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Computer longevity

One huge misconception in the computer community is that computers are obsolete as soon as you buy them…or computers need to be replaced every 3-5 years.

Both of these statements are patently false. I stand by my claim and philosophy that a computer is only outdated when it can no longer perform the functions you need it to OR it mechanically fails. Today I saw a customer that demonstrated this theory well. He had two old computers (486 25mhz) computers with 2 GB Hard drives (they were upgraded in 1997). The original machine is circa about 1991 or 1992. The computers still server their purpose for him, but he needed a new application that won’t run on those machines. And this gentleman runs a multi-million dollar business with these 15 year old computers!

Mission Accomplished


Ubuntu Desktop As I wrote about on Friday, this was a busy work weekend for me. I think three of the computers I worked on offer an interesting comparison in operating systems.

One laptop was a brand new HP with 2 GB of RAM and Windows Vista, but the owner wanted me to install Windows XP and take off Windows Vista. He uses it primarily for traveling and downloading his digital photos while traveling and just didn’t like the lack of speed with Vista. The install of Windows XP went smoothly, but finding some of the XP drivers for it took quite a bit of looking around. All is running well now, and the with 2GB of RAM and a dual-core processor, the little laptop is very fast. Bootup time is under 70 seconds.

The next laptop was another Vista machine with 1 GB of RAM that a client bought for her mom who is a first time computer user and is 83 years old I believe. She will take the laptop with her to Connecticut next week. I took off all the pre-installed junk and installed AVG anti-virus and configured a Gmail account to work with Windows Mail (Vista’s version of Outlook Express). Because her mom has some sight problems, I bumped up the text size and DPI setting to make it easier to work with for her. Also, I disabled all of Vista’s fancy eye candy and effects. Despite all these tweaks, the computer still

Busy weekend

My work week isn’t over. I have five computers/hard drives that I’m working on this weekend. My most exciting task is to setup an older XP HP machine with Ubuntu Linux. My customer had a huge XP problem and couldn’t use her restore CD’s to get it going. After some discussion of her options, costs, and time involved, she decided to give Ubuntu a try. This customer is retired, but is writing a book, uses a digital camera, is an AOL user, and emails a bunch. However, she loves here computer and has been using one for many years and has no qualms about trying something new.

Fun with Cameroon Pet Scams

I really love English Bulldogs. Recently I became aware of a common pet scam that is based on every other over seas Internet scam. Someone from Cameroon posts a desired breed up for a ridiculously low price. He/she asks for money plus shipping. You never get the dog. Here is my recent correspondence with one such scammer. I have resorted… Read More »Fun with Cameroon Pet Scams

TechTV Appearances

I reached into the “way back” machine and found these clips of my interviews on TechTV’s “Call for Help” and “The Screen Savers” shows in May of 2001 when I was promoting my book. Enjoy or be frightened…leave a comment and tell me which.

“The Screen Savers”

“Call for Help”

Disposable tech?

All-in-one printers have dropped so low in price the last couple of years that it poses a dilemma when the machine goes on the fritz. Decent all-in-ones can be found for right at $100 and some as low as $79. When one starts to malfunction, you need to really evaluate how much time and money is too much to spend on an inexpensive piece of equipment.

My thought is that if your printer cost around $100-125 new, I wouldn’t spend more than 1/2 that amount to get it fixed. If you are under warranty, by all means push the manufacturer for a fix. But once it is out of warranty, think long and hard on how much time and money is too much for the printer.

Ubuntu – Day 13

Haven’t used my computer at all today except to write this blog entry. I will answer some email later, but again, Ubuntu does that without any problems at all (except that I miss my Cloudmark spam filter). I have one more day before I return to my Windows machine and use it as my primary again. I did hook a regular mouse to this laptop and it makes it easier to run the machine than relying full time on the touch pad. Thankfully, this laptop has a button that can turn the touchpad off when I’m typing since my palms tend to rub on the touchpad and then throw me out of the box where I was typing.

Tomorrow night, I will give a longer summary of my 14 day Ubuntu report and how I feel it would work for other computer users.

Ubuntu – Day 12

Over the past two weeks, we have been working diligently to come up with a solution for our newsletter problems. We can’t apologize enough for the delay in getting the news to your email box…remember that you can come here to read the newsletter as well.

In my ongoing quest for finding an email newsletter solution, I discovered that Mozilla Thunderbird email program will handle RSS feeds (search our site for RSS for more info) very capably. I plan to write a tip on that in the future. Since I’m using Thunderbird as my email program on this Ubuntu machine, I have been able to become more familiar with it. And the features it has on Ubuntu are the same as Windows. I’m actually becoming quite used to it and might switch to it on my PC as well.

Ubuntu – Day 10

Ubuntu is becoming so routine for me, that I have nothing to report. And that is a good thing in my opinion…no problems, no worries. I haven’t touched my Windows Vista or XP machine since starting this learning quest 10 days ago. In fact, my Visa machine sits beside me right now in the OFF position, and my XP laptop is probably feeling neglected in its bag.

I will do another Ubuntu tip for tomorrow. If you have suggestions, leave a comment below!

Ubuntu – Day 7

Today marks the one week mark that I quit using my Windows Vista machine and started using Ubuntu exclusively. I pledged to use Ubuntu only for two straight weeks to really put the operating system through the paces of daily use. After a rough start with email and fighting spam, I am almost in a groove of using this free and robust operating system. I think that Microsoft has the work cut out for themselves over the next few years to maintain their huge share of the operating system pie.