There isn’t a lot of competition
in the tech world these days,
is there? There are basically
four motherboard vendors—
five if you’re on Intel—two
graphics card manufacturers
(one of which provides no
high-end alternatives to the
competition), and don’t get
me started on the processor
situation. Flip-flop, back andforth, one’s in charge for 10
years, then the other, and then
the other again.
Don’t get me wrong, even at
Maximum PC these guys go on
and on about how much choice
you have, and how easy it is to
build a bespoke system. And
that is sort of true in the finer
details: cables, cooling, cases,
and, eugh, RGB. But let’s faceit, if you have a budget and a
particular aim, the likelihood is
your new rig’s hardware—the
beating heart stuff that really
makes those processes go
around—isn’t going to be very
different from a guy halfway
around the world with the
same ambition and the same
funds. Competition is good,
yet one of the most innovativeindustries out there lacks it
almost entirely. What does
that mean? A technological
dark age, that’s what.
Perhaps it’s just an anomaly
unique to this moment in
time, and only because some
companies are on the up today
while others play catch-up
tomorrow, but it really doesn’t
feel like there’s much choice.INDUSTRY INSIDER
©^
GETTY^ IMAGESI BELIEVE IN THINGS coming full circle,
so my final “Lab Note” is about my dad.
He graduated with a degree in computer
science from Cal Poly Pomona, when PCs
were heavy, all-in-one machines, with
s cr eens that looked l ike tiny T Vs , and spent
most of his life designing PC hardware.
When the US entered a recession in 1990,
it was the first of several times throughout
his life that he was laid off from his job.
But even when he was pushed out of the
job market for good in 2009, he never lost
his love for hardware—even when the
technology outgrew his own knowledge
and understanding.
I often imagine what he would say about
things such as ray tracing, cloud gaming,
liquid cooling, and SSDs that can fit in the
front pocket of my skinny jeans. “You’re
telling me I don’t need my own computerto run this game?” he’d say, as I
handed him a Stadia controller.
I wish I could have shared all the
things I’ve written about over the
last year and a half with him.
A few months ago, I visited
the Computer History Museum,
and my early memories of him
came back hard. I wanted to hear
his anecdotes of how he helped
design some of the ’70s and ’80s
hardware on display. I wanted
to hear his lame nicknames for
companies such as America
“Offline” and Packard “Hell.” I
wanted to see his reaction when
he saw a Gateway computer for
the first time in 20 years.
But although my dad wasn’t physically
there, he was. He may not be famous forhis contributions to computer technology’s
history, but he had a hand in it. I’m proud to
be my father’s daughter, and I plan to carr y
on his legacy in my own way.But don’t forget to regularly dust your PC, for a change
Not Goodbye,
Just See-Ya-Later
JOANNA NELIUS, HARDWARE STAFF WRITERJoanna’s “selfie” with Charles Babbage from
the Computer History Museum.80 MAXIMUMPC MAY 2020 maximumpc.com
in the lab