August
2002
Is it my
imagination or is the settling out of DVD standards taking much too
long to end. Those of you who remember, or even worse, got stuck
with a Sony Betamax recorder will certainly show a bit of restraint
before dumping another $600 or so for a DVD recorder and discs. The
problem is that they may take too long to settle things out before
we decide we don’t need a DVD recorder. Right now, there are still
six different DVD recording types out there and unfortunately as a
consumer of these products, we have to decide which one to buy. We
do because if you ask the different manufacturers, you will get
conflicting answers as each hopes to be the real one to go forward.
The good news is that they have settled on the DVD-R standard for
creating the one time use only discs. Kind of like what CD-R is to
the rest of us. You write to the disc once and that is it. You
should have no trouble in reading it on any other DVD system. The
real problem is in the re-writable area and that is where we are in
our VHS/Betamax quandary. If you ask IBM or Gateway, they go with
the DVD-RAM standard which is what they install on their desktop
systems. Dell and HP use the DVD+RW standard. Finally, Compaq and
Sony use the DVD-RW format. What is the big deal, well for one
thing, a re-writable disc written by an HP cannot be read by the
Compaq. Since they are both the same company, you guess which will
survive. For some very good analysis of the DVD world, go to http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html.
From the people
that I see and talk to, no one is that anxious to get into DVD
recording. The people that should be would be the ones that have old
videos, home movies, and the like that probably need to be converted
to digital format before they disintegrate. Now for data backup, DVD
I think won’t be the solution no more than CD RW is the solution.
Not enough space for everything. Yes DVD currently holds 4.7GB of
data compared to the 700mb of a CD but my last customer installed a
100GB drive in his computer and most of the drives these days are in
the 40 to 80GB range. Granted I haven’t seen too many people fill
these up but it really won’t be that long before they do. Now for
those of you that only use your computer for occasional word
processing and email, you are right; you will never fill up that
much space. That is until you decide to get a digital camera,
scanner, or discover that there is a way to convert all those old 78
and 33 LP records to digital. I still look longingly at a stack of
records that I haven’t heard in years and don’t have CDs for.
Our problem is
that I am seeing too many people and businesses not backing up their
critical files on the computers. There are too many factors out
there that will kill a computer from power spikes through lightening
to simple failures of the hard drives. So, what is your solution to
backing up your stuff? My favorite right now is to set up a second
computer and use the network. That computer can be nearly anything
that has been sitting around. Just be sure it is running Windows98
or better, can recognize a hard drive bigger than 20GB, and use the
network to copy the files across. Now Rollie’s adventure in doing
this for a large set of files seemed to take quite a bit of time so
depending on how much you have, you might need to revise some
options but there are some software packages out there to help you
compress the information and keep it all together. PowerQuest’s
Drive Image is one such solution.
Noisy Computers
I have talked
about noisy computers in the past and Dave Knoll (former president
of the ICS) has done some real research into the problem by spending
cold cash on some of the solutions that are out there and his
findings are interesting to note. One of his first comments after
buying a new quieter power supply and CPU Fan is that his computer
still sounds like a wind tunnel. To me, my test system with the
three fans installed sounded like a turbo-prop plane in flight. You
can read while in flight but it does get annoying after a while and
is really noticeable when you turn the thing off and discover how
quiet life can be. The real problem is to tell how much cooling that
your computer really needs. If you ever put your finger on a
processor chip just after it was turned off, you know that you can
easily leave a layer of skin there because it is really hot. Hot
enough that if the CPU fan quits, you will more than likely be stuck
with a dead computer. So what is good to see is now a trend towards
cooler systems. If you consider that most laptops even running
Pentium IVs don’t have anywhere near the cooling capacity that our
desktop systems have we may find we are on to something here. I also
see computer systems out there built around very small cases. Both
Intel and AMD are working on low power processors and the Chipset
maker VIA is also working in that direction. So, do we need all
these fans to keep things quiet? Hard telling but probably so and so
what we need is more information on what is really happening inside
the computer. Well one thing is that most new mainboards will tell
you how fast the fans are running and what temperature the internal
CPU is running at. There is also some software out there that will
also tell you without having to go into the CMOS setup of the
computer to see them. One such product is MB Probe, http://mbprobe.livewiredev.com/.
Check out a
couple of Dave’s references at http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/02q2/020605/.
Also look at www.pcpowerandcooling.com/, PC Power and Cooling, and
Silicon Acoustics at www.siliconacoustics.com. One thing you should
remember though is that nothing wears out a computer faster than
over heating so be very careful if you decide to reduce the amount
of cooling available to your computer. Another very good resource
will be the Over Clockers. These are people that routinely push the
computer to run much faster than it was designed to do. Think of
them as the hot rod junkies of the 21st Century who take
ordinary cars and turn them into racers. There is a whole bunch of
web sites devoted to over-clocking your computer and these folks
have really run into the problem of cooling things down as one thing
besides speed that is generated with over-clocking, and that is
heat.
Short Takes
I have long
been telling people that they need to replace the surge protectors
periodically and recently came across an article from the Naked PC
Newsletter (http://www.thenakedpc.com) that clarified the problem.
According to them, the reason that the surge protectors (and that
also includes the UPS Uninterruptible Power Supplies) need to be
replaced is that the technology that protects against surges wears
out over time. You see, what happens is that each of these units has
a fixed amount of life to them and each time they take a hit or
surge, that hit takes away from their ability to protect your
equipment and so they wear out. I remember back in the early 80s
building my own surge strip. I took a power bar, opened it up, and
soldered in the metal-oxide varistors (MOVs) inline with the power.
It is these MOVs that actually protect your equipment against surges
and spikes. The problem is that when these MOVs wear out or get
burned out because of a surge or spike, there is often no way of
knowing whether they are still working or not. The power strip still
works but you have no way of knowing whether the protection is still
there or not and unfortunately, I have seen several situations where
a computer was hit by lightening and the owner tells me that they
had a surge protection unit on it. When I looked at the unit, I
discovered that it was purchased some 10 or more years ago. Not
surprising at all when you consider the surges and spikes that you
get and don’t know about them because they aren’t quite large
enough to kill anything but maybe just cause a light to blink for a
split second. Some of the newer, and more expensive, surge units
have indicator lights that tell you that your unit is still
protecting what ever you have plugged into it but most of them do
not, especially the cheaper units.
There are a couple of solutions. One being to replace all of
those devices every few years. A better one would be to get a better
quality surge protection unit (like those from American Power
Conversions, APC at www.apcc.com) that will let you know that it is
still protecting your equipment. Another solution would be to get a
whole house surge protection unit. You can learn more about them by
doing a search on Google, www.google.com under “whole house surge
protection”.
It is hard to
believe but I still don’t own what I consider a quality digital
camera. Yes I have tinkered with many and have had the opportunity
to review several from companies like Kodak, Olympus, and Minolta
but I still haven’t found the one that I really want to plunk down
cold hard cash for. The problem is that the camera I want costs over
$1,000 and the one I can live with costs over $600. But I still
haven’t found just the right mix of camera to make me actually
spend the cash. I was beginning to really feel alone in this boat
until I saw an article from David Pogue in the New York Times back
on Thursday, June 13, 2002 called “STATE OF THE ART; Desert Island Cameras”.
In it he goes through the same types of agony in selecting a camera.
He did a round up of 10 4 megapixel cameras in the $400 to $900
range and his thought process of elimination is worth reading. You
can still get it on the New York Times web site at www.nytimes.com
but it will cost you to retrieve it.
In his review,
I found a few (actually quite a few) interesting details and
information that went with the column. First of all, of the 10
cameras selected, they use four different memory card types. To me
this is a serious point in selecting the camera as I want the memory
card to easily work with my other devices and computers. I use a
Pocket PC Computer that uses Compact Flash CF memory, The new Epson
printer uses both CF and Smart Media SM memory and you can find a
lot of devices that will allow you to simply plug either of those
memory modules into a USB connected reader for easy and quick
transfer to your computer. My Notebook also has a CF Reader built in
so again, for me, the camera must use CF memory. That would
eliminate 4 of the cameras including the Olympus and Sony. Another
requirement for me is that it uses standard AA batteries, preferably
four of them for better battery life. I have tons of spare
rechargeables and Alkalines around the house to use and if you get
stuck, you can almost always find AA batteries for sale. That will
bump three more out and leave the Casio, Kodak, and Minolta cameras.
I want at least a 3X optical zoom lens and that bounces the Kodak.
The Casio, in my opinion, is a techno geeks dream and I really want
a camera that works fast, is easy to change from one setting to
another, and is easy to use. What that does leave me is the Minolta
Dimage S404 camera to take a look at. Not a big selection once you
get down to it.
Want true audiophile quality from your computer? Want to know what
it sounds like to have those warm true sounds coming out of your
computer speakers? Then you should take a look at AOpen’s newest
mainboard offering, the AX4B-533 model. With a vacuum tube built
into the sound chips, this is truly a unique offering for those that
really want the superior sound quality coming from their computer.
http://club.aopen.com.tw/activity/tube/en/default.htm
Robert Sanborn
is an Independent Personal Computer Consultant, and a contributing
editor for the Indianapolis Computer Society. Reach him through the
net at indypcnews@indy.rr.com
