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This web site

When I first put this together I used what I had and knew, namely Microsoft FrontPage©.  A year has passed and I now do some cool web work using 'professional' tools. So why not redevelop this site to give it a more professional appearance? 

The honest answer is time. Like every other small business owner/operator I know, I have much more to do than time to do it in. So, I prioritize. Yes, I do develop web sites. But it's not a core competency and I don't expect it ever to be. I am not interested in specializing in web development. Frankly, I'm much more interested in building dynamic web sites with databases underlying them than in graphically cool 'static' web sites. So, for now, I'm not going to invest my time in making this site more professional, just to prove to the idle curious that I can.

You see, I don't really expect this web site to bring me much if any business. It's here because I need a way to provide information to people who may have heard of me and want to know more about what I can do for them. So, my focus is on providing content, not pizzaz.

Like most of us in the industry, Windows Vista just doesn't seem worth the pain. But, it is rather pointless trying to fight it.

I have started replacing dead systems with Vista machines. Well, it has some significant security advantages over XP. But, the most important factor is that it will have a longer useful life. Microsoft is very likely to stop providing those all important security updates to XP before the new machine you buy today goes in the crusher.

Instant Messaging, aka chat, seems to be finding its uses. I have zero interest in casual 'chat' rooms, or meeting strangers on-line. But, I'm beginning to find it has some value for me. 

I have one client who uses IM regularly, so I'm set up to support him by IM, whenever he needs it. My son and his family use it regularly, so I'm finding it is a nice way to stay in touch with them.

There are a lot of alternatives. Big companies can and usually do run their own IM service internally. The many IRC (Internet Relay Chat) services and its derivatives are useful depending on what your desired contact uses. As with most, you can use AOL's IM service (AIM) for free. I personally prefer the GAIM client because it doesn't carry the advertising baggage. Yahoo appears to have the lead if you want to tie in an eyeball camera. Then MSN and others offer competing services.

Backups

Windows Update

Windows Update is one of the better things Microsoft has done for us. For most uses, it is best to just keep your system up to date with all critical patches and service packs. Okay, so that is opinion and some will disagree with me. I respect them. But that's my opinion.

Anti-Virus

There are good tools on the market (Trend Micro, Panda, McAfee, Norton...). If you ever have your computer on the Internet, you have to use one. And you have to keep it up to date. That means pay for a renewal of the update service when you have to. You are safer crossing an LA freeway on foot than using the Internet without Anti-Virus (or relying on really old virus definitions). Did I exaggerate? Well, maybe. A little...

Support

Hardware and software development efforts can be categorized as either projects or products. Projects are one-time efforts that work upon completion, but the future is up for grabs. Typically, this occurs when a developer solves a problem with a piece of custom written code.

Products are supposed to have two additional attributes, on-going support for a reasonable period of time (at a charge, usually). At the end of the supported time (which should be announced well in advance) called ‘end of life’, there is an expectation of there being a migration option. A product goes to End Of Life after new product sales have become insignificant, and enough customers have migrated to newer, better technology that a business decision can be made to risk angering the remaining customers in order to cut the support costs. Hopefully, a reasonable migration path is available.

Support and migration make it tremendously more expensive for a company to develop a product for the market than to do a project for a customer.  Big companies like IBM, Sun, HP and Microsoft take this seriously and spend the money. It may be marketed as “investment protection”, for example, but it is a differentiator in this business.

It is important to understand that often ‘supported’ is more a business decision than a technical one. In particular, an unsupported configuration may work fine. Moreover, it is not uncommon for the vendor’s customer service representatives to unofficially provide telephone support on a ‘best efforts’ basis even though the installation is ‘unsupported’. You have to ask, if it is important.

It is worth a moment to understand the history. Around 20 years ago, customers would buy everything from the system vendor, who would sign them up for a ‘support contract’. Revenue from these support contracts was very profitable and companies like IBM did well. As the industry matured, repair gradually became replace and third party products that were fully compatible became the norm. Support contracts became uneconomic to customers and the resulting impact on big systems vendors like Digital was dramatic if not fatal. Without contract revenue to fund the on-going support efforts, companies have been forced to end product lives earlier than they otherwise would.

Microsoft Operating System Support

Microsoft has a small army of people running thousands of computers of every conceivable make, model, and weird combination of third party hardware and software products. Each new software release gets subjected to extensive testing in this environment. Microsoft is in business to make money and has to eventually phase out support of old products. They have announced a phased schedule and it is available on their web site.

Volume systems builders like Dell offer few alternatives. So, if you want buy an older system, you have to shop around.

For example, practically speaking, I expect Windows 98 SE and ME to be supportable for many years to come, not from Microsoft, but from third parties because there will continue to be many people running on these systems well beyond 2006. And the clock is ticking now on XP.

Drivers

Modern systems are all built in layers with specified and relatively stable interfaces between the layers. An operating system, such as XP, relies on lower level software called ‘drivers’ to do everything. In many areas there are multiple layers of drivers. One reason might be to provide an abstraction of common functionality. Also the hardware may determine the layering. This happens in the case of a PCI bus which needs its own driver which interacts with separate drivers for the various options that might be installed on the PCI bus.

You should know that a driver is written to conform to the needs of the calling software (the O/S, typically) and the controlled device or driver. Every new device needs a driver, and that driver can be different depending on the environment it goes into. It doesn’t have to be different. They might package code for all the supported environments together and use only the required pieces at installation.

Computers are assembled by a system builder. It's the builder's responsibility to provide the customer with a set of all the software needed to make it run properly.  Without this, rebuilding a system disc can be nearly impossible. One needs not only the base operating system, but software drivers for various chip sets on the motherboard, etc. It can be very difficult and time-consuming to try to reconstruct everything. Don't lose those CDs!

The best practice approach to a driver problem is to determine what isn’t working properly, what it actually is, and go to the device manufacturer’s web site to look for the latest driver that supports your Operating System.   You may be surprised to learn that often the hardest part of this is determining what is actually installed. 

This creates a very nasty situation in the downgrade scenario. There is a very good chance that enhancements to the specific options mean that the drivers packaged with the old Operating System kit will not work well with the new option. Conversely, drivers packaged with the new hardware may not support the old operating system, especially, when the new operating system shipped is on a different code base, as XP is, than the old system’s code base, Windows 95/98/ME.

What doesn't work

You do not want to try to run an old operating system on a computer that wasn't built for it. In this case they wanted Windows 98 on a Dell system loaded with Windows XP. Other gurus said it should work. Sure, I'd have to hunt up drivers. I did it for the client, and it was a colossal mistake. Those fancy Video and I/O chips weren't known when the operating system was built, and their manufacturers don't try to provide updates to old operating systems to make them work.  

So, if you really want to run Windows 98, for example, find someone who will sell you a system running Windows 98. 

Backward compatibility works with software. You can put new software on old hardware, within reason, and it should work. But don't try putting old operating system software on new hardware. Old applications have a much better chance of working, although there can be some unpleasant surprises.

I know this industry well enough that I should not have made this mistake, but I did.

Wireless

I wonder who came up with the "WiFi" label. The only expansions I've seen go to "wire-less fidelity". What does 'fidelity' have to do with it pray tell? 

Real briefly, for those who don't keep up on the latest technology crazes, I'll explain WiFi. It is a cordless connection for your computer. No wire is involved. It runs over short distances, usually less than 100 yards/meters. The radio part of your laptop or handheld computer is relaying through a special box that is, normally, wired into some network like the Internet. It's easy to setup and use and inexpensive. It also has some security concerns, but let's not go there for now.

People are putting it into their homes, to avoid running wires all over. Companies are putting WiFi into their office building to support employees moving around. Some companies are setting up airport lounges and coffee-shops. The big question is how is anyone going to make money doing this? One of my friends had the best idea I've heard yet. RV parks are scattered throughout the country. They are especially popular with retirees who are roaming. Many of them have laptops and want to receive e-mails with pictures of the grandchildren, and surf the web for information about sights of interest. The outfit that wires up the RV parks and signs up the roaming seniors will stand to make some money. Extend this notion to marinas, and you've got the makings of a tidy fortune.

Did I think about doing it myself? Yes, for about 20 minutes. Be my guest. Send me pictures of your luxury toys when you make it big.

Keeping up

Preventative action usually saves time and money in the long run. This is encapsulated in the expression  "pay me now, or pay me later". 

It's a fact of life that information technology keeps changing and if you fall too far behind, the cost to recover is often stunning. Vendors spend a lot building reasonable aids to help you keep up--we call it migration. The problem is that they generally don't go back to prior generations of product. You can find the migration/upgrade to a current product exceedingly difficult and costly if you've let one or two generations of product go and themselves become obsolete, before you actually undertake the migration.

Well, if the application isn't critical to your business, you can probably let it ride. Toss everything away and start with a 'clean slate'.  But if it is critical, you are asking for trouble.

A lecture like this is about as welcome as telling a teenager not to smoke, etc. The real world abounds in such situations and big companies with large IT budgets and professional staff, have these problems, too. Sometimes, as with Y2K, it hits the news and people get worked up. But usually, people get away with ignoring the problem for years. After all, you will probably be able to buy a computer that will run MS DOS for many years to come. Maybe your old application will run on it the way you expect.

Pity the government. they are forever developing sophisticated, highly integrated systems only to have essential components become obsolete before they can even deploy the system. It makes for some interesting contracts, and a strong tendency to look askance at vendors with uncertain prospects.

Your 'computer person' needs to be looking out for you. It's part of what I call being 'business oriented'. A planned, managed response gives you time to pick the best alternative and implement it with little or no impact on your business. In a crisis, you do whatever you can. If you wait for the crisis to develop. It will cost you more out of pocket, and it will impact your customers, clients, patients, as may be. Moreover, you won't have the luxury of finding the best alternative. You might be lucky on that and know what it is or hit upon it. Are you feeling lucky?

It's the little things that get you

We had some folks over for dinner one evening and this friend told me he couldn't get his new computer working on-line. Finally, he'd called tech support and gone through that pain, but still it wasn't working. 

Before I made a date to go over and bail him out we went into my office and I walked it through on my computer (also an XP machine). Baba-bing. No problem, worked just fine. What he hadn't known was that when the wizard asked for his account name, he was only supposed to give the portion up to the '@' sign. He'd been inputting the whole e-mail address. That said, some ISPs, Earthlink for one, use the entire e-mail address as the account name. 

Reminds me of my wife's torture. Years ago she was going in to a computer lab to run some statistical analyses for a research course. Despite turning to the geek-on-duty, she hadn't been able to make things work the way they were supposed to. So, she took me in and I discovered she was entering a capital 'i' for the numeric 1. Also, she used capital 'o' for 0. Now we are both old enough that we were taught to do that in typing class. Old typewriters didn't even have keys for a numeric 1.

Working with computers is a way of reminding yourself that you really should be humble. We all make 'stupid' mistakes now and then. And sometimes they can be frustrating beyond words. 

Photography

Our youngest daughter's wedding was a few weeks ago. The photographer delivered her handiwork--8 CDs worth. Enough to make the proudest papa's eyes glaze over.

We like pictures and have many, the best of which are in photo albums. But, we've been resisting digital photography. I'm not sure why, it never seemed necessary. So, this same daughter decided we'd been in the 20th century long enough and gave us a digital camera as a joint birthday present. Very generous. Well, now, papa has to learn how to use this new technology. Actually, I'm thinking it's going to be great once we've gotten over the adjustment period.

I have to admit, I should have launched into digital photography sooner. It is cool, especially when you spend $20 and add a reader to your computer than can take the memory card from the camera. Anyway, my wife and I are converts, now. But we order prints on-line instead of trying to print them here.

Technology

All of which brings me to technology.  I'm a technologist, by profession. I adopt new technology with relative ease. But rarely does it fascinate me and appeal to me for its own sake. So, I only adopt new technology when I can that it is likely to bring me value, in terms that make sense to me. Working for a big company, the Blackberry was useful when I was moving around as it enabled me to see and reply to e-mails without digging out the notebook and linking it up somehow. My cell phone, like my voice-mail, is more or less indispensable. I'm experimenting with more Outlook functions and if this keeps up I may be forced to buy a PDA. 

It isn't so much the money, as the time required to learn and really get the benefit from a piece of new technology. How many people own VCRs that they cannot program to record a show? Digital cameras and camcorders are so feature rich that is formidable to learn and remember everything needed if you are a casual user.