The Computer Speaketh Not

A nice lady comes in and says that she wants to upgrade to Windows 7 from XP. We check her ram and find it minimal, but sufficient.  We check her current data and find that she had recently crashed and reloaded XP and all her data is gone. Well, this looks like it is going to be an easy installation of Windows 7. The operation is very routine. We repartition and format the hard drive and then load Windows 7. Windows 7 found most of the hardware drivers. We update those and find and install the others. We download all the OS updates and then load on the basic, free programs that she will find useful.

Somewhere toward the end of this process we notice that her audio is not working. The driver is loaded and says it is happy, but the control panel tells us that there is no audio device. The troubleshooting process begins: Go download the latest driver (again) and load it. Still no audio device detected. Download another driver that probably isn’t the right one, but we want to try it. Still no audio device detected. We uninstall then reinstall drivers and reboot. Nope, no audio device detected.  Actually, when scanning for new hardware it does see the audio device, but none of the listed drivers, nor others we try, will make the hardware work.

Okay, so we write off the problem as a hardware error or a Windows 7 incompatibility. I install a PCI audio card to get around the on-board hardware and run the driver installation. It doesn’t go well. There was something strange about the installation process—no error messages, but it didn’t seem complete. The result is no audio device is found. I double check and this sound card and driver are Windows 7 compatible.  So we uninstall, reboot, and reinstall. I get a “Platform not supported: error 0” message. Hmmm. I go to the company website and download the current driver for this platform.  Again I get the “Platform not supported” message.  This is getting frustrating.  I reboot and reinstall with an error message. I select the “diagnose”  and reinstall option. Hey, this time it says it loaded. Is there sound? Why, yes there is. Hurray! The computer wants to reboot to cement the installation and so we do. When it comes back up there is “No audio device found.”  Do I shoot the computer or shoot myself? Then an intuition strikes me. I take out the old modem that is in the other PCI slot and put the audio card in it. I reinstall the driver. I get an installation error, but diagnose and reinstall and it loads. Yes, I have sound. I reboot. Again I have sound. I reboot several times and play YouTube videos and music and have sound every time. I put the gun away and the computer and I live another day. Apparently we had a bad PCI slot. Computers, so simple yet so complex.

Tablets Vs. Laptops

I have been following tablets since the beginning. I was aware of the Windows-based tablets years before the iPad came out. Of course the Windows tablet was virtually unknown except to those few who had a need for them. Then the iPad came out and created a sensation. I played with iPads purchased by others and had to admit that they were interesting and nicely designed. However, try as I might I could not see how I could justify buying one. Also, it was an Apple and I just don't buy Apple. Yes, this is an ugly bias in my judgment. Um, now that I think of it I do have an iPod that I love, so add hypocrisy to my vices.

When Apple made it clear how much money could be made from tablets loads of other companies jumped into the market. Google's Android OS, first seen on smart phones, became the platform of choice for most non-Apple tablet makers. Unlike Apple, where there is one product, the iPad, there were a whole slew of Android tablets to choose from. For me there were two problems with these tablets. The first and largest problem was cost. At $500 to $700 they just cost too much for my budget. The second problem closely tied to the first was need. As interested as I was in tablets, as cool as they were, I just could not find enough need in my life to attempt justifying purchasing a tablet. I had a laptop at home and a netbook at the shop (for on-site calls). A tablet gave me nothing that what I already had could not do. Oh, I guess there was one thing a tablet could do uniquely--be used while standing up, but that alone didn't justify the kind of money they were asking for them.

Eventually an event happened that finally influenced me to pull the trigger. The Amazon Kindle came out for $199. The low cost of the Kindle Fire and my intense curiosity for tablets finally won and just before Christmas I pulled my Kindle Fire out of the box. It was an exciting moment for me. This blog entry is not a review of the Fire or a comparison against others so I will spare you details. Rather, it is a brief analysis of how a tablet has changed my life. In short I have found that it hasn't changed my life very much. The novelty is starting to wear off and my tablet is relegated to some bedtime reading and web-browsing. Oh, yes, it also serves well for the bed-time games of "Worms" with my kids. That is about it. I'm really glad I didn't put out $500 for a tablet. My table is really good for looking at things and for short entry input, but that is about it. The ease with which it can be carried to another room to show someone something is unsurpassed, but that is where its true usefulness in my life stops. A major problem with a tablet is that they are just too big to carry around all the time. They are no more mobile than a netbook. Even my 7" Fire is too big for my pocket. Fortunately there are smart phones that do fit in my pocket. My G2x has every function of any current tablet and is extremely mobile. I love it and use it constantly throughout the day. So in essence this phone, not considered a tablet, has changed my life where a tablet proper only entertains me.

I have found that when I need to get any serious work done I still reach for my laptop. Writing this blog entry is a good example. Other examples are editing my photos, creating movies, writing letters, paying on-line for my daughters school lunches or adjusting usage allowances for my mobile phone accounts (not mobile sites and kind of clunky on my tablet). I am aware that there are keyboard options for tablets which help solve the input problem, but then I basically have a laptop--and I already have a laptop that can still do more than the most expensive tablets.

So where does this put me in my opinion of tablets? I love them! They are so cool. They are here to stay and are making a difference in many people's lives. However, I don't see them replacing laptops, but only becoming a different kind of laptop--a laptop with a removable, touch screen. There will be at least three kinds to choose from: Apple, Android, and Windows. At this point in time, if I didn't already have my mobile needs taken care of I would choose a Windows 8 tablet (when released) because I like the 30 years experience behind the OS versus the new and still rather unpredictable Android environment. But that is the  subject of a different blog entry.

The Web Knows All

     There are many great developments in the past 25 years, but I believe that the one that has had the most profound effect on society is the Web. The Web and its side-effects truely have made the world a very small place.
     I remember back in the DOS 3.1 days. This long before the Internet was a household item. In fact I had not heard of the Internet yet. I had a computer and it was running from a command line like everyone's computer. On one occasion I remember having a technical problem of one kind or another. Technical problems are a part of my everyday life now. However, back then I was on my own. Today you wouldn't understand those words. At that time I had a problem. My resources to solve the problem were what I knew in my own head and a useless user's manual. I didn't have the answer in my head and the user's manual didn't have the answer. At that point the program was broken and that was that. I still remember the incredible frustration I felt. I was totally helpless. Luckily the problem was not life or death. I can't even remember the details. But something that should have worked didn't work and I had no resources to fix it.
     Today it is so very different due to the web. I was putting up a bulletin board on a web site once. I ran across a problem where a necessary feature wouldn't work. I had no ideas on how to fix the feature, but I began the search--online. I read through all the help for the bulletin board without success. I went through other avenues without finding the answer. I ended up on a PHP forum where I found people discussing similar problems with their bulletin board. After several hours of searching across two different days I finally ran into a post that held the answer.

"Open up the configuration file. On line 128 change the '1' to a '0' then restart the program."

I did this and the bulletin board was working. It was the most beautiful thing--not the bulletin board, but finding an answer to my problem. The problem was far above a non-programmer like me. In spite of this, because the Web's powerful communication ability someone out there who I have never met was able to help me solve a problem that was impossible otherwise.
     Since that time I have used the Internet, as most of you, to solve many, many problems. I believe I would not hesitate to call the Internet one of the wonders of the world.

Superstitious Computers

I was never very superstitious until I started working with computers. Cause and effect was always good enough for me. If there is an effect there is normally a reasonably explainable cause. This should hold true with computers, and probably does, but at times it doesn't seem to.

In the best cases I will have someone come in and tell me that their computer will not do anything when they hit the power button. The first thing that enters my mind is "power supply" and often it is. No superstition there. But then the problems get a little more murky.

For instance. Almost every day I have someone bring their computer to the shop and tell me, "This computer was working fine when I turned it off last night, but when I turned it on this morning it won't boot up all the way." The implication is the computer was fine yesterday when I turned it off, so how did it break while it was off overnight? Although this does seem strange reason tells us that the computer was probably developing undetected troubles in the days leading up to the detectable problem and upon that last shutdown something broke the camel's back. I like to look really smart and be able to tell a customer exactly what happened that disabled their computer, but sometimes I have to rely on the word "something" and just accept it. Still, this kind of problem doesn't blow the mind.

Then we get to the digitally supernatural. I sold a woman a brand new external hard drive. She calls me up and complains that I sold her a used external hard drive. She knew this because it was already full of data. I visited her home, plugged in her external hard drive, and sure enough, the drive that appeared was full of data. I was confused because the I had put this external hard drive together myself with a hard drive I had pulled from a sealed static free package straight from the manufacturer. I brought the hard drive back to the shop and plugged it in to look again. This time it was completely empty like it should have been. I was a little more confused now. I went back to her home and plugged it back into her computer. The drive appeared in the "My Computer" screen and again it was full of data. At this point I am starting to hear the Twilight Zone theme music.

After much head scratching and looking around I finally discovered that when I plugged in or turned on the new external hard drive on her computer two new drive letters were showing up in her "My Computer" screen. One was for an ancient zip drive on her computer and the other was for the external hard drive. The letter for the external hard drive showed up lower down the screen where I had to scroll to see it. I had quite reasonably assumed that the drive letter that appeared up higher was for the external hard drive I had just turned on. When I clicked on the drive letter down lower I indeed found an empty external hard drive ready to receive data. We dropped data onto the external hard drive and saw it saved there. Now I was off the hook for selling her a used external hard drive.

But the question still remained as to why this other drive would appear only when I turned on the external hard drive. An even bigger question was why was this Zip drive showing up full of data wen there was no Zip disk in the drive? I double-clicked on one of the files listed and it opened! I did a search for that file and it did not show up. It was phantom data. I had to assume it was data that had been written to a zip disk long ago by someone other than the owner (she did not recognize the data files) even though she was the original owner of the computer. I can only think that they were temporary files meant to be written to a Zip disk, but never were. But who? When? How did they remain all those years. Why did they only show up when turned on the external drive? If I could make money pursuing such questions I would put in some time to get to the bottom of this. But having many more explainable problems to resolve I've just had to let this go and classify it under the "ghost in the machine." I have had many other experiences with computers that seem unexplainable. I will describe these in the future.