Everest Computers Blog About Computers and Web Design

Some time ago in this blog I wrote an article about the trend in computer sales: the sales of laptops have overtaken sales of desktops. This has happened because of the falling prices, people’s desire to be more mobile and the rise of the Internet availability and speed.

The latter gave way to the unheard before Internet applications i.e. applications that carry out a normal task but run not from the computer itself but on the Internet.

Let’s take a document text processor for example. There are plenty around, which can be installed on the computer and can be used by a computer user to create and edit the documents of various formats. These include Microsoft Word (a part of Microsoft Office), Writer (a part of Open Office), Word Pad, Notebook and so on. At the same time, it is now possible to edit a text document online. This is how it works. You open a page on the website with the embedded text editor, create (type in or paste and then edit) a document and then save it - also online - somewhere on the server.

The safe storage is guaranteed by the text editor provider, which means that your document will be store securely - no one else but you will have access to it - and also the document will never be lost because of the existing network of backup servers, which duplicate the data and restore it should something go wrong with the main storage. The example of such a solution is Google Apps, which includes a text, spreadsheet and presentation editor just like Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint, an email, a calendar, a website creator tool and many more little bits and pieces. All this comes with the safe data storage guarantee. One can choose between a free standard edition and a business edition.

There are no doubts that Google Apps is a good thing because it allows flexibility and choice. People can now choose between the online storage and the local pc or laptop storage, online editing and local pc or laptop editing. For those who travel a lot and have access to the Internet everywhere, Google Apps is the way to go. A word of warning though: if you are a terrorist, don’t bother using the Google’s online service because I have no doubts that CIA and FBI have access to all the stored information including documents and emails, so your terrorist plans will immediately be uncovered. But if you are a normal and regular guy or girl, CIA and FBI generally have no interest in you, so go ahead and use the service.

This article would not be complete if I don’t mention all the pros and cons of the online applications.

Pros 1: Unlimited access from anywhere around the globe and from any computer. There’s only one condition: the Internet connection, and it doesn’t even need to be a speedy one for the document editing and emailing.

Pros 2: The document security and safe storage forever and ever and ever. If your computer breaks down, all your files will still be available to you because they are stored online.

Pros 3: Easy share at the click of a button. Don’t need to send the documents and share them somewhere else because they are already on the web.

Pros 4: Locally edited documents can be uploaded and dowloaded to be used by an online service.

Cons 1: The Internet access should be present in order to access the documents. This is why if the Internet if off, the online services are useless.

Cons 2: Local editing still provides more functionality and will probably provide more functionality in the near future. It still provides more resources and possibilities. Online applications are limited to what browsers can do. No manipulations from outside of an online editor is possible - you will need to download a file and edit it locally.

Cons 3: Just from the human point of view, files on the local pc seem more accessible than on the Internet. But this perspective can change.

Cons 4: In order to move on to music, image and video internet editing and sharing, a very fast Internet access will be required, which is not yet widely accessible wirelessly and around the world.

In the presence of so many disadvantages, going half-way seem to be the best solution at the moment. Keeping all the files locally and some of them temporary on the Internet for editing and quick access is a good idea. This way, more and more files will end up in an online storage but the carbon copy will still be found on your local pc or laptop. When technology advance and the Internet becomes the true part of our lives, it will be possible to trust it without reservations, you’ll a netbook and fully immerse yourself online.

In continuation to the one of the first posts in this blog Nicely structured wordpress permalinks on IIS 6 for subdirectory blog location I need to add something.
I was setting up a blog for a friend and encountered an error in the code, which I’ve added for Everest Computers Blog. This simply forced me to figure out what the code does and find the solution, which I did.
Here’s the new wp-404-redirect.php code:

<?php

$qs = $_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'];

$pos = strrpos($qs, ‘:’);
$restOfStr = substr($qs, $pos);

$pos = strpos($restOfStr, ‘/’);
$path = substr($restOfStr, $pos);

//$path=’/2009/01/test-post-only/’;

//echo “path (should be with year): $path”;

$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] = $path;
$_SERVER['PATH_INFO'] = $path;

include(’index.php’);

?>

The trick is to make sure that the value of $path equals to the exact custom link value i.e. it should start from “/”, then a year should go, then “/”, then a month and so on exactly copying the custom link. In this case everything works.

A little bit of the code explanation: after the URL, path usually contains “:80/”. The code finds it and then looks for the first “/” and then retrieves $path from here.

Recently there has been a story in the news that the sales of the laptop computers have overtaken the desktop computer sales. There are many good reasons to this trend, which, I’m sure, is going to be observed in the near future thus reducing the number of desktops in households around the world.

The reasons for the laptop dominance lie:

(1) in their prices, which have been falling for many years now;

(2) in the way people use their computers these days.

It is possible now to buy a good performance laptop with the latest software on it for twice or three times less than 5 years ago. There may be performance issues with these laptops if a user decides to install resource-hungry games or a huge graphic editor on the system but for the day-to-day tasks these computers are absolutely fine.

This leads me to the changes in user preferences when it comes to computers. These days Internet is everything and everywhere and working with the computer for some people mostly mean browsing the Internet, which includes emailing, social networking, instant messaging and other similar virtual “timespendings”. Occasionally these people may look at the pictures, write documents or play music too. But they won’t play games on their computer - they have a game console for that - and won’t use their computer for programming and graphics or music editing. That’s absolutely fine, so do they need a big pc, a monitor for it and a special table for it in the corner of the room to do just that? No, they don’t, they will be happy with the ordinary laptop.

Couple of years ago I was concerned that buying a laptop essentially leads to impossibility of upgrades. Don’t get me wrong, the upgrades are technically possible but they will cost dearly because the cost of laptop components usually goes through the roof in turn because they are only produced by the original manufacturer. This concern is no longer there because as laptop gets older it can now easily be thrown away and a new one bought instead due to the current low laptop prices. This would require some file transfer work but it’s a one-off job and - you’ll agree with me - can and will be easily undertaken for the sake of the technical progress.

There are even cheaper laptops, which are now produced almost exclusively for the Internet users, called netbooks. These are small laptops, which can allow their users to browse the Internet but virtually incapable of doing anything else. This “anything else” may not even be needed by a user, who edits his or her documents online and keeps all of his or her photos online too. As the cloud computing (an Internet-based development and use of computer technology) extends and more and more people get involved, the role of the Internet will increase and maybe one day every personal computer in the world will resemble some sort of a netbook.

But is it all so bleak and hopeless? For me as a programmer and web designer the death of a desktop as we know it will most definitely be a tragedy. This is why I hope that desktops will not disappear and will be used in one form or another.

People whose job is computer-related will have desktops at work because laptops cannot be physically secured and simply there is no need for them in the stationary work place.

The programmers, designers and developers will have powerful machines with big screens at home and at work because the complicated computer development simply cannot be done on a laptop.

The dedicated gamers will always have high-end desktop personal computers to play their favourite games on them. And there will always be the games, which are not suitable for game consoles like various tycoons or simulators.

I also wouldn’t underestimate the powers of a computer upgrade. Instead of buying a new desktop pc because the old one has been gradually slowing down, it is sometimes enough to upgrade it in order to increase its speed and to improve its response time. Computer enthusiasts always strive to improve the performance of their computers and so do many ordinary users.

The world will always need big powerful servers for computer centres, web hosting companies and many other big and small businesses around the world in order to provide various services to people. The cloud computing requests, which I mentioned before, are processed on these sort of computers and there are thousands of them scattered around the world.

In conclusion, I would say buy a laptop with Windows XP or Windows 7 in the near future if you want to be mobile and don’t work with any resource-hungry professional stuff on it. Buy a desktop pc if you’re a graphics designer or an obsessed (in a good sense of this word) computer game enthusiast. Buy a desktop pc if you want to have a control over the hardware and build and re-build a pc as you wish it to be and according to your own taste and knowledge.

Wired computer network require cables to pass the information from one computer to another. Wired networks are now mainly used in offices where an uninterrupted, reliable and very quick networks are required. In homes, the wireless devices are used instead but sometimes it is necessary to install a wired network. This requirement may come for example because of the fear about the network security or in order to guarantee the network speed because the speeds in the wired network are not affected by the distance (within 100 metres if the ordinary cable types are used) and by atmospheric activity.

Mainly the Ethernet technology is used for home and office local networks (LAN). It is possible to join computers one to one directly with the cable or to connect them through the router or a hub. All this is discussed in the second part of this article (please go to “Creating a wired network at home part 2: routers, hubs and network types”).

Cable types and usage. For Ethernet, at the moment there are 4 main types of cables one can choose from to build their local network: category 5 (cat5), category 5e (cat 5e), category 6 (cat6), category 6a (cat6a - augmented) and category 7 (cat7). The most common and offering the best value for money cable is a category 5e cable. The category 7 cable is for future cabling and is not being sold and used at the moment. The newer the the cable category the higher is the data transfer speed. The latest cable types support the new data transfer standards too.

It’s better not to use the category 5 cable any more as it’s an old standard. The best category to use is cat6. Cat5e is the best choice if a lot of cable is to be used and the cost of creating a network is an issue.

All the cables are backward-compatible, which means that the cat6 cable can be used where cat5 was used to be and so on. I’d recommend to use cat6 or cat6a because of their near-future provability.

Patch and crossover cables. Patch cables are used for connections between a computer and a hub or a router i.e. between two devices with the different functionality. Crossover cables are used for same-to-same types of connections like computer to computer or hub to hub.

Connectors. For Ethernet networks, RJ45 connectors (plugs) are used. The official name is “The 8 Position 8 Contact (8P8C)”. They are sold in bulk and are attached to the cable with the crimping tool. It is possible to do it with an ordinary screwdriver but with the crimping tool it will be quicker and easier.

Boots. Boots are the plastic caps that are put on the connectors in order to avoid damaging them. If you manually add a connector to a cable, make sure you’ve put a boot on the cable before you attach a connector.

Crimping tools (crimp tools). When buying, make sure that the crimping tool is designed for RJ45 plugs. More expensive crimping tools can support different types of plug standards like RJ11.

Important tips when working with Ethernet cables:

– It is easier and cheaper to buy cable in bulk and then cut it as necessary and attach connectors manually using the crimping tool. When cutting the cable, don’t forget to allow some spare space in case users decide to move their computer or the cable’s path would need changing;

– It’s recommended not to mix different types of cables in one network installation;

– Don’t bend the cable excessively as the bending may damage the cable. It is recommended not to bend it when the bend diameter is less than 10 cable widths. Also, try not to squeese the cable tightly when attaching to walls or floors as this my damage the cable.

The second article about the network cabling can be found here: Creating a wired network at home part 2: routers, hubs and network types.

The Internet statistics shows that people mostly use Internet Explorer to browse the Internet. The other browsers like Firefox, Opera, Safari and now Chrome are not as popular as Internet Explorer. There is nothing unusual about that because Internet Explorer comes with all editions of Windows operation system and supported by Microsoft. After all, all Internet browsers do the same thing – show the pages on websites of World Wide Web, that’s it, so there’s technically no difference which browser to use.

And if you would have said this, you would be wrong because:

(1) The security is approached differently by different browsers. The security settings differ too and missing a setting could let some nasty cookie or a trojan into the computer.

(2) All the browsers have their own engines, with which they interpret the data received from an Internet server in order to show this data on user’s computer display.

(3) Different engines mean different speed – some browsers run quicker than the others.

So in regards to the above, the studies show that Firefox is the most secure of all and also the fastest even though its loading time seems longer than the one of Internet Explorer’s. Opera and Safari are somewhere in the middle.

All Internet websites and applications have standards – these standards ensure that the web code behind the web pages is interpreted correctly by the browsers. The standards are agreed internationally and the organisations that look after them are internationally recognised and respected. But Microsoft always goes its own way, so when Internet Explorer was created as an alternative to the Internet browser Netscape, which dominated Internet since the very beginning of it until IE has showed up, Microsoft have put their own standards in and the programmers and designers who create the web pages have to cope with them till this day.

Internet Explorer 7 has made the big step towards universal standards but IE 6 still have a lot of problems with them. On the other hand Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome do not generally require additional “coping for” programming.

Recently, there has been a scandal about Internet Explorer newest vulnerability issue and a patch that has immediately followed. This has even spilled into the papers and television news programs. If the same sort of problem was to occur to say Firefox, would it be discussed as widely as the problem in IE? The answer is “no” because Firefox is not only used only by only about 18% of the Internet population but also because it dot not issue patches like Microsoft does but prepares a new version, which a user is informed about immediately. This is definitely a plus. Opera also informs a user when a new version is available.

Multiple browser installations on the computer ensure the multiple browser instances can be opened on this computer. I’m not talking about the browser tabs but about the separate browser sessions. For example if you’re doing Internet banking with the secure connection, no matter how many tabs or windows you open with one browser, it still will be considered as one session. To open the second one not affecting the first one, you would need a separate browser.

Firefox has been developed as an open-source application, so there are a lot of plugins and add-ons that have been created for it. This is not the case with Internet Explorer, which is a Microsoft’s child. There are only common use plugins available for it like multimedia players or java applications. For Firefox, one can find literally hundreds very useful plugins like translators, picture viewers, link sharers. In this blog, I’ll later publish the ones that I use and find very useful.

Considering all of the above, the advice I’d give to the computer users regarding the Internet browsing, the security, the performance and everything around it is as follows:

– use Firefox as your main browser, set it up to be as secure as possible and keep it up to date. Having version 2 when version 3 is available is not acceptable. Check out many available plugins.

– occasional use of Internet Explorer is not a bad thing if you need a separate session or encounter a website, which has been optimised only for Internet Explorer. Keep IE up to date by monitoring Windows Updates and occasionally local and national newspapers, radio and TV :-).

– use Opera if you often work with many tabs.

– give Chrome a try if you often work with Google and all your Internet browsing is based around Google.