In computer news this week, 01/09/2002

Looking at the new year in PC perspectives .......... something old, something new ....

On the old side, one of the traditional PC vendors - Gateway 2000 - a company that emerged in the 1980's and became one of the industry leaders, appears to be in big trouble. A newspaper article yesterday stated that Moody's downgraded Gateway's debt rating to junk status, citing concerns over the company's declining sales in the intensely competitive PC market. . The PC maker reported that sales fell 15% in the 4th quarter. Despite all the cute cow ads, it looks like Gateway might be put out to pasture.

Microsoft has introduced a new operating system again, Windows XP, and as always this is supposed to be the biggest and the best. I asked them to send me a review copy after that had got all the bugs out, and I just got it a couple weeks ago. I sat and watched a cd instruction video hearing over and over the claim "most secure operating system ever .... tested completely ..... you can be positive of the security of Windows XP."

Then the next day the paper had a story about 3 massive security holes detected in Windows XP .... . Even Microsoft can't keep up with all the hackers.

With the pc industry now being 27 years old - since 1975 - I've seen a lot of operating systems, from the first - cp/m - to several versions of dos - and now multiple versions of windows. It seems that Microsoft and pc vendors are trying to sell new systems based on the merits of a new operating system; windows 95, windows 98, windows 2000, and now windows xp. On this logic we should buy new pc's every 2 years or less. And with each new operating system comes new hardware requirements, which your current pc usually doesn't meet, so it's easy to fall into the trap of the upgrade cycle based on all the hype. Merle Haggard's got a song with a line that says "I wish a Ford and a Chevy would all last ten years like they should ... " and the same logic applies to pc's. If your software programs are doing the job for you, a new operating system or even a new computer won't necessarily do that much for you. Time is on your side, prices keep coming down.

Some things never change. With the exception of the Internet, most businesses are doing the same basic functions on their pc's they were doing decades ago. Word processing is word processing. Despite how many thousand bells and whistles a program has, human nature dictates that people are still going to learn just a dozen or so functions so they can get their jobs done. On the most basic level, one thing has changed. I've been saying onair now for over 15 years that you have to backup your data, and the media has changed from disks, to tapes, to zip drives and writable cdroms. The biggest mistake people make is not doing data backups; in fact a lot of people buy computers without even considering this. So you still have to backup your computers.

But a new most basic level function is to protect yourself against computer viruses, which are just totally out of control. The new generation of virus software automatically updates itself, but there are still some viruses that get in under the radar. And in the event a bad virus crashes your computer, and if you don't have a recent backup, you're out in that pasture with Gateway.

For Raw Bytes, This is Frank Delaney

POB 222 Spangle, Wa 99031 (509)245-3736 624-7230