DECEMBER 28, 07:37 EST
The Dubious Achievement Awards
By LARRY BLASKO
Associated
Press Writer
For journalists, year's end is a time of reflection, which takes much less energy than actually reporting something. That leaves time for other worthy pursuits, such as celebrating at holiday parties.
In that spirit, a glass or two is hereby raised to this year's winners of the CompuBug Dubious Achievement awards for Determined Dumbness in software and hardware.
The Practice Makes Perfect award goes to Microsoft for Windows 98, which fixed some of Windows 95's bugs and introduced a swarm of its own.
The I Knew I Forgot Something award goes to Apple Computer, which introduced its much-touted iMac without a floppy disk drive. Clearly, the ``Think Different'' crowd never takes work home. Of course, for $150, you can add an external floppy drive, just like you could 20 years ago, before it became standard equipment.
With the minimum system requirements for everything from games to productivity software roaring past the 166-megahertz Pentium/32 megabytes of RAM mark, the Immoderation in All Things award is shared by the entire software industry. While we all would like to upgrade our machines every six months, many of us have other financial obligations, including children, a mortgage and such.
The software industry also wins the Punishing Profligate Packaging award for surrounding 5-inch-wide CD-ROMs with enough cardboard to deforest Canada, much of it inside in sadistic origami creations that aren't going to let go of the software without inflicting at least a paper cut. And we really needed the latest trend: box-cover flaps, some with multiple pages, touting the product. Quick, go hug a tree while there are still some left.
The Yes, We Have No Bananas award goes to software manufacturers whose only installation and help instructions are online. If we could get the doggone stuff to install, we wouldn't need the help!
The Chicken Little Marketing award goes to those who raise the grim vision of the end of computing in Year 2000 unless you do a ``system audit'' with a product that, coincidentally, they sell.
The Al Capone Financing Genius award goes to those computer manufacturers that are pushing leasing programs to increase their market share, thereby making it possible for consumers to pay much more for a computer than it would cost to buy one. Manufacturers say it makes computers available to those who can't afford to buy one — in the same way loan sharks give high-risk lenders ``access to financial services.''
Finally, the Tolerance Beyond Belief award goes to publicists, editors and, most of all, CompuBug's readers, who have endured with me this year — and for the past 15 years — and keep coming back for more.
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Questions and comments are welcome. Mail to: CompuBug, P.O. Box 626, Summit, N.J. 07901. Or e-mail via the Internet: Larry—Blasko(at)ap.org.
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