Originally posted by: Wingznut
Whenever a change is coming, there are always a bunch of whiners. These are the same people who feared losing ISA slots, the AT standard, serial ports, etc...
I swear, if it were up to some of you, progress would grind to a screaching halt.
When I lost my ISA slots I had to buy a new modem, three Winmodems later I finally shelled out $100 to buy a 3Com "gaming modem" just to get the same connection stability I had with my old ISA modem. (Yes, I know, I can still get a board with ISA today, please don't anyone bother to point that out to me. That just goes to prove ISA still works and can still coexist fine on a board anyway) Like BTX I had to buy hardware over to fill an unchanged roll.
The saddest part is that bit of progress was, and remains, primarily cosmetic.
The AT standard, funny that, BTX will put the CPU right back where it was with my 486's and Pentiums in a tower case. At the time we were being told the power supply blowing air on the CPU in the ATX design will save us from having to have CPU fans... that worked out well. But tell me, since we're not sticking the CPU and ram behind the expansion slots, but rather having the CPU
halfway up the board how's that going to work in a tower case? Going to need a pretty big curved duct coming from the front/bottom or are we going to throw out drive bays to keep it in line? Looks like expansion cards will get less air than in ATX. For small desktop layouts I see the sense, for any size tower I don't.
Seriel ports I never much did like.
If we're going to change let's make sure to get the most gain. Take S-ATA for example. Hot swapping is nice, though I've been doing that wire firewire for years. The single thin wire hookup is great for ease of installation and reducing impediments to airflow, except of course that the rat's nest of power lines that have been with us since the XT are still there. When S-ATA was supposed to carry data and power on the same cable I was all for it, when that was abandoned so went a good portion of it's upside. BTX again ignores that. Heck if BTX called for a universal plug for power/reset/etc I'd like it for that alone. Is BTX better than ATX? That's not my question. Is it the best solution - is it enough better to be worth it?
You may think those of us who question the utility of each change are "whiners". That's your right. I wouldn't go so far as to say watchdogs, but something more akin to it. Technology for technology's sake isn't progress. Nor is change for change's sake. When change benefits the buyer it is, and I need to see proof of that benefit, not namecalling, to convince me there is sufficient value in this change.