Tthis week I've had two experiences which served to remind me once again just how much innovation and growth there is in computing hardware. The two incidents were: 1) installation of rack-mounted servers; 2) replacement of a laptop keyboard. Both offered interesting views of engineering beauty.

I've installed rack mounted servers hundreds of times over the years, but it has been at least 6 years since I even looked at one so I was prepared for a knuckle-ripping, muscle stretching experience that was going to be a tad frustrating and certainly lengthy. I had three servers and a switch to install with three different rack mounting hardware; I didn't purchase the rack and I had no choice as to what rack mounting hardware I would receive. While I did my homework and was told that all would be well, I was still preparing for a major undertaking. Boy was I surprised!

Now I'm pretty competent with my hands, and puzzles are fun for me so I don't want to give the impression that this is/was a task that was a major burden, but it did take a lot of time and a fair amount of fiddling around. But not with today's suite of hardware, the instructions were clear, simple, and comprehensive. The rails went in with only a slight modification (they arrived ready for square holes but the racks were round screw holes, a quick flick of a lever and a spin of some hardware fixed that issue) and the machines simply dropped right into the rails... they just dropped right in! No levers, no threading one metal piece down another metal track, no pinched fingers, no scraped knuckles.... they just dropped right in, it was brilliant.

We tend to think that innovation in computing is limited to software and CPUs but the truth is that there has been innovation everywhere (and I didn't even talk about inside the box). The size of the computer had decreased from 4U to 1U, with equivalent redundancy and far more processing power. And the cost has truly come down in a way that I hadn't expected at all,less than 10% of what this would have cost (had that even been possible). In all, truly an amazing situation.

I've owned at least 6 laptops over the last dozen years or so and have had occasion to open up each and every one of them ... I can't help myself, I'm just a geek at heart. I'm pretty sure all but the first couple brutes (they weighed at least 5 pounds a piece) had their keyboard replaced for one reason or another. I've been told that I am hard on these beasties, I prefer to think that I just type too many characters for the laptops to keep up . And so, it comes as no surprise to me that this year-old laptop needed to have it's keyboard replaced ... a couple of the key caps broke loose and wouldn't fit back.

Rather than have somebody onsite, Dell simply sent me the keyboard, arriving less than 20 hours after I called. It was up to me to replace it ... nine screws and a couple quick flicks of the wrist and in less than 5 minutes the keyboard was replaced and the laptop was back up and in business. It was truly easy, perhaps not idiot proof but damn near. The instructions were clear and easy to follow, there was almost no thinking involved and no prior knowledge needed. Previously keyboards were integrated with the motherboard, screwed to the motherboard, or in some other way made very difficult to replace, typically taking a trained technician about 1/2 hour to complete.