underwater daphne:
ye, and i feel better using a computer now. after reading all the threads about computers being unreliable, are only used by "bad" divers, etc i was beginning to question my faith in my suunto. personally i depend on my computer like i depend on all of my gear for diving.
Your other gear is all passive technology. Your computer is not. If you don't understand the difference, or why this makes an equivalent dependence unwise, find an engineer to sit down and explain it to you.
underwater daphne:
i'm lousy at maths, even simple things and i don't know what would be more reliable in the long run - my comp or my table skills.
THAT is a scary statement. If you have that little confidence in your own ability to perform basic diving tasks, aren't you worried about diving?
One, there is really not any real math in using the tables. If you can have a credit card without getting into bankruptcy, then you can use the tables; it's almost exactly the same process. There are 12 year olds learning to use the tables every day. If you have trouble with it, you shouldn't just accept that, you should find a way to overcome it.
underwater daphne:
i don't really understand why i should plan with both?
underwater daphne:
The first four words of that sentence are what's wrong with your approach.
if my comp were to fail underwater i still have my buddy as a backup.and seriously i look at my comp quite often and if i noticed something was wrong, then the dive would be off.
What if your buddy has the same type of computer - for that matter, many of the computers available today share the same internal hardware. Oh, they couldn't all fail at once, and in a way no one noticed, could they? Are you old enough for the words "Pentium Bug" to resonate with you? How many thousands were in the hands of consumers before that one was noticed? How many more before Intel actually admitted that it was true? Anyone here ever dealt with Intel's QA processes? They're the benchmark. Check out the "copy exact" policy to see what fanatics they are, and yet, this one slipped by them.
Your computer could fail in ways you would NEVER detect, unless you understood the principles it operates on well enough not to say "i don't know what would be more reliable in the long run - my comp or my table skills."
Computers are not inherently bad in diving, but your statement is a screaming advertisement for the reasons people object to computers.