So what was on your wishlist for Christmas this year? Did you get it? I did not put much in the way of technology on my wish list this year. Everything I want is too expensive. If I didn’t have a limit here are some tech things on my wish list:
Dual-Quad server with 64GB of RAM, ESX server, and at least a couple TB of fast RAID10 disk.
Flatscreen TV for bedroom and computer room
Netflix Roku player, or alternatively low energy media PCs to attach to my TVs
I just saw an article on Wired called 8 Signs That Apple Customers Are No Longer Special. I am going to breech the Apple vs. PC subject here with my 2 cents. First of all, the article has some good points, but the larger picture is that Apple has fans that spend money on them rather than customers. Customers are a fairly loyal sort of people. You give them a good product at a good price and they will likely return when they need to replace that product. Even more, they will go out and tell their friends who they bought the product from and you can build a base of loyal customers this way. A fan on the other hand is fickle and moves on as soon as something better comes along. Apple’s “customers” are more fan than customer. Read the rest of this entry »
This topic has been debated for many years with pontificators claiming that the appliance computer had arrived, yet we still see tremendous progress in processor speed and capability, hard drive space, video cards, and so on. I have usually disagreed with these statements, instead believing that software and people’s desire for and immersive and fluid computing experience, would continue to drive technology beyond the appliance stage. I will now join the ranks and claim that the appliance computer is at hand, however I do not believe that it will take over the computer market. Instead I believe that it is targeted at the next tier of potential Internet users. Three legs of the appliance computing platform now exist – enough to make the platform able to stand on its own. This article discusses the three legs that exist now and the fourth that will complete this platform and usher in the era of appliance computing. Read the rest of this entry »
Why is it so difficult to produce a trustworthy electronic voting machine? I know Maryland has had electronic voting for quite a few elections, but it seems that many places can not make it work. I have seen examples of machines that count the votes wrong during testing, favor one candidate over another, or are vulnerable to having their data compromised.
It is sad really. NVidia has always been my favorite graphics manufacturer. After some issues I had with ATI years ago, and ATI’s lack of solid Linux drivers for many years, I have been a real NVidia fan. Unfortunately it seems like they are experiencing wide spread failures and there is no solid reason described. There are plenty of rumors. Now it seems that Apple’s laptops are experiencing problems.
My own experience is with my Dell XPS M1210 NVidia failure. NVidia claims that the 7400 chip in my laptop is not affected, however it was affected. It was a typical video card problem with the broken vertical lines in the screen and lockups during 3D usage. Dell graciously changed the motherboard in my laptop along with the heatpipe.
There is a class action suit against NVidia by its shareholders for keeping its problems from the public for so long. This resulted in some layoffs which are ongoing. NVidia has kept quiet about exactly which of its chips were failing. I’m sure it is because they don’t want people to return product that hasn’t failed. The problem is that they lose significant goodwill by doing this. The alternative is that they lose their shirts.
It may be time for me to start looking at ATI for my next graphics card.
I get this question all the time. People went to Wal-Mart and saw a DTV converter box and wonder if they are going to have to get it to continue watching TV. They know I’m a geek so instead of buying it they ask me. Those are the smart ones. I know of several people who purchased these already thinking that they would not be able to watch TV after a certain date if they did not.
The reason most people won’t be affected is that this only affects people who receive their TV with an old fashioned over the air antenna (not satellite antenna). In my area that means you can get one station if you buy a huge antenna and stick it way high in the air and are willing to watch a lot of snow with your picture. I realize that some people, in fact probably many people, still get over the air television, but not in this area. Wal-Mart is either irresponsible for selling them, or is being forced to sell them by the government.
I would be negligent if I didn’t point out that you really should look at the DTV Transition site. This does affect many people or they wouldn’t have gone to such an effort to publicise this.
The best way to tell if you need a converter box or not is this: If there is an old wire antenna on the top of your house and you don’t pay any money for your television then you need to buy a converter box. If you pay money monthly for your television, then you have nothing to do.
I believe Dell is in a unique situation to actually make something like this work. Here’s the opportunity:
The Dell Inspiron Mini 9 in a business setting.
I’ve been pondering this idea for a while now and have come to the conclusion that it really could work if they could market the idea properly. As with any good marketing campaign you first have to set up a problem, false or not. The following are some problems.
Laptops are heavy
Laptops are expensive
Laptops are too big
Laptops are too slow to boot up
Laptops carry too much proprietary company data
Laptops are easy to break (and loose all that data)
Not everyone can have a laptop
The solution is the Dell Inspiron Mini 9. Or maybe they should rebrand it to a Latitude Thin Client, because this is my idea. Marry the Ubuntu OS and a 4GB solid state disk to an install that focuses on Citrix and/or Remote Desktop access. These UMPCs could be so cheap that some companies could easily afford to purchase one for every person, purchase one for every seat in a conference room (don’t lug that laptop!), or have dozens available in break room areas for people who otherwise don’t have access to a computer while at work.
It solves all our problems as above:
Laptops are heavy, but the Inspiron Mini 9 is light enough to take anywhere.
Laptops are expensive, but the Inspiron Mini 9 is cheap and easily replaceable.
Laptops are too big, but the Inspiron Mini 9 can fit in your luggage as an afterthought.
Laptops are too slow to boot up, but the Inspiron Mini 9 with its paired down operating system can be up and ready in seconds and can connect to your existing desktop session where all your important software is already running – no need to wait for Outlook to open and download email.
Laptops carry too much proprietary company data, but the Inspiron Mini 9 carries nothing but address and connection information that is useless without a user’s authentication.
Laptops are easy to break and loose all that data, but the Inspiron Mini 9 has a solid state disk that is tough enough to withstand a drop while powered up, and if you somehow do manage to break it all your data is safe on your desktop in your office.
Not everyone can have a laptop, but everyone can own an Inspiron Mini 9 enabling 24 hour connectivity from home for all employees.
I’m sure there are other ideas for this too and that I’ve only scratched the surface of what could be done with this. I’m sure someone at Dell has already thought this through and decided that either it wouldn’t work or that they don’t want it to work. From their perspective, an equal profit margin is better on a $1000 laptop than it is on one at $300. Assuming the profit margins are equal, which is probably not valid, they would at a minimum have to sell more than 3 Inspiron Mini 9′s for every lost Latitude laptop sale. Still, if some company gets this idea first it could have a similar impact but without the Inspiron Mini 9 sales for Dell.
The Latitude would still be useful, but would be reserved for executives and people who really do need to work while away from connectivity. I see the UMPC providing new connectivity more than replacing laptops where they are already useful.
My project is actually resurrecting an old SGI Fuel system whose motherboard and hard drive simultaneously died. There were no backups of the system, and it is a testament to the SGI hardware that this system lasted 6 years with 24/7 operation. This system is critical to production as it programs multi-million dollar machines. There is an upgrade to the software package available that will work on Windows, but the cost is somewhere in the six figure range. The system is also used for engineering work, and while this part hasn’t been production critical it has been an annoyance.
I managed to attend a telecom and send a bunch of emails back and forth today, so things are starting to get back to the grind. It has been a nice break though, and I wish that there could be more like that. I’ll have an SGI guy on-site tomorrow to replace the motherboard for a second time. It appears that the SCSI controller has gone bad because I am unable to load the engineering package on the system and it has been having some performance issues.
I just watched the video over on Gadgetspot of Dell’s new UMPC being unboxed. It looks like less packing than Dell normally uses, which is a good thing, and I think due to the fact that they aren’t offering any options with the Mini like an external monitor, docking stand, etc. Things that would normally require more room in a standard box. The other thing I was concerned with is how long it took to boot up Windows XP the first time. I know what the performance of the Atom processor should be like since I have a MSI Wind barebones that I built, (more on that later), and this was quite disappointing.
Anyway, I still wish I had one to test hands on. As I have mentioned before, I believe these could have use in the enterprise, and I would really like to replace my wife’s Inspiron 8600 with one as well. At any rate, with that little piece of video and the lousy performance I have no intention of running out to buy one just yet.
Have you gotten tired of these analogies yet? I saw yet another one of these on betanews today and had to cringe. You know, it is in no way fair to compare a toaster to a computer. People never did buy computers because they were appliances. People bought computers because you coud do so many different things with them. That’s changing a lot today as more people get online since there are people who genuinely have no interest in having a computer yet they do want to browse the web and read/write email. For those people the appliance idea works and I agree. You don’t want to have to do drop to a command prompt and type iexplore in order to launch a web browser, and you don’t want to wait two minutes for the computer to boot up. I’d argue that you don’t want to wait 30 seconds for your bread to get toasted either, but that’s beside the point.
If someone buys a computer and all they want it to do is browse the web and do email or wordprocessing then the argument they give is good. My argument is that everyone who bought computers in the beginning bought them because they were not limited to just a few applications. They wanted to be able to run anything they want and even program something new if they wanted to. I’m thinking of my first Apple IIe computer. It booted to a BASIC interpreter and was simple to start programming it. It is what got me interested in computers. If it popped up and only gave me the choices to do email or browse the web or write a document I would have quickly moved on to a different field of study.
I’m posing the opposite argument. What if your computer acted like your toaster?
Here we go – You plug in your computer (because you have to leave it unplugged when not in use or it could be a fire hazard) and nothing happens. You pull a fresh disk out of a package and stick it in the slot checking the expiration date first to make sure that the disk is still before its sell-by date. After doing that you push a lever and the computer turns on. Within seconds you start smelling burning electronics, but you are assured that’s supposed to happen. You have between 30 seconds and a minute to type some email before the lever flips up and the comptuer turns off again. You see that your disk is pretty melted, but you push thet lever back down again because you wanted to finish reading that chain email from your mom. You have 30 seconds to read the email again before it shuts off. This time the disk is pretty much toast and you have to get another one to try again. You proceed like this for ten minutes or so, literally burning through a stack of disks, until the computer finally decides that it’s overheated and needs to cool down before it will work again. While waiting, your mom calls and tells you that a piece of a disk broke off in her computer and started a little fire, so she lost all her email and has to buy another computer, but on the positive side her media will be compatible with the new one, so she doesn’t have to buy another loaf of disks.
So does that make any sense? Nah, and neither does arguing that the other way. It can be humorous, but there’s no logic in doing so and no reason to draw a correlation between the two machines. You might as well try to compare your automobile with your television. Yeah, can you imagine if you had to keep your foot on a pedal to keep the TV on, or if you pushed it too hard that the police would show up on your doorstep? Or what if you got in your car and spent 30 minutes pressing buttons flipping through channels until finally realizing that you weren’t going to get anywhere you wanted to go right now, but if you waited until 8pm it would go somewhere you wanted to go but during the journey you’d have to take a 5 minute break every 9-15 for a detour down an alley filled with all kinds of junk to buy that you aren’t interested in.
I’m sure nothing I’ve said will stop this nonsensical comparing because, after all, it can be humorous. If you were fortunate enough to stop by and read this, I hope you’ll think twice about making such a comparison in any kind of seriousness. There’s just nothing logical about it.
My computer acts like a computer because that’s what I wanted it to do. I didn’t want a toaster (email appliance/webtv) so I didn’t buy one. You know, the webtv thing didn’t do so well either, so I’m thinking that most people still probably like the versatility of their computers. I’m not sure I’d like to spend hundreds of dollars on an appliance that only does email and web browsing. Even a UMPC does more than that, especially one with Linux.
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