RHFtech™ Write on Tech » hardware

Don’t throw out your computer yet

Richard Frisch — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:36:40 +0000

I do quite a bit of video production. So, I am always on the lookout for tools to make the post-production effort easier. My main tools for post-production are a beefy Windows 7 rig, running Adobe Premiere Pro CS5. I have tried many other programs. That list includes, but is not limited to: Final Cut Pro 7, Final Cut Pro X, iMovie, Windows Live Movie Maker, and Avid Media Composer. Avid Technology, Inc. recently released Avid Studio for the iPad, a video editing app, similar to Apple’s iPad iMovie, but with a simpler user interface (UI). As it only cost $4.99, I was game to play with Avid Studio on my iPad 2.

After buying and installing the app, I threw together different assets to test what the app can do. I used titles, video, photos, transitions and audio. My experiment yielded two short videos, Avid iPad test 01 and Avid iPad test 02, which I uploaded to YouTube directly from the app.

Avid Studio for the iPad is pretty good for a first version, just not good enough for two reasons. Unsurprisingly, the first reason is the app has a limited feature set. As an example, although you can add titles, you can’t change the black backgrounds to another color or use an image instead. You can’t even add a second text box to the title.

The second reason was more troublesome. The iPad’s hardware is unsatisfactory for post-production transcoding, even with short videos. Video rendering and transcoding taxes all computer hardware. The video chip and CPU in the iPad are built for low power consumption not high speed video production. It took a long time to work with the two videos I produced, even though each was only about one minute long.

I look forward to Avid Studio version 2 running on the as yet unannounced iPad 3. That should be a better experience. I don’t expect to give up my Windows 7/Premiere Pro setup anytime soon.

This got me thinking whether someone with more limited computer requirements might forgo their personal computer all together. Is it possible to discard our personal computers (PCs) and replace them with tablets?

Most everything we do with our PCs, both Windows and Macs, has an analogous app, feature or function on today’s tablets, even hardware intensive video production. Yet, after due consideration, I conclude the answer is no. We will be using PCs for a long time.

Everyone uses their computers to read/write email, to surf the web, and to compose or edit documents, spreadsheets or presentations. Tablets can do that. A lot of us use our computers to view and edit photographs. Tablets and smartphones can do that too. In fact, many of the iPad photo editing apps are superior to Windows and Mac applications in both easy-to-use functionality and cost. Tablets are great gaming machines, as are computers. Additionally, some of us consume media—video, music, and books—through our computers. Tablets can do that too.

Typing on a touch screen device is an inferior experience to using a real keyboard. Most tablets allow us to connect keyboards to them via a Bluetooth radio connection. I successfully did this using an Apple wireless keyboard and an iPad. It works fine. The biggest complaint I have about this setup is the lack of a pointing device, other than my finger. I find mice far more exact and easier to manipulate when I am using a keyboard. But I suppose we could adapt to a setup of touch screen and keyboard, sans mouse.

Storage is the single issue that will keep tablets as adjuncts to computing, rather than becoming our computer mainstay. Computers have large hard drives. We can add more storage to most computers, even notebooks. Tablets come with limited, usually fixed, storage. Most large form factor Android tablets and iPads come with 16GB to 64GB of storage. 64GB or less is insufficient for many of us to store all our photos, videos, music, documents and apps. We depend upon our computers to store the preponderance of these files. There are great utilities and services (think Dropbox) that let us sync or move these files from our computers to our tablets and back. Without these we would quickly find tablets limited and their luster would fade.

So until we have 500GB to 1TB tablets, something we are likely to see in Windows 8, due out later this year, I suggest you hold on to your computer.

2011 Hardware Favorites

Richard Frisch — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 18:03:03 +0000

Below is a list of some 2011 hardware I like, listed from most to least expensive. (Prices listed are/were current as of Saturday, December 31, 2011.)

Apple 13-inch MacBook Air ($1,299 to $1,778)

My initial and continuing impression of the first and second generation MacBook Air, which was released in January 2008, was that it was an over-priced piece of crap. Sure it was thin and light weight but it was underpowered, lacked enough or properly positioned USB ports and was bested by the then generation of Windows netbooks.

Apple’s continuing improvements to the MacBook Air line over the years have changed my opinion. The third and fourth generation models were a leap forward in notebook design. I now believe it is the best general purpose notebook computer. The addition of a second USB port and moving the USB ports to the side of the case make it much more connectable. The solid state drive (SSD) makes it faster than many high-powered desktops or laptops that use spinning hard drives. It is still thin and light weight. It is still expensive. It runs Windows 7 better than most Windows computers. Battery life is good. The current models are the best yet. In 2011, Apple restored the backlit keyboard that they took out along the way and added a Thunderbolt multipurpose data and display port. If the price is not a deterrent, this is the notebook to own.

Apple iPad 2 ($499 to $829)

The iPad 2 is simply the best tablet computer. I use this device more and more nine months in. I own the lowest cost model: $499, WiFi only, 16GB model, in black.

The hardware is well thought out. The screen is easy to read. The device, although weighty, is not too heavy to hold and handle for extended periods. Battery life is superb.

The iTunes app ecosystem is great, although far from perfect. I wish we could test apps before buying them. Alternatively, it would be nice if Apple allowed us to return/rescind an app purchase within an hour or two of buying them. Most apps are good to wonderful, but there is the occasional clunker.

I bought the Snugg iPad 2 Case Cover and Flip Stand for my iPad 2, $29.99. It is superior in functionality and appearance to the more expensive and less useful Apple iPad Smart Cover, which costs $39 – $69. The 427 customer reviews on Amazon, giving the case a 4.5 star rating is an indication that this case is a winner. Apple’s Smart Cover garners a 3 star rating on Amazon and at the Apple Store.

Crucial RealSSD ($120 to $485)

A solid state drive (SSD) runs rings around a spinning hard drive in speed of data reads and writes. That performance boost comes at a price: SSDs cost more than rotational hard drives, while rotational drives have much larger maximum capacities, as much as 4TB. The largest SSDs, 960GB models, cost over $2,400 and some cost over $3,000. A 3TB rotational drive costs between $330 and $400 today.

I put a 256GB Crucial RealSSD in my main Windows 7 desktop computer, in early 2011, replacing a 1TB rotational drive. I have not regretted that decision. In fact, I wish I had done it earlier. I have lots of programs, a very large digital music collection and do lots of video production, which consumes large amounts of storage. I could not fit all my stuff on a 1TB drive much less an SSD a quarter of that size. I use 3 2TB rotational drives for data and new program installations. My machine is much faster. Fast is good.

Amazon Kindle Fire ($199)

The Fire was released in November 2011. It is a small form factor (7” diagonal), combination ebook reader and touchscreen tablet computer. If you had to pick between the iPad 2 and the Fire, pick the iPad. If you want an inexpensive, portable, color screen tablet that does double duty as a media consumption device and general purpose computer, get a Kindle Fire.

Amazon ties the Kindle to their very large and rapidly expanding digital products ecosystem, which is especially convenient and economical if you are an Amazon Prime customer. Anything you buy from the Kindle book store, any music you buy from Amazon’s MP3 store, and any videos you rent or buy from the Amazon Video store can be read, listened to, or watched on your Fire. The screen is very good. Watching video on the device is a surprisingly positive experience. (You should get a stand if you do this regularly.) Battery life is good, but not as good as the iPad.

It is WiFi only, so if you are traveling, I advise loading books, video and music onto your Kindle Fire before you leave. Storage space on the Kindle is not as robust as I would like. You are limited to about 5.4GB for media: books, music and video. There is an additional 1.2GB of storage available for apps. Amazon has a free app each day, which you can buy, download and install. One niggling hardware issue is that the power button is placed in a spot where it is easy to inadvertently turn off the Kindle when just holding it.

Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station ($179)

It’s a dual band 802.11n network router and Internet gateway device. That’s not the most exciting device in our electronics kit today. There are comparable routers from other companies that cost less and do the same or more! I know because I frequently install and configure or fix routers for my customers. The AirPort Extreme has only 3 LAN Ethernet ports, while all the others have 4. It requires special software to configure and manage. Its competitors can be configured from any standard computer attached to the router through a browser window, no special software required.

So why do I like it? In high traffic environments, like mine, it is the most dependable consumer-grade router I know. Other consumer-grade routers suffer from over-heating issues in high traffic environments. This causes them to malfunction. The AirPort Extreme Base Station is rock solid. Interestingly, the Apple AirPort Express (the Extreme’s little sister) is not as solid. It too suffers from overheating problems due to high traffic.

Logitech Wireless Illuminated Keyboard K800 (Windows) ($69.99)

I work on many computers, mine and my customers, desktops and laptops. I use a lot of different keyboards in a standard workday. So I sample many different keyboards, from many different manufacturers, such as Dell, HP, Microsoft, Logitech, and Apple. I write quite a bit so my personal keyboards matter a lot to me.

This Logitech wireless keyboard for Microsoft Windows computers has a no-nonsense design. It features a relatively small footprint, nice and responsive keys, backlit keys, great rechargeable battery life, and a switch to turn it on and off. It comes with a USB recharging cable as well. I like it much better than the older Logitech wireless keyboard that it replaced.

Logitech Wireless Solar Keyboard K750 for Mac ($59.95) (Black or Silver)

I am not a fan of Apple keyboards. They are too flat. I don’t find typing on them anything other than tortuous on a good day. I like number pads on my desktop computer keyboard, but Apple doesn’t sell a wireless full-size keyboard.

Fortunately, Logitech has come to my rescue with an innovative light-powered, wireless full-size keyboard designed specifically for Macs. It is not perfect but much better for me than Apple’s hardware. It has Apple-style chicklet keys but the finger rests are indented and rounded rather than aping apple’s flat keys. It runs off the ambient light in my office, day or night. It never needs to charge its batteries or have them replaced since it converts light into energy. It also has a handy on/off switch, which lets you turn off the keyboard when not in use.

The retractable legs are not as sturdy as I would like. I haven’t broken them yet but it feels like it wouldn’t take much to do that.

Logitech Wireless Anywhere Mouse MX ($47.99)

Most people use whatever pointing device came with the computer. If it’s a desktop Windows computer they use a cheap, limited function mouse.

If the computer is a desktop Mac, an iMac, Mac Mini, or Mac Pro they are probably using either the Magic Trackpad or Magic Mouse. With the Magic Mouse, Apple continues its unbroken tradition of never making a usable mouse . It incorporates features of both a mouse and a trackpad to the user’s disadvantage. Their Magic Trackpad is much better but I find it awkward compared to a good mouse like the Anywhere Mouse MX.

The Anywhere Mouse is a wireless mouse that communicates with your Mac or Windows computer via a tiny USB radio receiver that plugs in to the computer. I’ve had an Anywhere Mouse MX for several years that I use on my Windows desktop. I bought an additional one this year to use with my 27” iMac.

It works on pretty much any surface, without need of a mouse pad. It even works on a transparent glass surface! (I am tempted to test if it works in butter like a TV-advertised ballpoint pen of my youth. I never understood why anyone would want to do that.) It has a built-in clutch on the scroll wheel that lets you shift from frictionless hyper-fast scrolling to line-by-line navigation with a simple finger press. It lasts a long time on two AA batteries. You can use rechargeable ones if you want.

It has a convenient storage slot in the battery compartment for the USB receiver if you want to travel with the mouse. The bottom cover comes off and can be put back on with little effort. It also has a simple slide button on the bottom that lets you effortlessly turn the mouse off and on. This lets you conserve your batteries when the mouse is not in use. It has other features too, such as buttons on the side for moving forwards and backwards in a browser window. It truly is a great mouse. Over 500 people on Amazon who reviewed the Anywhere Mouse MX agree, giving it 4 and 5 star ratings.

Fast is good, faster is better – SATA 6G and USB 3.0

Richard Frisch — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:48:23 +0000

One of the holy grails of technology is to make things go faster. This impulse pervades all technology from cars to computers. There are three new and improved technologies for data transfer within a computer, tablet device or smartphone that have recently come to market that will speed up our computing. These are solid state drives (SSD), Serial ATA Revision 3.0 and Universal Serial Bus 3.0.

Solid state devices replace rotational storage devices like hard drives. They are much faster than hard drives and more durable. They are also expensive. SSDs use non-volatile memory to read, write and store information. The most recent Intel/Micron joint venture fabrication facility builds SSDs using 25-nanometer NAND technology. The factory cost billions of dollars to construct and outfit. 25-nanometers is very small. At this size a few atoms misbehaving can ruin a device. SSDs are desirable as computer drives but I am waiting for SSD prices to drop significantly before deploying them as replacement drives in my existing computers.

As an aside, I recently had a conversation with a friend who consults to a large German optical company that makes the lens for these plants. He said he was working on the 11-nanometer next generation NAND lens. Unbelievable! What an incredible human accomplishment to work at this microscopic level.

SATA is the typical way internal drives connect to a computer. The first version of SATA allowed for theoretical speeds of data transfers up to 1.5Gb/s. Revision 2 doubled that theoretical speed to 3.0Gb/s. Most modern computers have drives and controllers that communicate using SATA 2.x. SATA Revision 3.0 is also known as SATA 6Gb/s because it has doubled the maximum transfer rate once again. Real world data speeds never come close to these maximums but each major revision has significantly sped up our computers.

I tested an ASUS U3S6 controller card in my custom-built Windows 7 main computer. The computer has an ASUS P6T Deluxe V2 motherboard, 12GB of DDR3 RAM and an Intel i7-920 (2.66GHz) CPU. The U3S6 adapter card has two USB 3.0 connectors on the back plane and two SATA 6Gb/s connectors on the inside. These are used to connect to a computer’s internal drives. The adapter card connects to the motherboard via a PCI Express x4 interface

I needed 6Gb/s drives to test so I bought two Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX hard drives. There are not a lot choices today. This is likely to change in the near future. I also acquired a BYTECC T-200U3 external docking station, that incorporates a USB 3.0 connector, to test USB 3.0 data transfer rates. These four pieces of equipment cost me about $300.

I wanted to get SSDs but they cost much more and the SSDs’ capacities are too small so I went with this setup: A $30 add-on card and two new SATA 6.0Gb/s capable 1TB hard drives. A single Crucial Real SSD 256GB SATA 6Gb/s costs $759 at Newegg today. My configuration is slower than the SSD but I have 8x the storage for less than half the price.

I first benchmarked my existing drives using the motherboard’s built-in SATA 3Gb/s controllers and the external USB 2.0 ports. I used PC Wizard 2010 to run the hard drive benchmarks. I then installed the board and benchmarked the SATA 6Gb/s controller and drives, and the USB 3.0 docking station with both the new and old drives.

In my testing SATA 6Gb/s is about 50% faster than SATA 3Gb/s controllers+drives not the 100% I hoped for. However, my computer is much more responsive. Applications and files open much faster than before I installed the board and new drives.

USB 3.0 may be a big improvement but I didn’t see it in my initial testing. It is supposed to work at speeds up to 10x USB 2.0. This board’s USB 3.0 ports connected to a USB 3.0 external hard drive are only about 40%-50% faster than USB 2.0 equipment. This is good but nowhere near the 10x range I hoped for. The ASUS-supplied software drivers are the probable culprit. I am hopeful that ASUS will release new ones in the near future.

The bottom line is that I recommend this board and new hard drives to anyone who has the money and the motherboard expansion slot. The 50% improvement with USB 3.0 is nice but less than hoped for. However, I do not believe you will be disappointed if you upgrade your rig. I am not looking backwards.

Lifehacker survey – Apple iPad: Love It or Lump It?

Richard Frisch — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 11:23:11 +0000

The Lifehacker survey results, as of now:

Thoughts on the Apple iPad announcement

Richard Frisch — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 10:19:18 +0000

The total cost of a usable version will likely exceed $1,000

The Apple iPad is more sizzle than steak, based upon what I read and see on the Internet.

Do I want one? Yes, to play with for a few hours.

Do I want to own one? Probably not.

Should you buy one? Not yet. Not this year. Wait for the 3rd generation before buying one of these. It will likely have big improvements and hardware additions, like a camera, over the announced first generation models.

The cost of ownership is much higher than it seems. The total cost of a usable version will likely exceed $1,000, and probably $2,000 with the cost of a data plan. The $499 model has only 16GB of memory, which is insufficient in today’s media file and data intensive world. The 64GB model is $699 but you want the Wi-Fi + 3G model, which costs $829. A data plan from AT&T Wireless is extra. AppleCare prices were not announced. I expect the extended warranty to run at least $200. You need to buy a case. You need extra charging cables and perhaps an external battery, which cost $80-$100 for the iPhone. You may want one of the iPad Keyboard Docks (price unknown).

The apps we will want are not yet written and app pricing is unknown.

The bezel, the black area around the screen, is huge and makes the device look clunky to my eye.

The lack of a built-in stand or a camera makes this thing seem half-baked.

Based upon my experience with other battery-powered devices, the touted 10 hour battery life is probably over-stated. The question is, "By how much?" Book readers like the Kindle can go 2 weeks or more on a single charge. The battery life at 10 hours max, means we will be charging iPads all the time. Also, battery life for all devices declines over time. Since the iPad battery is hard to replace, Apple intends these devices to be disposable.

Why do we want this? What does it add to our technological life that is not as well or better served by other devices?

Caution is advised. Let someone else be the beta tester for Apple.

Apple, not so delicious

Richard Frisch — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 14:21:29 +0000

Many people I know believe Apple makes the best computers and related hardware. They are surprised when I challenge their opinion. I think they formed these opinions based upon three sets of Apple products—iMacs, MacBook Pros, and iPhone/iPod Touch/iPod models. My opinion is based upon the complete Apple product line that incorporates products such as the Mac Pro, Xserve, Mac Mini, Apple TV, MacBook Air, AirPort hardware, storage products, and keyboard and mouse offerings.

I am agnostic when it comes to technology. I try to assess what I see and use on its face value. I am rarely swayed by flashy or shiny things. I try to judge on ease-of-use, how well the technology does what it purports to do, and the cost/value ratio.

Below are some quick thoughts that I hope amplify my position:

The iMac is the best all-in-one computer. There are Windows alternatives. None are as compelling.

MacBook Pros are very nice notebook computers. There are few comparable offerings in the Windows world. But there are many good Windows notebooks, often providing a better cost/value ratio than a MacBook Pro. This impression is due to Windows 7. Windows 7 changes the balance for the client operating system user interface/user experience (UI/UX), away from Apple’s OS X Leopard/Snow Leopard, to Microsoft. This happened once before when Microsoft released Windows 95 and leapfrogged the Apple UI/UX of the day.

The iPod Touch is in a category by itself. I have seen no other device that does as much as the Touch, does what it does as well as the Touch, or is priced as favorably.

The iPhone was in a category by itself but that is rapidly changing. The Motorola Droid offers many features that the iPhone does not and is quickly adding apps and functionality that leapfrog the iPhone/iTunes App store ecosystem. Peter Ha of Time Magazine recently named the Droid the best gadget for 2009. There are other new or soon-to-be-released smartphones that challenge the iPhone’s hegemony.

The Mac Pro is a beautiful tower computer. It is extravagantly over-priced. There are many Windows alternatives that provide comparable hardware at a fraction of the cost. The primary reason I see to buy the Mac Pro over a comparable Windows tower is because you want to use Final Cut Studio, Apple’s $1,000 video editing program, to edit lots of video recordings.

Xserve is an expensive, not-so-special, pizza-box-shaped server. Linux, Unix, and Windows servers generally provide better functionality and features at much lower cost.

The Mac Mini is useful but monitor, keyboard and mouse are extra. It is not always the best-in-breed for media center devices and it makes a mediocre desktop computer. (I suggest buying an iMac if you need a Mac desktop computer.) Window nettop boxes are coming to market soon that challenge the Mac Mini. We need to wait until January 2010 to assess what is best-in-breed in this form factor.

The Mac Mini has a younger, smaller sibling, the Apple TV. TiVo is far superior as an easy-to-use media device. Xbox and the SONY PlayStation PS3 provide media center functionality and add game playing and an optical drive (Blu-ray for the PS3), both of which are missing from Apple TV. Roku, Vudu and Popcorn provide lower-cost media center functionality. The Roku box, which I will be reviewing next week, costs much less, provides a simpler interface and is easier to use than an Apple TV.

I often recommend Apple computers and other Apple hardware to my clients because the device(s) best meet the clients’ needs. I often recommend non-Apple products because they better meet that client’s needs. As I said above, I’m agnostic.

I could go on surveying Apple’s remaining hardware, such as Airport networking devices, keyboards and mice but I won’t. My point is that Apple makes some good hardware, in some instances such as the iPod Touch or the iMac the best, but not always the best and often not very good, like the MacBook Air or Apple TV.

Apple, not so delicious

Richard Frisch — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 14:08:44 +0000

Below are some quick thoughts that I hope amplify my position:

The iMac is the best all-in-one computer. There are Windows alternatives. None are as compelling.

The iPod Touch is in a category by itself. I have seen no other device that does as much as the Touch, does what it does as well as the Touch, or is priced as favorably.

Xserve is an expensive, not-so-special, pizza-box-shaped server. Linux, Unix, and Windows servers generally provide better functionality and features at much lower cost.

The Mac Mini is useful but keyboard and mouse are extra. Window nettop boxes are coming to market soon that challenge the Mac Mini. We need to wait until January 2010 to assess what is best-in-breed in this form factor.

The Mac Mini has a younger, smaller sibling, the Apple TV. It is not always the best-in-breed for media center devices and it makes a mediocre desktop computer. (I suggest buying an iMac if you need a Mac desktop computer.) TiVo is far superior as an easy-to-use media device. Xbox and the SONY PlayStation PS3 provide media center functionality and add game playing and an optical drive (Blu-ray for the PS3), both of which are missing from Apple TV. Roku, Vudu and Popcorn provide lower-cost media center functionality. The Roku box, which I will be reviewing next week, costs much less, provides a simpler interface and is easier to use than an Apple TV.

Thinking about a new high end computer

Richard Frisch — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:41:09 +0000

I have a client, a radiologist, who needs a new home computer. Since he uses this computer when he is on-call it must meet minimum requirements for the medical imaging software and display the images in high resolution on a large monitor so that he can properly read the images.

He sent me his specifications and asked for my thoughts. Here they are:

The nicest reasonably priced, large monitor is bundled with the new 27" iMac. One of these with a 2.8GHz i7 CPU and 8GB of memory (which I believe is more than adequate) costs $2,399 plus tax at Apple. Adding a second Apple display, a 24" Cinema Display costs $899 + tax. Not certain you need the 2nd monitor as a 27" primary monitor is quite large. Also the second monitor does not have to be an Apple.

Firefox is available for all major operating systems, Windows, Mac and Linux. So if Safari doesn’t cut the mustard, I would expect that Firefox will work. As always, better to test this on a existing Mac, before buying, rather than assume.

We can run XP, Vista, Windows 7 (32-or 64-bit) on a Mac either under the built-in Boot Camp utility (which I do not like because it means rebooting the machine to switch operating system) or in a virtual machine (VM) using VMware Fusion, Parallels Desktop, or VirtualBox. I prefer VMware Fusion over Parallels or VirtualBox. This would entail buying the VM software and a Windows OS and license, and installing the VM manager and then the operating system.

This might be the best of all worlds, great display, good hardware, and your choice of OS depending upon what you want to do. Please note that you will have to maintain two computers, the physical Mac and the virtual Windows, so updates, patches, and backups are times two.

Let me know if you have other questions or would like to discuss this. If you want to go with a desktop computer, and not an all-in-one like the iMac, we could consider the Mac Pro (which gets pricey very fast) or a higher-end Windows 7 64-bit machine with XP Mode. The Windows machine would probably cost $1,000 to $2,000 less than the Mac Pro (depending upon configuration). The advantage of a desktop is that is more serviceable and upgradeable. An iMac is more like a notebook in its construction and consequently harder to service and limited in upgrades, i.e. the video and sound cards/chips are fixed with whatever comes with the computer. Memory and hard drives can be upgraded.

The more things change, the more they change

Richard Frisch — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:54:58 +0000

This article’s title is turnabout on the French proverb, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” That is not the case in technology. I know many examples where technological enhancements cause the need for further improvement or refinement. Technology often changes our behavior causing a need to adjust to the new behavior. At times this feels like an infinite recursion, which it may well be. (As an aside, Googling “recursion” will display Google’s attempt at logical humor.)

An example of this occurred in the mid-1970s. I worked at Citicorp and had been a member of the team that invented the modern ATM, which we called CATs (Customer Activated Terminals). We saw these machines as a way of substituting capital for labor, replacing the need for branch tellers and shifting the work load from the bank to the customer. I was in line at the headquarter branch waiting to use one of the ATMs. It was Friday afternoon and the line was long since we all wanted cash for the weekend. There were no lines in the teller area and four available tellers. I couldn’t use a teller because I didn’t have a check with me. I could use the ATM because I had my Citicard. The tellers could not give a customer cash from his Citicard. We had succeeded in changing customer behavior thereby unbalancing demand in favor of the machines. Citibank eventually fixed this and today tellers can work with a customer’s card.

Recently, People’s United Bank changed their ATMs to add a question when one first interacts with the machine inquiring what language would we want. This is a good change, except that I don’t feel I need to answer this question more than once. People’s should program their systems to remember my response since it is highly unlikely I will ever answer that question differently. Perhaps someday someone at People’s will wake up and implement the change. This is a small thing but an annoyance brought about by a change that should be changed again.

It is great that our computers can multitask. In the early days of personal computers this was not possible. You either worked on a word processing document or spreadsheet but not both simultaneously. Have you ever worked on something, perhaps a document, and the computer pops up a message from another application, stealing the system focus, breaking your concentration and frustrating you. There should be a way for us to tell our computers to not do that. Perhaps someday we will be able to mute these responses just as we can turn a cellphone to vibrate rather than ring.

I can think of many innovations that lead to annoyances that I would love to fix. I use many Google services, Gmail, Contacts, Calendar, Google Voice, Google Wave, Google Docs, Google Reader, Google Maps… It would be nice if Google spent less time creating new services and integrated what they have so that I don’t have to have so many Google tabs opened in my browser. (iGoogle is not the answer.) Update 2009/10/15 7:01a: A Firefox add-on Integrated Gmail addresses much of this issue. It does not seem to work with Google for Your Domain, e.g. rhftech.com.

Another example is that my Kindle can play audiobooks from Audible. Both Kindle and Audible are parts of Amazon. The Kindle reverts to a standby screen after a certain period of inactivity. Unfortunately, it does this while I am listening to an audiobook because it does not recognize the audio playback as “activity”. I then need to move the “power” button to the right to wake up the Kindle. The power button is not easily moved. This is like having the standby screen popup while I am reading a page. This should be reprogrammed.

I can think of many more instances of a need for change brought about by change. I’ll bet you can too. Add a comment to the blog post and tell me what you want to change. Perhaps we can get some of them made.

What a difference a driver makes

Richard Frisch — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:41:44 +0000

I just got an NVIDIA update for a Windows 7 64-bit computer’s video card, via Windows Update. My computer’s video card performance went from a rating of 1.0 to 6.9. And the computer’s Base score, its overall rating, went from 1.0 to 5.9.

A system’s Base score is the lowest rating for any of the tested hardware devices.

The highest possible rating in Windows 7 Experience Index is 7.9. The highest possible rating in Vista is 5.9.

The Base score of 5.9 is limited by the primary hard drive, a 1TB Seagate 7200 RPM with a 32MB cache. I suspect if I replace that drive with a solid state drive (SSD) the computer’s , current 5.9 Base score would rise to 6.9, the video card’s current ratings.