Like the "compact stereo system" – the new Übermonitors suck. Apart from notebooks – who should include everything for portability – all other gadgets should be "separate". So when one part breaks it doesn’t spoil all other "elements" and usually the built-in components are not top notch, so you want to replace them anyway – but you can’t. The speakers suck and the webcam/microphone are not as good as say a good Logitech one.
It basically turned from a 1970’s brown box to an expensive pebble. And Apple still pretends it’s only a single button mouse – keeping up that old idiotic paradigm of fake simplicity.
Some “instruments” have a certain complexity to them: a computer keyboard needs all keys to work. And the Mac OS has been supporting right-clicks for a long time – but Apple still wants users to perceive the Mac as especially “simple” to use.
But it’s new multitouch mouse isn’t simple at all. It takes some training to get it right.
I am sure such workstations are used to answer complaints and send birthday letters. Right?
I am still waiting for an affordable Hello Kitty netbook – I would buy it instantly!
When I was a kid and heard about the Sinclair QL I was on fire! Great processor, stylish design and powerful graphics. But Sinclair blew the product launch and sold the machine before it was ready for the market. The rest is history as they say.
I still think this is a great machine.
I read your eMail – Dalai Lama!
New Scientist: Chinese spy network infiltrated embassies worldwide
BBC News: Major cyber spy Network uncovered
Bad enough that the great Firewall of China suppresses it’s own people. Bad enough that western companies like Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and others support such measures. But it gets worse …
China – like probably every big nation – loves to spy and so they built a giant computer spy bot network. It seems like that China can’t afford or built such a big "weapon" like the American NSA. So they simply infected thousands of other people’s computers and made them their involuntary spy bots.
China is growing ever more paranoid and suppressive. When will this totalitarian regime finally fall?
Nature hasn’t built us to sit in the same position and stare at a 19"-Universe. We are built for movement and endurance, not pushing pieces of plastic.
The Recession hasn’t started this trend – but it certainly will push it ahead. More and more consumer products don’t include more and more features – but less. They go for a new minimalism that is just enough to finish the task at hand.
I think it’s an excellent trend. We need smaller, smarter und simpler products – in addition to over-engineered thingies like the iPhone and the Hummer.
Small is beautiful was always a design mantra, but “This will do” should be another one. Products that will do the job without any bells and whistles – which save cost, material and energy.
In the Communist era the Soviet Block was far behind in digital technology. So their own computers were celebrated as important achievements and part of the regular worker’s parade.
We still parade our computers in the West – or better say globally, because we love to show our status symbols (so called Digital Penis or Pussy Tech).
Before iPods, before Computers, before CDs, before TV, before Magnetic Tapes, before Radios, before Records, before Phonograph cylinders … Music couldn’t be "saved" or "transmitted" from one place to another.
So people who liked music had to either learn an instruments or simply visit a concert.
It was not very easy to listen to a famous Tenor or Opera, unless you lived in the same city or were lucky enough that that person or performance would play in town.
So many great performances were only done once and never recorded. Today nothing is forgotten and has lead to a new phenomenon: that we listen and cling onto performers long dead. Living musicians have to compete against dead ones. So called "classics" hog shelf space and sales, it makes it hard for young musicians to make a living and achieve fame and stardom. They will always compared mercilessly with recordings from superstars …
Sometimes forgetting and "dying" is a good thing. It makes space for the new and young. But thanks to recordings certain moods or markets become the de factor standard for our ears. For example Steve Wonders’ "Happy Birthday" seems to be the one and only song for that occasion. There seem to be more and more established theme songs that cover our "emotional range" in private and movie moments.
Will future generations still be pestered by the Best of Rolling Stones, Best of Celine Dion and Best of Elton John?!
BBC News: New phone features ‘baffle users’
Apart from the phone designers – is anyone surprised about this?
Most touch screens are only meant for the tiny fingers of 12 year old Asian girls. Most people press at least three functions operating these touch mine fields.
The interfaces are fully Disney-compatible – full of eye candy instead of clear and easy to understand visuals.
To configure mobile internet application or simply the included synching software is often a nightmare. Add Bluetooth networking to make it even more confusing and you have the perfect consumers nightmare.
Those smart phones are hardly smart – most of the intelligence has still to come from the user to make these bloody things work.
When I moved into my new place I had no DSL for two months. I was reduced to an UMTS-Datastick, which works quit well, but is no substitute for real bandwidth.
Now I have 18.000 down and 1.000 kbit/s up. Now that’s what I call speed.
With my old 2000 DSL connection much less bandwidth and my download queue was always full with stuff I desperately needed to be sucked down from the intranets. But today updating my favorite podcasts takes only a couple of minutes, not hours to finish.
So most of the time the huge bandwidth lies dormant.
It’s a paradox: the more speed you have, the less you use it, because everything comes down so quickly.
Even downloading a whole movie sometimes happens under 15 minutes.
But at least I can skype with my friends, download pr0n and surf the web at the same time. That’s nice.
Sure life has changed in the last twenty years a lot. But apart from the obvious technological change and all these gadgets around us – there are far more dramatic changes in our social, economical and political behavior.
Statistics and mathematical problem solving has been around for ages – but with today’s huge databases, networks and extremely cheap processing power suddenly “smart” computer advice is shaping our everyday life …
Since computers have become lifestyle products instead of tools many companies have started to pander to very different types of consumers.
Pink Tech is already causing me eye cancer every time I encounter it in shops (Video 1 and Video 2).
But this pink keyboard from Greybusters with a mirror really takes the cake. And don’t miss all their other great offerings!
Could anyone please stop these people? It hurts.
We are slowly entering the Age of Human-Machine-Symbiosis. Sure – it’s all very crude at the moment and we are still ’smarter’ then machines.
But …
Can you remember all the telephone numbers of your friends?
Would you socially disappear if you cell phone would be gone?
Do you mostly use computers as a bridge to communicate with others – or just your human ‘interface’?
Can you still perform easy calculations without a machine?
Can you write a perfect text without a keyboard and automatic spelling checker?
Can you entertain yourself without a digital machine delivering moving images, games or music to you?
Finally the digital revolution enters the next stage of small and affordable computing. The success of the Asus Eee PC has spawned a whole range of competing machines. The Eee is so far a huge success: it’s small affordable (under 300 Euro), very portable (just around 1 Kg) and it simply works (the screen and keyboard are obviously not very big – but bigger and better than anything a cell phone or PDA like a Palm can offer).
Now this is finally a machine that has enough power to surf the web, do some work and communicate with your buddies (via Skype or instant messaging).
It’s a great secondary machine – because it has not enough memory to hold your complete MP3 collection no does it have enough horse power to do image a lot image or video editing. Not to mention it’s graphics are far to weak to play any serious game. But give it some time and those weaknesses are solved as well.
Most of all: the machine is CHEAP. So mobile computing becomes a cheap commodity (all machines are around 300 Euro) – so you are less afraid of carrying your precious computer around. Plus our global infrastructure offers more and more free wireless access – without which such a machine would be worthless.
I am looking forward to a whole batch of machines for next Christmas – and by one in addition to my other – heavier – notebooks.
Back in the early days of desktop publishing these SyQuest cartridges were the best thing to send your data to clients or the printers. And they worked pretty well … most of the time (any one remember all the hassle to mount SyQuests when there was the wrong or a nasty SCSI driver on it?).
44 MBytes sound like a joke today and they were bloody expensive too. You can easily upload that amount of data today or burn a cheap CD. But all these technologies were not yet available at that time.
Digital Life certainly has improved.
I always applaud companies, when they try to keep the update insanity for device drivers to a minimum. Many companies have switched to so called “all in one” driver packages, which means that all their drivers for all their products are in one huge file.
How huge? The newest SetPoint combined mouse and keyboard driver is a whooping 54 MB big. A monster to download and install.
Excuse me! But a mouse or keyboard is really a simple device – this sucks. Some operating systems are not as big as this driver package. What a waste of resources to download and store that bloody thing …
I very much preferred Apple’s marketing when it was based on it’s own technology instead of constantly bashing the PC / Windows.
Today it’s way too much focused on lifestyle or labeling PC users as stupid. Don’t tell I am an idiot because I DON’T use a Mac – you are not making any friends with me …
Computer Viruses, hackers, rootkits and spyware are everywhere – they are out to get us and eat our data!
Yes? Kinda true.
I had several times ugly spyware and even viruses on my system – and I fixed many times other people’s infected machines. So why on earth would I uninstall my Anti-Virus software?! (But that firewall stays on!)
Simply because I always contracted a nasty piece of software, when I downloaded or installed something from a pirated websites or downloaded so called ‘free software’ with some hidden bonus in it.
So the problem wasn’t really the virus – it was me. I didn’t take care of my own data protection. What was needed was some strict data discipline.
Who wants to install first?
The main problem was always my own stupidity, but for three years I have complied to these simple rules and never had an accident again:
I would recommend these rules to everyone – no matter if you have an anti-virus program installed or not.
Please insert disk one …
But there is another reason why I don’t like to use Anti-Virus software anymore: they have all turned into bloatware.
A combination of firewall and anti-virus software makes sense – but all these “Internet Security Suites” are packed with features, protections and mechanisms I don’t want nor need. Plus they often are huge resource hogs – slowing down the system and fucking up it’s internal workings.
For example: I had to save many computer from example from Norton Security Suites, which had crashed their system and made them very unstable.
Some of these “Suites” are a pain to configure and maintain. I am a pretty nerdy person – I understand most questions and functions that are thrown at me. But I have seen many machines totally fucked up by badly answered / configured “Security Suits”.
There is also the problem that many people install these suits, but never renew their update license to get new anti-virus definitions.
I know many people who have old anti-virus programs running and haven’t updated their definitions. If your protection doesn’t know a new bugger it hardly will protect you against it.
Obsolete protection gives you a false sense of security and really can fuck up your system.
See – no virus on my system!
In all my years of computing I haven’t encountered that super nasty killer virus, No virus I encountered so far has deleted a SINGLE BIT OF DATA.
Most of them want to hijack your system or hide in it to use it’s power for some criminal purpose. Millions of infected machines serve in botnets for cyber attacks, sending spam mail or attack big websites.
Most spyware simply floods your machine with ads, while others try to steal credit card numbers and passwords.
So the data killing virus is ALMOST a myth – it has happened, but is VERY rare these days. (But that’s no excuse not to make your daily backup anyway.)
But data protection and security software are also a big business these days. So many companies have made millions of Euros providing “security” to business and home users alike. These companies have to keep us scared to keep us buying their product.
Time to get rid of your security software?
No.
If you are NOT a nerdy user or admin like me: KEEP your anti-virus software and a good firewall installed. Especially when you are downloading loads of software or spend many hours on public WiFi networks.
Especially StumbleUpon users should be aware that clicking that “Stumble” button can transfer you to a nasty site without warning.
If you have a “Security Suit” that is troubling you or you don’t know how to operate it uninstall that thing and replace it with a free and SIMPLE Anti-Virus program like AVG.
Make sure that at least your Windows Firewall is on (and allows no exceptions if you don’t need them).
Another excellent documentation from Frontline (which you can view online). This time about the first generation (of Americans) who grew up with the Internet, cell phones and computer games.
It covers all important topics: the ‘Always-on’ generation, ego surfing with MySpace and other sites, the new global ‘we’, web slutism, stalking and cyber bullying.
Highly recommended – even if you don’t have kids – because it gives you a better understanding in the psyche of the coming generation and the impact of technology on our society.
Those where the times – when your new gigantic 10 MByte hard drive came with it’s own rig and technician – and a huge invoice …
You know that you hard drive will die some day and all the data on it will be lost. Maybe you loose your data by mistake, a system crash or virus? But day X is coming and you should be prepared!
This is a LONG rant – so skip this if you are not interested.
I am sick and tired of Apple getting all that hype for it’s new MacBook Air. My Samsung Q-35 is already 14 months old and isn’t considered a hot item these days. Here are some numbers to illustrate my point that Samsung built a great machine over two years ago that still is almost as good as Apples new Yuppie gadget:
Weight:
Apple: 1.36 kg
Samsung: 1.9 kg
CPU:
Apple: Intel Duo 2 Core / 1.6 Ghz
Samsung: Intel Duo 2 Core / 1.6 Ghz
Battery Life (according to official propaganda):
Apple: 5 hours
Samsung: 4 hours
Display:
Apple: 1280×800
Samsung: 1280×800
Dimensions:
Apple: 325 x 227 x 4 – 194 mm
Samsung: 299 x 214 x 27.4~35.8 mm
My Samsung has more ports (Ethernet, Modem, 2x USB, Firewire, PCMCIA card) and INCLUDES a DVD drive plus a slot for all sorts of memory cards (why is that missing in a Mac?).
The Mac has a built in video camera and better graphics card (no surprise two years later). The 80 GB hard drive is more or less identical. The Mac has a bit newer Bluetooth and WiFi, but not that much different or better.
The new Apple keyboards are terrible – dunno if the MacBook Air feels as rubbery as these. The Samsung keyboard is brilliant – since I write a lot this was an essential point for me.
The new trackpad in the Mac seems to be a big innovative plus, but I am not sure if it makes any difference while writing or designing. Most people use an extra mouse even while traveling – and hardly anyone does design work with Photoshop or Illustrator using the trackpad anyway.
The Samsung Q-35 is no longer available – but you can get it’s successor Q-45 under 1.000 Euro with more power, bigger drive, CPU and better graphics. The new MacBook Air will set you back 1.600 Euros with NO DVD drive …
Just within a hundred years we spread ‘waves’ everywhere. You can listen to radio or talk via your cell phone in almost every corner of our blue planet. Satellites and WiFi antennas will soon provide full broadband coverage everywhere – so you can tune into the intranets and the full media spectrum of radio, voice and webtv wherever you are.
While a primitive radio set can built with the most basic of electrical components modern communication relies on complex digital technology. I wonder if things like emergency radio will be any use in the future – when nobody owns any equipment to listen to it.
Radio Waves are the very essence of modern communication.
Back in the 80’s I adored these modern looking Apricot computers. Too bad they were not so successful like the IBM machines. Their design and technology were pretty cool and innovative.
More? Apricot @ Wikipedia
The good old Mac OS 7 was simply the best: small, compact, easy to use, visually appealing and humble. It just worked and didn’t distract you with stupid gimmicks or widgets or a gazillion functions your didn’t need.
Today’s Mac and Windows operating systems are bloated monsters compared to that. Instead of working you are busy administering your system and learning stuff about computing you absolutely don’t need to earn your living. That’s geekery eating itself.
All computer security is only there to protect you from evildoers.
Gee, is it already over ten years ago that these oversized pocket calculators achieved the final breakthrough of the PDA? Together with the mainstream revolution of the WWW suddenly cell phones and personal digital assistants exploded everywhere.
Palm created 1996 a huge market that was invented by Apple with it’s Newton 1992. But the original Newton was a brick compared to the slender Palm (which would appear huge compared to today’s machines). And it played nicely with a Mac and a PC. Something Apple always hated until they finally ‘got it’ with the iPod.
Suddenly everyone wanted to have one of these organizers – in every meeting people would try to take notes with Graffiti – a special sign language to make the computer better understand human handwriting. Most people ended up using the keyboard map instead.
Today the PDA’s are slowly disappearing – or better say evolving into the smart phones. Today almost any cell phone offers an extended address book and scheduler. If you need more power – you simply use a notebook or small laptop. Especially since PDAs from Palm and Windows CE are bloody expensive.
The whole PDA market will be killed by smart phones. There is no need to have a small computer if you cell phone can organize your life as well.
More? Palm Pilot @ Wikipedia
I liked the Mac cube concept. Overall our desktop machines are way too big. But I also think that laptops are not always the best ‘form factor’ either. I like to have my keyboard and monitor separate from the computer itself.
The iMac ‘lamp’ design and ‘PC-within-the-monitor’ designs are pretty practical as well – but your are stuck with fixed setup: you simply can’t replace the monitor or computer if it fails. You have the same problem with laptops.
But since monitors will be the biggest feature of all PCs in the future all designs will end up being built around this component anyway. And laptops and notebooks are outselling good old desktops now for several years. So the one in one machine is the future.
The ‘electronic book’ was already dead when it was first proclaimed as the next big thing on CD-ROMs. But nobody bought those shiny edutainment books on CDs, no matter how annoyingly they stuffed down our throats. Remember when almost every magazine had a silver disc attached to it?
Then came the mainstream web and the browser – and once again the book was considered dead by tech pundits – the web was the new "electronic book". This didn’t stop companies like Apple, Sony and Palm to also sell their PDA’s as new "electronic books".
Everybody knows that reading a long text on screen sucks – even on very good screens. But Amazon.com has decided they do it all better. Their new "electronic book" reader is called "Kindle" (which is already a weak name) and it has WiFi, built in search, a weird keyboard and an extra nice screen, so we can read it in the bright sunlight.
Forget Kindle – buy an Asus Eee PC …
Amazon has rolled out a huge launch page on it’s site with many videos, reviews, celebrity endorsements and stuff you can already download via your Kindle.
But the user reviews are a disaster. Anyone reading the specs of this ‘contraption’ immediately sees that it is hardly state of the art. And it lacks basic PDF support among other things, battery lifetime is too short and the thing is simply bloody ugly. They should let Apple design a new one.
But for the most part it’s totally overpriced: $399 for a simple eBook reader? You can buy for less dollars any old decent Palm and get more value for your money. Or you buy a really cool and more useful Asus Eee PC for also $399. It’s bloody small, has a proper browser and office suite – and can also be used to view eBooks.
Of course for $399 you can buy many books and magazine … without all the digital hassle and simply read without worrying about battery time and sunlight reflection on your display.
Hello I am a PC – and I am a Mac …
Apple has been playing the the same old tune: bad and unreliable PC – super cool and practical Mac. It’s just getting boring to repeat old flame wars again and again.
The more Apple insists on being cooler, younger and more reliable – the more it becomes a joke itself. We are now beyond coolness in your daily life’s – we simply want to work and are hardly excited about any new Geekery. Stuff has to work – and the PC’s simply work as well.
The iPod campaigns so far show how they can do it better: simply show the joy of using the product and it’s simplicity. Don’t even recognize the competition.
Computer Aided Gardening! No shit Sherlock. This thing comes complete with seeds, a program to monitor the growth, a watering reminder (very handy!) and bookmarks for further information to grow a digital green thumb.
I am wondering how many nerds use this to grow their own drugs with this? But it’s a great idea.
I am afraid the plant won’t be enough to offset the greenhouse gases your computer creates. But it’s a start to start your own CO2 emission program.
There is no such thing as a big enough monitor. So I upgraded from a 19" to 22" monitor. This Samsung beast is excellent: great contrast, brilliant colours and brightness like a sunbed. I only wish it was a little bit bigger …
Yeah, the good old digital stoneage, when a bit of memory cost you an arm, a leg and your grandmother’s pension. Good thing that electronics getting cheaper and cheaper. Who would have thought to have 10.000 songs in your pocket – and being able to walk … those old drives were HUGE!
Thanks to Edosan for sending me that ad.
Can anyone still remember life before email? Most companies and private citizens didn’t use eMail before 1995 – so the revolution is hardly 10 years old for many people. (I got my first email address 1991)
You remember the pain of snail mail? Typing or printing your letter on paper, stuffing it into an envelope, finding the right stamp and post it into a letterbox right on time for next day delivery?
Old school mail sucked – although spam is taking the fun out of instant electronic delivery as well.
The next generation of Credit Cards could include a small keyboard to enter your PIN for transaction – which means it has it’s own communication and computing power ‘on board’. Great!
Anything with a computer can crash, have communication problems and can be hacked.
‘Excuse me, I need to reboot my credit card – it just crashed.’
What a Nightmare!
Thanks Edosan for sending this one.
Ah, the promise was so neat: a wireless technology for small gadgets. You simply connect your cell phone, headsets, coffee machines or vibrates with each other. Super easy and super simple. Yeah, right …
Reality check please!
Several years after the introduction of Bluetooth this technology suffers from the same stupid mistakes and problems almost all gadgets do: compatibility issues. Often Bluetooth devices from the same vendors won’t talk to each other.
And the bitch is that with wireless devices you never can ’see’ if they properly connect with each other. So searching for the real problem is hard – even for experts.
Even Bluetooth 2.0 didn’t fix the problem – it just made it worse.
I am a big wireless fan myself, but my Bluetooth headset, my Bluetooth mouse, my Bluetooth enables cell phone and my Bluetooth keyboard hate each other. Only one device at a times please.
So once again we have to update drivers, check compatibility before buying and spend hours making gadgets talk to each other.
Thank you so much Bluetooth people – please accept my thanks in form of a real hard kick in your wireless butts.
I always find it highly amusing when friends and client proudly show me their backup. After a solid decade of data loss most people finally understand the bare necessity of making backups. But still they are not ’safe’. DVDs themselves are a terrible backup media: they easily scratch, bright sunlight is bad for them and sometimes the data can’t be read in all DVD drives. Most of all they won’t last forever: manufacturer promise sometimes ten year or more. But try to complain about data loss in ten years to TDK or Sony. You must have done something wrong Sir!
And who knows if we will have DVD drives in ten years anyway? The floppy disk died a slow death, but I guess DVDs and CD-Drives will change and disappear much faster. Hopefully not your data.
The best protection: make backups on different media’s! I have my most important data on DVD discs, an external portable hard drive, an USB stick and on a secure server on the web. Overkill? Not really if your work means something to you. Most of all: backups onto web machines or online services can be done every night when you sleep.
