Scientist types will undoubtedly establish increasingly precise measurements of some of the same quantities. For the average person, and even for most businesses, the point of reasonable standardization that we could HAPPILY LIVE WITH for several years, IMHO, is upon us in the field of consumer electronics.

Three of the most common and pertinent areas of electronics measurement and standards correspond directly to our senses:

• graphical output (sight);
• audible output (hearing) and
• tactile movement (touch).

I personally believe that we have actually OVERSHOT the reasonably necessary degree of perfection in some of these areas of "consumer electronics."

My evidence comes from recent trends to accept performance/quality that is below the available alternatives. Add in the factor of cheap ($3 per Gig?!) storage, and computer manufacturers are only the first of the huge consumer electronics smackdown I envision.

SEE NO EVIL

Unless the tape is a poor copy or you have poor equipment, VHS is perfectly acceptable for everyday viewing. If old, fuzzy, black & white TV output could keep us glued to the screen, what's not to like about full color and "see-the-hair-on-their-head" clarity?

How about Internet graphics, are they clear enough? Yeah, yeah, I know they take forever to download and movement is jerky, but that is a supply issue and outside of This Writer's basic contention that current electronics standards for final output are very acceptable.

The pornography industry's success on the Internet underscores the issue of how little clarity people can find acceptable - 72 dots (actually lines) per inch, the approximate output of most computer monitors, apparently shows human genitalia in sufficient "piece-of-hair" and "drop-of-sweat" detail to please the average viewer of same.

In the case of DVD movies, background scenes -- particularly during action sequences -- are commonly dragged down to the equivalent of 100 dots-per-inch so that the movie can fit onto the medium. No one is complaining about the quality.

Printers: 600-1440 dots-per-inch (dpi) far surpasses the quality of most glossy print publications, from National Geographic to Sports Illustrated, who publish at a mere 300 dpi. The difference is that most consumer's don't start out with as high quality images or paper stock as the professionally prepared publications. Nowadays, "I printed this at home" frequently elicits a response of "Really? It looks like store-bought. "

Ed Cantarella

Digital cameras: The smoothness/lack-of-graininess of a camera's pictures is largely dependant upon the granules of chemicals in the film - one color per granule. Digital cameras capture pixels - one color per pixel. There are 3 - 4 million granules in one exposure of average 35 mm film but only approximately 1.5 million in "Poloriad-type" instant film.

At the top end of the consumer digital camera market ($1000 USA) we are now offered 4.2 million pixels (granule equivalents). That means that consumer-grade film has pretty much met its match.

Beyond manufacturers making some improvements in the digital devices sensitivity to varying light levels within a picture, which would improve the contrast of shadows, most consumers could buy a quality digital camera today and feel no real need to upgrade to something better - ever.

And consider this: the price of a high-end digital camera will almost certainly fall dramatically during the next 12-18 months.

HEAR NO EVIL

In the early 80s, I knew a guy who had a CD player and a CD collection - BIG BUCKS!

Granted, CD's are convenient and very functional, but they are also (I believe) of a lower sound quality than a good reel-to-reel tape. Digital music is captured (sampled) in several thousand "snapshots" per second, but that still loses some of the finer sounds that make up the entire listening experience.

Now we have migrated to MP3's, an even further reduction in sound quality. No one is complaining.

DO NO EVIL

Pointer resolution is pretty much a dead issue, IMHO, these days. We now have available wireless, ball-less, comfortably shaped, scrolling wheels for surfing. I fully agree that comfort/use factors can still be improved - but fineness of movement (resolution) is a dead issue.

Before you toss up to me that your mouse moves too jerkily to write with, please consider: you couldn't draw very smoothly with the corner of a deck of cards either. Point being, a mouse requires you to move your whole hand to draw, and most people have gross hand movements that are too jerky for drawing. Instead, try a drawing pad (say a newUSB Wacom Pad,$99 USA) with a writing stylus. What you will probably find is that your fingers can move a small object plenty fine enough to appreciate 600 d.p.i. of resolution.

ironically, most monitors and graphics cards can't even adequately SHOW 600 d.p.i of movement so there is no reason to knock the pointing devices' accuracy.

Gamepads, Flight/Driving Simulators and Joysticks of all breeds not smooth enough for you? As we used to say back when I was a toolmaker,"Don't blame the machine, blame the operator."

Economical storage/memory devices are pulling the last legs out from under the hype of "improved quality" offered up by the electronics manufacturers. Their argument has been that large storage allows Joe Consumer an unprecedented chance to store, retrieve and compare the sights and sounds of the past and today, against the "latest & greatest" technologies. Unlike a comparison of VHS to those chattering, flickering 16 mm films that caught so many memories for an earlier generation, Joe Consumer is finding that most of today's "low-quality technology" doesn't look and sound that bad. Not bad at all.