need to spend so much time on it to get it working and I do not always feel that this effort weighs up against the benefits. The most extreme example is for me still the Windows Operating System. That took years before it finally become a useful end-user tool and that can be used effectively at home.
In general I like the advancements in technology and like to follow it and use it when I see a clear need for it. In many other cases, I prefer to wait until the teething problems have been resolved and you can actually gain the benefits.
Anyway, buying my new CD player is one of the best decisions I made recently and Percy Jones rolls very nicely out of my speakers again.
