Our Opinion April 2001

Our Opinion Page for April 2001

Other people say we talk like a computer, almost pure binary these days. When I went to college in 1982, folks had five different coloured pens in their top pockets, elbow pads on there tweedy type jackets, their trousers usually three inches above the shoes and sporting odd socks, etc., etc., I however had a scar on my face, long hair and a tattoo. In those days it was possible to know everything there was about computers and for many years I struggled on, trying to know everything about computers. Some time ago, realizing this was no longer possible, we decided to know how to find out everything there is about personal computers.

This digital age is in our opinion one of the best revolutions the world has ever known (to date). In our early days it saddened us to see the mass of unemployment caused by computers taking over the every day repetitive tasks men and women have been doing for many years. System analysts came in and convinced employers to use computers. Staff were never properly retrained. The expense of the analyst and computer software and hardware then all the peripherals, meant that staff were being paid off. Payoffs were expected because the computers were going to do the work of many people, not needing rest or food, no 40 hour weeks, unions or holiday pay. However, for those who got the boot , there were no opportunities for other employment. Most companies found themselves left behind the competition if they did not have a computer (sigh to those horrible myths) and could not afford to increase their work force. However everyone wanted to employ someone who could operate the damned machines (PCs that is) but all the best techs etc. were on mega bucks with so and so. The opportunities eventually came when businesses and the like realised the mass of unemployed folks needed re-educated and retrained. Those unemployed who have not found a way to embrace the digital technology are being left on the shelf.

It broke my heart to see a man mid fifties collecting trolleys outside a supermarket. A job that used to be popular with youngsters at college, who, possibly, instead are publishing web sites or writing 3D engines and possibly earning more money than there parents.

It really bothers us that some people will spend lots of money on computers and peripherals yet know absolutely nothing about them. Would they spend thousands on a car and not know how to drive it, or where the petrol goes. Yet across the world folks are buying something they know very little about. This is encouraging to technicians looking to make a living but not so good when the technician, like one I heard of, is using the Internet to pose questions to helpful sites regarding the problem the customer is being charged for. The customer who thinks they are paying the technician for their knowledge is caught in the middle when the engineer trashes the operating system and makes a sharp exit when they can't get online anymore.

Microsoft Windows

Windows is better known to us as Windaes a Scottish pronunciation of the word. Many problems we encounter with windows happen for the same reason or as a result of the same action. Meaning logical problems. For instance 'every time a user does x, y happens. 'Every time I use the computer this happens'. Knowing the last function the computer correctly performed or the last time the computer was working and what did I do next gets to the bottom of the problem quickest. Trying to remember exactly what it was that changed the computer configuration is made more difficult when many changes are made simultaneously.
Our personal choice of operating system is Windaes NT. We like the (false) sense of security the system gives us. In all fairness we use it as a deterrent to put of casual nosey parka's from easily accessing our info. Lacking decent faxing software (integration) we use Windows 95 for that purpose. Defraging isn't really necessary with NT but occasionally we dump our files to another identical hard drive then swap the drives when the machine is switched off then power back up with a nicely defragmented hard drive.

We at Scotsmist like networking for networking sake. Sharing drives, CD writers, printers, modems, fax machines is what we wanted networking for. The faster the cabling and cards the better. We use our network to video conference with each other and play the occasional Rally Masters race (recommended), as a backup store for all our work and best of all every single album we all have is on MP3 format stored on a hard drive, nine gigabytes, over two hundred albums, about two thousand songs. All day Intranet music. We each have our own play lists which we use in Xing and some nice compilations have been created from the many songs. A web server pushes the MP3 songs and keeps track of the most popular songs, dates and times played, number of times played etc., stored in an SQL table. We have also scanned all the covers and shrunk them to thumbnails displayed on a web page. Clicking The thumbnail starts the album streaming over the network through fairly decent sound blaster live cards and four point speakers (also standard on our own PCs).

In the early PC days how many of you liked windaes. Particular hates about windaes were how easily you could delete the contents of your hard drive or how accidentally, files or folders could be moved or copied. The massive (at the time) overhead of windaes put us off and the swap file just ate your hard drive space (about 40 MB total on our best PCs). Then there was the time it took to boot the machine to start actually doing any work (if you had any RAM left and it wasn't swapping to the hard drive already). In DOS only and a line added to autoexec.bat we could switch on, dial in to our mail server download messages and log off in nearly the same time Windows needs to boot up and the hour glass to disappear.

Things about windaes we like are multitasking, not having to relearn programs and application user interfaces (although that is changing, software authors are writing their own GUIs) and OnNow which works on most of our PCs.

Component Quality

I have had two new floppy drives installed in my own personal PC in the last twelve months. Surprisingly just after the warranty runs out. Both floppy drives are made by Panasonic. Both times the same thing happened. The drives are hardly used these days, so I really can't blame usage. I booted from floppy disk and started running an anti-virus program. The application asked for disk two and fifty percent of the way through reading the floppy started grinding. I swapped disk two for my backup copy of the disk and pressed 'R for retry, but the same happened, the disk just grinds. I aborted everything and ran scandisk with surface scan on the floppy but at 50% the disk started to grind and report errors, then just hung. I replaced the floppy drive with a brand new NEC this time and everything deems fine again.
I have came to the conclusion that dust built up inside the drive is responsible for the errors. Even though I used a disk cleaner, the old drive still reads with errors.

My advice to anyone who does not use the floppy drive often is to use a disk cleaner first. Then you will reduce the chance of contaminating the head and surface of the disk. We have also started leaving a floppy disk in the drive as this appears to reduce the build up of dust inside the drive housing. Also, I activated the seek floppy drive at start-up option in the BIOS, just to give the thing a kick start periodically.

It still puzzles me however, that my drive did not get much wear or tear, I probably didn't use it more than a hundred times.

This week one of our LCD monitors packed up. It is a 18" dual input and has two USB ports. These monitors have a fluorescent tube along the top and bottom edge of the case which illuminates the panel. The tubes are rather expensive but should last for about 4000 hours use. I checked the service history on the monitor. This model supports this by holding down the menu button when powering up. A extra field appeared in the menu allowing me to see things like operating temperature, operating hours or date of manufacture, etc. The tubes had been in operation for over 4000 hours so I unwrapped the spare and started to replace it. Taking the case off was easy, there were slots along the edge that could be popped with a flat blade, and two screws in the bottom corners once removed allowed the whole front fascia to come off. Both tubes were easy to locate and the small plugs easy to separate. A screw held each in place and once removed, the tube slid out easily. After replacing and securing the top tube the unit was powered up again, only this time there was a smell. A very strange smell similar to melting plastic but crossed with a hairdryer. This means stripping the unit down to the bone and is a job for another day.

May's Opinion