This is a dream come true for me. I am showing my age now but i come from the pioneering days of computing. If you wanted your computer to do something you had to write a program. 6502 assembly was a second language to me. To get something on the screen or get a blip or sound out of the computer meant programming. The 80’s were incredible times in the computer industry.

 The Apple II, TRS80, Microbee, Amstrad, Vic 20 and the almightly Commodore 64 to name a few are all legends in my eyes. These very basic machines were pushed to their limits in their day. Few people would believe that a Commodore 64 with only 38 K of usable memory was capable of running a Windows (GUI) interface. GEOS was amazingly efficient and years ahead of its time.

I’m sorry… back to the topic. The Commmodore 64 is back!!!. The Commodore 64 which was originally introduced in 1982 with over 17 million units sold is making a comeback. The US company namely Commodore USA has taken the Commodore 64 concept along with its name,  given it a very sexy new case and stuffed it full of modern componentry.

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I have been working with computers for some 25 years now and I remember in the earlier days whenever there was talk of a new operating system there was a lot of hype. When the Operating System was finally released you couldn’t avoid reading about it and stumbling across articles but when I compare the release of Windows 7 against other releases this one has had the least hype of all but Windows 7 is something to get excited about and this one deserves all the hype. Microsoft have done an amazing job with this release and they should be proud.

Unfortunately Vista copped a lot of bad media and most of it was unjustified. I actually liked Vista but in hindsight it probably would have been best for Microsoft to go straight from Windows XP to Windows 7. 

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It never ceases to amaze me the number of sites we are called out to that are running unbearably slow and / or unstable systems. A task that should take 5 minutes can end up taking 15 minutes or longer. Another observation is the number of people that “put up” with errors or a system that is unstable. They are confronted with error screens or alerted to issues on their system and when asked “has that every happened before” they reply “Yes, that happens all the time but we just click ok or reboot the machine”.

In 90% of cases the slow response times of machines such as this also lead to the instability and errors. Some of the problems are caused by the user. When a system isn’t responding in a timely manner the user often gets frustrated and starts clicking ahead which in fact makes the whole thing a lot worse. Other problems are caused by tasks timing out, threading issues and file operation problems.

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I can almost guarantee that anybody that uses a computer at some stage has left their perfectly functional workstation or server only to return hours later or the next morning and find things aren’t working the way they should or maybe not working at all.

It happened to me again only a couple of days ago. I had been using Microsoft Word 2007 without any problems. I left the office and returned the next morning and Word kept freezing. I was going out of my mind. I needed to get a proposal out and ended up spending 2 hours trying to get Word working again. Even re-installing MS Office and running the Office Diagnosis didn’t resolve the issue. Sure enough upon checking the Event Log I found that Windows Updates had come in overnight. I rolled back the updates and sure enough MS Word worked perfectly.

This poses the question: “Should we run Windows Updates?”.
Given the loss of productivity when the updates go wrong it tends to become a case of “If it aint broke then don’t fix it”.
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How many coffees does it take to generate your Profit and Loss ?

The network versions of QuickBooks and MYOB are designed extremely poorly. They are actually using database technology from the late 80’s and early 90’s.

When you confront the vendors about your performance issues you will be referred to a document that provides you with suggestions that may improve performance but sadly these suggestions do very little as the problem extends from their use of Desktop Databases.

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Internet technologies are rapidly changing. You may have noticed that your browsing experience is getting more and more interactive. You no longer have to work through wizard style interfaces that have a Submit button in the bottom right hand corner of the form. Google, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube to name a few are some of the sites that require Internet Explorer 7 or higher to get the “true” experience. Security is another issue. Improved Internet Security requires changes to the browsers and the way online transactions work.

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Software Piracy; Its just not worth it

Microsoft is on the prowl and home users are not immune

Many people take a fairly casual approach to software piracy. We often hear “Microsoft are only chasing large pirates and businesses” and “I’m only a home user, they wouldn’t be interested in me”. Well the legal department of Microsoft Corporation Australia is alive and well and working all over Australia and the local area is no exception.

A customer sent us a copy of their legal notice this week (see below).
It appears that Adobe have partnered with Microsoft through the Genuine Advatage program. (more…)

When a component such as RAM or a Video Card fails in your computer then you simply purchase another. There is a little downtime but you basically return to where you left off.

Hard Disk failure is a different story all together. Unfortunately whether your Hard Disk is a couple of hours old or years and years old it is susceptible to failure. Although things are changing; for the moment Hard Disks are still mechanical components and account for the majority of failures we see through our technical department.

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