A look at hardward, software, inter- & intra- nets, and solutions
Don’t you hate it when people are depending on you and your computer breaks? Gr-r-r-r.
Insert reboots as appropritate. My desktop computer told me I had no disk space when I had plenty … Then it froze my screen … Then it wouldn’t hook up to the internet … and on and on.
I can take a hint. Continued…
Posted in hardware, structure, technology.
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– August 13, 2009
I have purchased my last desktop computer ever. I didn’t realize it at the time I bought it, but the new hardware model seems obvious to me — relative to my business’ objectives.
What I need:
I can get all of this using a netbook computer and external devices (hard drives, monitor, and keyboard, etc.), for less than ½ the price. And better yet, it uses Windows XP instead of that clunker, Vista.
Granted, I do lose some functionality, but nothing I can’t live without.
The missing piece that I don’t yet have (tomorrow!) is an external DVD drive so that I can (a) install new software and burn DVDs and CDs. And then I can get dedicated netbooks for different business functions for $400 or so a pop. I get redundancy; I get good-enough power, I gain physical space on my desk.
And I don’t have the aggravation – that I have today – of my $1000+ desktop dinosaur going bad on me and needing to be taken into the shop.
Time will tell, but I think this is a good model.
- Bal
Posted in hardware, software, technology.
– August 9, 2009
My son is an artist. Pretty good, especially for the amount of formal training he’s had.
By and large he does physical art, i.e., art with tools and materials that could have been found 50 years ago, like charcoal, markers, pencils, spray paint, etc. Nothing wrong with that, but I envision much better things for him. After all, we’re in a computer-networked world, and his life, whether he knows it or not, is deep into the 21st century – not back in the 20th.
So I suspect that one of the most important tools he can have in his arsenal is a good graphics tablet.
As I conduct my search for a good one, I’ll tell you what I find; not so much in the form of reviews. Rather just a way of letting you in on the factors that will eventually go into the decision I make.
If there are factors that you think I should take into account, of course, I’d be very interested in that.
- Bal
Posted in technology.
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– August 8, 2009
Sometimes I go to places like eBay, Amazon and Craigslist to see what is out there.
One of my favorite categories is software. (You can tell, right?)
So I go to Ebay today, and search for software and then sort for the most expensive product to come up first. Now, I was expecting a price on the order of $1,000 – maybe $2,000. I mean, even CATIA sells for about $8Grand.
So imagine my utter amazement when I saw something – SOFTWARE – billing software – selling for $750,000!
I feel like Professor Emmet Brown in Back to the Future when he realizes the power requirements to send Marty back to the future and screams “1.2 gigawatts!”
$750,000!
Now – you might be thinking, how on Earth could billing software be worth ¾ of a million bucks.
The answer appears more reasonable, though I am still amazed at the price, when you realize that it’s not for use of the software, but rather for the source code. So this is a sale aimed at developers, or rather, software houses that could create products from the source code.
I guess I just find sales of this magnitude startling since I tend to deal in somewhat more modest numbers.
- Bal
Posted in saw it on ebay, software.
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– August 6, 2009
Even without asking, let alone taking a survey, I think I speak for a lot of people in this post.
If you are developing software, it would be really nice if you could provide time indicators when a software operation is going to take a fair amount of time. For instance, I just installed an antivirus program on my machine. One step took more than 10 minutes. I didn’t anticipate that, and it looked like the system had frozen. Just on the chance that it was a long duration step, I went and got my lunch prepared. By the time I returned, 10 minutes later, things had moved on.
It would be nice if there was some way for a user like me to tell when the program freezes versus when it is simply doing it’s thing and it’s going to take awhile.
How about running a secondary program in the background called something like “All is well” that runs a diagnostic on the installation process. Obviously if my entire system freezes, that won’t be any help. But at least it could tell if the installation program has frozen while the rest of my system is OK.
I, for one, would find that very useful indeed.
- Bal
Posted in communication, improving software.
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– August 6, 2009
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