laptops that you can't sit on your lap

Why do they call laptops - "laptops"? I have been having some trouble with my laptop lately. It's been getting hot and the fan is getting LOUD, and I was reading on the manufacturer's website that they recommend that you don't place it on your lap, as your pants do not promote ventilation. Which begs the question - what good is a laptop if it cannot be placed on your lap? Oh, and before you offer the bit of advice that, "there are colling trays that you can buy to sit your laptop on your lap", ask yourself why they didn't just include this into the laptop design in the first place. What a joke. I guess they should have just called them skinny desktops.

my latest conspiracy theory

A few weeks back, we had a pretty extreme lightning storm which resulted in one fo my hard drives going bad. Fortunately, the drive was still under warranty and I had enough time to back everything up before it quit working altogether. From what my neighbors have been saying, lightning storms (and fried electronics) are a common occurrence in this area, so we are going to try and make a regular habit of unplugging our computers when they are not in use.

Unfortunately, protecting our PCs from random acts of God doesn't seem to be enough to keep them running efficiently. My wife's laptop is already acting very sluggish, and it is less than a year old. It has become our primary internet PC, which I suspect is the reason for it being so slow. I have already tried a memory upgrade, and I have installed the latest software and driver updates available. I removed unnecessary start-up programs and tweaked the performance and page file settings. I've got a good firewall, virus protection and anti-spyware software running, too. But nothing seems to help. So I have a new theory...

I am starting to believe that computer manufacturers use the internet to slowly make our computers obsolete. It sounds silly, but there is a reason why I think this is possible. I have another laptop that is about six years old now. Strangely enough, it functions flawlessly. All of the programs work, and it doesn't ever crash on me. It is as fast as the day that I bought it, too. What's my secret? It has never been connected to the internet. It isn't exposed to viruses and malware, and it doesn't get any of the "recommended" software updates that we see from Microsoft and the hardware manufacturers. So if these updates are so important, and they fix major problems with the OS, how can a laptop continue to run so well without them?

The major difference between my two laptops is that one is connected to the internet and the other is not. When I worked for a large telecom firm, I also noticed that the computers that didn't have access to the internet (or those that were restricted to intranet only) also ran better and lasted longer. Could it be that some of these software updates that claim to better protect our PCs from internet bad guys are actually bloated updates to make our computes run slower, to convince us that our systems are now obsolete, and therefore in need of replacement?

my computer died!

It finally happened. After years of problem-free computer ownership, I finally had a hard drive crash. It started out with occasional clicking noises, and then the system would hang when I went to reboot. Eventually, it turned off for good and wouldn't boot back up. I tried problem solving it - disconnected all peripherals, swapped out the ram, replaced the CMOS battery, and tried some new IDE cables. But nothing fixed the problem. Lucky for me, the drive is still under warranty for another three months, and I managed to back up everything from the drive to DVD-R before it crashed for good.

What is really strange is that a number of my neighbors have been reporting computer trouble in the last two weeks. I am wondering if there may be a connection. We have been seeing lots of inclement weather lately, including some dazzling lightning storms. I always try to disconnect my PCs during extreme weather, but I don't always get the chance. Now I'm just worried that if some lightning fried the system, there may be other issues with the motherboard that I won't see until I have mounted the replacement drive.

It is also a bit discouraging that this is the first PC that I would have a hard drive failure with, and it happens to be the fist PC that I built myself. :(

mobile work leads to a mobile mind

My desktop PC had been giving me trouble over the last couple of months, and I did my best to troubleshoot, but I can't seem to figure it out. The computer seems to cycle on and off about ten times before it will boot, with no BIOS indication of the issue. I checked the cables and tried replacing the CMOS battery with no success. I've tried removing most of the peripherals and have narrowed it down to either the hard drive, motherboard, or the OS - all of which are a pain to replace. Seeing as I only paid about $300 for the PC in the first place (I built it myself), and that was three years ago, I decided to go ahead and migrate all of my work to my laptop. I'll keep the desktop as a backup for now, although I have to leave it on to avoid the boot problem. I may just have to cannibalize it and see what parts I can use elsewhere. If anyone has any recommendations for one of those USB hard drive enclosures, I'm all ears. I'd like to put it to good use as an external expansion drive for the laptop, assuming that the hard drive isn't the part of the desktop that is broken.

As a result of switching to the laptop, I find that I work less in the office and more in other parts of the house. Unfortunately, I also notice that with this enhanced mobility, I have a harder time concentrating. It seems as though my switch to the laptop has brought with it all kinds of distractions. So now I'm thinking that I need to try and discipline myself a little better so that I do most of my work in the office, even if the laptop affords more mobility. Just because I can "go mobile" doesn't mean that it is the best choice for productivity.

tired of tech support?

For all of those whiny consumers who complain about their lackluster tech support experiences, I have a message for you: Your tech support people are tired of you, too! At least, that's how I was feeling the other day when my mother-in-law called asking me for help on setting up her DSL. Honestly, I used to get a sense of self-worth when I helped relatives with their computer problems, but these days I feel like they should just take their problems elsewhere. Hell, it took a week before the phone company could get my DSL to work properly and I know what I am doing. How am I going to help her over the phone? I know - it's rude and selfish of me, but my time is limited and every minute that I spend trying to fix someone else's virus-ridden PC is another minute that I could be spending with my kids.

This recent DSL experience was no different. She explained that she had just installed the software and plugged in the DSL mode and couldn't get it to work. She had tried calling the DSL provider's tech support but they were unable to resolve the issue, so she called me. She also stated that if I couldn't assist, she would just take it into Best Buy. Please do! Let the "Geek Squad" do their job - at least they get paid for it. She has the money, too.

Walking my mother-in-law through the steps required for troubleshooting her ethernet adapter drivers and internet connection settings is no picnic over the phone. I'd just drive on over and do it myself if she wasn't living nearly 1,000 miles away. It would at least save me the trouble of trying to explain how to differentiate between her regular phoneline and a Cat5E cable. In the end, she didn't have the drivers she needed and she had no way of getting online to download them, so we gave up. She took the PC to Best Buy the next day and they couldn't fix it either. So now I'm talking new computers with her instead. Her PC is still running Win 98 and is likely on it's last leg anyways. As much as our landfills don't need it, this is what those $300 throwaway computers are for. Or she can spend $500 and get a throwaway laptop. Either way, she'll be needing a new one in a year or two.

computers - logical or illogical?

As I have gotten older, the rift of my love/hate relationship with computers has been growing. Every day I feel like spending less time with them. But let me explain something first. I practically grew up with computers. I wrote silly programs in BASIC with colors, faux conversation and midi tones when I was ten years old. I build my own computers. I program websites. I get my news from the internet instead of the TV. In a nutshell, I am "mister computer".

However, things are getting out of control. On certain days, I spend more time trying to make my computers make sense than I do using them to make my life easier. I've narrowed down the problem to a simple case of logic. If computers always acted logically, their performance would be predictable and they would prove themselves to be a useful tool. However, over the years, as the computer has expanded its foothold into every other part of our lives, it has become anything but predictable. There are inconsistencies, incompatibilities, and dare I say gremlins. As a result, someone like me, who "knows" computers, ends up hating them.

Here's an example. I was working on a multitrack sound file the other day. It was complex. There was a lot going on, but my laptop was handling everything like a champ. The next day, I opened up the very same file and it was hiccuping every other second. What gives? Nothing changed between then and now. I struggled for half of the day trying to troubleshoot the problem (with no success) before finally giving up on it and working on something else. I went to open it up the next day and guess what? It worked fine. To me, these are the times when I feel like throwing my laptop through the wall.

Yesterday, I was working on a new website design which incorporated small flash buttons beside MP3 links. I was using the free XSPF music player combined with a javascript that automatically placed the flash button beside any MP3 hyperlinks (similar to Digg's playtagger). It was working great until I started to fidget with the page design a little. Suddenly the flash buttons disappeared. It turns out that you can't set your background to position:absolute and have flash function properly on the page. What does the background CSS have to do with flash, you may be asking. I have no idea, but after searching a bit I discovered that this is a fairly common problem and that it has been a problem for years.

As much as I loathe working through these types of computer quirks, there is a bright side. We are not alone. Google can provide links to solutions if you don't mind spending half a day sorting through the results and trying the suggestions that others with similar problems have received.

i killed the web...except for google

Or so I thought.

Strangely enough, after working for several hours redesigning one of my websites today, my entire internet connection appeared to have collapsed. I checked my modem and DSL connection and everything looked okay. Then I tried Google. It worked. For some odd reason, I could search and surf Google but nothing else. I couldn't check my email, FTP anything or visit any other websites. Absolutely strange. The problem persisted in both Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer.

I did some searching for solutions and had to view Google's cached version of the sites listed in the search results since they wouldn't load. I tried a lengthy MTU registry fix proposed by Microsoft that didn't fix anything. Then I tried entering a few things from a command line. Just in case you ever run into this odd problem, here's what I did that solved it:

Click START > RUN
Type CMD & hit enter
Type ipconfig /dnsflush & hit enter
Type ipconfig /release & hit enter
Type ipconfig /renew & hit enter

I was back to surfing in no time. I'm hoping that this doesn't become a common occurrence. There were two potential triggers to the problem. I downloaded and tried out a new torrent download client earlier today called BitTornado, and my version of CoreFTP crashed unexpectedly in the middle of a file upload and I had to do a CTRL+ALT+Delete forced shut down to stop it. None-the-less, I think I'll be uninstalling the torrent client and find another FTP client if it crashes again like that.