Several times a month I get asked what computer to buy.
This gives me an opportunity to vote my biases about what to do and where to do it.
First, I try to ascertain the desires of the buyer and what they hope to do with the computer and also whether they are limited by budget or not.
I recently had a hands-on tradesman, with no computer background, who was anticipating over $3000 in expenses to replace his older machine that was giving him fits. His expectation was based on his daughter's perception of what was going to be needed to do word processing - and a 1000 Mhz at today's current prices was a colossal over expenditure. I felt we could do the whole job for half the budgeted price.
So we usually have a little chat and the following conversation usually ensues:
Having established that the usage is usually for nothing more than word processing, the purchasing of a 1000 MHz cpu with its present costs is just ridiculous. Even the lesser minimum computers are blessed with about 800 MHz and the price is about $650 for the entire computer from Micro Center or Datawise (Skawinski). This is quite fast enough and is a lot less than $1500.
I also advise them to not buy the mail order computers because the products by Dell, Compaq, and Gateway cannot be serviced locally and they usually have parts and structures that are meant as lock-ins; often parts configurations designed to force you to do business with them for additions. I remember one IBM machine that had special cables that would not fit onto the hard drive and an adapter was soldered onto the hard drive - purely a lock-in.
Having selected the more reasonably-priced standard model, we then review the peripherals to assure that there are enough slots. Currently there are choices to be made concerning DVD and CD R/W units. The DVDs are cheap and easily touted by the manufacturers, but I have yet to see one where the owner actually used the DVD to show movies on their computer.
The selection of the CD R/W unit is next. If the customer doesn't want such a unit, and does not know what the backup capabilities are, then I drop the subject. If the customer wants a CD R/W unit, then the next decision is whether to go with a slight upgrade to replace a CD R/W from the manufacturer (often a 8x4x32 unit which is quite slow) or a Plextor after-market 12x10x32 from Datawise that costs a few bucks more but cuts down significantly on creation time and is also "burn proof". We always check that there is a slot into which to install the drive.
Then there comes the discussion of how the person proposes to back up the computer. Often this is the first time that the buyer has even considered the subject. If the answer is to use floppies, then some kind of unit can be used externally when the need arises after the first crash.
My own philosophy on making full disk tape backups, is to assure that I don't have to spend any time personalizing or reinstalling software that did not come with the original machine and having to recreate the personalizations to boot.
But if a tape drive is in the planning, then a slot is required and the availability of a slot is reviewed as external units cost about 20% more.
So then we go on to the disk. In today's machines, 20 GB is minimal and 30 GB seems to be average. This is so tremendous overkill that anything is acceptable. With the operating system and programs usually not taking up more than 1.5 GB, the balance remaining is more than enough for data. The only time I have seen this observation to fail is on a machine that was designed to be a BACKUP machine to receive the images of 20 other machines, and the 45 GB drive was already 60% utilized and climbing.
Next is the discussion of the monitor (CRT/terminal). Now that the prices of 17" monitors are near where the cost of the 15" used to be, they often opt for the larger 17". And now that the 19" prices are where the 17" used to be, the 19"is often chosen. But then they are informed of the current flat panel displays - still getting less expensive. Sometimes a flat panel make a lot of sense for small apartments.
Then we turn to printers. Every computer needs a printer. The fundamental choice is between a laser printer and an inkjet printer. Usually the discussion begins with a short discussion of the relative merits and disadvantages of laser vs. inkjet technology vs. color vs. cartridges vs. refillability vs. operating costs vs. separate heads vs. cost of refilling.
The laser gives MUCH faster print and has higher quality and sharpness. The inkjets can print in color, and hype notwithstanding, are slow as snails.
Laser printers are fast. Even the cheaper ones are many times the speed of a color inkjet. Their print is sharper and the cartridges are refillable. They cost more initially, but the cost per sheet is about 10% of inkjets. In the real world, most printing is best accomplished with the laser printers's black on white.
On the other hand, the inkjets can print color - albeit slowly. Internet is a color medium, and sometimes manuals are presented in color, so a color printer makes sense. But a color printer is just plain dumb for many jobs such as printing out e-mail or a non-color manual.
Then there is the selection of type of color printer which means that you have to make the choice between a three-color printer that makes black from all three of the colors creating a grungy brown that masquerades as black, or a four-color printer that carries a true black in addition to the three primary colors. For serious printing, printers with even more colors are employed - which allows photographic-like images - usually digital camera work.
But color printers are terribly expensive to run - especially if one has a color printer that incorporates the print head along with the ink reservoir. Since the heads in a print head outlast the reservoirs by a factor of at least ten, to have to buy new print heads is sheer folly. Therefore, the first recommendation is to buy a printer with replaceable reservoirs. Further, since usually one color is used more heavily than others, replacing the reservoirs by individual colors makes more sense. The solution is individual color reservoirs. And further, if you have individual reservoirs, the refilling of the reservoir at about 20% of the new cost is just that more rewarding.
Rather than get into the position of choosing between them, I utilize a laser printer about 95% of the time and a color printer about 5%. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. Getting two solves the missing capabilities of the other.
Now that we have made a pitch for two printers, how does one attach two to a single parallel port. In today's market, one can add another parallel port or merely buy a USB-equipped printer. The USB option won't tie up another IRQ. Another way to obtain the extra printer is to go to Computer Recycling on Saturday morning at 9 a.m. and purchase your second printer for peanuts. The ones with the green dot are checked-out machines.
I'm a map nut. I print out a map of where I'm going in 8.5 x 11 format so I can read the map while driving. Makes finding unfamiliar addresses just that much easier. In addition, rather than spending time looking up the street location in the index of a paper map, I use the computer to find and mark it for me.
There is only one thing wrong with the above procedure - I can't see the street signs at night - so locating can get fantastically frustrating when the car headlights don't reach high enough to illuminate the street signs.
Enter the Global Positioning System (GPS) which permits a home PC to have software on it that senses a receiver plunked onto the dashboard of a car, and plots the present position of the receiver on the surface of the earth superimposed onto a map of the local area.
I had always wanted to try GPS out for myself and when my wife presented me with a receiver and software, I went to it.
Loading the Delorme Street Atlas Road Warrior Edition was, as usual, painless. I've been using the predecessor programs for years.
I made the assumption that the satellite signals would be sufficient to penetrate our roof as there was no metallic material in the roof, and assumption proved to be correct.
I plugged four AAA batteries into the receiver, plugged the receiver into the laptop, set the mess on the floor and waited. The diagnostic that showed the number of satellites, eventually showed the requisite four satellites with sufficient signal strength to lock in.
At first, our living room was clearly in the backyard of the house across the street. Then, after a number of minutes, it progressed to where one would expect to find it. The slowness is the time of acquisition of about 15 minutes that one has to allow for the initialization of the system.
I tried the system the next morning and nothing was working. I tested the four AAA cells and they were either dead or marginal. This was the big clue that the power drain on the batteries was such that running the receiver from the automobile 12-volt system is imperative.
On a trip down to the SPAUG tour of Level 3, I used the system with the receiver poked up through the moon roof. It locked in OK but when I got up to 50 mph the receiver flapped around causing me to retrieve it.
But on the way back home via Central Expressway, because I had the system working, I was able to observe my progress. At lights the indication was a single green dot, but when moving, a series of arrows showed my progress. Because I had not permitted enough time for normalization, I was driving through the back yard of the houses I was passing. As the trip progressed, I progressed into the house, the front yard, and finally onto Central Expressway where it belonged.
A note of caution. The system MUST be operated by a passenger. I found that my having to operate the computer and to read it was bundles worse than using a cell phone while driving. One needs the passenger to pay attention to the computer. Reading it at night, however, is a snap.
The San Jose Mercury News on Sunday April 30 had a review of three hand-held GPS devices and the results were not good. I'm happy to say that the Delorme product is just fine.
In a recent issue of Print Screen a sentiment suggested that it was sad how many relatively knowledgeable members of SPAUG still use America On Line (AOL) as their ISP of choice. This seems to suggest that these users just don't understand and have yet to see the light. In their naivete they are totally unaware of what is "right" for them. Maybe it's true. Maybe not. This sentiment of course might also have included the vast majority of PC users in this country who also use AOL.
I plead guilty to being one of those unenlightened many who continue to use AOL. Why? Because it offers everything I need in an ISP and provides me with the extra values of a rather complete Internet information system for the low cost of $19.95 (AARP discount). I do maintain a second phone line that is dedicated to a separate fax machine as well as modem in my computer. Have there been problems? Of course, but very few and far between. Am I concerned about a lack of transmission speed? I rarely download attached files choosing to err on the side of caution, therefore the need for transmission speed is negligible. Perhaps because of this I have never encountered a virus in my system. I am fully aware of the services and pricing structure of other ISPs and the speed of carrier systems such as ISDN, Cable, Satellite and all forms of the DSLs. If the service that AOL provides deteriorates or the rates are no longer competitive, I will consider looking elsewhere. As for others, in their wisdom, they will make similar decisions on what works best for their particular needs.
I will however avoid upgrading to AOL version 6 until all of the negative rumors of problems with this version are either disproved or the problems corrected. This is consistent with previous personal policy on such things as operating systems. There were those pioneers, the "firsts" who tempted fate and elected to be first on the block to install WIN 95, WIN 98, WIN NT and WIN ME. God bless them. They were the ones who went through the horrors of hell encountering all of the bugs and compatibility problems that effected the positive changes in the software. This of course allowed opportunists such as me to benefit from their frustration, by waiting to install (or choose not to install) the operating systems after they were relatively bug free. In a sense this has become a computer world game of the tortoise and the hare. In this case the hare encountered all of the ruts in the road in order that the tortoise could avoid them and still reach the same destination. As Maurice Chevalier might intone, "Thank heaven for little 'firsts', without them what would little CU's (computer users) do"