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Among the odd jobs I've done for fun and profit was serving as a computer consultant of sorts. It started about 15 years ago because this is a little town, and people with computer questions would call anyone else who had a computer. They even started paying for my advice, and I was tempted to give up writing for something profitable.
However, this pretty much ended when Windows became popular and my knowledge of undocumented MS-DOS function calls became as obsolete the Bill of Rights during the War on Drugs.
Or so I thought until this month. Years had passed without any such calls, and then several arrived in the same week. So, to save us all some time, I'll try to answer some of the common questions here.
Q. I'm thinking of buying a new computer. Is there any brand you'd recommend?
A. Don't buy any brand you've ever heard of, like Dell, Compaq, Gateway, HP, etc. You're better off getting the Assembled-by-Some-Guy-in-a-Garage generic computer.
That's because the name brands use proprietary parts, rather than regular off-the-shelf components that anybody can get at a reasonable price -- even you, if you want to fix it yourself.
For instance, I was just in a shop where the owner was fixing an HP whose power supply had died. The deceased 130-watt power supply looked even wimpier than the $20 200-watt replacements sold in catalogs -- but it was an odd-sized special HP part that cost $108.
So, avoid name brands, unless you like spending a lot of money and waiting a long time for special parts to arrive.
Q. My computer is connected to an Uninterruptible Power Supply, so that I can shut it down gracefully if our electricity goes out. It works fine, except that when the power's off, the UPS continues to sound an annoying alarm signal, worse than any sound my cat has ever made. I don't know why it has to alarm me -- I already know the power's off. Is there any way to disable this?
A. I've never seen a UPS with a way to turn off its noisemaker. You might be able to open the case of the UPS and find the speaker or audio transducer, and replace it with a resistor of the appropriate ohmage.
Personally, when the beeps are so loud that I can't hear the radio that I've plugged into the UPS because the local station might have an announcement about our electric outage, I prefer to apply one of those short-handled four-pound sledgehammers available for $10-15 at a hardware store. Granted, this doesn't help the UPS, but it sure improves my attitude.
Q. I need to buy a new printer. Is there any special feature to look for?
A. An off switch, preferably within easy reach. These used to be standard, but now many printers ship without one, and when a printer acts up and starts eating paper by the quire and ream, you want to be able to act quickly -- before you're tempted to reach for the office sledgehammer.
Similarly, when you're shopping for a computer, look for
one with a big reset button on the front that's easy to
find and push when you're enraged because the Press any
key to reboot
message on the Blue Screen of Death just
brings up another Blue Screen of Death.
Q. What's better for connecting peripherals like scanners and external CD-ROM burners -- USB or Firewire?
A. Those are for sissies. Real users employ SCSI, so that they can talk about device numbers, parity settings, active versus passive termination, how Apple messed up by using a 25-wire SCSI cable instead of 50 or 68 wires, etc. To be fair, though, SCSI is faster, and once you get it working after two days in SCSI Hell, it's stable and reliable.
Q. I use the e-mail program that came with my computer, and every so often, it gets infected and I start sending out viruses and the like to my friends. This is annoying and embarrassing. Is there anything I can do about it?
A. You're probably using Outlook Express. Even though it comes from Microsoft, there's nothing especially bad about it, but virus writers are attracted to it because so many people use it. Switch to a less-popular email program like Eudora or Pegasus.
Of course, if everybody did that, then the virus writers would focus on those programs. So, stick with what you're using, thereby simplifying life for non-Outlook users like me.
Q. I keep seeing ads for a fast Internet connection called DSL that comes from our local telephone monopoly, but when I call the phone company, they say it's not available yet in my area, and they don't know when it will be. Can you tell me?
A. It may not happen in Qwest's lifetime, but it should happen in yours.
And on that cheerful note, I've got to quit answering your questions and start pursuing one of my own, which involves figuring out which cables are still connected to something in the snarl behind my desk.
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