Why C/S GUI? (was Re: New Era or what?)

rodney@worf.infonet.net (Rodney) wrote (edited): -> However, the world isn't about us. It's about them. Damn, what a pity! :) -> Oh, and GUI is cooler. I would take an application that has neat-o pictures -> and toys and all that before a plain old character one (all else Hmmmmm, maybe I just have a problem with eye-hand coordination, but I find using a mouse a royal pain in the *ss. I find data capture in a GUI environment practically impossible. Furthermore, I might lack the necessary romance in my soul (or whatever), but I rarely find a picture (or icon, for that matter) actually worth a thousand words. I appreciate your comments (I've heard similar views before - mostly from my users!), but I remain unconvinced that from a cold, hard-hearted dollars & cents point of view that there is any productivity gain or other, material gain that automatically derives from implementing GUI and/or C/S. How "cool" must something be to justify (say) an arbitrary 20 to 200% increase in hardware, network and staff costs? -> And having been exposed to both, I would say that there are certain training -> and ease-of-use advantages (for beginners) that are hard to argue against. Hmmm, it may well be that I am biased (ahem!), but I didn't really find it any easier to learn Windows than Vax/VMS. Once you have the general paradigm (provided it's consistent, of course!), you can go for it. But then I'm not a beginner (well, not much, anyway). OTOH, nobody stays a beginner for long, and I'm not sure that the alleged "empowerment" of users is appreciated by the users, most of whom (in my experience) don't use much outside their core apps and Solitaire, even in a Windoze environment. A classic example (and it's just one of many I've seen): my main client has an actuary working for them who *power* uses Lotus. For his spreadsheets. For his databases. For his wordprocessing. For his drawings. For everything. They have far superior tools for all the non-spreadsheet stuff available, but he won't touch them. Hence, I feel that it all seems to boil down to "we must get it 'cos it's pretty". And I don't see that the looks are worth the cost. The users may say that they want it. As a consultant, I say: is the cost/benefit comparison OK? I don't believe that it is. All IMHO, of course. Thanks for the comment. ---- Digitec Online - South Africa Telnet: bbs.digitec.co.za