23 posts tagged “technology”

I suspect I might go to Windows 7 some time in 2010 or 2011. The reason: I have an XP machine running the way I like it. My laptop is running Vista, the way I like it. I have no obligation to Microsoft’s share price. My obligation is to me and my productivity, and last I looked, technology serves me. As long as it does so, and does so reasonably, then the status quo is absolutely fine. In a year, maybe I might need the new features, but not now.
   For those considering upgrading, this PC World article is instructive.

I was glancing at the laptop and what it could see of the head-office network today (without going into the network itself):

If you told me 10 years ago that a simple office network would have over a terabyte of hard drive space, I would have laughed at you.
   The laptop itself has 320 Gbyte, and the two hard drives it can reach have 1·5 Tbyte between them. The cellphone alone has over 2 Gbyte.
   Not long ago my main computer was on 80 Gbyte, the design computer was on 40 Gbyte, and I think the laptop had something in the region of 10 Gbyte, less than a tenth of the above. The cellphone had 40 Mbyte.
   And I am sure it is within living memory for many of us when 40 Mbyte seemed to be endless space for a home computer. That’s what I had on my PC, and it was double what my closest friend had on his.
   We are getting to the point where the time involved in deleting a file exceeds the cost of retaining it. These numbers will be perfectly normal to so many people now, especially younger readers, while I still marvel at them.

Apart from announcing that I would run for mayor of Wellington, the week was dominated by this:

   This computer belonged to my friend Nigel, who moved to Australia earlier this week. And as he’s very “in” to web development and graphics, he has to have the latest and greatest—which meant that this unit, even though it’s grunty and would put many modern computers to shame, sat in his shed. He generously gave it to me.
   The DVD, hard and floppy drives are mine, which at least explains the mismatched colour of the first. The floppy was originally a gift as well from another friend who was disposing a 1998-vintage PC. Interestingly, despite everything being beige in those pre-Imac days, this one happened to be black, so I took that rather than the one I had used on my old PC.
   I have now a healthy appreciation of what computer-makers do when systems are built. The unit came without the drivers, etc., and with a few faults that Nigel warned me about. When I was in Auckland two weeks ago, he plugged it in and there was no display; prior to that the main fan was faulty.
   Step by step, I (with more than a little help from Dad—who still seems to be more logical brain-wise than a lot of these younger computer types) brought this PC back to life, installed the right drivers (thank goodness for the internet) and the programs. I took the opportunity to upgrade at least one, while I had to ask for new registration numbers for two (which came overnight).
   Things went fairly smoothly other than the motherboard drivers—I put in the wrong ones and replacing them forced the computer to run so slowly that Windows XP took 40 minutes to boot! However, a System Restore fixed that and it is back to normal.
   I’m pretty proud of myself as among the tasks I had was editing a DLL for a 1995 program that would not work on newer computers. I’m certainly no computer programmer (I did take a course in BASIC and LOGO in 1984 though), but the changes (as suggested by a hacker on a forum) worked. In another case, I had a technical issue and found the solution on a forum where I had posted the answer. What was interesting was how long it takes to replace 10 years’ worth of stuff: three days.
   There remains a couple of issues. There is still one entry in the System Devices that has a yellow warning exclamation mark next to it, but the last time I tried fixing that, we had the motherboard driver issue. Secondly, while this baby is on auto-detect for the LAN speed, another computer at the office is going at a mere 10 Mbit/s when I know it is capable of going at 100 Mbit/s. Yet when I put both at the same 100 Mbit/s speed, the transfers go at about a tenth of the speed that they were going at when the settings were 10 Mbit/s and auto. It’s the exact opposite to what I expect, but it would not be the first time that network settings have had me stumped.
   Meanwhile, I have to give props to old faithful, which we used to refer to as Moneypenny (the name assigned to the hard drive):    While I’ve had a few new machines in here, I stuck with my old desktop PC. Thanks to swapping out the DVD drives, what is in here is Nigel’s. And this machine has been very good to me for over 10 years, and if you have accumulated this much stuff, then you’re a bit hesitant to take time out to redo everything on a new system. In fact, I doubt I would have proceeded with the “upgrade” if I went into a store with a couple of grand. I got a bit attached to a very faithful computer. But when you have a unit that is much newer and faster sitting in your office, despite its faults, then you have to act. You almost feel compelled to fix something that is broken.
   Of course, no one can run an international company on a computer if it stayed the same as it was in March 1999. This has been the subject of motherboard, CPU and RAM upgrades over that time, usually done by a real expert, though I did the RAM stuff myself (not that hard). It ran OK, but when I bought the Asus laptop, I found myself on that all the time. And stuff in this family just keeps going—they seem to like being here.
   The new machine does mean greater productivity, so expect to see me work more rather than blog, which was what I tended to do on the laptop because I enjoyed the better speed and, admittedly, the Windows Vista interface.
   It didn’t help that I had early starts on most days this week, after tinkering with the computer at night, attending several functions (including the Montana World of Wearable Art Awards last night) and going to bed at 3 or 4 a.m. So any typos above are mine. Hopefully I can rest up tonight. But for now, a big, public thank-you to Nigel.

First Twitter died for nearly two days. Facebook has been progressively dying, first removing its navigation bars, then its logo, then making false accusations, and now removing all the contents of my home page. And today, I see Vox has begun recommending splogs on my blog:

   I have reported many of these and tonight, I am just too tired to. Hopefully someone else can take up the baton for the time being. Vox is pretty good at dealing to these.

Here are some more neat finds on YouTube. I have only a vague recollection of this show, but I might be confusing with others that had fake computer messages going across the screen (The Invisible Man, The Gemini Man, The Incredible Hulk, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, etc.). Apparently, it was originally entitled Probe, but was retitled Search (possibly due to a conflict with another TV series). It didn’t last, due to a producer change and the idea of a revolving star each week (mixing between Hugh O’Brian, Doug McClure and Tony Franciosa). But the theme music and titles are great (note the use of the MICR typeface) and very early 1970s. They also hint at the optimism people had toward technology as a tool to aid mankind, in this case, an agency specializing in searches.

If only they showed this in the ’50s about life in 2000!

(Forwarded by Larz Shinobi on Twitter.)
   Man, I need some Soylent Green.

I was interviewed for a Ph.D. thesis last week and this is the gear the student had. (Funny calling someone who will be smarter than me in a few months a student.) The thing on the left is a video camera.

   Here are the two gadgets next to a regular café pack of sugar.

Tanya found this last week and we watched it at the office.

   And no, I had decided to Tweet less before I watched this. It just began feeling a bit, well, passé.