_I wrote the piece down the bottom about eight years ago - and am
entertained at just what a bygone era it seems to be describing. It was
of a time when I thought MS Windows on Intel hardware was a necessary
evil at home, proper computing could be only be done on an OS ending in
*nix and anything with a piece of fruit on the case was for the guys in
polo-necked sweaters and their arty-farty pretensions. Not so very long
ago, I was still of the latter view - Apple hardware was all very nice
if you wanted it to co-ordinate with the sculptured lines of your
penthouse apartment - or wanted to convey that you might just have a
penthouse apartment - but it was all form over function and no good to
anyone who wanted to do real work.
And now look what's happened. My house has been overtaken by poncy Apple kit. It's beautiful to look at, invites a loving caress and, actually, helps me get things done in a way that all the other portable kit I've owned could barely aspire to. I still do proper work on the laptop I'm typing on... but 90% of my computing needs are now met by expensive little Jobsian devices. |
__What
I want is the form and stability of Apple's kit, with the
configurability of almost any other OS than iOS. There are devices out
there that have almost got it right... but not quite. When they do,
some of this stuff is going on eBay, where it will fetch a silly price
for secondhand hardware. In the meantime, I'll carry on feeling vaguely
embarassed about sporting a twerp's device and wonder where my black
polo-neck has got to.
" I well remember the first time I actually managed to connect a computer to a telephone line and make it talk to another computer on the other side of London. Today the act is so everyday that it passes unnoticed, but at the time (1992) it was a revelation. I made the first connection around 7pm in the evening, and I was still sitting at my desk goggling at all this free stuff I could have (on a bulletin board) when the birds started warbling at dawn the next day. The possibilities it opened up seemed unthinkable, and to describe the experience as life-changing would not be at all hyperbolic.
That first connection was made with an accoustic-coupler lent to me by a techy neighbour. I can't remember what speed it connected at, but suspect it was well under 1kbps - which wasn't so dreadful when the vast majority of what was available to access was ASCII text anyway. But it was the first device in a long line over the years which enabled my PC to talk to others. And it seems that every device was characterised by claims that nothing faster would ever be possible.
For some reason I developed an early allegiance to US Robotics modems, starting with a 9.6kbps device, which went to my Dad after an upgrade to a similar 14.4kbps device. Followed with a 28.8kbps, then a 33.6 which at the time was clearly proclaimed to be the fastest possible over a POTS telephone line. Until someone worked out a better approach to the technology and 56kbps suddenly became possible. God knows how much cash I spent on this stuff over the years - but the need for increasing bandwidth was real - all of these acquisitions took place over the period that the WWW sprung into existence, inline images became a reality, software installations grew....but the world stuck for a bit at 56kbps, because that was the limit over copper wire. I never dabbled with ISDN, because it was just too expensive - 56kbps was the limit transmitting in the traditional modem audio frequency way.....but then DSL came along.....
I was lucky enough to get myself on a BT trial in 98 (99?), and for a period enjoyed faster connectivity than you can currently buy from any DSL provider. Then I had to start paying when the service went live - £39.99pm I seem to remember, and worth every penny. It wasn't just the bandwidth, but the always on-ness without tieing up the phone line. The availability spurred me to set up a peer-to-peer network at home and investigate software routing to share the connection. Then I added a hub and replaced it with a switch....more expense......and finally I got sick of the flakiness of software routing, so I bought a Draytek Vigor Router with a built in switch into which I could plug the USB ADSL modem.
And I thought that's where it would stick for a while. I moved to the current house and installed Cat5e cable all over the place so Al and I could plug our laptops in anywhere (ish....). But wireless was just around the corner....
I waited a bit for this one, because the standards were such a moving target and the kit was expensive. But eventually 802.11g seemed pretty solid and I secured a 3Com Wireless Access Point bundled with a PC card for £80. Installation couldn't have been simpler (plug it in the router, it works), nor setting up WEP encryption and changing SSIDs etc (I know, I know, WEP isn't uncrackable - but having looked at how it can be cracked, it would take someone a long, long time sitting outside my house to collect enough data to have an evens chance of cracking it, and frankly, who's going to try....).
Another revelation. Now I can sit in the back garden and connect to the internet at 1mbps...without a cable in sight!
But I'm not finished there....next purchase was an 802.11b capable Pocket PC (a Dell Axim), which I synch wirelessly with the Desktop in the attic from the kitchen every morning . Via Avantgo it collects today's Guardian, the BBC news site and a bunch of other stuff, all formatted for the Pocket PC screen. I've saved half the original purchase cost of the Axim in not buying newspapers......
Where next? Well, I don't know really....I've recently bought a laptop on eBay (Compaq Armada m300 - not the latest technology, but I use one at work and love the ruggedness and portability of it) and added an 802.11g card to it, so the house is full of wireless kit. I have a sneaking suspicion that the next technology foray is going to be towards central media delivery - audio and video from a central store to receiving devices around the house. I don't think the technology is quite there yet - but there is a huge industry behind the approach, its arrival in every house is an inevitable matter of time. Watch this space..... "
" I well remember the first time I actually managed to connect a computer to a telephone line and make it talk to another computer on the other side of London. Today the act is so everyday that it passes unnoticed, but at the time (1992) it was a revelation. I made the first connection around 7pm in the evening, and I was still sitting at my desk goggling at all this free stuff I could have (on a bulletin board) when the birds started warbling at dawn the next day. The possibilities it opened up seemed unthinkable, and to describe the experience as life-changing would not be at all hyperbolic.
That first connection was made with an accoustic-coupler lent to me by a techy neighbour. I can't remember what speed it connected at, but suspect it was well under 1kbps - which wasn't so dreadful when the vast majority of what was available to access was ASCII text anyway. But it was the first device in a long line over the years which enabled my PC to talk to others. And it seems that every device was characterised by claims that nothing faster would ever be possible.
For some reason I developed an early allegiance to US Robotics modems, starting with a 9.6kbps device, which went to my Dad after an upgrade to a similar 14.4kbps device. Followed with a 28.8kbps, then a 33.6 which at the time was clearly proclaimed to be the fastest possible over a POTS telephone line. Until someone worked out a better approach to the technology and 56kbps suddenly became possible. God knows how much cash I spent on this stuff over the years - but the need for increasing bandwidth was real - all of these acquisitions took place over the period that the WWW sprung into existence, inline images became a reality, software installations grew....but the world stuck for a bit at 56kbps, because that was the limit over copper wire. I never dabbled with ISDN, because it was just too expensive - 56kbps was the limit transmitting in the traditional modem audio frequency way.....but then DSL came along.....
I was lucky enough to get myself on a BT trial in 98 (99?), and for a period enjoyed faster connectivity than you can currently buy from any DSL provider. Then I had to start paying when the service went live - £39.99pm I seem to remember, and worth every penny. It wasn't just the bandwidth, but the always on-ness without tieing up the phone line. The availability spurred me to set up a peer-to-peer network at home and investigate software routing to share the connection. Then I added a hub and replaced it with a switch....more expense......and finally I got sick of the flakiness of software routing, so I bought a Draytek Vigor Router with a built in switch into which I could plug the USB ADSL modem.
And I thought that's where it would stick for a while. I moved to the current house and installed Cat5e cable all over the place so Al and I could plug our laptops in anywhere (ish....). But wireless was just around the corner....
I waited a bit for this one, because the standards were such a moving target and the kit was expensive. But eventually 802.11g seemed pretty solid and I secured a 3Com Wireless Access Point bundled with a PC card for £80. Installation couldn't have been simpler (plug it in the router, it works), nor setting up WEP encryption and changing SSIDs etc (I know, I know, WEP isn't uncrackable - but having looked at how it can be cracked, it would take someone a long, long time sitting outside my house to collect enough data to have an evens chance of cracking it, and frankly, who's going to try....).
Another revelation. Now I can sit in the back garden and connect to the internet at 1mbps...without a cable in sight!
But I'm not finished there....next purchase was an 802.11b capable Pocket PC (a Dell Axim), which I synch wirelessly with the Desktop in the attic from the kitchen every morning . Via Avantgo it collects today's Guardian, the BBC news site and a bunch of other stuff, all formatted for the Pocket PC screen. I've saved half the original purchase cost of the Axim in not buying newspapers......
Where next? Well, I don't know really....I've recently bought a laptop on eBay (Compaq Armada m300 - not the latest technology, but I use one at work and love the ruggedness and portability of it) and added an 802.11g card to it, so the house is full of wireless kit. I have a sneaking suspicion that the next technology foray is going to be towards central media delivery - audio and video from a central store to receiving devices around the house. I don't think the technology is quite there yet - but there is a huge industry behind the approach, its arrival in every house is an inevitable matter of time. Watch this space..... "