cars vs computers

cars vs computers

Date: Wed, 18 Mar 1998 09:28:11 -0500

At the most recent COMDEX computer expo, Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated "If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty-five dollar cars that got 1000 mi/gal."

General Motors addressed this comment yesterday by releasing the Statement "Yes, but would you want your car to crash twice a day?"

So, here you are: a dozen reasons to be glad the automotive industry hasn't kept up with the computer industry:

1. Every time you wanted to drive on a different road, you would have to buy a new car.

2. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason, and you would just accept this, restart and drive on.

3. Occasionally, executing a common maneuver would cause your car to stop and fail and you would have to re-install the engine. For some strange reason, you would accept this too.

4. Traffic jams would be known as lag, and you'd accept them as well.

5. You could only have one person in the car at a time, unless you bought "Car95" or "CarNT". But, then you would have to buy more seats.

6. Macintosh would make a car that came fully loaded with optional equipment, was powered by the sun, reliable, five times as fast, twice as easy to drive, but would do no advertising and have no dealerships

7. Every now and then, a Cray car would blow past doing about 1000 times your speed - and God help you if you were in the fast lane.

8. Buying a new set of tires would also require one to buy multiple other accessories or the car wouldn't run properly.

9. The airbag system would say "are you sure?" before going off.

10. The resale value would drop 75% as soon as you drove out of the showroom and would be $0.00 within two years - trade ins, forget about it!

11. For service you would have to call a toll free number and select the proper number for the repair you wish to have done. An automated voice would walk you through the step to repair the car yourself and when that didn't work refer you to the company that sold the gas for the car.

12. The oil, gas and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single "general car default" warning light which would come on only when it was too late to fix the problem.