Hi folks!  Sorry about the long hiatus.  With the holidays, work and family, I've been pretty busy these last few weeks.  I did, however, run across something of interest while my sons were visiting for Christmas break.  In my previous software review of Helium Music Manager, I think I left little to my readers' imagination as to my strong dislike of all-things iTunes.  Believe it or not, I left a couple of even bigger issues that I have with iPod/iTunes out of that carefully worded (and rather witty) rant about Apple's flagship product.  One of them was that once you sync your iPod to your computer and upload your library to it, you can't sync it (your iPod) with another computer (or in the case of multiple log-ins with Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP/Vista, a different log-in on the same computer) without first erasing all the music already on your iPod.  The other (and perhaps the biggest) one:  you can only sync from your PC to your iPod; you can not sync from your iPod back to your PC.

Now before you start moaning on behalf of musicians the world over as well as the RIAA, Lars, let me state that I understand (to a point) that this is most likely so people can't easily share music files with each other without paying for them (aka piracy).  And, I'm sure the iTunes store isn't losing money with that little bit of skullduggery, but do let us stick to the point.  The problem I have is this:  What if my hard drive crashes and takes my entire music/video/picture library with it?  What if my home is involved in a fire and my computer, pictures, CDs and DVDs, but not my iPod, are destroyed?  What if some nozzle steals my laptop along with my back-up external hard drive?  Not only do I lose my library and my computer...please compound that loss with an erasure of my iPod's library as well, Mr. Jobs!  No, it's no problem that your $350 mp3 player is just that and nothing else.  Really, I didn't want to use it as a backup drive, even though your company used that very idea as a selling point.  Again, I digress but I have to ask...have you taken the first step yet, Steve?

Enter:  iPod Copy (iPC) by Wide Angle Software.  Now this, ladies and gentleman is a great piece of software, and a must have for anyone that owns an iPod.  It does just what iTunes and Apple (as well as the RIAA) don't want you to be able to do, and that is retrieve your music from your iPod and put it back on to your computer!  Of course, you can sync your iPod back to your computer with iPC as well, using it just as you would iTunes, but you do so without the iTunes bloatware overhead.

"Overhead?  What overhead do you mean," you ask?  Well, let me explain.  When you install iTunes on to your computer, it sets itself up so that it loads when Windows loads and it runs quietly in the background, even when you aren't using it.  And it does this to the tune (pun intended) of 6-20+MB of memory for a program that isn't even actively running!  That's what it uses to do N-O-T-H-I-N-G!  Now, that may not seem like much when you're running 1 or 2GB of memory, but this isn't the only program that tries to nickel-and-dime you to death by exhibiting this kind of sneaky behavior...and yes, I call it sneaky when it neither gives me the option of turning it off when I run the setup app, nor gives me the power to turn  it off in the "Preferences" portion of the running application.  It does not announce itself in the system tray, either, so the only way that you'll know it's there and eating up system resources is to go into the Task Manager (or other such diagnostic app) and see what's there (if you do, look for "AppleMobileDeviceServices.exe", "iPodService.exe" and "QuickTime.exe") .  iPC doesn't do this.

In fact, when you are actively using it, iPC uses about 35MB of RAM and 7MB of HDD space, which is quite reasonable for how robust it is.  iTunes on the other hand (ignoring its inactive overhead) costs you almost 60MB of RAM and at least 146MB of HDD space, and you're able to do less with it.  Granted, you can't play your PC's music library in iPC (but you can play your iPod's music library even if you don't have iTunes installed), but seeing as iTunes is woefully inadequate to that task anyway, you're really only losing the ability to play your music poorly.  To me, that's 2 negatives making a positive!  And as you can see from the screen shot above, it looks remarkably like iTunes, so you don't have to re-learn a completely new interface to get up and running quickly.  A quick rundown of all the nice features:

• You can get very fast 2-way syncing with your PC to the iPod, and from the iPod back on to your PC.  It took me about 10 minutes to grab 2,000 songs (including tags and album art) off my son's iPod without iTunes installed.
• It can sync not only your music but also your tags, album art, playlists, movies, videos, podcasts, audiobooks, pictures, contacts, calendar and notes without iTunes installed.
• It can play your iPod's library on you PC without iTunes installed.
• It prevents iTunes (if you decide to keep it for nostalgic purposes) from loading up and auto-syncing when you dock your iPod to your PC.
• iPC auto-senses your iPod when you start it up.
• Looks and "feels" like iTunes, so there's no time taken up to learn a new interface.  A couple of mouse clicks and you're all done!
• iPC does not work with the iPod Touch or the iPhone, but Wide Angle has a program for them, as well:  TouchCopy.

I don't know about you, but I'm tired of feeling like I only rented my iPod from Apple for all that money (what else can I call it when I pay to possess something that I have no control over and can only make superficial changes to?).  A little analogy to put it in to perspective:  When I go to Sears and buy a Craftsman wrench, I don't have the salesguy (or girl) telling me not to use it as a hammer.  I don't have the manufacturer making the wrench in such a way that I'm unable to use it as a pry bar if I so unwisely desire.  They sell me their product with the faith that I have enough sense to use it for it's intended purpose.  But if I do decide to use it in a way that wasn't anticipated by the manufacturer or the store, that's ok, too.  I paid my hard earned money for it, so it's my wrench to do with as I decide.  And you don't see the folks making the nuts and bolts having a fit and suing the wrench manufacturers because their wrenches fit and turn all those nuts and bolts, right?  "Damn you guys at Snap-on, and all your confounded wrenches!  We want the end user to pay royalties to tighten and loosen our nuts and bolts with our specially made "turn monitoring" wrenches! We give the wrench away for free, but we make that money back by selling the toolbox for $350 as well as charging $1.99 per turn!  Sure it only turns what we tell it to when we tell it to, the wrench will only fit in our toolbox and the toolbox will only fit our wrench, but it's our technology!  You're starving our families, you know!  We might be willing to lease our licensed toolbox technology to you for say....$50 per wrench."

If you feel the same way, then what in the blue blazes are ya waitin' fer?  Go get iPod Copy!  For $20, you'll never have to worry about losing your library again, and you can completely dump iTunes...hell, that alone makes it a steal at twice the price!

Oh, by the way...the Jolly Roger is free!

Steve@Dall-Tech

I found a very cool new product  while doing a search for an audio file editor on my favorite shareware/freeware site the other night:  Helium Music Manager 2007.  It's got all the best features of  iTunes, WinAmp, Windows Media Player and SAM Broadcaster wrapped up into one sweet package.  I'm not going to go into the entire list of features because, frankly, it's huge.  You can read all about it by clicking on the link I provided above.  I will say that it supports as many music formats as I've seen (.mp2, .mp3, .MPC, .MP+, .WMA, .FLAC, .FLA, .OGG, .M4A, .M4P, .MP4, .M4B, .APE, .WAV and .WAVE), as well as all the associated tags that go with them (the tag dialog box has over 60 fields for those of us that are particular to the point of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder), album art, lyrics, plugins like last.fm, CDDb and evilLyrics, an auto enqueue/auto DJ feature...I'm here to say that this is one knocked-outta-the-ballpark package for the audiophile in you.  But I haven't gotten to the best part yet - when you're done putting it through its paces during your free trial, it only costs $39 and you get the HMM 2008 upgrade for free.

**(I know that it sounds like I work for Intermedia, but I honestly have nothing to do with them and I am getting nothing but satisfaction for telling you about HMM.  I will provide, from time to time, click through links and ads to Amazon, Office Depot and others. But for the record, if I'm rating a product it will always be one that I have actually used and truly evaluated, and I'll always let you know beforehand if you buying it is going to benefit me in any way, shape or form.  I feel that it's the only honest way to get you good information, and then allow you to decide my level of bias before you incorporate that knowledge and follow it.)**

I know this screen shot isn't very clear, but if you click on it you'll be taken right to the information about the "Playlist Browser", which is one of the many views that you can use to see, modify and play your library.  As you can see here, the interface is very clean, uncluttered and well organized despite having a metric ton of information and a music player (at the bottom) on it.  It does need a database to store all this info in, so make sure that you have either Microsoft Access, Microsoft SQL or MySQL (an open source and completely free data base you can download by following the link to TUCOWS) installed prior to installing HMM.

The only downside that I can see at this point is that there's no iPod support as of yet, and there probably never will be.  Apple has a stranglehold on that and as of now you're stuck with their proprietary iTunes application.   You would think that old Stevie Jobs and his lackeys would have learned their lesson by now about all that proprietary crap, but it looks like they're testing the definition of insanity by doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result.

Note to Mr. Jobs:  Get into a 12 step program.  "We admitted that we were powerless over innovation - that our business model had become unmanageable"*  The first step, Steve, is to recognize that you have a problem.  The second is to pick up Bill Gates and all the guys from the anti-virus firms on your way to the meeting.

I was unfortunate enough to buy an iPod both for myself and for my oldest son and, although the iPod itself is a great piece of equipment, I can tell you that I am no fan of iTunes for a million different reasons (you can do very little to modify its view to your liking; it's a major resource (memory and CPU) hog; it constantly runs in the background, whether you're using it or not, making it an even bigger resource hog...I could go on and on).  All I know is that I'll be buying a different MP3 player here in the very near future, and putting the iPOS on E-Bay as a sort of welcome-to-my-new-career kinda thing.  As far as HMM is concerned, I'll be purchasing that as soon as possible.

Now, in the spirit of going around the world to get my freakin' point, that leads us back to the blog's title and the accompanying "conversation" below.  This is the reply that I sent back to the actual person that answered my feature request (the question I asked about iPod support was in a different e-mail, but answered by the same gentleman).  Yes, you read that correctly - I sent in a request for a new feature to be added to HMM and got a real person to send me a helpful, polite and prompt reply back.  No auto-responders for these folks!  I'm impressed beyond mere words.  I took the time to "reverse" the order of the e-mail for your reading ease and pleasure, but it is otherwise re-posted in verbatim.  Enjoy.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

> -----Ursprungligt meddelande-----
> Från: Steve [mailto:***@*****.***]
> Skickat: den 7 december 2007 06:29
> Till: ***@*****.***; ***@*****.***;
> ***@*****.***
> Ämne: ¤ SUPPORT ¤ Feature request: Sorting
>
> Hello!  I just wanted to write to make a request.  Seeing as this program
> seems to be a perfect fit for the quirkier (read geekier) side of me when it
> comes to my music, I have only found one thing that I would make a
> suggestion for.
>
> Sorting.  I am VERY particular (read anal) about making sure that as many
> tag fields as possible are filled in so I can find songs based off of
> specific filters.  But, when I'm in the "Music Browser" section going
> through things, I would like to be able to sort more specifically (e.g. by
> "artist-album-track#-disc#-yr released), but there are only 3 sort fields.
> Is there any way (please, please please) that you could add maybe a couple
> more, for the more anally retentive geeks like me?
>
> I would promise you my first-born for this favor, but I already traded him
> away for a high end graphics card and a bit of cheese.  It was a good
> cheese, actually...oh, never mind that.
>
> What do you think?

--------------------------------------------------
From: "Fredrik ******" <***@*****.***>
Sent: Saturday, December 08, 2007 4:14 PM
To: "'Steve'" <***@*****.***>
Subject: SV: ¤ SUPPORT ¤ Feature request: Sorting

> Dear Steve,
>
> We don't currently plan to add support for more sort fields - however you
> should be able to sort on as many fields as you wish manually. Just click
> the column headers in the wrong order and the list should be sorted
> correctly. I know this is not a long-term solution if you want to use the
> same sort order setting for various views in Helium Music Manager, but it
> might be sufficient for your needs.
>
> Also, have you tried configuring the User Defined item in the Music Library?
> Again, perhaps not what you are looking for, but it might be worth checking
> out.
>
>
> Regards,
>
> --
> Fredrik ******
> Intermedia Software
> http://www.helium-music-manager.com
--------------------------------------------------

Dear Fredrik,

I'll have you know that I can see through your thinly-veiled and desperate attempt to keep me from purchasing Helium Music Manager:  "No" to extra sort fields; "no" to iPod support.  Well, my friend, consider yourself on notice that I shall not be discouraged that easily!  You have forced me to take a stand, and as such, I have no choice but to purchase this Music Manager doodad of yours in spite of your diabolical efforts.  And as punishment for your insolence, I will be pointing all of my friends, family and associates to your product as well...how do you like those Kiwis (I'm not fond of apples)?  In fact, I'll be adding our little conversation to my blog (with your personal info removed, of course) with a link right to your site, so all of my loyal readers can come and buy a copy of their very own.   I'll bet you're feeling pretty foolish now, aren't you Mr. I-say-no-to-all-your-requests-man?

You're a hard sell, Fred, but so am I.  So am I.

Steve

PS - Please give Mikael and Mangus my best.

*Credit where due - I stole the first step from the AA Big Book and reworded it a little.

Steve@Dall-Tech

Ok, we've gotten the very basics out of the way so let's move on to some other components of your computer.  This addition is going to cover both connections and components, and although these aren't usually a cause of problems, it's still good for us to understand their function and how they fit in to the grand scheme.  Please note that this is by no means an all-inclusive-list, and that I have tried very hard to keep this material as simplified as possible and have generally forgone my normal humor so as to keep the reading easier.  Because it is highly technical to start with, I may have failed here and there.  If there is technical information here that you don't understand and would like to, please feel free to contact me directly and ask.  I will answer you as quickly, and as simply, as I can.  Here we go:

Motherboard - Also known as the main board, logic board or system board; this is the main (and naturally the largest) circuit board in a computer.  It houses all the connections for the CPU, memory, HDD and Floppy disc controllers, expansion slots for sound, graphics and networking cards as well as other peripheral components.  This is the part of the computer that determines what CPU you can use (type and speed), the type and amount of memory available for installation and what peripherals you will have available to install.  Please consult your users manual or the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) for the specifics of your motherboard before purchasing or installing any new components.  Failure to do so will, at best, cause you to sadly and dejectedly return your previously-exciting new purchase to the store or, at worst, damage the motherboard and the installed component beyond cost-effective repair.  In other words:  Broke, can't fix, need new one.

BIOS - The Basic Input/Output System is almost universally a chip (or chips) installed on the motherboard that is  loaded with firmware (software that is integral to the system's hardware configuration).  The firmware gives the computer the initial commands necessary to ready it for the operating system to load, execute and assume the functions of the computer.  It stores the correct time, HDD, Floppy drive, mouse, keyboard and other peripheral information; more recently, it has assumed the role of power and thermal manager, as well as controlling hotswap devices such as USB (see below).  It has for some time now been flashable, meaning you can download a patch or upgrade from the OEM that will upgrade the BIOS to fix bugs and give it enhanced capabilities.

Expansion Slots and Connections - There are several different slots and connections that may be available inside or outside of your computer, with the choices mostly dependent on the age of your PC.  These are the interfaces that are used to give you sound, graphics, network connectivity, external and internal storage options (HDDs, CD-ROM, etc) and to connect the other hardware in the computer to the motherboard.  The following is a list of the most popular in the last 20 years:

ISA (and EISA) - The Industry Standard Architecture and it's big brother, Extended ISA were developed in 1983/84 (respectively) and were the expansion slots and cards of choice up to the advent of PCI.  The main problem that you encountered with this architecture was the fact that it was very rarely plug-n-play (and if it was, it was commonly called plug-n-pray), meaning that you had to configure the card and your system manually to recognize and utilize it.  This card type has been squeezed out by more user friendly architectures such as PCI, AGP and now PCIe. The transfer rates for ISA was 4.83MB/sec and EISA was 16.85MB/sec.  The picture at left shows a slot incorrectly labeled as ISA; it truly is an EISA, as an ISA would be approximately half the length.

PCI - The Peripheral Component Interconnect was introduced in 1993 (around the same time as the Pentium architecture) by Intel as the replacement for ISA/EISA.  The main difference that users benefited from was the fact that they could plug-n-play; install the card, turn on the computer and have the BIOS and the operating system configure the card automatically.  Another benefit was the fact that these cards utilized a much faster interface with the motherboard than ISA/EISA did, allowing the computer to run faster with transfer rates varying between 133.33MB/sec up to 533.33MB/sec.  99.9% of computers today have PCI as their main expansion slot architecture.

AGP - The Accelerated Graphics Port (or Advanced Graphics Port) is a dedicated slot for graphics cards and was introduced by Intel in 1997.  It is much faster than PCI when dealing with graphics rendering (for several reasons that I won't cover here…way too technical), and has been the de facto standard for graphics until recently, with the advent of PCI Express.  Transfer rates vary from 266.66MB/sec to 4.266GB/sec.  If you decide to upgrade your graphics card and your motherboard is equipped with an AGP slot, be sure to consult your users manual or take it to a professional.  There are several versions of AGP and if you get the wrong one, it either won't fit or it could potentially damage your system.

PCIe - PCI Express is an updated interface that utilizes PCI programming concepts, but is not akin to PCI the same way that ISA and EISA were to each other.  EISA expansion slots were backwards compatible with ISA cards, meaning that you could use a "legacy" ISA card in an EISA slot.  This is not the case with PCI and PCIe.  PCIe has already become the industry leader for high end graphics and for new Giganet ethernet cards (see description below) because of its high-speed bus, but is quickly being adapted to sound cards and other peripherals.  PCIe is capable of delivering and accepting up to 80GB/sec, greatly increasing speeds within your computer and across a network of computers.  This is a very new architecture, and is only seen in computers manufactured in the last two or three years.  As you can see from the various pictures, including the one at right, it is important for you to know what connections you have available before you buy an upgrade card for your PC.  Most of the time it's merely an inconvenience when you get the wrong card; other times, you'll find that you can fit the wrong card into a slot with disastrous results (this is especially true with memory modules and AGP cards).

PATA -The Parallel Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA) interface (commonly misnamed IDE [Integrated Drive Electronics]/EIDE [Enhanced Integrated Drive Electronics]) is used for connecting HDDs, CD-ROMs, CD-R/WR drives, DVD-ROMs and DVD-R/WR drives to the motherboard.  It is a legacy interface from the old Industry Standard Architecture (ISA), and uses an 18 inch ribbon cable to attach the drive to the motherboard.  It is capable of affixing up to 2 devices (e.g. 2 HDDs) per cable, 1 as a master drive and 1 as a slave drive, each sharing bandwidth with the other.  Transfer rates run from 33MB/sec to 133MB/sec.

SATA - The Serial ATA interface is the successor interface for the PATA interface.  The 2 biggest upgrades over PATA is increased transfer rates and the dropping of the master/slave device interface, giving each drive its own cable and dedicated bandwidth.  Transfer rates today start at 150MB/sec and run through 300MB/sec.  This is a relatively new interface, and is only found in computers made after 2000.

PC Cards - Also known as PCMCIA (for Personal Computer Memory Card International Association) cards or CardBus; Portable Computer Cards are used almost exclusively in laptop computers in a similar way as expansion cards are used in a desktop computer.  Initially designed by IBM in the early 1990's as a memory expansion card slot (Type I), further advancements have been made with Type II (mainly phone modems and Network Interface Cards[see explanation below]) and Type III (which include external storage devices like HDDs and the like).  Most laptops today have Type II card slots solely, due to other memory and external storage device connections such as USB and, to a much lesser extent, FireWire coming in to wide-spread availability.

Serial Port - Also known as RS-232 and RS-422 (RS stands for Recommended Standard); this legacy port can  still be found on computers today, but there are almost no components available to use it anymore.  It's original function was to connect a phone modem to older computers, but it has also been used to connect printers, mice and keyboards.  This port is unidirectional, meaning that data can either flow out from or flow in to the computer; flow in and out at the same time is not possible.  Transfer rates run from a criminally slow 960B/sec (you read that right, 960 Bytes per second.  You'd get a ticket for going that slow on the information superhighway!) to 1.25MB/sec

Parallel Port - Also known as IEEE-1284 (after the standard developed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers); this legacy port can also be found on most computers today.  Developed by Centronics in the 1970's as a connection for its printers, it soon became the industry-wide standard with the IEEE officially blessing it in 1994.  Because of it's high throughput, it's use blossomed over the years to include external tape and HDDs, scanners, and networking equipment.  There are still components available (mostly printers) but they are rapidly being supplanted by faster, cheaper USB devices.  At the time, this was a very fast connection which allowed bi-directional data transfer, meaning the device and the computer could send information to each other simultaneously.  Transfer rates for this port are up to 1MB/sec

USB - The Universal Serial Bus was initially designed to complement FireWire and was implemented mostly on user input devices such as keyboards and mice.  Because of FireWire's high cost, most computer manufactures (except for Apple, Dell and Sony) went exclusively with USB, and as such hundreds of other devices were developed.  Now the de facto industry wide standard, most new peripherals such as printers, external hard drives and flash memory "sticks", digital still and video cameras, cell phones, scanners and hundreds of other consumer electronics are all USB compatible.  Two of the biggest benefits of USB for consumers is the ability to hotswap (connect and disconnect a peripheral without powering the computer off), and the ability to easily daisy chain multiple devices (up to 127 individual devices at once!) together.  Transfer rates run from a very slow (by today's standards) 192kB/sec up to 60MB/sec.

FireWire - Also known as iLink or IEEE-1394; FireWire was mainly an Apple Computers invention.  Designed for  high speed transfers of large video, photo and audio files, it was hoped that this standard would become the serial bus of choice by computer and peripheral manufacturers.  Although it was initially much faster than USB, it was because of it's high cost to license (Apple holds the rights to the FireWire standard) that most manufacturers opted to go with the cheaper, albeit slower, USB standard for broad release to the public.  In recent days, even Apple has moved towards USB, with its newer generation of iPods switching from FireWire to USB connections.  This standard is also hotswappable and has the ability to daisy chain multiple devices together (up to 63 different devices).  Transfer rates run from 12.5MB/sec to 100MB/sec

Graphics Card - Also known as a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU); As the name clearly describes, this card is the workhorse that renders all of the graphical interpretations of your programs and transmits that information to your monitor.  Because they have their own on-board processor that is specially designed for this purpose, they are infinitely better at rendering graphics than the CPU is.  Hence, we have seen huge leaps in 3D graphics in computer games, as well as the processing and rendering high resolution graphics from digital cameras and video recorders.  There are 2 types:  Dedicated and integrated.  Dedicated graphics cards are typically add-on cards and have on-board memory that is used solely for graphics rendering, helping to alleviate the burden from the main system memory, or RAM.  Integrated cards are typically hardwired to the motherboard and do not have their own on-board memory, instead utilizing the main system memory.  Please remember that what determines which card you have is whether it has on-board memory or uses the system's main memory.

Sound Card - An expansion card that can take input from and send output to audio devices such as speakers, headphones, music players and MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) devices among other things.  Computers started featuring sound cards as standard equipment in the early 1990's, and have since gone from very basic 2 speaker devices to high-end 5.1, 6.1 and even 7.1 surround sound stereo capable devices.  The way that the hardware (sound card) and the software (the OS) meet up to produce sound is by means of software CODEC's (which stands for Compression/Decompression). These codecs are installed into the OS and give the sound card the proper "language" necessary to reproduce/playback specific sounds and files.  For instance, Windows has specific codecs for MP3 music playback (so you can play your favorite songs on your computer) and for MIDI device sound production and playback (so you can be the musician).  Most sound cards produced after 1993 also have included on them a joystick connection, for use with some computer games.

Telephony Modem - Modem stands for MOdulate/DEModulate, and telephony is pronounced tel-EF-ony (emphasis on the EF); this is the everyday modem that has been standard in PCs since the early 1990's, but these devices were originally designed by IBM in the 1950's to help connect geographically distant computers for the US military on secure lines, and were slowly brought in to consumer use in the 1980's thanks largely to Hayes and US Robotics.  This expansion card uses a regular telephone line and cable with an RJ-11 (RJ stands for Registered Jack) connector on either end to connect your computer to other computers, usually through a Bulletin Board System (BBS), or to the internet through a local Internet Service Provider (ISP), via the telephone company.  It accomplishes its task by turning binary language code (very large series' of 1's and 0's) in to sounds (modulation) that are carried over telephone lines, and decoded back in to binary in the proper sequence on the other end (demodulation).  Typical throughputs (or download/upload speeds in kilobits/second) on modems since the early 1990's run from 14.4kBs/sec to 56.6kBs/sec.

Network Interface Card (NIC) - Also known as an Ethernet Card; this is an expansion card that uses (typically) twisted-pair network cable with an RJ-45 connector (about twice the size of a telephone jack) on either end.  They are used to connect your computer to a Local Area Network (LAN) which can be in your home or office and/or to Wide Area Network (WAN) like the internet or a large, geographically separated corporate network.  NICs are capable of transferring data at 10MB/sec, 100MB/sec or with new Giganet NICs, 1GB/sec (or 1000MB/sec).  Each NIC has a unique 48 bit identifier, called a Media Access Control (MAC) number that is used just like the address on your house.  We will cover MACs and basic networking terms and protocols in a follow-up blog specifically suited for that purpose.

Floppy Disk Drives (FDD) - Most people will remember these drives as a piece of their computer that they rarely, if ever used .  Because of the advent of optical and flash drive technologies and the ever increasing size of applications and related data, these drives have been almost entirely supplanted.  Out of fear of leaving consumers with no way to recover from a catastrophic operating system or HDD failure, most manufactures continued to include a floppy drive on most of their systems until recently.  Now days, optical drives and flash memory sticks are bootable (can be loaded with control commands that take over when the BIOS has completed it's initial startup, and accessed in lieu of the HDD during initial power on), and can be used easily to recover from such instances, so more and more manufacturers are removing floppy drives entirely.

Optical Drives -  There are as many technologies and corresponding names as there are manufacturers.  With most drive makers creating hybrid drives that read and write to a multitude of varying disk formats, the format wars created by the competitors has left end users largely unaffected, so for our purposes here I will forego an in-depth explanation of each and just refer to them from here on out as such:

CD-ROM - Only reads CDs.
CD-R - Reads and records to CDs.
CD-RW - Reads, records to and can re-write CDs.
DVD-ROM - Reads CDs and DVDs
DVD-R - Reads and records to CDs and DVDs
DVD-RW - Reads, records to and can re-write CDs and DVDs

Because of their speed, storage capacities and their corresponding media's resistance to damage, these drives (with the help of USB flash drives) have all but run Floppy Drives off of the personal and business class computers and DVD drives have become the de facto standard for most machines made today.  The drive makers are still upgrading (now we're into high definition) and battling it out for standardization, with a large group including Pioneer, Sharp and Sony marketing the Blu-Ray format heavily, and DVD Forum lead by Toshiba, Microsoft and HP trying to take the market with DVD-HD.

Wow!  That turned out to be a much longer set of descriptions and explanations than I had originally planned on (it took me 3 days to get it written up and formatted properly).  I apologize for that, but if you can wrap your head around all this, we're ready to move on to bigger and better things like basic networking (including how it ties in to the internet), computer security, and more.  Stay tuned for future installments!

Steve@Dall-tech

**I also want to take time to state that I did use Wikipedia to make sure I got the descriptions/explanations right, and to get the proper dates and transfer rates, but the writing/wording is all mine.**

Ok, now that we've gotten some general terminology out of the way, we can move on to some more in-depth stuff.  I may repeat myself here and there, but that's because I feel that I'm making an important point.  But first:

 

Computer

Pronunciation:  \kəm-ˈpyü-tər\

Function:  noun

Usage:  often attributive

Date:  1646

2 : a programmable usually electronic device that can store, retrieve, and process data

 

Maintenance

Pronunciation:  \ˈmānt-nən(t)s, ˈmān-tə-nən(t)s\

Function:  noun

Etymology:  Middle English, from Anglo-French, from maintenir

Date:  14th century

3 : the upkeep of property or equipment

So we ignore the fact that some English words were stolen from those pretentious French-types (I'm part French...deal with it), use our overwhelming powers of deductive reasoning and reading comprehension, put it all together and get, "The upkeep of a programmable electronic device that can store...blah, blah, blah."  Pretty straightforward, right?  Right. </englishlesson>

(for those of you that didn't understand, </englishlesson> was a joke.  Using juxtaposition by writing "end english lesson" in a computer language called HTML...oh, never mind)

"But Steve," you all moan, "how do we maintain our computers?"  That, my good sirs and gentle ladies, is our subject for today.   We're going to cover some of the most basic things that you can do to maintain your computer and keep it running in top form.   That way you can continue to peddle used socks and underwear on E-bay, short-sell your silly stock certificates on the TD Ameritrade site and traffic in pirated music and movies until your eyes bleed.  Hell, you'll even be able to throw together a neighborhood LAN party and play team Minesweeper when we get through here.  All that at the breakneck speeds your parents could only dream about whilst slogging along on a Wang token ring.

*balloons and confetti fall from ceiling*

Alright, settle down now.  I think that you would be best served if I explain what to service, then explain how to service it and when.  So first, let's break down the "what" into bight sized chunks, shall we?  In my travels, I have found that speed issues are caused by a veritable cornucopia of things with 3 of those leading the pack.  In other words, if you fix those 3 things, you will eliminate most of the causes of slow speeds.  They are heat (physical maintenance), lack of necessary memory (hardware maintenance) and inadequate or non-existent file maintenance (software maintenance).

• Heat (aka physical maintenance) - Heat is, almost universally, cause numero uno of system slow downs and application/operating system crashes.  If you have noticed a marked speed decrease, an increase in applications (including Windows) hanging or crashing and you haven't altered you computer's hardware or software, chances are your computer is running hot.  I'd be willing to bet a year's wages that you haven't cleaned the dust and pet hair out of your computer chassis...ever.  Either crack the case open and clean that thing out (at least every 6 months), or hire someone to do it for you.  Think of it this way:  If you were sitting in a 250 degree oven full of smoke, dust and hair, you wouldn't be too productive either.
• Lacking Memory (aka hardware maintenance) - Odds are, if heat isn't your problem, then this is.  Just like grandma and her ever progressing senility, your computer can only use what it's got and everything new just gets tossed out; you can only cram so much information in to a finite space before it gets full.  That's actually an oversimplified analogy (please see the one I made in the "RAM" section here for edification) because, unlike grandma, your computer doesn't "forget."  It just stores overflow information back on the painfully slow hard drive in the form of "page file memory."  This problem can stem from 2 different, yet equally likely, issues:
  • If, and that's a little if, you don't have an unabridged dictionary and an entire library of encyclopedias opening at Windows startup, you may need to upgrade the amount of RAM (Random Access Memory) that's physically present on the motherboard.  As I stated before, this is the fastest and most cost effective way (besides cleaning the vent fans and chassis of all that dust) to speed up your computer and give it some room to breathe.  You'll need to consult the computer manufacturer (aka Original Equipment Manufacturer or OEM) to find out exactly what kind of RAM you need and the maximum amount that your computer and it's operating system will recognize.  Don't trust the 17 year old twit at the local "big box" electronics store to be able to tell you anything useful.  He just hawks that computer crap so he can take his girlfriend out to fancy dinners at Taco Bell ("No snookums!  I just got my commission check, so we're gonna shoot the works!  Get the Nachos Bellgrande!).  Call the OEM or a real computer consultant.  
  • If a lack of physical memory isn't the problem, we're starting to lean into the last of the 3 reasons (software maintenance) that I stated above, but we'll cover it here briefly.  Look down at your "start" bar, next to the clock (it's called the task bar, in case you were wondering - see picture at left).  Do you see 45 little icons there?  Those are programs that most likely loaded when Windows started up, and they're using up your precious RAM just sitting there looking cute.  Do you really need AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Instant Messenger, iTunes, Apple QuickTime, Windows Media Player, WinAmp, Tetris, Weatherbug, Google Desktop, 3 different photo rendering applications, Outlook and Outlook Express to start when you log in?  Or, do you think it might be more prudent to start each program manually when you're actually going to use it?  Rule of thumb:  You shouldn't have more than 4 or 5 icons in that tray after Windows is done loading.  If you do, proceed to the next topic directly.
• Inadequate/non-existent file maintenance (aka software maintenance) - The following is probably the most common user mistake of them all:  You call Dell and have them build you a brand spanking new computer by hand.  They ship it directly to your house via UPS (admit it -  you started tracking it the minute you hung up the phone) in a huge box with big blue letters.  You bust it out, set it up and then run out to Best Buy and get all the software that you couldn't get Dell to load for you at the factory - genealogy libraries of massive proportions, 3D games up the wazoo, the full $650 Adobe Photoshop Suite, screensavers, ringtone making software for your cell phone, Microsoft Office 9003 Ultramegasupreme Plus, and some games for the kids so your wife doesn't kick your ass for spending another $4000 on your computer.  You rush home (getting a ticket for reckless driving, no doubt), fire up that shiny new funbox and start loading software on it as fast as your DVD/CD combo drive will spin.  As each program's installation package comes up, you just bang the "next" button feverishly, never bothering to read what it is you're telling the program to do.  Now, you have 68 programs loading when Windows starts up.  Of course, you'll only use Microsoft Powerpoint to see those cheesy slideshows about endangered snufflopods and ice sculptures in China that your brother-in-law, the environmental wacko, forwards to you in e-mail attachments 92 times a day.  You'd love to see the pictures that you downloaded off of your $2000, 49 gigapixle digital camera, but you zoomed through the Photoshop setup so fast you never saw where it actually stores your photos.  You're not really sure what DBase is, but it sounded like something you couldn't live without so that's on there, too.  Your computer is a whole 4 nanoseconds old, and it's already running like an 80 year old man with a double hip replacement.  Are  you starting to see where you went wrong?  Here's a hint, just in case you missed it:  Your hard drive is full!  Your memory is so full, it's caching stuff back to the hard drive (which slows everything down even more) before Windows is even done loading!  That box sitting there isn't a Cray super computer, and even those have limits, ya know.  Tips to live by:
  • If you don't know what you're going to use an application for, or if you don't know how to use it, you do not need it.  If you think that you'd like to use your computer to do something you're unfamiliar with (like unseating the Rockefellers by conquering the oil industry), don't buy software and try to figure it out.  Take a class to learn how to use the software effectively, then buy the software.
  • Pay attention to the setup package of your application.  If you only use a program (like Powerpoint) once in a century, do not have it loading up at Window's startup.  Better yet, don't load it on to your computer at all.  This is where it pays to be honest with yourself and answer the question, "How often am I really going to use this?"  It actually helps more if you ask that question before you buy the $500 Ultimate Edition, when the $125 Basic version would have done everything you needed.
  • Regularly clean up your hard drive by removing (uninstalling) unused applications, running disk defragmenter software, tossing (deleting) old or outdated files in "My Documents" and changing applications' configurations to keep them from loading up until you're ready to use them.  If you're not doing this at least once a month, you are a slacker McFly.
  • Get a "computer guy" (or girl).  Someone you can trust to help you make all your decisions concerning computers (buying, upgrading, maintaining) and that explains to you what he/she is doing to fix your problem so you can understand it.  Someone who isn't put off by questions or you not understanding "tech" language (This is a real language.  It's distinctive by its clicks, clacks and involuntary head movements).  Someone who will show you, step-by-step, how to maintain your computer yourself, leaving the "hard stuff" to him/her.  Someone who charges you a fair price for their work, preferably by the hour, not by the job.  If someone wants to charge you by the job, they're almost surely trying to overcharge you for something that takes very little time to do...and they're probably doing a half-assed job of it, as well.

Well, I think that's going to be it for now.  I realize that this was a pretty short blog, but I didn't have much to say on the topic.  I'll cover some of the things mentioned here in greater detail when I'm not so busy playing mahjongg online and sipping wheatgrass juice in my underwear.  I placed some links to a virtual library of useful software down below, for those of you that can't help yourselves.  Just remember to give me a call when you need to take it all back off.

Steve@Dall-Tech

Business and Office Software

Personal Finance Software

Graphics Software

Software For Macs

Although it hadn't occurred to me before, I think I'm safe in assuming that if you're here reading this most informative and witty blog of mine, then you are not in need of the remedial course on how to run your computer.  You obviously know where the O-N/O-F-F button is, you have mastered the use of the keyboard and the mouse and have come to the realization that there's this thing called the "internet" where you can do all kinds of wacky and wild stuff.  Personally, I'm sitting here chugging Darjeeling, listening  to my bloated library of pirated music, writing this blog and playing cut-throat Crazy 8's against a bunch of noobs (read newcomers).  I am so kicking their asses!  Yeah!  You know what they say:  If you ain' cheatin', you ain' tryin'.

Anyhoo, before we get in to a discussion of the fun-filled area of the internet, let's backtrack just a smidge and concentrate on that wonderful box, or slender folding plastic doodad, that is your computer.  For some (or maybe even a lot) of you I'm going to get in to an area that may be way below your knowledge base and I would apologize, but I'm above all that.  Just know that I'm not trying to talk down to anyone, except maybe the guy in the third row who's staring at me with that glazed over look.  I'm just making sure that I'm not leaving anyone behind.  If you are unfamiliar with this stuff, what comes later will not make any sense to you, so please try and focus.  With that said, some definitions:

Central Processing Unit or CPU - This is the brain of your computer (think "Intel inside").  It does all the millions, billions and trillions of calculations that are necessary to make the programs on your computer run.  Without this little chunk of silicon, your desktop ceases to be anything more useful than a boat anchor.  When you see the computer ads in the piles of magazines that Dell sends to your house, it's listed something like this:  Dell Dimension XPS Intel Pentium D Processor 920 with Dual Core Technology (2.80 GHz, 4MB L2 Cache, 800MHz FSB) - MHz stands for Megahertz or millions of clock cycles per second, and GHz stands for Gigahertz or billions of clock cycles per second.  This determines how much data the CPU can handle in a given amount of time.  Obviously, GHz is more data in less time than MHz and the higher the corresponding number, the more calculations per second.  The number I underlined is the "speed" of the processor.  The other two numbers we'll have to discuss later.  Do not confuse this with memory.  We'll get to that in a minute…

Hard Disk (Drive) or HDD - This is the heart of your computer and it's used for long term storage.  This is where all the  programs you load are stored so the computer can access them when you click on an icon, and it is the one piece of hardware that you, the user, can directly access and control.  It is also one of the most abused and overlooked areas of the computer.  When you see this listed in our fictional Dell ad, it would look something like this:  160GB (7900 RPM) Western Digital HDD…MB stands for Megabytes (millions of Bytes), GB stands for Gigabytes (billions of Bytes) and TB stands for Terabytes (trillions of Bytes).  Just for clarification purposes, 1 Byte is composed of 8 bits of information with a bit being equal to one character (equate 1 letter or number).  This is the amount of room that your hard drive physically has to store information.  The RPM rating is how fast the platters in the hard drive spin and thusly can access your precious data - so the higher the RPM's, the better.  Do not confuse this with memory.  We'll get to that in a second…

Random Access Memory or RAM - In our little visualization of the computer as a living organism, memory would be the lungs  of your computer, linking the brain (the CPU) and the heart (the HDD) together and pumping oxygen (data) to each in turn.  It also has to be one of the least understood areas of the computer. When you access a program by clicking on an icon, the HDD starts loading data into memory for the CPU to access quickly.  If the CPU had to draw that data directly from the HDD, it would take forever.  This is generally where the bottlenecks occur.  When you have too little memory for the amount of information you're trying to load, everything s-l-o-w-s d-o-w-n as the system starts moving the active application into RAM, and inactive applications that are still running into a cache, or virtual memory, on the hard drive.  Imagine, if you will, a 10'x10' room full to the ceiling with stuff you want to hawk on E-bay (things like stacks of old Reader's Digests and TV guides, piles of Bobby Vinton singles on virgin vinyl and a few cases of used toothpicks).  You have just returned home from your weekly trip to the local flea market and you need to put more "cool" stuff that you just bought (some rip-off art prints that you got for a song, a large stack of ratty comic books and a pallet of 1 ply toilet paper) in there, but you can't until you take some of that other stuff and store it somewhere else for the time being.  So this perverse version of pass the parcel ensues until you find some sucker to unload a portion of this crap on, or you get crushed in the inevitable avalanche and make the "tragic story" spot on the 11 o'clock news.  This is the same thing that your computer does when you try to load too much data at once; it passes data back and forth between the RAM and the hard drive until you shut a few of those cotton pickin' applications down, or until the system crashes to the famous blue-screen-of-death and you just miss out on your opportunity to corner the pork belly market.

A memory upgrade is the cheapest, easiest and most beneficial upgrades that you can make to take a slow computer and give it the extra oomph it needs to speed it up.  In our fictional Dell ad, it might be listed something like this: 1GB Shared DDR2 SDRAM - again, MB stands for Megabytes, and GB stands for Gigabytes.  If you do decide to upgrade the memory in your computer, you absolutely need to make to get the correct type and amount of memory that you computer and operating system are capable of recognizing, or have a professional install it for you.

Well, that's it for now, my budding computer-nerds-in-training.  We're going to cover computer narcolepsy, and the virtual Adderall prescription for it, in the next installment of you most favoritist blog of all times  After that, I think that we'll breeze over some more basic components of your new best friend.  I know, I know...I've left you all breathless with anticipation.  Please, do try and contain yourselves for the love of Pete.

Steve@Dall-Tech

Anyhoo, if you have something that you just can't live without or even want to watch a movie or TV show, do us a big ole favor:  Get it through Amazon, and connect to them through here.  I've always said:  If you can't find it on Amazon, chances are you really don't need it anyway!

As an FYI, I do plan to cover specific hardware and software topics here in the near future and I will be adding links to products that can be purchased there right in the blog it's mentioned in!  No searching necessary on your part...just point and click on the links provided, and you're in like Flynn.

Thanks in advance for your continued support!

Steve@Dall-Tech

This has been a thing with me for quite sometime now, but after poking around on Yahoo! Answers for a bit, it has come back to the fore-front.  In other words, this is a real hot-button issue for me that needs to be touched on in a most desperate way.

Just so that you are all aware, I've been in the IT field since my separation from the Air Force in 1999 (and it was a secondary job responsibility for the 10 years I was in the military), and I've come to realize that with the explosion of technology there are many, many people out there (young and old alike) that struggle just to grasp the basics.

One of the basics that I'm going to refer back to time and again is computer maintenance.  As the title of  this blog eluded, your computer is a complicated and delicate piece of machinery that needs regular care and maintenance, just like your car does.  Otherwise, bad things happen and you have no one to blame but yourself when they come to pass.  If you don't change the oil in your car for 150,000 miles, you don't run screaming back to the dealer that sold it to you to demand that he fix it for free when it breaks, do you?  I should think not.  Or better yet, given the same scenario, you surely wouldn't blame the company that manufactured the tires, right?

Alas. with computers, people point the finger of blame in the "tire manufacturer's" direction with infuriating regularity.  They do absolutely no maintenance for years and when things go tragically wrong, who do they call?  Their internet service provider (ISP).  "THE INTERNET IS BROKEN!  DON'T YOU PEOPLE KNOW THAT I'M TRYING TO RUN A BUSINESS HERE?  I'M LOSING 150 BAZILLION DOLLARS A DAY!  What do I do for a living?  I'm a day trader (or better yet:  "I sell widgets on E-Bay")."

First, let me state the obvious:  day trading and selling used books and junk on E-bay is not a job, no matter how badly you want to believe it is.  It's an interesting hobby, maybe.  Based off a recent Reader's Digest article that my father pointed out to me, it's more likely a mental illness, not a career.  Seek therapy if necessary, but get over it.  Every tech that you try to impress with that "self-employed millionaire" line is rolling his or her eyes...trust me on this one.  With that said, I'm brought comfortably to my second point:

If you're making sooooo much money from widget sales and cornering the gold market (at the same time, no doubt), why are you ignoring the regular maintenance of your most valuable business tool and trying to use a network that was designed for residential, recreational use to run your multi-platinum-bar producing business?  Why don't you have a computer company like Dall-Tech working for you (you had to know that was coming) and a T3 line with 24/7 up time running in to your computer?  Pry open your wallet, Mr. Gould!  You don't drive a broken-down Yugo over back country roads when what you need is a Ferrari on the Autobahn is what I'm saying here.  The rule that applies to everything else applies here as well:  You get out what you put in.

Third, learn basic computing terminology.  The internet is not broken.  Ever.  That would be like stating that the entire interstate highway system is closed because the Wayne County Road Commission has one on-ramp to I-94 under construction near Canton, MI.  Every technician that I know cringes when they hear a customer start the conversation off like that.  It almost invariably means a marathon phone call, a lot of over-the-twisted-pair training and a missed lunch for our hero or heroine.

Fourth, don't scream at the person on the other end of the phone because you spent all of your time playing Spider Solitaire;  never once running defrag or bothering to update your factory installed anti-virus program.  Have you ever even dove in and taken a look at how much hard drive space you have left?  No?  Wouldn't even begin to know  where to look for that information, huh? *sigh*  Would you like to know why you can't get access to the internet or your precious e*trade account?  Because your operating system is being crushed by the 4 versions of Tetris you have running simultaneously, the 72 gigabytes (GB) of porn clips and pirated music on your 80 GB hard drive and the 59 programs all vying for that less-than-ample amount of memory you have installed when Windows 95 loads up.  What does all that mean?  It means, quite simply, that you're trying to ram a bowling ball through a piece of IV tubing.  Try cleaning that crap up and see what happens, before calling the wrong people to complain, okie dokie?

The above was an hourly occurrence when I worked as a senior technician and call center manager in Comcast's high speed internet department.  In an 8 hour, 70 phone-call-per-shift day, 20% of each tech's calls would be speed issue/can't connect calls.  99% of those calls were due entirely to the computer's owner not doing routine maintenance, not to its internet connection.

For those of you that take care of your computers, I apologize for the previous rant and thank you for your diligence.  For those of you that fall into the category described above:  I do not think you're stupid, I think  you're careless.  Yes, careless...in the same way that you would be careless if you ran your car out of oil, seized up the engine and then tried to play it off :  "I didn't know I needed to put oil in that crazy contraption.  What am I, an auto mechanic?"  I don't expect you to ever become a computer expert (or an auto mechanic), but you took the time to learn the basic functions and needs of your car before you drove it, right?  Well, then show your computer (and the technicians that support it and you) the same respect and learn about its basic functions and needs, as well; not necessarily how to do it, but what needs to be done and when.

I will do my best, throughout the life of this blog, to instruct you about the basics:  Maintenance, security, internet fundamentals and the like.  If you would like to add on to the discussion, have questions or a topic suggestion please speak up.  I learn something new about computing every single day, and I hope to pass that knowledge on to all of you!

~Steve@Dall-Tech

**Special thanks to Dell and Microsoft (in that order) for the stock photos above.