William Robb wrote:
> I don't think Pentax is ever going to be state of the art again. The
> Spotmatic days are long gone.
> If you can live with a camera that is a couple of steps behind the
> state of the art, and (I think more importantly) like the lenses,
> then the istD is a good camera.
This phrasing reminded me very strongly of something from
another field. I'm not sure how well it applies here, but
I'm going to throw it out there and let other people decide
whether it's useful...
In the 1970s, Hewlett-Packard introduced a new line of
minicomputers for business users, the HP-3000 (various
models). Industry analysts and their competitors mocked
them, saying, "But you're using ten year old technology!
Your computers are obsolete right out of the box!"
HP responded that their customers didn't _need_ the
bleeding-edge, didn't need to be using the latest and
most nifty technology or the fastest machine on the
block. They needed machines that fulfilled the computing
requirements of their businesses, at whatever level of
tech-niftiness. "This is exactly what our customers
actually need," HP said, "This technology is proven and
tested." Most businesses have ordinary computing
requirements and don't need anything fancy unless fancy
actually saves them money.
And HP went on to sell a metric-s&$^load of HP-3000
systems over the next ten years, to customers who had
ordinary business-computing problems to solve. That
"obsolete out of the box" platform made HP a bunch of
money.
-- Glenn
