Hello and welcome to my first blog. I knew about blogs for many years now but never, until today put one up. My real intention was to do a podcast and I still plan to that, however that is on a temporary hiatus.
Well first a little about myself, I’m a 38 year old tech support personel for a major computer company for the last 2 years. I started in desktop computers then moved over to laptop computers where I am currenly but may soon transfer again to color laserjet dept. .
This blogs main theme is about older computer technolgy like old pentiums (P-1 +) and windows 9.x but also sometimes we will talk about newer technology as well.
As a tech support personel I hear everyones problems with there computers and I’m not going to get into that here or I’ll rant on for 5 pages. What I will say about that is that I think that most people buy the wrong type of computer. It’s a shame that most people buy that latest P4 pc with for example Intel 3.4 Gig Dual core processor, 2 gigs (or now you can get 3 gigs) DDR2 ram, 500 GB hard drive and a dual layer DVD burner. In my opinion that type of pc is rediculous. Processors really took a side step in 2004. The fastest processor (single core) stopped at 3.73 Gigs, then came hyperthreding and now dual, triple and even quad core. I’ll let you in on a little secret, most people will never need or use anything more than a single core 2.4 GHz processor. For people that only use the pc for emailing, surfing the web, playing music and or dvd movies and some light games like pogo.com a 1.8 Gig processer is the maximum they will ever use or need. Also in the race for faster speed comes new problems like with DDR2 ram, did you ever get an error message of “IRQ is not less or = to”, where do you think it comes from sometimes. I’m still skeptical about DDR2 and still prefer just regular DDR ram (when I updrade that is).
My best pc is an older IBM P4 1.6 Gigs with 768Mb (pc133) ram and a 80 GB hard drive running Xp Pro and Ubuntu. It also has a ATI 256 Mb dual head video card. That is a far cry from fancy, but as far as computers were in 2001/02 it would of been an above average unit. The wife has just bought a new Acer laptop with Vista basic that I just upgraded the ram from 512 Mb to 1 GB and got rid of the trial Norton as well as a few other tweeks for her. Vista is ok but it’s not for me as far as everyday use pc. My oldest/slowest is a 200MMX with 96Mb ram and a 8 Gig hard drive and a 4 Mb ATI Rage PCI video card running Windows 98 FE. It did have Windows 95b on it and I did enjoy that OS but it was very limited as far as programs, internet use and finding a good free antivirus that it will run on.
This weeks favorite DOS “GAME OF THE WEEK” is CHAMP Kong from dosgamesarchive.com
It’s just like the clasic Donkey Kong.
This weeks favorate 9.x “APPLICATION OF THE WEEK” is Ad-aware se.
In windows 95 you can still use Ad-aware se however DO NOT try to use the regular intaller. The trick is to install it on another pc 98 to Xp, then go into the program files and copy the ad aware folder to a cd. Go back to the 95 machine and copy that folder that is on the disk in to the program folder in 95 then just copy the ad aware icon from that folder you just copied now in the 95 machine to the desktop and it will work.
If there are any topics you would like me to cover or would like to leave me a comment you can e-mail me at www.13mtn@gmail.com.
Take care everyone!
Michael Long
I was pondering starting my own podcast for a very long time. I did attempt and succeeded to do a mock one, a few months back but my issue was not with the audio but with the web site. I do have what I would call a fair knowledge of building a basic website however the issue I was facing was on trying too hard to perfect it. I wanted to do it like “the big boys” so to speak. All those semi-professionals that have been podcasting for years and were doing an excellent job of it. I tried to copy some of the source code off of their web site and make it my own. Since I have not successfully studied java script it was like trying to put words together of a language you are only familiar with to make a sentence. I felt like an utter failure and did not go back to it for several months. Does anyone know what it feels like to have just enough knowledge but not enough to excel in something?