I completely agree with this quote. When I was in my evening MBA program (classes ended at about 10pm). I couldn't sleep for at least 5 hours after class. It was so mentally invigorating you just couldn't quit. Weird Stuff...
I have started doing this at my organization on lots of different levels.
For personal level scanning we use Visioneer 9450's with Acrobat 6.0 Professional - I have found that Acrobat 6 makes file formats smaller if you are willing to sacrifice backwards compatibility. These work pretty well when people want to do maybe 5 batches of 5-20 sheets per day. A little spendy for many users which leads me to out next method.
Each division has a Xerox DocuCenter 425 (Docucenter's are smaller units - not behomeths like the print/copy center class DocuTechs). These units have scan to email capability at approx 25-30 pages a minute including double sides capacity. They work quite well allowing employees to walk up select their name drop their document in the feeder and hit the start button. 30 sec to a minute later it's in their inbox.
Next for the copy center in the department we have a Kodak i60 scanner (I think it scans 60 sheets a minute - could be wrong though). This one scans both sides at the same time, unlike the xerox which sucks it through a second time for the second side. It comes with Kodak Capture software which does a great job at processing jobs including blank page removal which is quite helpful if you have a set of documents that have material on some of the back sides of pages but not all. This works really well as we have a stand alone computer dedicated to this task.
Next in the copy center we have a Xerox DocuCenter Pro 75 which does essentially the same thing except it drops the PDFs or TIFFs directly to a novell or SMB share.
I hope this helps people some...costs are as follows (a rough idea), the visioneer about $200-250, the xerox 425 about $8000-10000 (also serves as network printer and copier), the Kodak i60 is about $1600-2100, and the WCP-75 is about $35000 give or take.
Actually it is good for the economy. Because damn if we had people with college educations working at mcdonalds and demanding higher wages to pay off those college loans that would be one expensive ass hamburger.
So you counter with the argument that they don't have computer at mcdonalds with email, fine I'm okay with that. I sure want the call center or accounts receivable center at "name your company" to hire college grads to open envelopes and process payments, which would undoubtable raise the central expense/overhead of the company making the products cost more.
so yeah in the big picture we have to have people that "aren't so smart working in our companies" because we pay them less and every job can't be shipped to china for a 5 year old to do.
My organization swears by unattended installs of Windows 2000/XP. It works wonderfully, all you have to do is select the template you will use which contains the software options to be installed and away you go. Drop in the floppy disk or CD enter the template name and come back a little later. The nice thing about using the CD is that it it handles slight hardware variations with the utmost ease. I use the same CD to unattend my Dell laptop as my coworkers optiplex.
Yeah it takes some time to setup in the beginning but it really works great if you are always pushing new machines out the door or doing annual reinstalls.
I'd have to agree with you. I am not stumping for MS here but I really like XP, I have never had a problem with it. I use a virus scanner and netgear firewall like many people.
One of these replies says everyone I know that has XP has some virus or whatever problem, every person that person knows is an idiot then. It's a bummer that because it's an easy system to deal with that there are a lot of dumb people using it but that's the breaks. Could Microsoft do a better job at informing people how to be secure - yeah probably but Apple and Linux don't.
It's also interesting that people bitch about how many viruses there are for Windows PCs. Hey I accept that the OS structure is less secure than say a linux system (properly configured) but you know what, who the hell as a virus programmer is going to write a virus that only affects like 5% of computers out there. Now I am sure my market share numbers are wrong but it's a really low percentage for common consumers, which is who they are freaking targeting.
I can just see it now, all of your 100+ household appliances getting hacked because they are wide open the net. Those damn script kiddies, why couldn't they have stole my credit card numbers instead of thawing my freezer, overflowing the toilet, and turning my airconditioner to 45F.
Remember the good old days when people just defaced your website or sent you spam:)
There is already networking over powerlines for inside your own house. I am not sure how this may or may not relate to delivery of internet service to one's home but this at least seems cool because a power outlet it the most prevalent outlet in most houses. I am not sure how well it works but I have been tempted to try it. Here is the link for the USB adapter and the Ethernet Bridge. Has anyone had any Real World experience with these?
That hardly matters though, when much of the ordinance we are using is GPS guided. There was even an article on CNN about how the M1A1 combines GPS in it's target so it could be pitch black and they'd still be blowing the hell out of stuff. Personally I just think he's pissed. And with the new battle coordination system (or whatever it's called) much of the stuff is still planned using satelite and other means and relayed to the ground groups.
Some small American newspapers frequently fabricate offbeat news to trick people into noticing them, with the aim of making money,' the paper said. 'This is what the Onion does.
Oh yeah I am sure they make lots of money. I am sure people ripping of their stories without payment much less credit helps a ton. Piracy capital of the world - what a surprise.:P
Oh that's ridiculous. There is no decent company that is going to overpay all of their employees. No matter what - what you are making is never enough - at least it isn't for me.
I was being recruited by another place, told my current employer about it they match and beat the other offer and I stayed. I love it here, they love having me here and matching the offer proves it. If they don't need you or want you around they are going to extend a counter offer especially of a magnitude of 50% as in this fellow's offer.
What programs (at least programs where the users might be more apt to need a manual - read not brilliant computer users) even have manuals anymore? Most of the time you get a CD, a couple of ads, and a silly registration card. Most novice users have no idea that hitting F1 (in most Windows apps) even brings up a help menu.
It's kind of funny most older computer users that I know and help out once in a while in my personal time are just perplexed when you tell them that Microsoft Word or whatever doesn't have a manual. Explaning that F1 is where to go for help doesn't really help because they don't know what to ask or search for. Most of them just want a sterile user's manual not even those How To Pick Your Nose for Dummies books. I just wish a lot of those extremely mainstream consumer applications would have a decent manual. Some do and that's a start. Most people just want a book to either read cover to cover or something that has a great index so they can easily help themselves. A great index to the book is something that is most important to me esp. with technical literature.
I can't even believe I am reading this. It says on the docs that come with many UPSes (APC for sure) not to connect a laser printer to them. There is nothing unsafe about a laser printer. I have one circuit for all my computer stuff...and there is a lot of junk on their plus lights, fans etc. I have never had one issue with interferance or any equipment problems. Yeah you shouldn't plug it in to your UPS but you shouldn't plug a microwave or 500W halogen lamp into one either.
I have a laser and inkjet at home and honestly I fire the inkjet up maybe once a month for it's color capabilities. Other than that it's slow and the quality is inferior. It maybe true that a toner cart is a bit spendier than an inkjet the over all cost of ownership if you print any real volume at all is so much less with a laser. Heck those HP LaserJet 1000's are only like 250...that's a steal.
Page 8 of this document (THIS IS A PDF) explains how in two years at only 10 pages a day how an inkjet is considerably more than a laser.
Why SonicBlue and not TiVo? There are probably two reasons
The first is that you can easily send shows over the internet, etc with the sonicblue box. We know this for a fact pisses the industry off. Not only can you send shows, etc, it's marketed strongly that way.
Secondly I think they are probably attacking SonicBlue because they are the weaker company. They have less dollars and most likely less lawyers. Once they get standing and precident from a case that's easier to win they can move on to going after the big dog with that in their pocket.
I am in Biology so I unfortunately can't relate to all of the issues with Word docs and such. With regards to submission to journals for peer review. We used to send the 5 copies or whatever they require because that's all we could do. Once we submitted (I can't remember the journal - something small-time) in a "word processor" format and just as Rubinson describes - it didn't look the same when they reproduced it. The thing that works especially well for us is to publish it to a PDF for review because it seems everyone just prints them anyways and we know that it is going to look as we intend it to whether it's on the screen or printed out.
Personally we are a Word shop so it's not all that big of a deal, when giving things to collegues to review the revision tracking function in Word is extremely helpful. You can just accept or decline changes at the click of a mouse.
Well that's my experience anyways. It is interesting to see how other academics do it.
I guess I didn't take it in the context of 60 machines. We have about 2000 in our group and where I see the benefit is instead of a consultant wasting their time calling western digital or something like that and having to play their "plug this into that" games they call dell give them the SN and the drive is on it's way, no questions no hassle. For a small group of 60 machines, I totally agree except when say there is the remote chance you have a flaw in the hardware, say a defective batch of video cards, not all that likely but it happens. In which case it does happen the service group for said computer manufacturer sends someone out and replaces the stuff for you, so you can spend you time doing other things. Unlikely but we had this happen once before. As far as machines on standby, that's a great idea we have many but it's not just the time of the person who owns the workstation that I am worried about it's the consultants also.
It maybe laziness but I would much rather keep track of a service code on the side of my PC than 20 receipts for the guts of the computer.
I think there are a couple of large issues looming.
First I think you have to figure how much you make now and figure how much money it's going to cost you to build these things. If you're the catch all now are you really going to have enough time to be building machines, as well as maintain them. It sucks but people time costs money too, could the money spent on you be spent better having you do something else.
The warranty thing is an issue, make sure you are covered under warranty for every part - there is somethign to be said for having an entire machine under warranty and being able to call dell and say I have a bad drive, I need a new one by tommorow morning
I honestly gotta think you can get new machines for under a grand each. You don't need new monitors, keyboards or mice do you? All you are buying is CPUs. You probably need a P4 1.4ish, 256 meg of ram, 20gig hd and you're fine...that should be had by Dell (I am dell biased sorry) or anyone else for around 600-700 or less.
Micro$oft - I seriously doubt you can role your licenses to new computers. If you upgrade a few components you're probably fine but I am fairly sure it says they are non transferable. At what point does gutting a system to upgrade it constitute a new system - I don't know but it may be an important point if you can't transfer licenses.
What the heck. I typed in Rosebud and I typed in Klapacius and no extra money? Is the cheat broken or something:) Does anyone have a link to this cheat? Oh yeah and the one to tone down the overbearing Public Safety dept:)
Re:Why use USB ? - It's Cheaper
on
VoIP at $15 a Pop
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· Score: 2, Interesting
They use USB because it's a ton cheaper to put in these boxes. A driver on the computer controlling the unit is cheaper than having all of that gear inside the box. Plus everycomputer manufacturered now adays has a USB port or four. Granted the popularity of ethernet is growing it's still relatively limited in the non-geek communities.
I think more along the lines of what you are talking about is this voip solution, it's just what you are talking about. Yeah you have to pay a monthly fee but it's really not that bad. Linksys also makes something that plugs directly into the phone and your cable modem. It uses the net2phone service.
It seems the downfall (at least for me) for the creative unit and the linksys is that I want to have an incoming number for these things. Having to mess with multiple phone lines to make long distance calls seems like switching phone companies all the time to get the lowest rate. A pain in the keister.
It would be great if they extended it to the airport right away...this is one of my favorite features of paris or london. You don't have to mess around getting a taxi or bus into town. You grab your bag, catch the tube and away you go. This would be great for people who JUST want to gamble, and it seems there are many of those...catch the train and get to business, especially if there will be rail stations at major casinos
Personally though all I can think about is the Monorail Simpsons Episode...Doh!
I have to admit I absolutely LOVE my Dell. I have a Dell Latitude C610. We are an all Dell shop here and their support is fantastic. I don't play any games on my system so I can't really attest to that.
This system is my desktop replacement. I honestly can't tell that much difference between the 1.7 P4 that I had and the 1.2 PIII-M that's in this machine. It sits in a dock all day with my dual monitors so it's not even like I am using a laptop, regular kb and mouse and all...
I have to say I am pretty hard on laptops and this thing is a champ, it's taken a couple of spills and keeps on trucking. Very solid, doesn't feel flimsy. I have to admit it's not the most sexy thing but it has a DVD/CDRW combo and a lot of ram and does everything I would ever need it to do. It also has builtin ethernet and modem which is wonderful, none of the laptops I had before had this. It also has a wireless enet builtin which is nice because the card with antenna doesn't stick out the side of the note book.
If you need a solid notebook that has fairly universal modules (my wife and I can share CD/ZIP/Floppy modules) I would highly recommend the Dell Latitude line (I like the C610 - it's right in the middle of the road). Get yourself the completecare(tm) warranty and then when you sit on it and crack the LCD you are still covered. Remember I don't game on this so I have NO idea with regards to system perf. on that - okay it does run the sims okay:)
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I completely agree with this quote. When I was in my evening MBA program (classes ended at about 10pm). I couldn't sleep for at least 5 hours after class. It was so mentally invigorating you just couldn't quit. Weird Stuff...
I don't see a single one of these that's under a couple thousand on froogle - most are 5-6k.
For personal level scanning we use Visioneer 9450's with Acrobat 6.0 Professional - I have found that Acrobat 6 makes file formats smaller if you are willing to sacrifice backwards compatibility. These work pretty well when people want to do maybe 5 batches of 5-20 sheets per day. A little spendy for many users which leads me to out next method.
Each division has a Xerox DocuCenter 425 (Docucenter's are smaller units - not behomeths like the print/copy center class DocuTechs). These units have scan to email capability at approx 25-30 pages a minute including double sides capacity. They work quite well allowing employees to walk up select their name drop their document in the feeder and hit the start button. 30 sec to a minute later it's in their inbox.
Next for the copy center in the department we have a Kodak i60 scanner (I think it scans 60 sheets a minute - could be wrong though). This one scans both sides at the same time, unlike the xerox which sucks it through a second time for the second side. It comes with Kodak Capture software which does a great job at processing jobs including blank page removal which is quite helpful if you have a set of documents that have material on some of the back sides of pages but not all. This works really well as we have a stand alone computer dedicated to this task.
Next in the copy center we have a Xerox DocuCenter Pro 75 which does essentially the same thing except it drops the PDFs or TIFFs directly to a novell or SMB share.
I hope this helps people some...costs are as follows (a rough idea), the visioneer about $200-250, the xerox 425 about $8000-10000 (also serves as network printer and copier), the Kodak i60 is about $1600-2100, and the WCP-75 is about $35000 give or take.
So you counter with the argument that they don't have computer at mcdonalds with email, fine I'm okay with that. I sure want the call center or accounts receivable center at "name your company" to hire college grads to open envelopes and process payments, which would undoubtable raise the central expense/overhead of the company making the products cost more.
so yeah in the big picture we have to have people that "aren't so smart working in our companies" because we pay them less and every job can't be shipped to china for a 5 year old to do.
Innovation instead of government intervention - what? Oh come on, the DMCA is working great isn't it? Oh, oh umm nothing.
Yeah it takes some time to setup in the beginning but it really works great if you are always pushing new machines out the door or doing annual reinstalls.
Here are a couple of links for those curious:
From Winnetmag.com
Unattended Installs in a Perfect World
Unattended Installs with Windows 2000 Professional
my $0.02
One of these replies says everyone I know that has XP has some virus or whatever problem, every person that person knows is an idiot then. It's a bummer that because it's an easy system to deal with that there are a lot of dumb people using it but that's the breaks. Could Microsoft do a better job at informing people how to be secure - yeah probably but Apple and Linux don't.
It's also interesting that people bitch about how many viruses there are for Windows PCs. Hey I accept that the OS structure is less secure than say a linux system (properly configured) but you know what, who the hell as a virus programmer is going to write a virus that only affects like 5% of computers out there. Now I am sure my market share numbers are wrong but it's a really low percentage for common consumers, which is who they are freaking targeting.
Remember the good old days when people just defaced your website or sent you spam :)
That and at some Best Buy stores they used to (probably still do) have the registers connected via wireless - airsnort anyone?
There is already networking over powerlines for inside your own house. I am not sure how this may or may not relate to delivery of internet service to one's home but this at least seems cool because a power outlet it the most prevalent outlet in most houses. I am not sure how well it works but I have been tempted to try it. Here is the link for the USB adapter and the Ethernet Bridge. Has anyone had any Real World experience with these?
That hardly matters though, when much of the ordinance we are using is GPS guided. There was even an article on CNN about how the M1A1 combines GPS in it's target so it could be pitch black and they'd still be blowing the hell out of stuff. Personally I just think he's pissed. And with the new battle coordination system (or whatever it's called) much of the stuff is still planned using satelite and other means and relayed to the ground groups.
A computer in the bathroom ... priceless :)
Yeah but for me to run my dnetc on my powerbook, i have to have it plugged in (no mains power = paused) Ouch! it's hot :)
Oh yeah I am sure they make lots of money. I am sure people ripping of their stories without payment much less credit helps a ton. Piracy capital of the world - what a surprise. :P
Oh that's ridiculous. There is no decent company that is going to overpay all of their employees. No matter what - what you are making is never enough - at least it isn't for me.
I was being recruited by another place, told my current employer about it they match and beat the other offer and I stayed. I love it here, they love having me here and matching the offer proves it. If they don't need you or want you around they are going to extend a counter offer especially of a magnitude of 50% as in this fellow's offer.
What programs (at least programs where the users might be more apt to need a manual - read not brilliant computer users) even have manuals anymore? Most of the time you get a CD, a couple of ads, and a silly registration card. Most novice users have no idea that hitting F1 (in most Windows apps) even brings up a help menu.
It's kind of funny most older computer users that I know and help out once in a while in my personal time are just perplexed when you tell them that Microsoft Word or whatever doesn't have a manual. Explaning that F1 is where to go for help doesn't really help because they don't know what to ask or search for. Most of them just want a sterile user's manual not even those How To Pick Your Nose for Dummies books. I just wish a lot of those extremely mainstream consumer applications would have a decent manual. Some do and that's a start. Most people just want a book to either read cover to cover or something that has a great index so they can easily help themselves. A great index to the book is something that is most important to me esp. with technical literature.
I have a laser and inkjet at home and honestly I fire the inkjet up maybe once a month for it's color capabilities. Other than that it's slow and the quality is inferior. It maybe true that a toner cart is a bit spendier than an inkjet the over all cost of ownership if you print any real volume at all is so much less with a laser. Heck those HP LaserJet 1000's are only like 250...that's a steal.
Page 8 of this document (THIS IS A PDF) explains how in two years at only 10 pages a day how an inkjet is considerably more than a laser.
The first is that you can easily send shows over the internet, etc with the sonicblue box. We know this for a fact pisses the industry off. Not only can you send shows, etc, it's marketed strongly that way.
Secondly I think they are probably attacking SonicBlue because they are the weaker company. They have less dollars and most likely less lawyers. Once they get standing and precident from a case that's easier to win they can move on to going after the big dog with that in their pocket.
Personally we are a Word shop so it's not all that big of a deal, when giving things to collegues to review the revision tracking function in Word is extremely helpful. You can just accept or decline changes at the click of a mouse.
Well that's my experience anyways. It is interesting to see how other academics do it.
It maybe laziness but I would much rather keep track of a service code on the side of my PC than 20 receipts for the guts of the computer.
First I think you have to figure how much you make now and figure how much money it's going to cost you to build these things. If you're the catch all now are you really going to have enough time to be building machines, as well as maintain them. It sucks but people time costs money too, could the money spent on you be spent better having you do something else.
The warranty thing is an issue, make sure you are covered under warranty for every part - there is somethign to be said for having an entire machine under warranty and being able to call dell and say I have a bad drive, I need a new one by tommorow morning
I honestly gotta think you can get new machines for under a grand each. You don't need new monitors, keyboards or mice do you? All you are buying is CPUs. You probably need a P4 1.4ish, 256 meg of ram, 20gig hd and you're fine...that should be had by Dell (I am dell biased sorry) or anyone else for around 600-700 or less.
Micro$oft - I seriously doubt you can role your licenses to new computers. If you upgrade a few components you're probably fine but I am fairly sure it says they are non transferable. At what point does gutting a system to upgrade it constitute a new system - I don't know but it may be an important point if you can't transfer licenses.
(plink, plink).
What the heck. I typed in Rosebud and I typed in Klapacius and no extra money? Is the cheat broken or something :) Does anyone have a link to this cheat? Oh yeah and the one to tone down the overbearing Public Safety dept :)
I think more along the lines of what you are talking about is this voip solution, it's just what you are talking about. Yeah you have to pay a monthly fee but it's really not that bad. Linksys also makes something that plugs directly into the phone and your cable modem. It uses the net2phone service.
It seems the downfall (at least for me) for the creative unit and the linksys is that I want to have an incoming number for these things. Having to mess with multiple phone lines to make long distance calls seems like switching phone companies all the time to get the lowest rate. A pain in the keister.
Personally though all I can think about is the Monorail Simpsons Episode...Doh!
This system is my desktop replacement. I honestly can't tell that much difference between the 1.7 P4 that I had and the 1.2 PIII-M that's in this machine. It sits in a dock all day with my dual monitors so it's not even like I am using a laptop, regular kb and mouse and all...
I have to say I am pretty hard on laptops and this thing is a champ, it's taken a couple of spills and keeps on trucking. Very solid, doesn't feel flimsy. I have to admit it's not the most sexy thing but it has a DVD/CDRW combo and a lot of ram and does everything I would ever need it to do. It also has builtin ethernet and modem which is wonderful, none of the laptops I had before had this. It also has a wireless enet builtin which is nice because the card with antenna doesn't stick out the side of the note book.
If you need a solid notebook that has fairly universal modules (my wife and I can share CD/ZIP/Floppy modules) I would highly recommend the Dell Latitude line (I like the C610 - it's right in the middle of the road). Get yourself the completecare(tm) warranty and then when you sit on it and crack the LCD you are still covered. Remember I don't game on this so I have NO idea with regards to system perf. on that - okay it does run the sims okay :)
(plink) (plink)