#31 Computer Waste - Why we should recycle

Today is garbage day. The day we present our waste for the county to bury. Now not all things we put in the garbage is fit for burying. High Tech equipment falls into that category. Batteries, motherboards, Monitor tubes and wires are all no nos for burying in the land fill. They never (and never is a real long time) break down and can pollute water and soil for a very long time. So what should you do as an educated American?

1. Pass on what you no longer need. If its still working pass it on. Your kids, couldn't care less if it can play games. Also, I'm sure there are children in every community that don't have sufficient funds to have a home PC. Work with local schools to see that there are less deprived children.

2. If it doesn't work, then check with local recyclers. A quick GOOGLE search should find companies in your area that accept equipment for recycling. Many schools accept used ink cartridges and cell phones for the money they will receive. Yes, you have to do some leg work, but you'll feel better after you have done it.

3. If you run up to a brick wall on #2 then there are National recyclers out there. We use HP and here is a link to their site: http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/globalcitizenship/environment/recycle/index.html

Please consider using the blank side of any printouts that you have for non essential print outs. Get a two sided printer. Only use color when you absolutely must. And finally if you aren't using your PC, just turn it off.

Mother Earth thanks you!

#30 New Software? What new software

I started to use the new Office 2007 that Microsoft hoisted upon us with the new operating system, Windows Vista. In particular, I was working with Word 2007. The interface is new and I was having a bit of difficulty finding some features (Like Save as, Outlining, Lines spacing!). While doing this, I started to think about what has happened to new software?

Other then some incremental upgrades, I haven't seen a program that does anything different in years. I would suppose that most new software is found on the Internet as web sites that do something more then give out information. If you have found some new commercial software, please let me know about it.

In fact I sell very little software anymore. Antivirus, Antispyware and Office are about it. Cameras come with graphics programs for free. Microsoft gives away browsers and music players. Apple gives away iTunes, If you have a CD or DVD burner on your PC, it probably came with free software (we use NERO) to make CDs. So I think its been the advent of free software that's killed innovation in software. Why work on a new program when someone will probably give it away with some hardware?

Happy Tuesday.

#29 Electricity Massage

Good morning!

Hope everyone sprung forward and is as tired as I am. My main PC had the Microsoft Patch and leaped without incident. We'll see how many calls I get today to keep the PCs in step.

Electric utilities do a fine job of providing power to us 24/7. They aren't real big on quality control. The variation of power provided can be harmful to your technology items that feed on pure electricity. Optimally, in the US, you want 120 volts of alternating 3 phase electrons heading your way. Note that most gadgets take that 120 volts and transforms them into direct (DC )current. I've seen as low as 103 volts and as high as 132 volts coming out of wall sockets. The transformers don't like that range of power and can do some interesting (read expensive) tricks when not fed their required 120volts.

We keep all of our valued electronics on UPS (uninterruptible power supply ). These black boxes have batteries that let them provide pure 120volt power no matter what is coming in to them. They also can provide power for a limited time should your faithful utility become unfaithful (read blackout). The price on UPS is pretty low ($49-$99) for most electronics. they need to be sized to match what they are protecting. Oh, and did you know that PCSS sells these gems? Go Figure. Have a great week.

#28 The High tech home - Part II

We left off our high tech home travels in the bathroom. Let's go back to outside the home. How do you unlock your doors? Still using keys? That's 500 year old technology. The latest is to use keypads and electronically open them. Keypads have great advantages. You can set up different combinations for different access. For example you can give out an access number to the cable guy that will only work from 9-5PM not at midnight. If you get a new housekeeper you can just delete the old housekeepers number and not have to rekey all your doors. You also can have a record of when everyone comes into the house. Teenagers will still craw through open windows!

Now the kitchen is the room that has seen the most technology change. Refrigerators that dispense all kinds of liquids and solids from the door are now the norm. Smooth ceramic cook tops and Convection/Microwave ovens have changed in a single generation how we prepare foods. Does anyone under the age of 60 really use their oven any more? I would love to have an instant hot water tap on our sink to make that cup of tea I like in the winter. You hardly ever see a kitchen without a TV today. Nice thin flat screen TVs that are small enough to fit in any small corner. Another newer innovation are the small wine refrigerators that have separate white and red wine zones. Santa I'll take the 50 bottle model, please!

Home theaters are the upscale equivalent of the old sunken living rooms. I've seen some in homes with theatre seats, popcorn machines and a sound system that could deafen half of Covington. Plasma, LCD and projection displays have gotten bigger every year. Costs have come down from outrageous to "wait for my Tax Return" size. Connecting your video system to your PC for all those MP3 songs and now downloaded videos is the latest rage. Two summers ago I digitized my entire CD collection. I hardly ever listen to music through the old sound system any more.

I would like to computer control my lights and heating. There have been systems to do this for 20 years, but its still isn't quite ready for prime time. I'll bet we'll see the time where you come into the house and tell it "Honey, I'm home!" and the house will adjust temperature, lighting and music to your taste.

Have a great weekend and don't forget to SPRING forward on Sunday!

#27 The high tech Home - Part 1

For being the techno geek that I am, I live in a pretty low tech house. We do have wireless Internet, but pretty much all the appliances and and elecronics are state of the art 1970s. We did install a geothermal heat pump in the late 90s. We drilled 4 wells in the backyard and ran pipes throgh the wells. Water is cooled or warmed to 57 degrees (the temperature of the deep soil) and then used to heat or cool air in the house. Its a pretty neat system and keeps our electric bills reasonable. It's not really high tech. We have old style mecury themostats the we push levers to heat, cool and select an approximate temperature.

So what would I put in a new house of the 21st century? Despite all the wireless craze, I think I would wire every room with fibre optics. You could use the wire for Internet and Cable/Satellite transmissions. I would definitely pick a heating/cooling system with computerized zone settings and programmed time controls. If your home isn't used much during the day, why heat and cool it for the ladybugs? I also would not put in a hot water heater. The new tankless hot water systems also make alot of sense. Why keep a big tank of water hot when you only need it 2 or maybe 3 times a day? The Rinnai system gets lots of publicity, but Rheem and Bosch also make great systems. Just google tankless hot water heater.

How hi-tech is your alarm clock? Ours plays music or harshly beeps you awake. I think I had one of those in the 70s in college. The latest gadgets put the time and temperature on the ceiling, play music from CDs and MP3 files and talk to you with information you didn't know you you needed to start the day. Any electronics in your shower? Music, massaging rain type water and computer controlled soaping while you sit on the shower bench are all available. Not ready for that? What about the high tech toilet? Surely you've seen the news articles of the Japanese toilets that are heated, salute when you leave and play cute tunes when you sit down. If you can think of it, someone will build it.

More tomorrow!

#26 Buying that Digital Camera

The Mrs. said she didn’t like my picture on the blog. Something about having a VT growing out of my head. The result of that conversation is the picture she took last night. Any comments pro or con can be left by clicking the comment button below. I’ll pass on the better comments to the Mrs.

PCSS sells just 3 brands of digital camera: Nikon, Canon and Olympus. Why these three? We’ve found that the camera manufacturers have the best lenses. The better the lens, the better the picture is rule of thumb. Our chosen three also do a great job of providing cameras at every price point. From the least expensive point and shoot to the expensive SLR replacements, they offer them all. They also keep up with technology, but don’t chase it. I mean they add new technology in a measured way, rather then putting in bells and whistles without regard to usability. In layman’s terms, they are easier to use.

So what do you look for in buying a digital camera? You first need to answer this question: What kind of pictures do I usually take? Vacation, Work, Kids, Landscape, Sports, or a bit of everything? These answers will help to determine what type of camera to explore. For example if you like to take action pictures (Sports) then we’ll look for cameras with a faster shutter speed. Early digital cameras had a 1-3 second delay from when you pressed the button till the auto focus worked and the picture was taken. Newer cameras have halved that time, but if you are serious about sports, you’ll need a faster response time.

We like digital cameras that are simple and have a nice feature set. We still like having a view finder and a nice large viewing LCD (minimum 2.5”). You should be able to turn off the flash and view your pictures on your camera in a minimum of effort. Controls should be easy to understand. The camera should be sized to feel comfortable in your hand. Not too heavy, not too small. We have a Canon elf SD 200 that the Mrs. and I fight over. It’s very small and takes great general pictures. Not the best for Sports, but for vacation and friends very nice. Notice that I haven’t mention megapixels. It really doesn’t matter anymore. Every digital camera sold today has more megapixels then most can use with their current printers.

Smile!

#25 Blogs, Blogs Everywhere

Since I've started blogging, I've become aware of the blogging community (a bit late!) and where it comes from. I'm not sure anyone knows where it is going. There are supposedly over 60,000,000 blogs out there in cyberspace. I would guess not many of them are read very often. Some are no more then the modern version of the diary. Others are in support of some cause, some group, something. Many, like mine, let individuals share their knowledge and thoughts on wide ranging issues. So how did we get to 60 million bloggers in so short of time?

Blogs were online diaries that gave the writer the opportunity to let others know what they were up to. Justin Hall, a student at Swathmore College, is credited with one of the first blogs. Begun in 1994, Justin continued his blogging for an impressive 11 years. In the beginning, blogs were just threads of commentary, that by nature were in order from today to the past. At some point, people began adding comments to the blogs. So many comments that the comments ended up having blogging lives of their own. One of the early news bloggers, Matt Drudge, began to morph from blogger to full fledged news web site.

The term "weblog" was coined by Jorn Barger on December 17, 1997. The short form, "blog," was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April or May of 1999. This was quickly adopted as both a noun and verb ("to blog," meaning "to edit one's weblog or to post to one's weblog"). One of the first sites to promote blogging was the still in existence XANGA. Begun in 1996, they now have over 20 million blogs.

So how can you make use of a blog? It certainly is a great way to get the same information to a great number of people. Better then email, because it doesn't go in SPAM filters or misses people because of vacation. It also leave a history that people can peruse at their leisure. We love the blogs our friends set up to document trips and adventures. We can live vicariously through their words (and pictures!). We use the Google sponsored Blogger software. Easy to use and still free. If you are thinking of starting a blog we highly recommend it: http://www.blogger.com/start

#24 Times they are a'changin

Next Sunday at 2 AM Daylight Savings time will be back with us. Your computer this year, may not know the time has changed though. Microsoft has an update on their site to keep your time up to date. This is a big issue for organizations that deal with money. Hopefully they have all updated their Windows to keep the clocks tidy.

Many customers would complain that their computer clock would not keep the right time. Slow or fast, never right. This was the case with Windows based computers until Windows XP. The older versions of Windows and DOS had no automatic update feature for the computers internal clock. The computer clock is a program running on your mother board that attempts to act like a clock. The program isn’t very accurate in comparison to a clock. With the advent of the Internet, Windows XP added the utility to update the computers clock with one of several internet clocks. The sites include a Microsoft site and a US government site. Just double click on your clock in the task bar and then chose the Internet time and Update Now. Viola, the correct time!

The “other” clock in your computer is the processor clock speed. This is the gigahertz, megahertz in the old days, speed that your processor is rated at. For many years the faster the processor the faster your PC would run. Processors are so fast now, that their speed is really not the slow down factor on your PC. The amount of RAM (random access) memory that you have installed in your PC and the speed of your hard drive are more important then the processor clock speed. You can find out how much RAM you have and your clock speed by right clicking on My Computer then left click on Properties.

Every new computer I set up, or every computer I restore, I have to change the time zone from Pacific to Eastern. This is the revenge of the Microsoft engineers. Since they all live near Redmond, Washington, they decided that every Windows operating system would default to Pacific time. Thanks for the aggrevation!

Have a great week!

#23 Mousing around

December 9, 1968 was a momentous date in the history of computers and technology. On that date in San Francisco, computer pioneer Douglas Englebart gave what we now call the “Mother of all Demos” at the Fall Joint Computer conference. Englebart had labored for over 12 years on a vision of a new way of computing. The culmination was this unique demonstration. In a short 90 minutes the world of computing was turned on its head and would never be the same.

Englebart’s group, the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford was interested in making computers more widely used. The group felt that punch cards and keyboarding would never be used by the mass of business people. In the demonstration, Enblebart introduced to the world: hypertext, networking, object addressing and dynamic file linking, as well as shared-screen collaboration. The highlight of the demo was the introduction of the computer mouse as a unique input device for the common business person. The mouse had been invented by Englebart earlier that year after many attempts to simplify human input to the computer. He wanted to create a device that anybody could use to control a computer more naturally than a keyboard. Made of wood with two wheels to determine X-Y motion, the first mouse looks quite boxy.

The patent for the mouse was awarded to Englebart in 1970, but was not fully adapted until the 1980s. Englebart never received a penny in royalties, since his patent expired in 1987, well before the mouse became the input device of choice. The first mouse used in a commercial system was the XEROX Star introduced in 1981. The Star also had the first graphical user interface (GUI) operating system. The founders of Apple loved the Star and introduced their version as the Apple Lisa in 1983. Although the Lisa was a commercial failure, Apple never gave up the hope of GUI and mouse input. The Apple Macintosh was the very successful result. Microsoft came up the “me too” Windows system in November 1985.

The development of the mouse using a ball and “chopper wheels” came in 1971. The “chopper wheels” chopped light beams as they turned and translated those chops into X-Y movement. Various attempts at getting rid of the ball were made in the 1980s. Optical mice that used a grid surface mouse pad and LEDs were made by several manufacturers. The Laser optical mouse we use today was developed by Sun Microsystems in 1998. Along with the laser came the cutting of the wire and wireless optical mouse, today’s ultimate mighty mouse!

#22 Why we type the way we do

Ah the infamous QWERTY keyboard. What idiot put this keyboard together? It makes no sense. It is awkward, inefficient and confusing. We've been saying that for 135 years. But there it remains. Those keys made their first appearance on a rickety, clumsy device marketed as the "Type-Writer" in 1872. The name QWERTY comes from the first six characters on the top alphabet row. Today the keyboard is a universal fixture on the most advanced computers in the 21st Century and is thus also known as the Universal Keyboard. The QWERTY has been the bane of everyone learning typing or keyboarding.

How could we get stuck with something so bad? In this case, the answer lies in the old proverb about the early bird catching the worm. As far as the typewriter keyboard is concerned, being first was the whole ball game. It was the work of inventor C. L. Sholes, who put together the prototypes of the first commercial typewriter in a Milwaukee machine shop back in the 1860's. For years, many typists have accused Sholes of deliberately arranging his keyboard to slow down fast typists who would otherwise jam up his sluggish machine. In fact, his motives were just the opposite.

When Sholes built his first model in 1868, the keys were arranged alphabetically in two rows. The crude machine shops in Milwaukee could hardly produce a finely-honed instrument that worked with precision. Yes, the first typewriter was sluggish. Yes, it did clash and jam when someone tried to type with it. But Sholes was able to figure out a way around the problem simply by rearranging the letters.

The first typewriter had its letters on the end of rods called "typebars." The typebars hung in a circle. The roller which held the paper sat over this circle, and when a key was pressed, a typebar would swing up to hit the paper from underneath. If two typebars were near each other in the circle, they would tend to clash into each other when typed in succession. So, Sholes figured he had to take the most common letter pairs such as "TH" and make sure their typebars hung at safe distances

He did this using a study of letter-pair frequency prepared by educator Amos Densmore, brother of James Densmore, who was Sholes' chief financial backer. The QWERTY keyboard itself was determined by the existing mechanical linkages of the typebars inside the machine to the keys on the outside. Sholes' solution did not eliminate the problem completely, but it was greatly reduced. Note that all these modifications were made for 1800s ENGLISH. The keyboard arrangement was considered important enough to be included on Sholes' patent granted in 1878.

Thus we have the wonderful QWERTY keyboard used on every personal computer due to mechanical interference. The irony isn’t lost on me…