I seem to get a call from some family member every few weeks where their computer is unusable due to viruses/spyware/adware...
Basically what happens is I spend at least an hour or two, (but not 10-1/2), removing programs, installing programs like Adaware, Spybot, ZoneAlarm (or make them buy a NAT device) and some decent Antivirus software.
It seems that overclocking the chips are all the rage these days, but I was excellent at Wolfenstein 3D when it first came out, because my computer ran at 20 Mhz and the minimum recommended speed was 25 Mhz.
I think you're joking but I'll bite.
Wolf3D ran great on the minimum system, a 286. Which never even came in 25MHz.
I broke my left arm/wrist, and my left hand is usually a little different hue than my right hand (the palm), and it sweats on its own. Can be frustrating to play games, you have to keep it dry all the time.
Why doesn't Nintendo release them, say 4 to a cartridge? For $24.99 that would be very fair.
The classic game collections on PSX such as the Namco arcade series, come with multiple games on the CD.
Where's the argument of, "I bought (licensed?) this game on Nintendo when I was 9 years old, why should I have to pay anything more than the cost of the media now?" People use that argument with VHS/DVD, and CD/Tape
On a side note, are these games emulated, or re-written?
Doctors make plenty of money. And they're greedy. Last time I was at the doctors office, I was led in to a room by someone making $7 an hour, then I sat there for about 20 minutes. The doctor came in, looked at me for all of 3 minutes, and dashed out of the room. They billed my insurance company $300.
Although I mainly use Linux for things such as file/email/proxy servers, I've set up printing before on workstations.
The last version of RedHat that I used, (7.3) made it pretty easy. There was a control panel where I entered a name for the printer, chose postscript, and gave the ip of the printer. (HP LaserJet 4100). Worked perfectly. Everyone asked how I got web pages to print out without cutting off the right side (anyone who's printed from Internet Explorer knows what I'm talking about)
It's equally easy in Knoppix, but you have the extra step of starting the printer daemon.
A lot of the old Coin-ops were bad, and the sequels of good ones (Super Pacman, Dig Dug 2, etc) were pretty bad too. But a few of them never get old. I can't help but play a classic when I find one at a bar or restaraunt. As long as it's not a hacked version, or someone decided to set the DIP switches to things I don't care for...
Let's not forget Tetris. Puzzle games never get old.
Wait till they find out how much they can save running OpenOffice."
We've only got ~100 PC's, and we pay about $160 for Excel/Word/Outlook. I can imagine Lockheed can work something out for the few users that need Powerpoint (managers that make presentations).
The very FIRST issue you have with OpenOffice, whether it's a formatting issue, file conversion, or other imcompatiblity, will cost MORE than Microsoft Office in the loss of productivity and IT staff.
I lurked about as the customer picked out a new mobo and two new sticks of Kingston HyperX RAM - and of course payed 3 times what the stuff would cost on newegg. He hung around as the "upgrade specialists" installed it for him. Before he left I offered him 100 bucks for his old motherboard (an Asus P4PE), 2.4ghz CPU (just a Celeron, but they frankly perform MUCH better than morons give them credit for) and "obsolete" gigabyte of DDR333, and went home with a bag full of "obsolete" goodies.
Great story. Reminds me of my days behind the tech bench at Best Buy. We used to buy old parts and even computers (that weren't really that old) at great prices like you did. Management really didn't like it and fired a few people over it, apparently some customers thought they were 'trading in' to the store.
In 2002 28% of desktops needed fixing, while this year the number dropped to 17%.
I find that kind of hard to belive. I support about 75 desktop machines, and other than coffee spills destroying a keyboard or two, and a couple mice going bad (I'll blame that on the cords being abused), we haven't had any hardware that needed repair/replacement at all.
DELL. For a company whose users love it, it has some "now, about that " issues to address. Its desktops received high marks for reliability, but when they do break down, Dell's tech support generates some grumbling. Part of the grumbling may relate to the company's outsourcing of portions of its tech support some respondents in our survey complained about not being able to understand some of the help technicians. Whatever the reason, Dell scores slightly below average on tech support.
True. I can't understand anything they're saying, and it's very difficult to deal with their outsourced support. Its worst category, though, is notebook computers. These rank below average for reliability in general, with 25% of business notebooks needing repairs. On the plus side, when it does have to repair its machines, Dell does a very good job.
I've had 3 Dell Laptop harddrives crash on me. All the same brand of drive, same symptoms. We've also had problems with some of them (we have around 15) overheating and freezing up.
I really wonder how many problems are actually bad hardware, and how many are things like Windows problems, and spyware/viruses.
He ordered it a month or two ago. To replace his way oversized Dell 8000 series laptop.
They're really too small and fragile to use. It's a nice novelty item, but I'd want something a little more rugged for every day use. The 12" Apple laptops are quite nice, and the Dell X300 is a pretty nice Wintel model.
Once you get down to a certain size, they lose usability.
The Phasers look like a good idea, but they're really not.
The 750/740's are the worst of them.
They weigh something like 100lbs. They only print 8.5x11" or smaller. They don't take many different types of paper well, like cardstock. The ink rubs off the paper if folded, scratched, or smeared. The ink comes off in fax machines and on copier glass. Certain colors look really bad.
They have a really long warm up time. Every time it cools down/warms up they eat a TON of ink. The black ink is free (all you pay is shipping), but the color ink is about $100 a box, and it doesn't last that long. They're also not that fast. 2-3 pages per minute. First page can take a couple minutes to print.
When we first got the printer, only one person could print to it at a time. If anyone 'barged in', it would puke. It took over a year for a new driver to fix this issue.
Outsource your printing. If you're not a big enough operation where you can lease a machine like a Canon ImageRunner 3200, don't bother.
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I seem to get a call from some family member every few weeks where their computer is unusable due to viruses/spyware/adware...
Basically what happens is I spend at least an hour or two, (but not 10-1/2), removing programs, installing programs like Adaware, Spybot, ZoneAlarm (or make them buy a NAT device) and some decent Antivirus software.
Maybe when you get a Centrino-based laptop that runs OS X
It seems that overclocking the chips are all the rage these days, but I was excellent at Wolfenstein 3D when it first came out, because my computer ran at 20 Mhz and the minimum recommended speed was 25 Mhz.
I think you're joking but I'll bite.
Wolf3D ran great on the minimum system, a 286. Which never even came in 25MHz.
I broke my left arm/wrist, and my left hand is usually a little different hue than my right hand (the palm), and it sweats on its own. Can be frustrating to play games, you have to keep it dry all the time.
Let's not forget, that by having car insurance, you are in the minority in the city of Detroit.
Not to mention Michigan has no-fault...
I pay $200 a month and I live 75 miles north.
PocketPC - $99
1GB memory card - $110
Downloading NES/GB/SNES ROMS - $0
Why doesn't Nintendo release them, say 4 to a cartridge? For $24.99 that would be very fair.
The classic game collections on PSX such as the Namco arcade series, come with multiple games on the CD.
Where's the argument of, "I bought (licensed?) this game on Nintendo when I was 9 years old, why should I have to pay anything more than the cost of the media now?" People use that argument with VHS/DVD, and CD/Tape
On a side note, are these games emulated, or re-written?
Doctors make plenty of money. And they're greedy. Last time I was at the doctors office, I was led in to a room by someone making $7 an hour, then I sat there for about 20 minutes. The doctor came in, looked at me for all of 3 minutes, and dashed out of the room. They billed my insurance company $300.
Hmmmmm - Home Depot is a pretty big corporation. Are you sure we're not supposed to be boycotting them for some reason?
Home Depot uses Linux! Have been since 2000. Take a look at their cash registers next time you're there.
Although I mainly use Linux for things such as file/email/proxy servers, I've set up printing before on workstations.
The last version of RedHat that I used, (7.3) made it pretty easy. There was a control panel where I entered a name for the printer, chose postscript, and gave the ip of the printer. (HP LaserJet 4100). Worked perfectly. Everyone asked how I got web pages to print out without cutting off the right side (anyone who's printed from Internet Explorer knows what I'm talking about)
It's equally easy in Knoppix, but you have the extra step of starting the printer daemon.
Microsoft already bought RARE (Killer Instinct, Donkey Kong Country, Goleneye, etc), and Nintendo owned quite a bit of them at one time.
How stable is, say a Dell/IBM/HP server, running an emulator?
I wonder if the guys at DEC ever thought, one day we'll be able to put 50 of these computers inside one box.
Ms. PacMan, Dig Dug, Galaga, Q*Bert, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr, Centipede.
A lot of the old Coin-ops were bad, and the sequels of good ones (Super Pacman, Dig Dug 2, etc) were pretty bad too. But a few of them never get old. I can't help but play a classic when I find one at a bar or restaraunt. As long as it's not a hacked version, or someone decided to set the DIP switches to things I don't care for...
Let's not forget Tetris. Puzzle games never get old.
If you don't get it, you weren't on any BBS's back in the old days.
Wait till they find out how much they can save running OpenOffice."
We've only got ~100 PC's, and we pay about $160 for Excel/Word/Outlook. I can imagine Lockheed can work something out for the few users that need Powerpoint (managers that make presentations).
The very FIRST issue you have with OpenOffice, whether it's a formatting issue, file conversion, or other imcompatiblity, will cost MORE than Microsoft Office in the loss of productivity and IT staff.
I lurked about as the customer picked out a new mobo and two new sticks of Kingston HyperX RAM - and of course payed 3 times what the stuff would cost on newegg. He hung around as the "upgrade specialists" installed it for him. Before he left I offered him 100 bucks for his old motherboard (an Asus P4PE), 2.4ghz CPU (just a Celeron, but they frankly perform MUCH better than morons give them credit for) and "obsolete" gigabyte of DDR333, and went home with a bag full of "obsolete" goodies.
Great story. Reminds me of my days behind the tech bench at Best Buy. We used to buy old parts and even computers (that weren't really that old) at great prices like you did. Management really didn't like it and fired a few people over it, apparently some customers thought they were 'trading in' to the store.
Exercise. Do something to use up some energy. Don't eat chocolate or drink pop after 5 or 6:00pm. Don't use your bed for anything except sleeping.
Maybe there should be a free alternative to these search engines?
There's a bit more to it than writing software. You can't just do an rpm -i google.rpm
Great article. A few points:
In 2002 28% of desktops needed fixing, while this year the number dropped to 17%.
I find that kind of hard to belive. I support about 75 desktop machines, and other than coffee spills destroying a keyboard or two, and a couple mice going bad (I'll blame that on the cords being abused), we haven't had any hardware that needed repair/replacement at all.
DELL. For a company whose users love it, it has some "now, about that " issues to address. Its desktops received high marks for reliability, but when they do break down, Dell's tech support generates some grumbling. Part of the grumbling may relate to the company's outsourcing of portions of its tech support some respondents in our survey complained about not being able to understand some of the help technicians. Whatever the reason, Dell scores slightly below average on tech support.
True. I can't understand anything they're saying, and it's very difficult to deal with their outsourced support.
Its worst category, though, is notebook computers. These rank below average for reliability in general, with 25% of business notebooks needing repairs. On the plus side, when it does have to repair its machines, Dell does a very good job.
I've had 3 Dell Laptop harddrives crash on me. All the same brand of drive, same symptoms. We've also had problems with some of them (we have around 15) overheating and freezing up.
I really wonder how many problems are actually bad hardware, and how many are things like Windows problems, and spyware/viruses.
Anyone care to post a transcript of the interview?
He ordered it a month or two ago. To replace his way oversized Dell 8000 series laptop.
They're really too small and fragile to use. It's a nice novelty item, but I'd want something a little more rugged for every day use. The 12" Apple laptops are quite nice, and the Dell X300 is a pretty nice Wintel model.
Once you get down to a certain size, they lose usability.
Gift idea?
You can read the book online!
http://www.khmere.com/freebsd_book/index.html
The Phasers look like a good idea, but they're really not.
The 750/740's are the worst of them.
They weigh something like 100lbs. They only print 8.5x11" or smaller. They don't take many different types of paper well, like cardstock. The ink rubs off the paper if folded, scratched, or smeared. The ink comes off in fax machines and on copier glass. Certain colors look really bad.
They have a really long warm up time. Every time it cools down/warms up they eat a TON of ink. The black ink is free (all you pay is shipping), but the color ink is about $100 a box, and it doesn't last that long. They're also not that fast. 2-3 pages per minute. First page can take a couple minutes to print.
When we first got the printer, only one person could print to it at a time. If anyone 'barged in', it would puke. It took over a year for a new driver to fix this issue.
Outsource your printing. If you're not a big enough operation where you can lease a machine like a Canon ImageRunner 3200, don't bother.
This is with 2400/9600 bps internet connections, TEXT browsers/email, and simple web pages
Wolfenstein 3D - 1991 or 92 - runs on a 386 - DOS only
Wolf3D required a 286. In fact, it played incredible on a 286.
Quake after this, all are playable over the internet- 1996 - runs on a P-66 - DOS, Win32, linux port some time later.
Don't forget the 3D acceleration offered by GLQuake and VQuake that were released shortly after the game
It's illegal to posess 'burgulars tools' in many places.
Lockpicks, etc. What makes a modchip different?