First of all, I had promised you all a column on shopping for that seasonal present. I have to let you down. I just haven't seen enough interesting stuff this year. Now this may be due to my current sedentary, retired lifestyle or the fact that there just isn't much new this year. I think it's the latter. There are tons of digital cameras to choose from, features and up and prices are down somewhat. But I can't recommend a standout buy. The digital music scene is in limbo due to the demise of Napster and copy protection of CDs (see later comments) so I wouldn't buy anything in this space right now. Software and games are boring right now. I certainly would not recommend buying somebody Windows XP as a present! So, join the crowds at Best Buy or Circuit City and hope that something jumps out and grabs you.
For me, DVDs are a great present. There are lots of DVDs now, especially the classics. And the price is right for a gift. I actually made up a list of the DVDs I want and put it on a web page for my family and friends to peruse. If you do buy a DVD for someone, look for one that says that it is remastered, or the director's cut, or something to indicate that a little more care was put into making it, rather than just copy the old film to digital format.
The copy protection problem on music CDs is going to be a very major topic real soon. The story is this: Now that the recording industry has derailed Napster, the ability to swap music files on the Internet is limited. Now, I don't want to get off into the legal arguments here, but I have always felt that something of that nature benefits everyone - it helps people become aware of new music and artists and that should eventually help retail music sales. But the success that the industry had with Napster is now being extended to CDs themselves. Very shortly, all CDs will use copy protection techniques that will make it difficult or impossible to copy them. OK - perhaps that is the way it should be. But, along with this, you will not be able to play the CDs on a computer; you will not be able to "rip" songs to make up your own mixes; you will not be able to download music you bought and paid for into your portable MP3 player. Once you buy a piece of music, you should be able to enjoy it anywhere and through any medium you wish. Mark my words: this is going to be a very big issue soon.
I had a humorous (to me) situation with one of my clients recently. They called twice while I was on the road for Thanksgiving with what appeared to be network problems. One of their PCs could not connect to the server, and that PC (which hosted a shared printer) was not accepting print jobs from other PCs on the network. I tried to talk them through some debugging on the phone, but couldn't find anything wrong.
When I got back home, I called them. They then admitted that one of the lawyers (it was a law firm) had previously decided to rewire things, had moved the PC network connection and had rewired things in the wiring closet. I wonder why they didn't think that that information would be relevant to the problem!
When diagnosing a problem, ask yourself: It used to work. It doesn't work now. What did I do or change during that interval? I am sure this will help you figure it out!
(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 him at bsc@bobseidel.com).