Text vs GUI (was RE: Antiquated Software)

[Kenneth Brody]

Quoting GCC Consulting (Thu, 19 Jan 2006 09:29:05 -0500):

[...]
> When the system was implemented at her last hospital, the accounts
> payable clerk started to cry.  Why,  it was taking him 3 days to
> process what on the old antiquated system one day to do.  The hospital,
> for the first time, started to be late in paying bills.
>
> The could not get EDI up and running with their vendors.
>
> So, have the latest and "greatest" does not mean that one has the best
> software to get the job done.
>
> Anyone who purchases a computer system because it "looks great" is just
> plain dumb.
[...]
> One of the partners has used wireless access thru Sprint, using terminal
> server to access the system while on the road.  He was surprised to find
> that the speed was almost as fast as if he was wired in.  He told me he
> could not do this with the GUI database he was previously using at
> another company.  The response was too slow.
>
> So much for the antiquated, non GUI interface.
[...]

The tellers at my bank have shiny flat-panel Windows 2000 workstations
with pretty GUI screens for doing deposits/withdrawals.  But, if you
need to have them do something else, like look up your account number
via SSN, or check your account history for some mysterious charge that
appeared on your statement, guess what?  They switch to another window
for a character-based telnet/ssh session.

I've also watched the people at the check-in stations at the airport,
and many of them are still using character-based windows on their
Windows boxes, typing in the same commands that they used back in the
1960's.  And even those that are using GUI are simply a GUI front end
on top of the same character-based programs, and still type in the
same commands.

--
KenBrody at BestWeb dot net        spamtrap: <g8ymh8uf001 at sneakemail.com>
http://www.hvcomputer.com
http://www.fileProPlus.com