Staples "Rewards" program, while it's gone through increasingly less easy revisions in the past year or so -- from credit to something they mail me -- is simple enough in terms of when I make purchases. Ditto many of their sales. In particular, their "Free Batteries" deal -- buy a 20-pack of AA or AAA batteries, get 100% of that money credited back to my Staples Rewards account within a month or so. Since I know I'm going to spend that money sooner or later (e.g., on toiletpaper), that's free batteries in return for tieing up a few tens of dollars or a month or so.  (I do use rechargable batteries where possible -- but it's not always possible.)

But, annoyingly, when it comes to rebates, Staples remains old-school PITF (Pain In The Fundament). E.g., this week, Staples is offering a $5.99 rebate on a $10.99 ream of colored, heavier-stock paper... which I have a use for.

Buying the paper: easy.

There's no technical reason Staples couldn't automatically populate the rebate information at time of purchase. My Staples Rewards account has all the needed info, after all.

But no. I have to take the frigging receipt, use my computer to go to the frelling web site, and RE-FRACKING-ENTER data by FNORDING HAND -- which took (I timed it) aroudn five and a half minutes.

And then wait 6-8 FRICKING WEEKS for a FUGGIN' REBATE. At least, this time around, Staples offered the option (which I took them up on) of having the rebate go to my PayPal account.

I'm not the only person who feels this way, either; see Steve Garfield's Off On A Tangent blog posting from a year ago, Staples Easy Rebates Are Not Easy, (which is where I found the "Not Easy!" graphic).

Rebates: Not Easy!

Taking some of my business elsewhere: Not hard!

Complaining: Easy!

But, via email, the web, and on-site agents, I will be doing my best to keep up with the vendors, products and technologies I follow and write about.

(And yes, I'll happily honor all embargoes and NDAs.)

Here's more on what I will be doing, and how you can help!

(In case you've lost track, I'm a freelance technology and business writer, covering products and topics from consumer/prosumer through SOHO, SMB and enterprise, including notebooks, storage, cameras, WiFi, power/UPS, mobile, gadgets/accessories, virtualization, cloud/Saas, Open Source/Linux... and, well, most anything I get assigned to do.  See here for fuller lists and samples. I also write some science fiction -- not enough -- and my not-yet-sold Dern Grim Bedtime Tales, Few Of Which End Well, And Other Stories.)

I send myself to CES -- this would have been my fifth, I think -- to see what's recent, new and coming in the way of products; to meet and schmooze with PR folks for the vendors; and to hobnob/schmooze with my fellow journalists (including looking for assignment opportunities, of course -- but many of the journalists -- and PR folks -- are friends, as well, of course.)

Although I file at least one show report, like to TechRevu.com, most of what I see and do at CES (including CES Unveiled, Lunch at Piero's, Pepcom and ShowStoppers) is grist for the rest of the year. Examples: my ComputerWorld reviews of five USB turntables, and of "fast non-Windows notebook boots," my IEEE articles on fuel cells and liquid-cooled PCs, and my CIO.com article on the business uses of Second Life.

I'd pre-registered as press for CES 2011, bought my plane tickets and made my hotel reservation. I had pre-registered for the multi-vendor press events that make CES manageable and more valuable: Lunch at Piero's, PepCom, and ShowStoppers. (CES Unveiled is part of CES, so we don't have to pre-register for it.) I'd also pre-registered, as press, for Storage Visions (which is a CES partner event), and for several CES press conferences.

So I've already got a healthy pile of announcements, appointment requests, press releases, and invites.

But things change, often at the last minute, so alas! No CES 2011.

But I plan to be there in spirit (and by proxy) -- and to get as possible out of CES as I can without being there in person. I don't want -- or plan -- to miss CES 2011 just because I'm not there.

Here's how you can help:

1) PROVISION MY PROXIES: I've asked one of two of my colleagues who are attending to pass along my regrets and requests on my behalf, along with "building me an info-goodie bag to go." (Tchotchkes welcome, too of course!) I'll be sending some some of my business cards (so don't be surprised it if looks like I stopped by when you weren't looking).

If they ask on my behalf, give them a press kit (flash drive, CD, or NTE 2 sheets paper), your business cards (PR agency folks, please make sure to write the vendor name). Don't hesitate to contact me if you need my shipping address for something.

2) KEEP MY NAME on your CES and general press mailing list(s).
 
3) MAKE SURE WE CONNECT post-CES, especially if you've got something in an area I've been covering or we've otherwise been schmoozing.

4) LET ME KNOW if you hear of anybody looking for post-show news, product reviews or write-ups, feature articles, etc.

5) HAVE AS GOOD A TIME without me as you can :-)

6) EXPECT TO SEE ME NEXT YEAR!

And I'll be following up directly with as many vendors as possible who have or will be contacting me, based on my having pre-registered as press.

Thanks for your understanding and cooperation.

Again, have a good, productive time!

-- Daniel P. Dern

Who'd'a thunk it?

According to the BYTE.com home page (as of December 2011): "Coming in Q2 2011, BYTE.com will serve as the professional's guide to consumer technology. Gina Smith, renowned author, journalist and network TV correspondent, will lead the coverage."

BYTE magazine was started in the 1970s, and at its peak was a thick magazine full of in-depth articles on computer technologies and products. Science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle (e.g., co-author with Larry Niven of RINGWORLD, THE MOTE IN GOD'S EYE, etc.) became the computer industry's first regular columnist, with his Chaos Manor column (which Jerry has continued to run through his own site.)

I had the honor and pleasure of writing one or two articles for BYTE magazine, on the Internet, in the early 1990s, which led, among other things, to my becoming the first editor of INTERNET WORLD magazine (the first magazine all about the Internet), and also author of  THE INTERNET GUIDE FOR NEW USERS, one of the first end-user (but a little too geeky for "consumers") Internet books.  

The venerable BYTE magazine was shut down in 1998, shortly after being bought by CMP, along with Data Communications and LAN Times, from McGraw-Hill.  (See former BYTE editor Tom Halfhill's Tom's Unofficial BYTE FAQ: The Death of BYTE Magazine.

But in 1999, CMP revived BYTE as BYTE.com, a web-only publication, with my friend Paul Schindler as editor.

When Paul got also put in charge of Windows.com, I was hired by CMP, reporting to Paul, and was editor of BYTE.com -- assigning articles, managing the columnists and freelancers ("Keeping Jerry happy" was the unwritten fifth bullet point in my job description), organizing Comdex and CES and CeBIT show coverage squads, writing editorials and some articles -- happy fun!

We even got, as tchotckhes for one Comdex, BYTE.com pocket protectors!

...until 2001, when budget cuts and re-orgs and such throttled BYTE.com's budget, turning BYTE.com into a sub-site of the equally venerable Dr. Dobbs' Journal site. (See Daniel bids farewell to BYTE.com.)

And, over time, even that BYTE.com became moribund.

But huzzah! BYTE.com, like Barry Alllen, Jean Grey and Hal Jordan, lives again!

(See Harry McCracken's blog post on Byte's past and future, Good Grief, BYTE is Coming Back!)

And if the new BYTE.com is looking for somebody with proven track record to wrangle and herd contributors and articles, this Barkis is willing! (Meaning me, in case they no longer force you to read Charles Dickens' DAVID COPPERFIELD in junior high school.) Our operators are standing by! 

So I press 1.

Less than five seconds later, same recording. I press 1 again.

After five or six more rounds, I hang up, and call again, being careful to not let myself get trapped in that tree again.

Sheesh.

Press 1 to re-read this. To move to the next blog posting, press 2.

I'm not a Unix maven by any means. I'm an end user. I've been using Unix as a command-line user since 1983, included a "Enough Unix to Survive" chapter in my 1993 Internet book, The Internet Guide For New Users, but there's a lot I never learned or don't remember.

In particular, ways to look for files, and disk usage by size. There's du and some other command I don't remember at the moment, but sorting by size, and then sub-shelling to use rm (which, of course, I've aliased to include the dash-i option, to avoid accidentally blowing away way too much stuff).

But pruning out older, unneeded files via the command line is time-consuming.

On my Windows machines, it's easy; Windows Explorer lets me click-sort files by size.

Fortunately, I've found a way to do this on my shell account, without even adding a new tool. I've been using the free FileZilla as my Windows FTP client, which displays filename, date, and size for the shell account as well as on my Windows box. And, it turns out, FileZilla has Explorer-like abilities at both ends to rename and even delete files.

So now all I have to do is click on the FileZilla date or size column, select what should go, and press Delete. Another problem solved!

• Update your computers, as Adobe releases patches, (which they've started to do, as of March 11). (UPDATE: According to Michale Kassner's IT Security blog in TechRepublic,  Adobe has released updates -- here's Kassner's advice on installing and double-checking the patches, and additionally securing FireFox (with the NoScript extension.)
• And here's a freeAdobe Flash vulnerability scanner from HP
  
• Meanwhile/instead, uninstall Adobe Acrobat completely (some of the components install into Microsoft Windows Explorer, so simply not using Acrobat won't do the trick), and install an alternative PDF reading application.

• Saving copies of my articles from the web sites they appear on, for my "clips" (samples), in case the original becomes unavailable (e.g., the publication's site closes or changes, or the article is too old for them to keep it available).
  
  I've been simply saving these as web pages, but often these saves don't rebuilt exactly, or sometimes don't work at all.  And here I don't care about a "live" web page; I'm looking for a copy that's the equivalent of having torn/copied a page from a magazine: "here's what actually appeared."
• On a separate note, as I do more to promote my Dern Grim Bedtime Tales, I'm making up promotional handouts and other things, and want to provide a single document made from a bunch of Word files... and would rather not provide it as a Word file, in any case.

For the longest while, this meant using Opera.

Somewhat belatedly, I've moved over to Firefox as my browser-of-first-choice, with Opera at the ready -- not because Firefox is necessarily better (and even though my fingers still know more Opera keyboard commands), but because as someone who writes about this stuff, I try to use (some) mainstream tools.

And Firefox does have all sorts of nifty add-ons, extensions, and other features I've barely scratched the surface of.

Plus, Firefox works with ZoneAlarm ForceField, CheckPoint's "browser/email wrap-around" session protector, which works with MSIE, Firefox, even Netscape Navigator, MSN Explorer, and AOL... but not Opera.

To be fair, Opera may be secure enough to not need the ForceField's additional protection... but ForceField also offers a "no session data (cache, cookies, history and passwords) left behind" mode, which feels useful at times.

Anyway, so I'm using Firefox.

I'm one of these people that accumulates lots of open browser tabs as the day and week go on. Yeah, being a better bookmarker would make more sense. I can easily have twenty, thirty or more tabs, reflecting sites I'm currently using, or URLs I want to get around to checking out.

I've got Firefox Start set to "show windows and tabs from last time."

Inexplicably, this is not always working.

Even more inexplicably, sometimes Firefox will restart several times in a row with just my home page... and then, poof! there's my twenty-plus tabs.

This remember-and-forget-and-remember behavior continues across days, incremental Firefox version updates, with ZoneAlarm ForceField working or not... there is no apparent (to me) rhyme or reason.

I've taken to doing a Bookmark-All-Tabs every so often, to save things. Of course, it seems like Firefox sometimes loses track of my bookmarks when it does a version upgrade, or hides them for a few sessions. Bad browser!

Plus, Firefox's "warn me when closing multiple tabs" isn't working lately if I've only got one Firefox window open... although if I've more than one open, closing one Firefox window will. Just not the last window. Go figure.

I'm not about to abandon Firefox and go back to Opera, much less move to MSIE.

But I wish Firefox would go back to doing what it says it would do, and be consistent about it.

• Probably the most important feature is using a standard charging port on the headset, i.e., mini- or micro-USB, which is what Jabra does, and also Plantronics on some, rather than something proprietary, which is what the Aleph Jawbone still does.

Reason: Without the cable, you've got a very small boat anchor (or ear decor). And these cables are easy to lose, misplace, forget to pack, not have on hand, etc., while you can probably get a mini/micro-USB cable at most drug stores. And it's easy to accumulate enough to provision your carry-bag, car, pocket, etc. And a growing number of pocket chargers come with these cables.

• Second, IMHO, is how well the dang thing stays in your ear, which in turn means, is there an ear loop, and how securely is it secured to the earpiece.

I lost one loopless headset a month or two ago, while doing chores in town. I sort of felt it pop out, but I wasn't paying attention, and by the time I realized it had fallen out, and retraced my steps five or six yards back from my car to the copy/ship store, I couldn't find it. No big deal, I've still got several headsets, but it's annoying.

On the Jabra I use a lot (partly because it has a mini-USB charging port, per above), the ear loop sometimes pops off. The Aleph Jawbone's is very securely connected, but (per above) I'm not using the Jawbone as much as I otherwise might.

• Button close to the edge, or whoops, didn't mean to hang up on you. The main button on some is easy to mis-hit, like when I'm adjusting the fit to my ear, and whoops, I've hung up on the call.
• How well can you hear me now? The big problem in selecting a Bluetooth headset is that while the callee may sound fine to you, you can't tell how you sound to them, short of having somebody call you using that headset. (Which Ernest Lilley and I have done many rounds of, often playing "Guess which headset.")

Lastly, a general observation: Be quieter. Pretty much every headset I've tried can pick up my talking at a conversational or even sub-conversational level, so quiet that you wouldn't hear me more than two feet away. I even conducted at least one test call from the stacks of my library, in a semi-whisper, and was heard well enough. You don't have to yell. The same goes for when you're not on a headset. So don't. If you have to talk loud when other people are around, go elsewhere or make your call later.

(* Which always makes me think of the line from the a classic parody, which I can't identify offhand although I think it was Robert L. Fish, '"Was it Wednesday?" asked the Thinking Machine, thinking he was a washing machine.')

That's often how I feel about tackling computer problems...although, far too often, there turns out to be no (good) way, or, sometimes, the problem resolves itself (mysteriously stops being a problem).

Case in point: The "afternoon of network heck" on Wednesday, July 10, when, abruptly, my Internet connection went wonky.

Suddenly, the browsers (FireFox, with Opera as backup, MSIE only when absolutely necessary) on my near-new XP Pro desktop weren't accessing the web. I had a Putty SSH session open, and it kept working, so it wasn't the connection proper...but foolishly, I closed Putty, and couldn't regain the connection.

And, apparently, it wasn't just me having the problem, as I discovered a little later.

I remembered that a little earlier, Zone Alarm had "detected it was on a new network"... given that my desktop has a wired connection to my router, that's a little odd. I tried checking Zone Alarm for odd signs, but didn't see anything amiss. (I may not have looked at the right stuff, however.)

Events like this are often, of course, the result of some change, but at the time, I couldn't think of anything that might have been.

So I began to try things, starting with the easy and obvious:

• A quick check of the TV confirmed that cable service per se was still on.
• Ditto blinky-lights on the cablemodem, so I hadn't inadvertantly tapped the STANDBY button (which disconnects things).
• Transient glitch? Rebooting the computer, and then the cablemodem and router, didn't help.
• Loose network connection somewhere? I removed and re-inserted everything in the path.
• Bad router jack? The box has fallen a few times. I tried the other router ports.
• Bad Ethernet cable to the computer? I tried another CAT5 Ethernet cable between router and desktop.
• Try another computer. The press-loaner Vista notebook could access the Internet, via my 802.11 WiFI. This was partial clue I didn't pay enough attention to.

Then it was time for some serious Plan B's. Since at this point there seemed to be WiFI Internet access, I went rooting around for a WiFI adapter for the desktop, but:

• And old Travel Access Point's "simple three-step instructions" sheet showed, in Step 3, cranking open a browser window to configure something... but didn't actually give the IP address. (And the manual, which I was able to grab via the notebook, wasn't much more help.)
• I found a USB WiFI Adapter -- but not the CD with the driver. And the vendor web site showed drivers for two models -- neither of which was the model I found. By the time I'd reached tech support and got the URL for the driver, I no longer had enough net access to get to it. (And, as it turned out, this wouldn't have helped.)
• In case the problem was my desktop's NIC card, I started to try a USB Ethernet adapter -- but although I had the driver CD, I remembered this was pre-XP enough that I was nervous. (I had another USB/Ethernet right in front of me, but didn't see it.

Now it was time to call Comcast, my broadband provider, in case they knew something I didn't. However, the wait-time was too long, so I decided to talk Grep (our dog) out for a walk. While out walking, I called one of my colleagues, Ernest Lilley, who said "If you're using Zone Alarm, crank its firewall setting down a notch or two."

Since I couldn't do that until I got back, I tried calling Comcast, my broadband provider again, while still out walking. Aha! A few menu choices down, the recording advised me there was a known problem with a new Microsoft update conflicting with Zone Alarm--uninstall the patch and then check the ZoneAlarm site for further advice." (This assumed that the un-install would resolve the immediate problem, of course.)

And, in fact, it did.

That let me get to the ZoneAlarm web site, where they acknowledge the issue and offered a little more advice. They initially put this on their main page:

Sudden loss of internet access - Microsoft Update KB951748 is known to cause loss of internet access for ZoneAlarm users. We recommend that users uninstall KB951748 using "Add or Remove Programs" until the issue is resolved.

And subsequently issued a Security Advisory, and a press release, which in turn pointed to the Security Advisory.

I conceded to Ernest that he was right enough in his solution -- although Zone Alarm feels that lowering the firewall security levels is somewhere between ungood and plusungood (to cop a phrase from George Orwell's 1984 reduced-vocabulary lexicon). But, as I pointed out, he hadn't actually identified the cause of the problem.

A few hours later, there were news stories confirming the problem, workarounds and solutions. By the next day, Thursday, July 10, Zone Alarm made updated versions available "which solve the loss of internet access problem," which should make it safe to allow Windows to (re) apply the patch. (I haven't yet done the Zone Alarm update, but I will.)

Solving Solutions

Let's gloss over the annoying fact that Microsoft's "Add/Remove Software" doesn't have any (obvious) way to sort updates based on when-applied, much less a separate "Update/patch manager" the way some applications seem to. The Add/Remove approach worked, at least for me.

Had it not, there were, as Professsor SFXvD noted, at least two other ways I can think of. One, use Microsoft's System Restore facility to revert to the most recent Restore Point. (Memo to self: Create a new Restore Point at least once a week. I try to do one before any software install, but even so.) This might sacrifice an install and/or config -- I _think_ that doing a Windows "Save State" would give me some way to re-recover. But it sure should undo that nasty update.

Two, since it was a system problem rather than a network problem: Have a bootable Linux CD, with whatever key utilities I might need. I don't know if this would be able to see my Windows NTFS file system (hard drives), worth finding this out when I'm not in a hurry.

Three, crank up my old IBM ThinkPad, which wouldn't have the dread update, since it's normally off, and therefore should work.

Four, dial-up. I've got a modem card in my desktop. I think I've got dial-up access through an account -- another Memo To Self, find a zero-maintenance-cost dial-up provider for backup.

Or do without connectivity for a while, or trot over to the library where there's Internet computers... if they're not already in use by fellow XP/Zone Alarm sufferers.

Or, of course, copy files to a USB stick and go to the library and use one of their computers.

(If I had a Blackberry or whatever, I could always use that for checking/sending email.)

("Get a Mac" or "Go Linux" don't count as solutions; for bad or worse, I'm working in Windows. I'm used to it, it ain't bad most of the time, and it's what most of my readers use.)

The challenge, of course, is which solutions to invest time making ready, and keeping solutions up to date.

Computers. Networks. Pfui.

Not only do you not have to write any HTML code, you don't even have to view and root through a site's HTML source.

All you have to be able to do is to copy and paste it HTML accurately. And maybe have done some searching to find what you're looking for.

YouTube, for example, shows two ways to access each of its videos: the URL proper, and also the HTML code to "embed" a clickable view within your page. YouTube goes even further, providing customization options including "include/don't include 'related videos,'" and borders. The only thing I haven't (yet) figured out is how to center an embedded YouTube video within my page.

For example, here's my YouTube video of a robot bookscanner: the URL, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2SzGcylZVE, and the "embed" code, as provided by YouTube, which I used to embed it on this web page (I've split up some of the lines to make the code clearer for us HTML amateurs):

 

<object 
   width="425" height="344">
<param 
   name="movie" 
   value="http://www.youtube.com/v/h2SzGcylZVE&hl=en&fs=1">
</param>
<param 
   name="allowFullScreen" 
   value="true">
</param>
<embed 
  src="http://www.youtube.com/v/h2SzGcylZVE&hl=en&fs=1" 
  type="application/x-shockwave-flash" 
  allowfullscreen="true" 
  width="425" height="344">
</embed>
</object>

There are third-party snippets, as well. Some require a little more knowledge of, and access to, what you're doing, like Exploding Boy's Add Links for Del.icio.us, Digg, and More to Blog Posts, which require access to your PHP files.

But others are as easy as YouTube's, like PictoBrowser, a "Free Flickr Slideshow for your Site or Blog." PictoBrowser turns a selection of your Flickr photos into a slideshow can embed (add) this turn a blog post or web page. (Kudo's to TechRevu editor Ernest Lilley for turning this one up.)

To create a PictoBrowse slide show (i.e., the HTML for one), find an existing PictoBrowse slide show, like the one in Ernest's BoltBus write-up. PictoBrowse asks for your Flickr screen name (but NOT your password, it's clearly searching for stuff you've designated as publicly available), has you select what you want slide-show'd, and then offers you code ready to copy and paste, or offers you the option to customize -- easy!

You're probably not old enough to remember the classic Timex watch commercials where Timex wrist watches -- pre-digital -- were put through a variety of funky tests and "keep on ticking." (I'm not sure I'm old enough -- I have a feeling what I'm really remembering is Mad Magazine spoofs on the ads.)

Some -- but not all -- of today's electronic devices can hold up to this.

• My digital wrist watch has survived being worn in the shower and swimming pool. (I look for "water-resistant" when I buy them.)
• My first NEC MobilePro 780 (that two-pound computer I have in my oversized shirt pocket at trade shows) never fully recovered from my spilling a glass over water on it, several year ago... and a one-third-working keyboard really isn't enough. (Lesson learned: don't hold a drink, even water, and a computer at the same time.)
• Some new notebooks, like Panasonic ToughBooks, and HP's new 2133 Mini-Note PC, claim they can survive about half a cup of liquid being spilled on the keyboard.

After a large dollop of shampoo got spilled on a SanDisk Sansa C1 flash MP3 player, it stopped working. It "wakes up," but the controls don't work beyond that. (I haven't yet given up hope of resurrecting it, though.)

But, I'm happy to report, my little SanDisk Sansa radio/MP3 player has survived a cycle through the washing machine.

And thereby hangs my admittedly long tale.

Aging Computers Get The Blue(Screen)s

I just picked up my new desktop computer will be ready on Friday. And not a day too soon, possibly thanks to my misplaced confidence, because where I briefly was back up to two working, albeit old, Windows XP desktop computers, I'm down to one, and that one's exhibiting new buggy behavior.

I bought my Athlon 1700 desktop back in Fall of 2001, and the Athlon 1800 early in 2003, from PCs For Everyone, a local (Boston-area) "white box" shop patronized by businesses, universities, along with Linux hackers, gamers, and folks like me who simply want a good computer.

(Here's articles I've written about this company, and more generally about buying from white box shops.)

They were, at the time, good, fairly priced systems configured more or less with "sweet spot" mid-range processors, a gig of RAM, separate hard drives for software versus data, and minor other frills, like nice lightweight Lian Li cases. Nothing fancy, just good systems for running the office and Internet apps I earn my living as a writer with. Although the Lian Li cases are easy-open, for the most part I've kept them shut, other than installing an eSata PCI card in one, a year or so ago.

According to most IT folks I've talked to in the course of researching articles, the standard "refresh" (replace with new) cycle for business desktop computers is three to four years.

So by any standards, my systems are, if not obsolete, entitled to be scheduled for replacement. However, up until this past year, they've continued to work. I've taken each in for service once or twice, over the years, resulting in a few hundred dollars of component replacement or upgrade, but, until this past year, they still worked fine.

But over the past year, my desktops had been so unusable for a few months that I was running off my notebook -- an IBM ThinkPad, itself at least four years old.

One system, nominally my "production" (do work on) system, was getting turgid to the point of uselessness -- it would boot up to Windows, but then often be slow, or incredibly slow. And the virus protection part of Zone Alarm kept turning itself off, a bad sign. Possibly I had an infestation of malware. Or Windows "Registry rot," or other inadequate Windows upkeep and maintenance.

The other system would boot up into Windows -- and then promptly crash, power cycle and reboot back into Windows, and then crash again.

I'd already been window-shopping a new desktop from PCs For Everyone. One project had me trying to run the Second Life client unsuccessfully -- it installed and ran once or twice, but on subsequent tries, it said, "not enough resources" or something like that.

And since I want to run XP Pro, not Vista, now -- before the end of June 2008 -- is the time to buy. (Vista Business offers a "downgrade" option that would let me switch over, but I've decided to get my desktop with what I plan to run, and worry about "upgrading" to Vista later -- or never.)

No Good Repair Goes Unpunished

I did manage to get both working again, to my pleasant surprise. At least, that's what I thought.

The one that was cyclically power/boot cycling worked fine, I discovered, once I removed one of its 512MB memory modules. (A lucky guess, on my part, as it turned out.)

The other machine -- which would finish booting into Windows and stay up, turgidly, proved t be fine in Safe Mode. So rather than attempt to reload Windows, I used Windows' System Restore utility to go back to the oldest Restore Point I had. This seemed to resolve the problem.

Voila, two working systems again.

Or so I thought.

Since my Test machine was down from 1GB to 512MB, I brought the apparently dead stick over to Micro Center (a computer-store chain which I like I lot), where the sales rep helped me a 1GB stick for $44 after rebate -- or 2 512's for a few dollars less. These both went into my Test machine, which seemed happier (faster).

Foolishly encouraged by my success in swapping RAM memory sticks, I said to myself, "I've got 1.5GB in my test machine, but only 1GB in my production machine... why not swap a module over?"

Even though the sales rep at Micro Center had made this point, I'd lost track that just because a memory module may fit in a motherboard slot doesn't mean it's compatible... and an incompatible memory module can have bad results.

My initial memory swapping simply caused my production machine to not boot, just beep. (These beeps have meaning, but I don't have the information at hand.)

The first memory slot had a lot of dust in and around it, so I took my can of compressed computer-cleaning air and gave it a zetz (little shot) of air, before replacing the module.

The computer didn't work any better... but now I noticed a sudden bad smell. So I turned the computer off, and the next day, I toted the computer over to PCs For Everyone's service location a half hour or so away in Norwood. (Their Cambridge sales/service location closed down a year or so ago, and, depending on traffic, wouldn't have been less time to get to.)

Three hours after I dropped the machine off, I got the bad news: fried motherboard.

Given the age of the computer, they didn't have any replacement parts to sell me. I might be able to find a motherboard and CPU somewhere like eBay, but that was a crap shoot.

Ah well, I still have one working desktop computer, I reassured myself. And I've been planning to buy a new desktop anyway, I've just been delaying it because the technology writing biz has been a little slower than I'd like lately.

Except, I discovered, that when I plug any USB storage, the machine again goes through the crash, reboot to windows, repeat cycle like it had before I replaced the bad memory stick. Not if I plugged in my USB printer, or my Bluetooth headset's USB charger cable... but for USB flash drives, a USB hard drive or CD burner (each of which have their own power supply, note), either to a USB port on the computer, or to the USB peripherals port on my KVM switch. Go figure.

This means, among other things, I can't do local external backups. Since I'm using an online backup service Data Deposit Box (see my review in eWeek) for nearly a year now, that's not a big deal, but it also means I can't download pictures from my digital camera, or retrieve/save files to USB sticks, or add stuff to my MP3 player.

So I ordered my new computer (more on this in future post), which I had pretty much spec'd out. And when I go pick it up on Friday, I'll bring this working-but-troubled-one in for service, to see if it can be (affordably) fixed. (Fortunately, my current desktops have 'lifetime free labor' service warrantees.)

With luck -- and, hopefully no more than a hundred bucks or so replacement parts -- I'll end up with one fixed aging desktop, plus a lovely new one. (I'll post a note on what the problem, and solution, with the second machine turned out to be.)

Like I said, both my desktops are are old enough that they've more than earned out, and entitled to go to the computer equivalent of Doctor Dolittle's Home For Retired Cab-Horses.

I'm sad that one or both will be retired. I'm annoyed at myself for possibly -- probably -- hastening one's demise and retirement, but at seven years, it's entirely possible the mobo immolation was coincidental (although coincidence is always to be distrusted). And it's entirely possible that this or something else would have gone wrong soon.

The reality is that I should have bought a new machine sooner, because the toll on my productivity outweighed the "savings" of not making the purchase sooner than I might otherwise. (I was also waiting until mid/late-April, for availability of Intel's new Penryn CPUs, admittedly.)

So, I'll be picking up my new desktop computer at the end of this week.

Lessons (re)-learned:

• Don't fix anything that isn't broken, especially if you don't really know what you're doing. And just because a part fits physically doesn't mean it's necessarily safe to do that.
• Good backups -- local or online -- will get you through times of bad computers better than vice versa. I was able to download my data in about six clicks, allowing an orderly transition between machines.
• If working tools aren't working, they need to be replaced in a timely fashion, because when you're not working, you're not earning.

]]> http://www.TryingTechnology.com/2008/05/fix-one-fry-one-buy-one-death.html http://www.TryingTechnology.com/2008/05/fix-one-fry-one-buy-one-death.html computer repair stupid user tricks Thu, 01 May 2008 17:54:30 -0500