Thank goodness Australians don't vote in the USA elections, we'd be more screwed up than we already are. :smile: As for bucking the trend, and it being worth while, to value the world you live in and the life you lead you first need to get a life in the present day and age and stop living in the past with a 15 year old Mac that can't cut it anymore cause apparently it doesn't have a spell check. I mean really an iPhone 3?? You really need to bring yourself up to date and stop living like a hermit.
Oh and BTW there's no such thing as the iPhone 7 yet. It's not do for its introduction until late this fall or early next year. There still promoting the 6 and 6S. Yeah you can drive your 1994 and it was probably a great vehicle in it's time but it's time is past, it's not an efficient running vehicle? Not to today's standards. It will cost you more in maintenance and fuel than a new truck would cost. That savings alone could make your payments on a new truck.
Same with your Mac, it's just not efficient to today's standards and with a new up to date computer you could be running programs that are faster and that would improve your business and probably make you more money. I mean if you like the Apple try an Ipad it will blow that 15 year old make away. I'd almost bet an iPhone 6 would do more than your Mac and would be better for your business and could very well make you more money because the more efficient your business is the more money you make.
Really don't get me wrong if you like living in the past by all means stay there but don't fault someone who lives in the present and looks to the future and doesn't make money there entire life.
Well it does have spell cheque but I turned it off as it slows my typing down and changes words according to what it thinks I wanted to type which means that I have to go back and check word by word rather than a whole page scan.
I can do things better but this is a free forum. The articles I get paid to write get done a lot better. They get written on the 1990 Mac Quadra using Great Works and funny enough it word process a lot faster than the worlds best typist can type so well above my capability. I save the document in word 4 format then drop it into Quark to lay out the pages & get quark to do the spell & grammar check as it does it in a way that I find easier to work with. They then get printed out on a color lazer printer set to the color gammut of the press being used to print the journals and finally emailed to the publisher no I am not a Luddite or hermit.
I am on several help syndicates where I get paid for assisting people and around 18 motorcycle forums 3 of which I moderate, so unlike you I understand exactly how forum software works and why it works the way it does.
As for upgrading equipment. I have a funny idea about that, it has to pass 5 important tests
1) is it intuitive or will I have to spend a long time modifying how I think in order to fit into the machine ?
2) Do I want or need what it is offering ?
3) Is it easier to use that what it is replacing ?
4) Will it generate some tangible benefit to me or my organization ?
5) is it cost effective compared to what I am using now ?
If the answer is no to any one of them it doesn't get acquired.
As for tablets I bought 82 of them.
We fitted them to the forklifts, pallet trollies & gave them to the pickers , receivers & dispatchers
These were all fitted with state of the art photo recognition software so the pickers take a photo of what they pick and the local server processes that information & told them if it was the correct stock in 4 micro seconds which was actually faster than the new PDT's that the company was going to buy at $ 3500 each could read a bar code. The system also sends large visual alerts if the product is commonly miss picked, warns the forkie if there is already a pallet of these goods open on the pick face or an older pallet elsewhere and then triple checks at dispatch that the goods to be sent match the original order, generates the invoice. sends a print command to the packing slip printer and an email to the customer of the pick report so they know what was picked & roughly when it will arrive. All useful applications of better technology. Annoyed the hell out of head office who had just stumped up $ 4,500,000 for a new Microsoft Navs system to find my system was cheaper, worked faster, better, ended all warehouse errors, saved over $ 500,000 /pa and that is not counting customer & staff frustrations. The state manager finally saw the light and ran all the local warehouses on this system and then read the whole report, introduced the smart pick software that works out the most efficient way to pick orders , combines several small picks into one big pick and times them so they arrive at the dispatch in the reverse delivery order so the drivers can literally arrives and push the whole load directly into their vans. This took 3 hours off the morning load up, eliminated driver frustrations and overtime.
Now back to stuff relevant to here.
My vans need to gobble up 2 gallons of fuel per mile before it is cheaper to buy a new van by which time they should have some decent solar / battery electric vans that will meet my requirements.
I can live without chilled drink containers and 3 zone air conditioning, my average trip is 15 minutes so I rarely turn on the air at all unless I need to demist in the early morning or heavy rain.
Forward control means I sit high so don't need fancy cameras to see a tiny image of what I can see for real, full size and turning your neck is good for body mobility.
Everything has to get a proper cost benefit analysis as it is easy to get caught up in the new is better then find that 72" deck on the 20 mph air ride mower actually does less work in a day than the 30"on the 10 year old 10Hp RER.And every cent it makes is profit to you not profit to the leasing company & insurance company. Old equipment has a low resale value so it does not become a prime target for the thieves that follow a contractor to a job, wait till you have gone around the back then snatch everything that is not locked down on your trailer / truck.
After that then I decide who I will buy it from. With a piece of kit that will make me an extra $ 100 /week I don't need nor have the time to scan the entire world to find the cheapest possible price and in the long term a saving of $ 500 on something that will make me and extra $ 5000 / year , every year becomes insignificant and this is before the "feel good" factor of buying from the little bloke down the road, so locally Trev is a good bloke and my work comes from the local community so local reputation is important. The local bloke employs 6 people and if I do the right thing by them, they do the right thing by me, we all make a quid and all live good lives.
Keeping money local is good for you and good for the whole community as it circulates around and around and keeps local people in work, some of which will be your customers, while they have a job and can afford to pay you.
The population of the local town is around 2000. There are around 50 lawn / property care contractors here now. There was 5 when I started here ( all my customers ) 4 years ago .The other 40 or so are all men over 40 who have been retrenched and have almost zero chance of being re-employed so either kicked off a company or bought a franchise. Thus the local area and the surrounding suburbs are all over serviced but as all these men have families and mortgages, they will all lower their rates rather than loose a customer and this is partially due to local small business closing down because they can not compete with no service big box shop advertised "cheaper prices".
Having a smaller population we see this effect earlier and to a greater extent than the USA will.
Australia is California population , GDP and budget wise, spread out a land mass equivalent to continental USA.
As for living in the past, noway I live in the future but I want to have a future with trees & birds and water