There was a great story in the New York Times today about tech laggards... you know, the people who still use dial-up AOL and Netscape.
I had to have multiple conversations with my parents into getting rid of the dial-up AOL and switching to high speed. My mom would say, "But why? I get my e-mail, it works, I don't need to change." And I would give lectures showing her how her life would be better with high speed, or if a banking website timed out I'd tell her that it wouldn't be a problem if she had high-speed Internet. Or I would explain that many websites are designed with heavy graphics and Flash and they expect you to have high-speed to use the site.
But if it wasn't for me pushing, I bet they still would have dial-up... or worse... do something like pay monthly for AOL and a broadband service. I was pretty much the last kid on the block to switch from dial-up to high speed. I would come home from college and have to explain to friends, no, I can't watch the movie trailer online... I have dial up.
Do you know tech laggards who won't change just for the sake of upgrading? It's the attitude of: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The story says about 1 million people still use Netscape, ignoring messages to change browsers.
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