BORK!BORK!BORK! Paris might sometimes be called “The City of Light” or perhaps “The City of Love” by the romantically inclined. Judging by this hotel’s elevators, “The City of Bork” is more appropriate.
Spotted by eagle-eyed Register reader Nathaniel in a Paris hotel, what we assume to be digital signage is instead stalled on the all too familiar American Megatrends BIOS configuration screen. The computer behind the scenes also seems a bit overpowered to serve information for hotel services.
Instead of enticing elevator riders into the undoubtedly delightful bars and restaurants of the establishment (apparently a Novotel not far from the Eiffel Tower) or whatever it should be doing, this screen has temptations of an altogether more technical nature.
A CometLake CPU? An i5 no less? Sort of up-to-date. And that 8 GB of RAM? The way memory prices are going, that might be enough to buy you a nice hotel room in some cities, and at least a decent coffee and a croque monsieur in Paris.
But why the upgrade? Elevators have existed before computers, seriously. The Empire State building had elevators when it opened in the 1930s, and it didn’t need “8GB Core i5” nor could it have one. The transistor was invented in the 1950s, to late 1940s.
The labor and materials to design and install an analog elevator control was probably more expensive than an x86 board. Not to mention more failure prone.
I’m sure now AI can build the elevator circuit/controls with lower issues? Then, it can just run?
to show you unavoidable ads in a confined space