The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Editorial Ash Nallawalla ash@melbpc.org.au |
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This month's theme is Portable Computing. I had the chance to evaluate a palm-top device - the Toshiba Pocket PC e750 - read my review. It costs more than some of the cheaper desktop offerings but it is an invaluable tool for the traveller who wants Internet connectivity in a small package. I have been on short trips where I had to pack a notebook computer purely to check a couple of anticipated e-mails, whereas such a device might have sufficed.
The Research In Motion (RIM) Blackberry is now sold in Australia and my former US colleagues became enslaved to their e-mail when they were issued with them three years ago. They are two-way pagers with a tiny keyboard, so you are tempted to read each e-mail as it arrives, even if you are stuck in traffic. Owing to the tiny keys, replies tend to be brief. Oh, how I hated those short replies to my carefully crafted long queries.
Notebooks
Notebook computers ("laptops") are getting cheaper and are often a replacement for a desktop PC. They are a great way for employees to work longer hours, presumably for no extra remuneration. I have had a laptop as my main computer for most of the past nine years. The first two I used were unreliable. I remember one that would not work for a couple of hours after the end of an aircraft ride, so I had to time my presentations accordingly. Both of those US brands are no longer on the market, which may be partly because of their unreliability. Getting them repaired used to be traumatic because I had to use even older, unreliable machines.
For the past four years I have used a couple of the IBM 600 series, an HP 510 and a Toshiba Tecra 8100. The HP 510 was the most interesting because it came with a CD-ROM burner and a separate DVD player but the floppy drive had to be ordered later. I could separate the main computer from the removable drives and sound system, which reduced the weight and size almost the same as a slim, hard-cover, desk diary. I prefer the larger screen of the Tecra, but its 10 GB hard disk is unrealistic nowadays. Over the years, features that were previously accessories competing for the solitary PC Card (formerly known as PCMCIA) slot became built in. Initially we saw intrinsic modems that were certified for multi-nation use and later the Ethernet jack also became part of the chassis.
A major problem with the use of notebooks is that their owners need to back them up to an external device, such as a network server back at the office or at least to a CD-R (CD-Recordable) or other large capacity drive. Those USB Flash memory drives are now available in a 1 GB size, so there's another easy option-at a price.
WiFi
Today's models include built-in WiFi (wireless networking) and the hard disks are mostly over 30 GB. I haven't used a Tablet PC but I hear that they are great for making hand-drawn marks or annotations while delivering a presentation. Some people plug in GPS (satellite-assisted Global Positioning System) receivers to view their exact location on a map. Others watch movies on a DVD drive while flying Business Class (unless they have special, extra-long-endurance batteries and are flying Economy).
Although wireless computing has many advantages over wired connectivity, you don't want to use WiFi at your own office desk. This is because most modern office and home networks use 100 Mbit/s speed, whereas the most common WiFi speed is 11 Mbit/s. In reality, the speed that you get tends to be a lot lower than these theoretical upper limits.
Viruses
We have seen another silly month of virus and cracker activity. The Sobig worm has been spreading, but it was not as noticeable to me as previous viruses, which is probably a tribute to our group's antivirus filter. There has been more of the same old scam wherein an e-mail arrives, asking you to log into your online bank account. Although the page looks like the real banking screen, it is really at some overseas site and all they are trying to do is to get your personal details and your password. Be careful.
A more insidious problem has been reported in the BugTraq mailing list at http://www.securityfocus.com. A Trojan horse program has infected many thousands of innocent PCs and turned them into pornographic Web sites. The twist is that these machines are visible for only ten minutes at a time, making them hard to locate and shut down. The details are at http://www.lurhq.com/migmaf.html and make very interesting reading.
Reprinted from the August 2003 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
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