A software development blog that I read had an entry on alternative data storage. It referred to a tongue in cheek project called PaperBack. The idea is that your data is printed out to paper so that it will not degrade like magnetic or optical storage. There are serious people thinking on this subject. All in all I cannot tell if PaperBack is a joke or serious. Regardless, it highlights something that I often think about.
I look at all the data that I and my family have acquired over time and wonder about it. Documents, audio files, image files, videos and others. I have managed over time to collapse them down to a single large collection, which I have on multiple different hard drives. The collection represents all the floppy and zip disks I'd hauled around for 20+ years plus CD and DVD archives. Luckily external hard drives have plunged in price.
I should have started all this sooner than I did and count myself lucky that catastrophe did not strike. I have personally encountered tape that could not be used for anything or there was no software to read it. Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of data inaccessible. Myself, I have CD's from the late 80's that are no longer readable. I also have a graveyard of dead hard drives.
It makes me think about how fleeting all this is. The fact that hard drives even work is something of a miracle with all the things that have to work JUST so between the hardware and software, at many levels. Every couple of years I have a fit of getting things together and saved. After I spend all the time doing it and making sure I've got it all I worry about the drives that I am backed up to failing. Or that a tornado will come in and annihilate it all regardless, making my efforts futile.
Then I get very philosophical and wonder what is so important with what I have. One time when I thought I had lost about six months worth of photos I felt physically ill and dreaded telling my wife. Luckily I found the files on another backup and all was saved. Regardless, if a tornado came along and annihilated the house and both backups we would be glad just to be alive.
I guess sometimes you have to balance off covering yourself against absolutely everything and what really matters.
Regardless, if you have not already done it, go out and buy an external hard drive and back up all your data. It is only a matter of time before your main hard drive fails. It is the cheapest insurance you will ever buy.
Showing posts with label computer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label computer. Show all posts
Friday, August 7, 2009
Friday, May 8, 2009
The rise of the Netbook
Making computers smaller was a goal from the very earliest incarnations of the technology. Down from the size of a room to the size of a few fridges. Down from that to a largish box that could sit on the top of a desk. Soon someone asked "How about one I can take with me?" Portable (in the sense that they COULD be moved, not necessarily EASY to move) computers themselves iterated through various forms. Of course someone said "What if it ran on batteries?" and computers became truly portable, freed from the tether of the electrical grid (or a generator). The same evolution has continued over the years with portables becoming smaller and more powerful with each cycle.
Until very recently these smaller and more powerful machines commanded premium prices. You could expect to pay much more than you'd pay for a desktop computer with similar power. The intent was that the portable computer should have the same power (or close to it) as a desktop. This meant all kinds of trade-offs had to be made and components had to be engineered to be even smaller. All this engineering did not come cheap and having a laptop computer was a badge of honor and the province of the technological (or just wealthy) elite.
Eventually a kind of tipping point was found, not unlike with cell phones. In the same way that the huge cell phones of the 1980's become smaller and smaller into the 1990's so that design decisions started to rotate around making the keys LARGE enough for human fingers to operate as the phones had become so small laptops started to change also. Two kinds of consumers were looking for portable machines, with two sets of criteria: as SMALL as possible (most often frequent travelers and/or gadget freaks) versus as POWERFUL as possible (the so called "desktop replacement" crowd). Each of these consumer types was provided with what they wanted, but in all cases you continued to pay dearly for the machines.
As time and Moore's Law marched on an intersection occurred. This was the intersection between relatively powerful laptops and the ubiquity of wireless internet. Again something that was once the province of the technical elite became very common, with wireless access available virtually anywhere for a very small fee, if at all. Instead of existing as an alternative to a desktop computer the laptop became basically a terminal to connect into the content of the internet. The need for the terminal hardware (i.e., the laptop) to be powerful was lessened. Beyond a certain amount of power was a waste. A simple machine could be used to read e-mail, surf the web, watch videos, etc. The hardware of a new type of laptop was ready. The other part necessary was the software.
Open source software, which languished for some years in obscurity from the public, leapt to the forefront of these new machines, dubbed "netbooks" as they are basically used to access networks and not much else. Rather than having to pay the "Microsoft tax" for every machine netbook manufacturers started to load open source operating systems like Linux onto their machines, erasing the extra payment. This dropped the price a little bit more, along with the smaller screen, small hard drive and lack of optical drive to produce a netbook for a few hundred dollars instead of almost a thousand dollars.
The effect on the market was slow to build but once it did it ran away, catching the large manufacturers unawares. Coinciding with some economic hard times netbooks flew off the shelves and accounted for most of the growth in the sales of portable computers. Now all the major manufacturers have their own netbooks out and Microsoft is scrambling to try and find a way to ensure that they are a presence in the market, albeit at a lower per unit cost as in the past.
For many people a netbook is all the computer that they need. They can use a web based provider of e-mail, store their pictures on a photo sharing site, use online applications for word processing and generally do what they need to do without very much regard to the computer that they do it on. If their inexpensive netbook bites the dust the only thing you might need to do is rediscover your bookmarks (although even those can be cached away by one of many online utilities).
There will always be a market for the more powerful and expensive laptops for people who need the power of local processing for tasks like video processing or engineering that burns up a lot of CPU cycles, in the same way that there will still be people who will spend thousands of dollars on desktop machines to do very specific tasks. In both cases, though, there are now inexpensive alternatives, often using open source software, that give people just what they need for a small amount of money.
Keeping in mind what you're trying to get done before you choose your technology is a techgnostic thing to do. Think it through the next time you advise somebody on what kind of computer to buy or examine your own needs the next time you put your money down.
Until very recently these smaller and more powerful machines commanded premium prices. You could expect to pay much more than you'd pay for a desktop computer with similar power. The intent was that the portable computer should have the same power (or close to it) as a desktop. This meant all kinds of trade-offs had to be made and components had to be engineered to be even smaller. All this engineering did not come cheap and having a laptop computer was a badge of honor and the province of the technological (or just wealthy) elite.
Eventually a kind of tipping point was found, not unlike with cell phones. In the same way that the huge cell phones of the 1980's become smaller and smaller into the 1990's so that design decisions started to rotate around making the keys LARGE enough for human fingers to operate as the phones had become so small laptops started to change also. Two kinds of consumers were looking for portable machines, with two sets of criteria: as SMALL as possible (most often frequent travelers and/or gadget freaks) versus as POWERFUL as possible (the so called "desktop replacement" crowd). Each of these consumer types was provided with what they wanted, but in all cases you continued to pay dearly for the machines.
As time and Moore's Law marched on an intersection occurred. This was the intersection between relatively powerful laptops and the ubiquity of wireless internet. Again something that was once the province of the technical elite became very common, with wireless access available virtually anywhere for a very small fee, if at all. Instead of existing as an alternative to a desktop computer the laptop became basically a terminal to connect into the content of the internet. The need for the terminal hardware (i.e., the laptop) to be powerful was lessened. Beyond a certain amount of power was a waste. A simple machine could be used to read e-mail, surf the web, watch videos, etc. The hardware of a new type of laptop was ready. The other part necessary was the software.
Open source software, which languished for some years in obscurity from the public, leapt to the forefront of these new machines, dubbed "netbooks" as they are basically used to access networks and not much else. Rather than having to pay the "Microsoft tax" for every machine netbook manufacturers started to load open source operating systems like Linux onto their machines, erasing the extra payment. This dropped the price a little bit more, along with the smaller screen, small hard drive and lack of optical drive to produce a netbook for a few hundred dollars instead of almost a thousand dollars.
The effect on the market was slow to build but once it did it ran away, catching the large manufacturers unawares. Coinciding with some economic hard times netbooks flew off the shelves and accounted for most of the growth in the sales of portable computers. Now all the major manufacturers have their own netbooks out and Microsoft is scrambling to try and find a way to ensure that they are a presence in the market, albeit at a lower per unit cost as in the past.
For many people a netbook is all the computer that they need. They can use a web based provider of e-mail, store their pictures on a photo sharing site, use online applications for word processing and generally do what they need to do without very much regard to the computer that they do it on. If their inexpensive netbook bites the dust the only thing you might need to do is rediscover your bookmarks (although even those can be cached away by one of many online utilities).
There will always be a market for the more powerful and expensive laptops for people who need the power of local processing for tasks like video processing or engineering that burns up a lot of CPU cycles, in the same way that there will still be people who will spend thousands of dollars on desktop machines to do very specific tasks. In both cases, though, there are now inexpensive alternatives, often using open source software, that give people just what they need for a small amount of money.
Keeping in mind what you're trying to get done before you choose your technology is a techgnostic thing to do. Think it through the next time you advise somebody on what kind of computer to buy or examine your own needs the next time you put your money down.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Reduce, reuse, recycle.
Being green is seen as increasingly important for companies. Sometimes it's a stretch to find something to trumpet about but you can always find something like using recycled paper in your printers or such. If the new measure actually saves the company some money (not often), all the better.
One place that companies could definitely get more bang for their green buck is with computer hardware. The hardware itself caused a lot of pollution during its manufacture and when it winds up in a landfill it leaches a lot of nasty chemicals. If you can avoid having to buy new computer hardware you can feel better for being green as well as save some money.
Most often the things that will fail on a computer are the parts that move: the hard drive, any fans in the case and the power supply fan. Otherwise, in the absence of a power surge, the rest of the solid state electronics will keep going for years (at least five). It used to be that software always outpaced hardware and you always had to buy new hardware to keep up. Hardware is now ahead of software in most cases (unless you're talking about niche needs like high-demand video games or such). With some more RAM (inexpensive) and maybe some new parts that you interact with (monitor, keyboard and mouse) you will feel like you have a new computer.
If your needs are not directly tied to software available on Macintosh or Windows you can load one of the freely available Linux distributions and get your computing tasks done very handily, while also saving some money and making your computer more secure. If you are not comfortable with such a move you could just back up your data and do a clean re-install of your operating system and again feel the joy of a new space. If you are 100% uncomfortable with either of these suggestions you can go and buy yourself a new computer but keep in mind that the prices are much lower than they used to be and you don't need a lot of power for most things you're going to do.
As always, you need to think about what it is you're trying to do when you are considering a hardware purchase. Do you want what you're getting just because you're "due" for some new hardware, or do you have a specific need for it? Are you tied to a particular software platform? If not, when you get new hardware is an ideal time to take look at alternatives. The computer market is in flux right now and there are lots of new approaches being tried.
Obviously everyone's situation is different, but what I am advocating is not necessarily just going on to the next revision of what you've always done, instead taking a look at alternatives, including keeping your existing hardware and just refurbishing it a bit. You'll save some money and help the earth by being green.
One place that companies could definitely get more bang for their green buck is with computer hardware. The hardware itself caused a lot of pollution during its manufacture and when it winds up in a landfill it leaches a lot of nasty chemicals. If you can avoid having to buy new computer hardware you can feel better for being green as well as save some money.
Most often the things that will fail on a computer are the parts that move: the hard drive, any fans in the case and the power supply fan. Otherwise, in the absence of a power surge, the rest of the solid state electronics will keep going for years (at least five). It used to be that software always outpaced hardware and you always had to buy new hardware to keep up. Hardware is now ahead of software in most cases (unless you're talking about niche needs like high-demand video games or such). With some more RAM (inexpensive) and maybe some new parts that you interact with (monitor, keyboard and mouse) you will feel like you have a new computer.
If your needs are not directly tied to software available on Macintosh or Windows you can load one of the freely available Linux distributions and get your computing tasks done very handily, while also saving some money and making your computer more secure. If you are not comfortable with such a move you could just back up your data and do a clean re-install of your operating system and again feel the joy of a new space. If you are 100% uncomfortable with either of these suggestions you can go and buy yourself a new computer but keep in mind that the prices are much lower than they used to be and you don't need a lot of power for most things you're going to do.
As always, you need to think about what it is you're trying to do when you are considering a hardware purchase. Do you want what you're getting just because you're "due" for some new hardware, or do you have a specific need for it? Are you tied to a particular software platform? If not, when you get new hardware is an ideal time to take look at alternatives. The computer market is in flux right now and there are lots of new approaches being tried.
Obviously everyone's situation is different, but what I am advocating is not necessarily just going on to the next revision of what you've always done, instead taking a look at alternatives, including keeping your existing hardware and just refurbishing it a bit. You'll save some money and help the earth by being green.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Good Enough Hardware
Used to be, a "cheap" desktop computer hovered around a thousand dollars in price, without a monitor. Those days are now far behind us. Cheap desktop systems with bundled LCD monitors are easily found for less than five hundred dollars. Laptops have similarly crashed in price, with a race for the bottom still underway. There is still a high end to the market, with multi-thousand dollar machines, but only people with very specific requirements should buy them.
If you only drive a few nails a year to hang pictures, you can buy a five dollar hammer and you're set. If you take that five dollar hammer onto a job site and drive a few thousand nails with it you will quickly destroy it, rounding the head of it, shredding the handle, etc. In the same way if you are a hard core video game player you would not buy a five hundred dollar computer and expect to be happy.
All that said, most people can get by with the modern "low end" computer, that has more processing power, memory, disk space, etc. than machines they purchased a few years ago. And that computer will be sufficient for a fairly long time. In the 90's software could get ahead of your computer very quickly, and your hardware quickly became obsolete. With so much time between major updates of software now, plus the power available at the low end of the market, breaks this cycle.
The one place that this is somewhat not true is with the Microsoft Vista operating system, if you want to run it with all the bells and whistles. If you want that then the low end machines might not be exactly what you want. If you are only wanting to surf the web and do e-mail you should consider alternative operating systems that run on the same hardware, such as a Linux distribution like Ubuntu.
The Macintosh computers are more expensive, but come loaded with a lot more bells and whistles that narrow the gap between the low end PC and the low end Mac. They offer a good level of stability and if you are looking for easy they are hard to beat.
When you go to purchase your next computer, consider all the factors, including what you are actually SPECIFICALLY going to use the machine for, and do not fall for the sales pitch of the latest, greatest and fastest. A "good enough" computer is going to be sufficient for 95% of people, so don't turn up your nose at a computer because of its low price. You'll be pleasantly surprised by your new machine, regardless.
Make your choice techgnostically, and don't be swayed by hype (I'm looking at YOU, Microsoft).
If you only drive a few nails a year to hang pictures, you can buy a five dollar hammer and you're set. If you take that five dollar hammer onto a job site and drive a few thousand nails with it you will quickly destroy it, rounding the head of it, shredding the handle, etc. In the same way if you are a hard core video game player you would not buy a five hundred dollar computer and expect to be happy.
All that said, most people can get by with the modern "low end" computer, that has more processing power, memory, disk space, etc. than machines they purchased a few years ago. And that computer will be sufficient for a fairly long time. In the 90's software could get ahead of your computer very quickly, and your hardware quickly became obsolete. With so much time between major updates of software now, plus the power available at the low end of the market, breaks this cycle.
The one place that this is somewhat not true is with the Microsoft Vista operating system, if you want to run it with all the bells and whistles. If you want that then the low end machines might not be exactly what you want. If you are only wanting to surf the web and do e-mail you should consider alternative operating systems that run on the same hardware, such as a Linux distribution like Ubuntu.
The Macintosh computers are more expensive, but come loaded with a lot more bells and whistles that narrow the gap between the low end PC and the low end Mac. They offer a good level of stability and if you are looking for easy they are hard to beat.
When you go to purchase your next computer, consider all the factors, including what you are actually SPECIFICALLY going to use the machine for, and do not fall for the sales pitch of the latest, greatest and fastest. A "good enough" computer is going to be sufficient for 95% of people, so don't turn up your nose at a computer because of its low price. You'll be pleasantly surprised by your new machine, regardless.
Make your choice techgnostically, and don't be swayed by hype (I'm looking at YOU, Microsoft).
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