They know that by the time we old farts get proficient, we’ll go blind or die. So they cater to a younger crowd.
Yosemite
I just searched for the tires I bought at Tire Rack last week. It seemed about as easy now as then. I don’t think it is better, just different.
I tried it again this morning and it worked fine. Perhaps I caught them in the middle of the upgrade with a glitch still to fix.
But I still like the old site better.
I expected that. But no problem! I like a lot of older stuff too, like me! I’d say Mrs JT, but she is sooo much younger than me. (This has been a paid political announcement)
I think the TireRack site upgrade is OK but I understand your complaints. I echo those. New websites have so much graphic content to make them “pop” that they crush my older netbook. My desktop has a very fast CPU and lots of memory and I constantly upgrade it. My little netbook doesn’t get any of that. I get a little ticked that I can no longer surf on a minimal machine because of a
Newer! Brighter! Better! Internet Experience!
Same for my smartphone.
But its been that way since the days of Prodigy and Compuserve … remember those???
Do I remember those? I remember writing in fortran, keypunching into 80-column IBM cards, and loading the cards into a reader… and that was in college, a few years after I got out of four years in the Air Force.
Ha, beats me, I only go back to writing programs on a teletype, paper tape, PDP8.
b
Ha, beats me, I only go back to writing programs on a teletype, paper tape, PDP8.
Did that. PDP-8L and 8S. 4k ram of Core memory.
Do I remember those? I remember writing in fortran, keypunching into 80-column IBM cards, and loading the cards into a reader..... and that was in college
Did that too. IBM 360-30. Fortran IV and PL1.
Then evolved to PDP-11’s then VAX’s…Fortran-77, then went smaller to PCs running DOS and Windows 3 with Turbo Pascal.
Computers have evolved tremendously over the past 40 years since I’ve been in the field…you either evolve with them or leave the field.
Don’t remember the 8L, just the 8, 8s, 8i. We went to 16k memory eventually. With a bit of coaxing, I probably could still toggle in the RIM loader, since I did that about 1000 times. We used to have contests to see who could do that the fastest.
b
edit, that should be 8k
I know I don’t remember the loader sequence…The PDP-11 use to have the same type loader, then they changed that over to a key system.
Got to play with many of the older systems when I worked for DEC. But sill loved the VAX and VMS the best.
You realize we’re going to get our wrists slapped for wandering away from cars.
But before we do… I remember slide rules. Handheld calculators weren’t invented until three years after I got out of HS.
I remember slide rules.
I still have one and showed it to my kids…if they hadn’t thought I was old before that…they sure did when I showed it to them. Some of their teachers never seen one.
I wouldn’t call this a wrist slap per se, but could you please bring this back to cars somehow? Thanks. 
To bring this back to cars…When I was in college hand held calculators were just coming out. My brother-in-law was just promoted to a manager at New Process Gear. He gave me a plant tour one day…and went to the engineering section. The engineers either had a new calculator in a pouch attached to their belt…or they had a slide-rule in their front pocket of their button down white shirt…NERD CITY.
First co-op job at an auto supplier while in college. There was a Wang calculator sitting centrally in the open office for anyone to use. By that time everyone had scientific handheld calculators, some programmable. But that Wang still sat there. I was told it cost $30,000 when new and no one had the heart to toss it out.
We had a computer “room” with 300 baud terminals connected to our VAX 780 mainframe running FORTRAN compilers. We still plotted most data by hand.
Somewhere in an old desk is a Texas Instrument calculater that cost $100 in 1971 and a Post slide rule that cost over $20 in the late 60s. Each was considered critically needed when purchased. And then there’s the computer that I bought to run Alldata. It ran MS DOS and cost over $2,500 in the early 90s. Computer technology exceeded my level of comprehension when I updated to a computer with Windows 3.0 in order to handle Alldata’s change to Windows format.
And as for websites. It does appear that like automobile designers, website designers overlook myself and others who to them seem over the hill. Even my cell phone is outrageously complicated with a windows type format and far too many icons to keep up with.
Remember wooden slide rules? You could tell when the engineers were having a test from the smoke wafting out the windows.
;-]
I remember my HP handheld with Polish notation. I loved Polish notation!
$100 would have been cheap for HP with rpn when they first came out. For cdaquila, used to calculate gas mileage of course.
Reverse Polish notation (RPN) is a mathematical notation in which every operator follows all of its operands, in contrast to Polish notation, which puts the operator in the prefix position
Think I paid 60 bucks maybe in the 80’s for a TI calculator that could convert decimal degrees into dms, so handy in cad. Still using it today
Thanks for trying, Barky, but I think this just ain’t a car discussion anymore.