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Digital mainlining? Sending digital signals through the mains has been a long-standing technical ambition by power companies and two Scottish towns are participating in a pilot scheme to receive broadband Internet via electricity power lines. SSE Telecom and various partners are aiming to beat conventional 512Kbps broadband rates currently offered, by delivering Internet services to residential, business and public sector Internet users in Crieff and Campbeltown at speeds of up to 2MBps (2000Kbps).
The .eu domain name has been formally agreed by the EU, having had to pass approvals by the European Parliament and a meeting of EU telecommunications ministers in Brussels. This domain, lending a European identify to those who take up the new .eu suffix, will be available for registration by early 2003, being administered by a non-profit organisation (still to be selected).
Mobile phone generates cash! Yes, for the first time you can use your mobile phone to get money from a cash machine - but only in Denmark. All the keying-in is done up front on a mobile, then on reaching a hole-in-the-wall, you just type your PIN on the phone keypad, point it at the ATM infra-red receptor and take the cash. The pilot scheme uses special ATM machines from NCR Corporation adapted for infra-red, but may use Bluetooth wireless connections in future.
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McAfee has launched a suite of free virus analysis tools under its new SecurityCenter banner. After downloading and installing, SecurityCenter scans your PC, and generates an out-of-ten vulnerability rating. The Hacker Vulnerability Scanner goes a stage further and bombards your network with hostile packets, even through a firewall, to check the vulnerability of common Internet ports. While the aimed is to make us all more security-conscious, McAfee clearly hopes to sell their anti-virus products to potential customers who discover they have security holes.
Microsoft has delayed the next version of .NET to review security. IBM and Microsoft have published a joint white paper on a proposed Web services security plan and roadmap for developing a set of Web Service Security specifications that address how to provide protection for messages exchanged in a Web service environment. View the white paper on Microsoft's home page.
'Postage stamp' printing may not be high on your list of priorities, but Panasonic's new mobile printer rates as the 'industry's smallest'. The SV-P10 prints tiny images just 40x32mm on to A9 paper making it suitable for labels (up to 45 at a time) and the like. It connects to a PC via the supplied USB cable and costs £149.99 inc. VAT.
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1. How often should I replace a PC ?
Computer components are becoming more reliable, operating systems more stable and storage capacities larger - so why do we still have to replace PCs?
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So is it:
- The auditor's answer: 4 years
- When machines aren't productive
- The "When our budget allows" answer
Most of use the last option, easily falling into the trap of thinking it's the simplest and cheapest way to manage. However, this may doing your organisation a disservice, to say the least. Below we provide much more tangible and justifiable means of assessing how often to replace a PC and what's more we've provided the calculations for you!
The answer you want to hear of course is "Here's a way to keep your PC as long as you like!"
And with some fairly stringent restrictions, you could make this come true.
However, that basically means not changing anything, which entails:
- not building up too many documents,
- always archiving old projects to removable media like floppy discs or CD-Rs,
- adding fewer devices (like modems, scanners, cameras, extra discs), because as time goes by drivers won't be available,
- hoping that crucial items don't fail (motherboard, controllers, tape drives, video cards, CD/DVD drives, network cards, sound cards) because direct replacements will be hard to come by and new substitutes may well be incompatible.
Having said all that many PCs in a workstation-type environment will continue to function happily after 5 years or more, though they may be increasingly frustrating for users.
What causes a PC to become obsolescent ?
The No. 1 Reason for a PC becoming less useful than it was before comes under the general banner of 'upgrades'. This means :
- the disc runs out of free space to store programs or data
- the memory (RAM) is insufficient to run more or increasingly large programs
- a new operating system is required to support new hardware devices, like scanners or cams or extra ports
- the existing operating system won't run a new application (more frequently now)
- throughput is too slow for the quantity of data from the local network or the Internet
As you can see none of these constitute wear-and-tear effects - it's a simple case of overload. The classic example here is that as our telecoms technology has produced faster connections, many Web site pages have got bigger on that assumption of extra bandwidth.
How much does a PC in my organisation cost ?
Simple, you might say: the price I bought it for.
You may shocked to discover that the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of a PC over its lifetime can be as much as two to three times that original purchase price!
Say you buy a PC for £500.
Suppose the organisation employs an IT person for half a week at £24K and they spend only a quarter of their time looking after 24 PCs.
This works out as :
24K * 1/2 week * 1/4 time / 24 PCs = £125 per annum for each PC
... so after 4 years a PC has cost 125 * 4 + 500 = £1000 in maintenance. Yikes! That's twice the original cost, without taking into account spare parts! Nor the time lost by frustrated workers - an even bigger slice of TCO.
And it's really not atypical.
Thus TCO is often quoted as 3 times the cost of the original machine.
It's a good formula.
You could argue that the IT person is also fulfilling a lot of other IT support functions in that quarter of the time they lean over a user's shoulder or wade into the PC's innards armed with a screwdriver - tips for users, deeper technical understanding, some preventative maintenance maybe.
However, at some point the law of diminishing returns catches up with us and all this effort and expense outweighs the benefits of buying a newer, more stable machine which is less prone to failure.
The auditor's view
Company auditors have determined this depreciation period with calculators and tables (and hopefully up-to-date computers!) and consistently come up with a depreciation time of 4 years. In plain English, this means that every PC is calculated as being worth nothing after 4 years, irrespective of whether it's still in use.
So the simple formula is :
No of PCs divided by 4 = replacements per year
In our example:
24 / 4 = 6 per year or 1 every 2 months
This at least gives us a rough benchmark by which gauge purchasing frequency.
However, this benchmark looks very rough when you add to this the amount of time lost by staff ....
The "When the machine becomes unproductive" view
Say the limit you want to spend on each PC is 3 times its original cost.
So in our example above, that's another £1000 on top of the purchase cost of £500.
Say typical staff time costs £100 per 7-hour day (cost to the company, not wages).
Say one staff member loses 15 minutes a working day in waiting or restarting, etc - that's £3.50 per day lost.
So the PC should be replaced in :
£1000 = 286 working days or 57 working weeks
£3.50 per day
Thus the formula is:
(PC total cost - purchase cost) * 60
Lost minutes * hourly rate * 5
or
(PC total cost - purchase cost) * 12 = replace in XX weeks
Lost minutes * hourly rate
Plug in the figures for yourself, but beware - unless you're paying slave wages, you'll find the answers expensive!
Minimising the TCO impact
As a general Rule of Thumb: stick to uniformity as far as you can amongst your PC flock; this will reduce your internal and external support costs simply because any problems are likely to be less diverse and therefore more easily solved en masse.
A bigger more specialised machine will eventually cost more to support. Although such 'renegades' among your neat and tidy flock are going to be inevitable - often accommodating environments like web design, desktop publishing (DTP) and streaming media (audio/video) - even the impact of such machines can be minimised by spending heavily on the hardware and providing just a few shared workstations, thus cutting down on software licensing costs as well as the number of support-intensive platforms.
Find suppliers that can provide a regular flow of PCs rather than 'hopping' between resellers continually seeking bargains.
Remember: " TCO = 3x "
Old computers never die, they can be re-used
If 4 years sounds like a short lifetime ultimately ending in landfill, don't forget that more PC recycling options are available now than before. Read about them in our "Where to recycle" article, or visit the itforcharities recycled PCs page.
-IB-
Paul Craig
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2. Back to Skool - keeping your IT skills up to date
Intro##
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Out with the old, in with the new
First a confession: like most IT companies once of the biggest problems we have is keeping our knowledge up to date and this situation is not helped by the fact that most specific IT knowledge is redundant after 4 years. Whilst re-skilling is important, it is often difficult to find the time to fit courses in around all the other day-to-day more pressing activities that need to happen. Sound familiar?
Crash course crash-tested
So to address this and lead by example, I recently went on a half day Windows 2000 Microsoft Training hands on training lab. As a "wise man" would say, the most important thing I understood at the end was how little I knew.
There was too much to cover, and what was covered we went through at a blistering pace - we went though DNS (Domain Name Servers), group policies and remote users, multi-sites, web server, communications server - Virtual Private Networks and Remote Access Server (VPN & RAS), Terminal Services, and migrations from Windows NT all within the space of 4 hours.
Microsoft's training labs have indeed been criticised for being unrealistic in the quantity of material covered. It is also undoubtedly true that, to make the most of these labs, you really need to have had a look at the product before - for few hours at least - and preferably become comfortable with using software in general.
But even if you have quite good product knowledge, these sessions do two important things:
- Firstly they fill gaps in your head
for instance: under the RAS bit, we looked at restricting what ports are used under TCP/IP settings ie: port 80 to prevent 'hacking' web pages. I'd heard other techies at Co-Op talk about this but now I can do it.
- Secondly the labs do is get you thinking about different ways of approaching tasks
eg: Windows 2000 actually makes central deployment and management of software a realistic possibility.
Summary
So on reflection it was time well spent and good value. However, a more telling question to ask yourself might be "Can you afford not to acquire and develop new skills?"
Well, in the class I was in there were about 15 of our IT competitors, so if we don't have this knowledge as individuals or as an organisation, others certainly will, and this is probably true in your profession too.
-IB-
Philip Anthony
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3. Simple cleaning for HP printers
A process that clears without smears ....
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What is it ?
A simple process that involves feeding one sheet of paper into the printer and
doesn't involve getting your hands dirty!
How often ?
HP recommend to do this monthly.
Works with ...
Hewlett-Packard HP Laserjet 3100, 4000, 5000 and 8150 printer series.
How to make it happen
- Menu button: select "Print Quality Menu"
- Item button: select "Create Cleaning Page"
- Press Select key
Now you have a sheet with a broad black diagonal stripe printed on it. Follow instructions at the top of the sheet.
This basically involves re-feeding the sheet face-down, using same menu options in 2 & 3 above, except the no 3 menu will say "Process or feed Cleaning Page".
That's it!
Benefits
Cures some specks and smears.
Extends the life of the printer components like the fuser unit and drum.
No need to open the printer case.
You don't get exposed to toxic toner.
Drawbacks
The Cleaning Page isn't a 'cure-all' - look up the Troubleshooting pages in your printer manual. Regular cleaning of the printer is still recommended with a standard cleaning kit, again in the manual.
Contacts
Can't find your manuals? Print this web page which covers
cleaning procedures for HP printers as well as details about the Cleaning Page.
Check here for our other printer troubleshooting tips.
-IB-
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4. Micropayments for a shrinking world
The wallet is dead. Long live the mobile ... ?
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What is it ?
Vodafone's launch of a UK micropayments service may herald the end of small cash - but only if you're buying online.
Benefits for users
Customers can pay for small purchases via their phones or via the Internet. You buy items online and the cost simply turns up on your phone bill - no cash involved. No major credit card applications to be filled in, if you already have a Vodaphone account. Typical 'small' purchases might be flowers, games, news, ticket bookings or even a cup of tea!
Benefits for retailers
Small items are expensive for retailers to transact, but they can charge m-pay customers between 5p and £5 and gain access to Vodaphone-enabled under-18s.
How it works
Both parties have to register with Vodafone UK. Content providers and retailers can be set up in a few days, and Vodafone UK charges an average 15% on each transaction.
An 'm-payer' initiates an online purchase and the content provider authenticates their details at the Vodafone Web site; WAP users do this via a PIN while surfers type in a username and password. The purchase charge is applied to their phone bill or prepay credit whereupon Vodafone confirms the payment and the content provider delivers the product. Vodafone 'settles up' with the content provider later on.
http://mpay-bill.vodafone.co.uk/
FAQ and demo:
http://mpay-bill.vodafone.co.uk/w_mpay.html
Other mobile payment initiatives
Orange is running a mobile payment service in Denmark in partnership with PBS and major credit companies. See a demo here:
http://www.orangemobilbetaling.dk/mobilbetaling_uk.html
Vodafone and WorldPay have begun trials of a global mobile payment system called m-Wallet in the UK, Germany and Italy. All of a user's credentials are stored in their virtual m-Wallet, such as username, password and billing/shipping addresses.
Nokia's 6340 mobile phone, on sale in the first half of 2002, allows users to store credit and debit card information and other credentials in an encrypted area of the phone's memory using standard Electronic Commerce Markup Language (ECML).
http://press.nokia.com/PR/200201/844677_5.html
BT calls it "shopping with loose change online" and hope to add their service to standard BT phone bills eventually. Their service is scheduled to be available to everyone, even non-BT customers, from September 2002.
http://www.groupbt.com/innovation%20and%20technology/old/articles/eWallet/INDEX.HTM
-IB-
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5. Application Service Providers - taking over your IT system ?
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What is it ?
Application Service Providers (ASPs) are in the business of 'renting software' (as opposed to selling licences) or providing 'software as a service' for a fee. Typically, the tools available are developed and delivered over the Internet and provide solutions for managing Web content, membership lists, emailing lists, and personnel skills matching and recruitment.
How it works
You access it all over the Internet; this could be databases, e-mail servers, accounting packages - all your common applications. The vendor/provider maintains and updates the application and makes backups of your data.
Does it work ?
So, will ASPs take over in-house computing?
As with many developing technologies, central issues are concerned with how much confidence end-users and decision-makers have in the systems and the providers, eg:
- Do you trust the companies and their financially status?
- Do they understand the nature of your organisation?
- What control will you have over your data?
- How safe is that data?
- Will it save money and/or personnel or just breed new specialists?
Oracle's take on ASPs has been risky, even for such a big player, with development being slower than expected and only 1 in 12 of users of Oracle applications worldwide taking to its Net-only offering, despite the best efforts of Oracle PR gurus. In Europe, that figure drops to around 1 in 15. However, for those customer that have gone into ASP-mode, Oracle claims costs have reduced by between 60% and 90% in the first year.
Benefits
An end to running around updating your in-house software or services.
Always have the latest software on-hand - leave the headaches to the ASP
In theory, economies of scale should make services ever cheaper for ASPs to provide
Drawbacks
You pay a fee for the service
A reliable Internet connection becomes crucial - it's the only link to your rented services!
Examples
Big players:
Sun Microsystems: "Sun ONE"
Microsoft: ".Net"
Oracle: "Dynamic Web Services" scheme.
Hewlett-Packard: OpenView.
Contacts
An E-Nonprofit Guide is available for free download (in Web and PDF formats) from:
A Guide to ASPs, Internet Services, and Online Software.
This excellent document is about 57 pages-worth (1.23MB) with plenty of useful Web links.
A shorter Beginner's Guide (517KB) is also available from the same location.
-IB-
[Acknowledgements: Internet World, NFP Techno]
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6. CD quick eject - a dandy trick!
You got a CD
Yeah it's stuck in the PC
It used to get me mad, maybe I'll come and set it free
You'll really love
My neat trick see
If you wanna quit your work and can't wait for your machine
To boot up
'Cos I like you ...
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What's the take ?
You're already late leaving the office and now you discover your CD is still left in that cold, powerless PC. Oh no - it'll take a precious 5 minutes to go through the whole power up cycle again just to retrieve it!
Fast CD rescue
To make it happen, do this:
- Power up the machine
- Press the CD tray ""Eject" button, retrieve your CD, close the CD tray and switch off the machine before you reach the "Starting Windows" message.
- Sweep out of the office Bohemian-style!
Why it works
Because Windows doesn't start its system checking until after BIOS and memory checks are complete, you normally have at least 20 seconds or so when power is applied to the CD drive to allow the tray to be ejected.
If you are the more cautious sort, you can buy extra (indeed, infinite) time by pressing the "Pause" key (top right-hand corner of keyboard) after the memory check is done. The machine will halt completely while you retrieve the CD. Then power off the machine.
Beware: don't power off after Windows has started, otherwise the PC will have to run Scandisk before the next user logs in. Many PCs with 'indirect' mains power buttons won't let you switch off at this point anyway, or will activate a valid, fast shutdown.
Benefits
Save a valuable 5 minutes if you're late!
Drawbacks
If you reach the "Starting Windows" message, you'll have to let the PC at least reach the login screen. Or get a colleague to shut it down again.
Contacts
Is your CD really stuck, power or no power? Read our tip for Retrieving stuck CDs.
I'm getting wise and I'm feeling so bohemian like you - wooo!
[Apologies to the Dandy Warhols]
-IB-
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7. Free Web space - a good deal
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Webs without strings ?
A free web site with plenty of space, easy access and support for MS Access databases? Surely too good to be true!
But no! The folks at Brinkster are offering 30 MegaBytes of web space for designing and testing your own web pages.
Features include:
- No adverts on your site,
- Support for Active Server Pages (ASP 3.0) and the newer ASP.NET,
- MS Access Databases,
- Web-based file management,
For US$12.95 per month and a once-off US$12.95 setup fee, you can get a full Brinkster account which adds extra features to the free version:
- 60 MegaBytes of space allocation,
- 25 POP3 email accounts,
- Use the faster File Transfer Protocol (FTP),
- 'Label' the site with own existing domain (eg www.yourorg.org.uk),
- Extra ASP components,
- .NET version 1 Framework Support
Benefits
Excellent for trialling a web site design, especially if you need feedback from remote parties
Pre-programmed examples (showing a menu, database connect) are supplied to get you going.
Did we mention it's free!
Drawbacks
Like all web-based transactions involving some sort graphical user interface (GUI), file transfer can be a bit slow.
No streaming audio and video files are accepted on the free account.
How to make it happen
Register at http://www.brinkster.com.
-IB-
[Acknowledgements: James @ TIW]
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8. Chatterbots
The "chattering classes" .... automated!
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What is it ?
You chat to an online 'bot' by typing words into a Web page input box and the 'bot' responds with uncannily(??) human characteristics.
It's supposedly called "Artificial Intelligence" (AI), but these 'chatterbots' mostly exhibit more of the former and less of the latter and it's all harmless fun anyway.
- Eliza - The computer psychiatrist emulator
http://www.planet-stuff.freeserve.co.uk/Software/Eliza.htm
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Eliza - the sarcastic version
... if your like your therapy 'in your face'.
http://www.ndir.com/ai/bad.html
- Zabaware
UltraHal comes with an animated face and is available as a shareware PC assistant, a web-based demonstration conversation application and an AI bot for websites.
http://www.zabaware.com/home.html
- Ask ALEX
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/alex.htm
"Go on, ask me any question you like as long as it's about law". ALEX is an experimental AI bot programmed to help you find legal information on JURIST: The Legal Education Network, and elsewhere online.
- "BRIAN" is predisposed to think of 'himself' as an 18 year-old college student who lives in Sydney, Australia. Tediously predisposed, in fact.
http://www.strout.net/info/science/ai/brian/
- A whole host of bot links, categorised as Classic, Complex, Friendly, Teachable.
http://www.simonlaven.com/
- My Little Tony
If you ever had any questions for our PM Tony Blair, now's your chance, thanks to this bot from Kiwilogic.
http://www.mylittletony.com/
- The Personality Forge is a bit like a combination of Instant Messaging and a Web bot, enabling you to build your own AI Personalities and turn them loose to chat with real people and other Bots. Multiple messaging dialogue boxes appear on screen but it's difficult to tell who is real!
http://www.personalityforge.com/entrance.cfm
- Loads more bots here ...
http://bots.internet.com/search/s-chat.htm
For some reason, Germans seem to be particularly adept at creating them.
-IB-
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