Belated epiphany

Apparently, keyboards are like wine...at least so far as the correlation between price tag and one's tastes go. Meaning that there is really no correlation.

That being said, the cushy (though not back-lit), kinda-cheap Dell doesn't work with the USB-to-PS2 adapter that my keyboard of the past several years used to interface with the KVM switch. Which leaves me in a quandry of sorts, particularly in the coming months when I'll have to make some effort to make sure that software works a broad smattering of web browsers on various operating systems

(Side note: If you don't know what a KVM switch is--and to tell the truth, I've never even cared about it enough to bother looking up what the letters K, V, and M stand for, m'self--all you really need to know is that its a heinously overpriced brick that lets you connect multiple computers to the same monitor, keyboard and mice.)

My very own heinously overpriced brick is a tad...shall we say..."retro" in that it supports PS2 (rather than USB) mice and computers and VGA (rather than DVI) monitors. But the essential problem--other than the classic pull of sunk costs--has three truly viable solutions:

1. The hardware-based solution is to close my eyes, key in a credit-card number, and upgrade the heinously overpriced brick to anothe heinously overpriced brick that will natively support my USB keyboard/mouse and (hopefully) better monitor resolutions.
2. The (mostly) software-based solution is to spend a couple hundred bucks and then a weekend installing Ubuntu Linux (on a beef-up hard drive) alongside multiple versions of Windows so that I can boot into any one--but only one--of them at a time.
   
3. The hybrid solution is to install more memory, a buffer CPU and a bigger, badder hard drive and then at least a weekend figuring out how to intall Ubuntu Linux alongside multiple versions of Windows on a single workstation so that I can boot all of them and toggle between them at will.
   

Once upon a time, my business card read "I/T Manager," and several years on, I'm wondering whether that wasn't a joke (on the entire company as well as myself), because I suddenly--yea, even viscerally--grok the attraction of Option #1, otherwise known as "throwing more hardware at the problem."

That attraction, I should point out, is predicated on the assumption that hardware--at least in the short-term--is a better value for money on each iteration. (See also: Moore's Law) Of course, "value" is a slippery term if you can't blind yourself to the socializing-the-costs-and-privitizing-the-profits multi-national business model. I can't say I'm eyes-wide-shut there...maybe squinting?...I'll make a virtue out of being a late-adopting cheapskate yet...

Anyhoo. The term "peak oil" is certainly in cant use. "Peak food" and "peak water" aren't far behind, as our species kaleidescopes--yes, it's a verb tonight--its DNA toward 7 billion planetary neighbors. Which (in light of the push & pull of fact and rumor surrounding rare earth metals and their processing) makes the concept of "peak hardware" that much more conceivable.

What then, gentle reader? Please understand that I'm not asking that as a fatuous rhetorical exercise (e.g., No oil => no plastic; no rare earth => no chips; no plastics + no chips => no gadgets => you're screwed, jack: Discuss.) Would pinching off the option of "throwing more hardware at the problem" mean that human-based solutions would become more valuable...or even more commoditized than they already are?

Me, I'm still working through the implications. Either way, repercussions are unavoidable--and they're not particularly pretty. But that doesn't mean they're not worth serious consideration. (After all, that's the kind of thing showers and bus/subway rides were made for.)