Thought up tonight's title from something I used to get as a child, "Things of Science". Every month I would receive a blue box in the mail, about the size of a contemporary Priority Mail cassette shipping package, fulled with stuff to cover that month's subject.
I was instructed by my father to hold off working on the subject, saving it until we could work on it together. I had a sizable box full of these things by the time I entered high school, and made the mistake of storing it in the basement of our house, where seepage ruined the collection, That, and my father never managing to find the time for our science bonding, was an early FP for me. I frequently came up short in my father's quality time.
Now, I find that things coming up short these days are technology, My biggest beef is the computer I use to access the Internet, and therefore this website. It's a laptop, a refurb I bought on eBay. When laptops first hit the market, I doubted then that I'd ever use one, let alone own one, with their limited power and proprietary parts, seeming to make a lowly IBM PC look like a heavy-duty workstation. But they progressed, and here I am.
But they still have their limitations, and that bothers me. Case cooling is one thing that really is an FP, with some machines having a delicate fan hidden deep inside, that you have to mostly disassemble the machine to replace, or use a fan base or slap-on exhaust fan, tying up a USB port for power (unless you have a fan base that has a USB pass-through that works). I don't have a clue how the fanless machines work. Case-wide Peltier panel, maybe? Why not an easy-to-replace snap-in fan?
Ports are another FP for me. I was initially leery of the Universal Serial Bus (USB), but came to find them indispensable. I have an old Compaq Armada that has exactly one USB port, but also has one Centronics port, an 8-pin serial port, a VGA port, an infrared transceiver, a proprietary docking bay connector, and two PC-Card slots, which will handle anything up to Type III card. Now, it's all USB, but only a few, and if you.re lucky, you may have a Cardbus slot right below an Expresscard port, but nothing bigger than a single Type I or II card, please. I would love a machine that could have my USB wireless plugged into a USB port on the front edge of the lid, and maybe one Type III slot?
What features would you like to see?
So, what's your FP?
And since folks have other FP's not computer-generated, this is an Open Thread.
And here's the current schedule:
January 5: Blueoregon
January 12: JeffW
January 19: bigjacbigjacbigjac
January 26: Mortifyd
February 2: Blueoregon