One disappointment with many products is failure to stick to standards.
Nearly every system you look at is ATX. They are either mini, midi or maxi. Generally, midi.
They all are the same size however, to accomodate different hardware, for example, in a mini ATX you can stick in a IDE disk. in a midi ATX, you can stick in an IDE disk, and so forth.
Unfortunately, companies think they can go better, and not stick to standards. One such case is a recent issue involving a box that doesn’t have the room for a second disk, and not only that, the CD drive is 1cm thick (thin), and the system is basically not suitable for upgrading.
Why can’t they stick to standards? Nearly every other manufacturer can adhere to standards, they don’t need to squish things down worse than the fat kid at McDonald’s who flattens your burger, by whatever means possible.
It’s a waste of time, and an inconvienience when you look at it in comparison to placing other hardware in the same area with it, for example, having a smooth, rounded top, therefore, nothing can get stacked on top of it, and being a different width, thus not stacking in a good way on the side, taking up a different space area.
They are a pain in the butt really.
Standards exist for a reason, so that someone else can pull it up, or others can develop to it, and not have to worry about satisfying the specs of other machines that might be too little, or too big.
Can you imagine if an IDE drive was available in several different sizes? You would fit some in your case, others you’d need a hacksaw for, and others you’d need a bit of filler to fill the loose space.
Manufacturers that don’t stick to standards exist primarily to satisfy a group of users (minimal) that want small, different style hardware. Good luck upgrading that to something newer, near impossible.
Good luck stacking that in a group of machines, it’ll either be too high, or too small for one allocated space, and require half the next space (therefore wasting that next space).
Pretty pointless to differentiate yourself from standards. Be unique, but not at the expense of ignoring standards.
Same applies to web designers / HTML coders. W3C didn’t put those hours of effort in just so you can ignore them and play with your balls, the standards are there for a reason.
Take a look at gameco.com.au – hardly standards compliant, and more to the point, who needs a clock on a webpage, when you have one in your start bar for Windows users, or in your applet for linux / mac users?!
Standards. Please follow them.