Windows Tips and Tricks

Although the Mac is picking up market share in the home, it remains a stranger to the business environment. In fact, Apple has basically ignored the corporate market. Since the iPod and the iPhone have gotten a lot of people interested in Apple products, could now be Apple’s chance at this market? The ability of the present Intel based Mac to run Windows as well as Apple’s OS X makes the Mac a much more plausible choice in the corporate world. An article at BusinessWeek takes a look at this possibility.

Are you in the market for a very fast, large capacity thumb drive? Standard USB flash drives with capacities of a couple of GB are now in the $20 (or less) price range but extra-fast drives with 16 GB capacities list for something just under $200. A review of some available models is at Computerworld.

There is a lot of talk that in the future the cell phone will be the platform used by many instead of a PC. Mobility has a high premium with users and I have posted before about Walt Mossberg’s prediction that soon we will be online all the time. In developing nations there is also a matter of cost and BBC News has made the case that the cell phone with expanded capabilities, not the conventional computer, is going to be the dominant technology factor in areas like Africa. PC Magazine has had several articles on the cell phone (especially the iPhone) as a computer platform. A recent article has some interesting facts about the use of cell phones versus computers globally. It concludes:

If we do see this shift in personal computing, as many have suggested, the ramifications for our industry are enormous. Today, much of the technology industry is driven by the traditional PC hardware and software vendors. In the future, however, the carriers, handset makers, and a broad range of OS and software companies may be the ones leading the way

Way back in the days of DOS, computer users were supposed to know that the system BIOS would emit beeps if there were problems booting. These beeps are still there but few home PC users have any idea what they signify. Actually, there is a kind of Morse code and the beeps vary depending on the message they are trying to convey. For example, one short beep says everything is in order but two short beeps indicate a problem. Other combinations of beeps indicate various types of problems. Go to BIOS Error Beep Codes for a table of the different error signals for the common BIOSes.

Sitting in my closet is a piece of blue hardware from DOS/Windows 3.1 days. It is a parallel-port connected Iomega drive. For a brief period, Iomega was an icon of the personal computer world. Back when floppy disks with a capacity of 1.4 MB were the way to back up things, Iomega came on the scene and offered a proprietary backup system with 100 MB addressable disks called “Zip Disks”. It was expensive at $10 a disk but provided an easy way for the home user to back up or transfer files. And in those days 100 MB was a lot. For a time Iomega was a stock market darling. In the two-year period from June, 1994-June, 1996, the stock price went from under $1 to over $137. It became a cult stock with a group of fanatic stock owners who called themselves “Iomegans”. Note that this was before the dot-com rage for technology stocks. In fact, the stock didn’t participate in that market bubble. The stock price has steadily trended down since 1996 and was recently between $3 and $4.

Iomega’s place in the sun didn’t last long. A disk capacity of 100 MB didn’t stay viable for long and when the company upped the capacity to 250 MB, the new disks were not compatible with the old hardware. Since the ability to burn CDs was becoming available, Iomega lost its interest for many home users. Then USB came along and proprietary hardware and formats were completely out of favor. Iomega struggled along as a minor player in external drives but never again had the important place it once had.

What has brought Iomega to my mind is today’s announcement that EMC is buying Iomega for $213 million.

You can’t trust anybody. HP admits that that it has been selling virus-infected USB drives. PC World reports:

Hewlett-Packard has been selling USB-based hybrid flash-floppy drives that were pre-infected with malware, the company said last week in a security bulletin.

Dubbed “HP USB Floppy Drive Key,” the device is a combination flash drive and compact floppy drive, and is designed to work with various models of HP’s ProLiant Server line. HP sells two versions of the drive, one with 256MB of flash capacity, the other with 1GB of storage space.

Since the drives are intended for servers, most home users are not affected. Nonetheless, it gives me pause to think that a company like HP could let this happen.

From Sol Libes:

It took a little time but Microsoft has awakened to the fact that many users of ultra portable laptops (e.g. Asus EeePC and the Everex Cloudbook) have removed the Linux operating systems from their systems and installed Windows XP home. These systems are too small to run Vista, but, XP with the unnecessary applications and utilities runs well. They also have installed Microsoft Office.

Dell was a pioneer in the build-to-order way of selling computers. It also had the advantage of selling only by telephone or on the Internet without the costs of a brick-and-mortar store. Dell prospered and became number one in selling PCs. But then Dell stumbled and lost its way. The founder, Michael Dell, came out of early retirement to head his company again and started changing the business model that had once been so profitable. Dell started selling in stores like Staples. And now it is reported that build-to-order is giving way to pre-built products:

Dell Inc. may have made its name building PCs customized to buyers’ specific demands, but the company plans to rely more on pre-built products for future growth opportunities.

The move is part of a large-scale restructuring effort at the PC maker which has seen its business come under fire from strong competition and a cost structure that many analysts consider “bloated,” which has hurt profitability.

The previous post discusses the the recent advent of various low-cost laptop models. They may already be affecting Microsoft’s marketing of XP and an article at PC Magazine says that they are affecting the hardware manufacturers as well:

A new class of small laptops entering the market has some of the major laptop vendors on edge. These computers have been dubbed netbooks. Originally, they were targeted at emerging markets for use in education. Now they’re finding their way into the U.S., where they’re being snapped up by consumers as second laptops for use in the home or by kids.

Recently, a number of low-cost laptops have become available. Some are for less developed areas of the world or children and others are ultra-portable models. Intel is about to announce a new family of processors called “Atom” designed for these types of systems. One characteristic of the low-cost systems is that they can’t run Windows Vista because of its prodigious demand for resources but they can run XP. Faced with losing this market to Linux, it appears that Microsoft is going to extend the June 30 date for ending the availability of Windows XP to OEMs. PC World reports:

Microsoft plans to extend the availability of Windows XP for low-cost laptops beyond June 30, with an announcement expected later this week, according to a source familiar with the situation.

June 30 is the date when Microsoft plans to stop selling most Windows XP licenses. The announcement that Microsoft will extend this deadline for low-cost laptops is expected to be made in the U.S., although it appears timed to coincide with the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) being held in Shanghai on Wednesday and Thursday.

A Microsoft spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment on the expected announcement.