I saw the Bud Dwyer incident too. What station did you see it on? I can only find references to Philly/Pittsburgh stations showing it, but I lived in the Harrisburg area and remember them showing it.
Jake Williams jake dot williams at elcomsales dot com for a direct reply.
No, Research In Motion (the makers of Blackberry) paid a ton of money to NTP because it was not clear that the government would invalidate the patents in question and they could not afford to be shut down. RIM _has_ friends in high places and could not get the judgement thrown out.
I'm not saying that the US government is not corrupt, just that your story about RIM is completely wrong.
Everything else is right in your comment, but I strongly doubt that you were required by T-Mobile to sign a 2 year contract - T-Mobile does 1 year contracts by default, and I'm not even sure that you can sign a 2 year contract with them.
We are using Dell for all our corporate laptops, and the support is very different from the home support. We do not talk to anyone in India, and everyone I get is knowledgeable. We have 3-year Next Business Day on-site service and I have not had any issues getting problems taken care of. I usually submit issues through the web (where they go to the Indians) but if I call in I get Americans. I highly recommend that you pay a little extra to purchase the corporate model laptops if you think tha tyou'll need any support on it, as you get much better support from Dell this way.
In Alabama you can renew your car tags online, but you have to pay a processing fee to cover the cost of the credit card processing. Plus they don't give you good confirmation and will sometimes just lose your re-registration request. Doing it online for cheaper means that somebody's cousin will be out of a cushy government job doing registrations rudely in person, so they want to make it hard to do it online...
That is not at all the point the parent was making. Ford is not going to require that their cars have Michelin tires on them in order to start - it'll just be something extra if you choose to buy that brand tire, and other brands will do the same thing so you don't have to have Michelins in order to get that information.
We use a device that appears to be no longer available, the HP Autobackup PC25/PC100 (for 25 or 100 clients, respectively). This says "powered by Previo" on it, and I looked on Previo's website (http://www.previo.com) and it appears that they have their own version of an autobackup device available: http://www.previo.com/home/products/appliance.asp. You load a piece of client software on everyone's machine, then load up the admin tool on the admin machine and set up everyone's computer backup strategy. I have ours set so that all the desktops are backed up at 7:00 PM Monday through Friday (we leave them on all the time), and laptops are backed up on a sliding schedule between 8:00 AM and noon Monday through Friday. The HP device takes a snapshot of each system and only puts files that have changed on the server. It also does not back up a file more than once if it is on multiple machines. We have had one machine lose a hard disk, and I had it up and running the next day (needing to ship the drive, it was actually up in about 2 hours) with no data loss. The HP devices have built-in HP Burners for making the disaster recovery CDs, but the Previo site says you can do it with a different machine that has a CD Burner in it. It is definitely worth looking into, because there is NO hassle on the admin once it's set up, and NO hassle on the end-users.
"What bugs me the most is that people believe the computer should just work on whatever task they want it to."
When you talk to non-computer users, do you talk like what you are saying is super-simple, or do you take the time to explain to them that when you download and install software, you cannot believe that it will work exactly as it says? Users believe that the computer and software should do what it says without any kind of administration because that is what they are taught.
People do not expect that "rudimentary knowledge on how to OPERATE the computer" should include how to check for spyware or how to maintain security on their system. We cannot expect regular users to know anything more than how to turn it on and get on the internet. People need to understand that as long as you are on the internet, you need to have more knowledge about computers and security.
The problem is not of people that are too stupid, or people that do not want to learn about computers. The problem is that people do not know that they should learn more, and do not know WHY they should learn more.
Actually, Office XP bought at retail (not OEM) allows you to install it on two different computers (laptop/desktop or home/work PCs). OEM is still tied to the hardware though.
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I saw the Bud Dwyer incident too. What station did you see it on? I can only find references to Philly/Pittsburgh stations showing it, but I lived in the Harrisburg area and remember them showing it.
Jake Williams
jake dot williams at elcomsales dot com for a direct reply.
No, Research In Motion (the makers of Blackberry) paid a ton of money to NTP because it was not clear that the government would invalidate the patents in question and they could not afford to be shut down. RIM _has_ friends in high places and could not get the judgement thrown out.
I'm not saying that the US government is not corrupt, just that your story about RIM is completely wrong.
Everything else is right in your comment, but I strongly doubt that you were required by T-Mobile to sign a 2 year contract - T-Mobile does 1 year contracts by default, and I'm not even sure that you can sign a 2 year contract with them.
Jake
We are using Dell for all our corporate laptops, and the support is very different from the home support. We do not talk to anyone in India, and everyone I get is knowledgeable. We have 3-year Next Business Day on-site service and I have not had any issues getting problems taken care of. I usually submit issues through the web (where they go to the Indians) but if I call in I get Americans. I highly recommend that you pay a little extra to purchase the corporate model laptops if you think tha tyou'll need any support on it, as you get much better support from Dell this way.
Jake Williams
ELCOM, Inc.
In Alabama you can renew your car tags online, but you have to pay a processing fee to cover the cost of the credit card processing. Plus they don't give you good confirmation and will sometimes just lose your re-registration request. Doing it online for cheaper means that somebody's cousin will be out of a cushy government job doing registrations rudely in person, so they want to make it hard to do it online...
This is also available from Citibank, I have one of their cards. It works exactly as you say, great for online transactions.
That is not at all the point the parent was making. Ford is not going to require that their cars have Michelin tires on them in order to start - it'll just be something extra if you choose to buy that brand tire, and other brands will do the same thing so you don't have to have Michelins in order to get that information.
We use a device that appears to be no longer available, the HP Autobackup PC25/PC100 (for 25 or 100 clients, respectively). This says "powered by Previo" on it, and I looked on Previo's website (http://www.previo.com) and it appears that they have their own version of an autobackup device available: http://www.previo.com/home/products/appliance.asp. You load a piece of client software on everyone's machine, then load up the admin tool on the admin machine and set up everyone's computer backup strategy. I have ours set so that all the desktops are backed up at 7:00 PM Monday through Friday (we leave them on all the time), and laptops are backed up on a sliding schedule between 8:00 AM and noon Monday through Friday. The HP device takes a snapshot of each system and only puts files that have changed on the server. It also does not back up a file more than once if it is on multiple machines. We have had one machine lose a hard disk, and I had it up and running the next day (needing to ship the drive, it was actually up in about 2 hours) with no data loss. The HP devices have built-in HP Burners for making the disaster recovery CDs, but the Previo site says you can do it with a different machine that has a CD Burner in it. It is definitely worth looking into, because there is NO hassle on the admin once it's set up, and NO hassle on the end-users.
Jake Williams
Elcom, Inc.
http://www.elcomrep.com
"What bugs me the most is that people believe the computer should just work on whatever task they want it to."
When you talk to non-computer users, do you talk like what you are saying is super-simple, or do you take the time to explain to them that when you download and install software, you cannot believe that it will work exactly as it says? Users believe that the computer and software should do what it says without any kind of administration because that is what they are taught.
People do not expect that "rudimentary knowledge on how to OPERATE the computer" should include how to check for spyware or how to maintain security on their system. We cannot expect regular users to know anything more than how to turn it on and get on the internet. People need to understand that as long as you are on the internet, you need to have more knowledge about computers and security.
The problem is not of people that are too stupid, or people that do not want to learn about computers. The problem is that people do not know that they should learn more, and do not know WHY they should learn more.
Actually, Office XP bought at retail (not OEM) allows you to install it on two different computers (laptop/desktop or home/work PCs). OEM is still tied to the hardware though.