[via Chandrashekar] Computerworld discusses five technologies that are evaporating:
– Windows 9x: “Can 92 million users be wrong? Yes. Declining support, reliability problems, security issues and incompatibility with new applications should drive the remaining installed base to Windows 2000 or XP.” This is perhaps the best opportunity for Linux on the desktop.
– Client/Server Computing: “The original client/server schemewhere the application’s visual presentation and business logic reside on the desktop, and data resides on a serveris an idea whose time has passed. It’s being replaced by Web browser clients, n-tier systems and Web services.” While I agree on the software transition, I think client-server computing can be extended to the hardware architecture in SMEs – thin clients and thick servers.
– IBM SNA/Proprietary Networks: switch to TCP/IP
– Tape Backup: “Tape is cheap, but disk technology is closing the cost gap. For day-to-day backups, disk-to-disk systems that use inexpensive ATA technology make sense.”
– Visual Basic 6: “As Microsoft gradually withdraws support from Visual Basic 6 and programmers abandon it for Visual Basic .Net, those old VB 6 applications will get harder and harder to maintain.”
