After failing the Southern witticism test in my column last week, I have decided to subcontract my Southern witticisms to a dear friend, who is a true daughter of the South. So now all y'all won't think I'm dumb as dirt.
At least I try to do better than the reporter in the local paper this morning. An article about towing cars in Wilmington talked about putting a car up on the wench - I hope the girl didn't mind!
I didn't realize until after I had written last week's column how much of a coup Dell had pulled off with its return to selling Windows XP. There are basically two business models used in the PC business - off the shelf or build to order. Dell has always been king of the latter, but since PCs have become so homogeneous lately there is a steadily diminishing requirement for custom built PCs. That is why HP has been eating Dell's lunch recently, market share-wise. You can go to a local PC store and buy a perfectly acceptable HP or Gateway PC and take it right home with you, perhaps for a better price than you can get from Dell. But if HP wants to do as Dell did and begin again to sell XP, it will take weeks or months to re-fill their distribution pipeline. And what will they do with the existing Vista stock sitting on the shelves. Score a big one for Dell.
On that subject, I have had people tell me that they are hesitating to buy a Vista PC. Let's face it - Vista is here to stay and will be the dominant operating system soon. If I were buying a new PC now I would get Vista, unless I were using it for business or had a known software or driver issue. Just do your homework before you buy - make sure your software will run and that there are drivers for your hardware.
On the subject of PC hardware, I thought I might cover some of the latest developments. But unfortunately this subject is now getting as boring as software. PCs have become powerful enough that even consumer grade units have all the power most people will need. The only exception right now to that is video editing - a hobby I love but most people aren't in to yet.
Dual-core processors have been available for a while now, and apparently do improve performance significantly in multiple application situations. Expect to see quad-core processors come out soon to continue that trend. But you will only see a real improvement when the application programs themselves begin to support multiple cores.
More engineering effort recently has gone into making processors run less hotly, and also into better cooling. Liquid cooling (seriously) of processors has started to become mainstream. This doesn't mean a radiator attached to your PC the size of the one in my old 1965 Oldsmobile, but does replace the traditional processor heatsink with liquid filled tubing. The problem is not that a terrific amount of heat needs to be dissipated, just that the heat that the processor does generate needs to be ducted away quickly. Liquid cooled units should also be quieter, as there is no processor fan any longer.
The change to the newer attachment for internal had drives - Serial ATA (SATA) - is now just about complete. I haven't seen a new PC with an old parallel ATA hard drive in a while now. Other devices using that same PATA interface, CD and DVD drives, are dragging their heels. But I have now begun to see SATA DVD drives, and I believe soon PATA will disappear from all motherboards.
Another aspect of this is that a derivative of SATA called eSATA has begun to appear. It is basically the same SATA interface, but driven to an external jack on the back of the PC. This allows serial ATA devices to be plugged in externally. External hard drives would thus be fully as fast as internal drives, as it is the same interface. Expect to see eSATA become the standard interface for external high speed devices, replacing USB 2.0 or Firewire.
(Bob Seidel is a local computer consultant in the Southport - Oak Island area. You can visit his Website at www.bobseidel.com or e-mail questions or column ideas to him at bsc@bobseidel.com. For specific inquiries, please call Bob Seidel Consulting, LLC at 278-1007.)