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I knew I should have bought that motherboard…

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , ,

My webserver seems to be having a hard time keeping up with demand. It was only a couple of weeks ago that I could have had my preferred low-end motherboard for about $33, but I was able to come up with about 10 reasons not to buy it at that time and tackle the project. I can get an Asus Socket 775 board and a 2-core Intel CPU to put on it locally for around $90-$100 total, which will give me a four-fold increase in available CPU power and RAM, not to mention a newer and better-known chipset to work with. But I had several things come up this weekend that kept me from making that trip. Studying, of course, but also a family matter.

My server managed a not-exactly-heroic uptime of 3 days on this last reboot. If I can swap the board for something better this week, I’ll try. And if it dies again before I’m able to do that, I’ll have to see if I can remember to put some more memory in it. I just found a half-gig PC3200 DIMM that will fit, assuming I have a slot available.

Apple and China, or Why the U.S. Middle Class is Shrinking

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , , , , ,

“Companies once felt an obligation to support American workers, even when it wasn’t the best financial choice,” said Betsey Stevenson, the chief economist at the Labor Department until last September. “That’s disappeared. Profits and efficiency have trumped generosity.”

Apple Computer, currently the highest-valued company in the country, at its peak employs 1/10 the number of Americans as General Motors did in the 1950s.  Apple is an easy target because it’s big, but the problem isn’t unique to Apple. Technology companies as a whole employ fewer people than the heavyweights of ages past like General Motors and General Electric. It’s the nature of the work.

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The future of 3D printing is now. The next industrial revolution comes in a box and costs $1299

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized ,

CES is this week, and undoubtedly there will be a lot of different things showing, but I can’t imagine anything being more important than this: The first ready-to-use home 3D printer.  3D home printing is going to change the world, and this device is the first commercially available printer that you don’t have to assemble from a kit.

This is an industrial revolution in a box.
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Best Buy has one foot in the grave?

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , , , , , , , ,

In a highly publicized article, Forbes argues that Best Buy is not long for this world.

I can’t disagree with any individual point in the article. Some of the problems Larry Downes identifies existed when I worked there in the early 1990s–I’d spare you the joke about being young, naive, and needing the money, but it’s too late now–but in the 1990s they could get away with that, sort of, because there were competitors who tried to get away with worse.

Sears/Kmart is a favorite whipping boy, but they have one very big thing up on the land of the blue shirts. I can make a five-minute trip to Sears or Kmart–particularly Sears Hardware–to pick up a couple of things, and I do so fairly frequently. I tried a couple of weeks ago to do that at Best Buy, and, like the author said, calling it a miserable experience is putting it mildly. Read more

Advice for upgrading from a CRT to an LCD

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , ,

Like a lot of people are doing these days, my brother- and sister-in-law replaced a CRT TV with an LCD. I helped my brother-in-law hook it up last weekend, and we got it working, but probably could have done things a little bit differently.

A lot of inexpensive LCDs have a limited number of inputs in order to meet a price point, and that’s what we ran into. The LCD had just as many inputs as the TV it replaced, but with some cable shuffling, we would have been able to make the new TV easier to use.
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I think this is the secret of Amazon’s success

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , , , , , , ,

When talking about e-books Friday, I mentioned that Amazon is making deals with authors directly, cutting traditional publishers out of the loop. And then my wife asked a good question: How does Amazon think of stuff like that?

I think it’s because Amazon isn’t hung up about last year. Let me explain.
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News flash: e-books are overpriced

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , , , , , ,

I saw a story yesterday about how e-readers are getting cheaper, but e-books are rising in cost.

In some cases, the e-books cost as much as, or more than a paper copy of the book. Which, as anyone with any knowledge of printing should be able to tell you, is ridiculous. Most of the cost of a paper copy of the book is printing and distribution. Or, at least that’s what they used to tell writers. When people paid $24.95 for a copy of my book, published in 2000, I saw about $1.75 of it. I’m probably not supposed to tell you that, but I just did. The printing and distribution costs of an e-book are negligible, so if the author, who does most of the work, is supposed to be able to get by on $1.75, shouldn’t the publisher and retailer find a way to do the same? So divide the revenue evenly between the author, publisher, and retailer, sell the e-book for $5.25 and, and everything’s fair. They could even put the book on sale for $2.97 sometimes, drop everyone’s share to 99 cents, and hope to make it up in increased sales.

But here are some things you can do while you wait for publishers to get a dose of reality.
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No, purchaser reviews on online web sites aren’t worthless

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized , ,

A magazine editor whose name I dare not mention pontificated this weekend that it’s never worth reading reviews on web sites like Amazon.

I expect more from someone with that job title–better writing and better thinking. There are times for words like always and never, but this certainly isn’t one of them. The reviews certainly have their uses. The trick is knowing how to read them.

Here’s how to wade through the muck, find good reviews, and use those reviews to find good products.

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Cyber Monday is a myth

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized

First things first. Have a happy and blessed Thanksgiving. I’m thankful for those of you who’ve stuck with me all these years, and those of you who’ve come back in the past year.

And the times are changing. I think there used to be something to Cyber Monday. But we’re rapidly approaching Cyber Thursday, if we aren’t already there.

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Things to look for when buying a GPS

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized

I get a lot of questions from friends and acquaintances about GPS devices, I guess since they are just small handheld computers. I think I bought my first GPS in 2007 or so, and after using one for about four years, I can certainly relate to the things I like and dislike about particular models.

I will say that if the price is right, it’s nice to buy one. I’d rather have an imperfect GPS than none at all. I know my neighborhood better than my GPS does, and maybe better than any GPS does. But when I get into areas I don’t know, it’s nice to let the GPS navigate me around and keep me from getting lost. The GPS may not pick the very fastest route to get me there, but when I found myself landing in Washington D.C. at 4 AM back in July (I’d been scheduled to arrive at 3 PM), you’d better believe I was glad to be able to rely on the GPS to get me to the hotel.

And this just happens to be a good time of year to buy one.
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