Although it may seem unreasonable, I recommend you stay out the hardware business as much as possible. What does this mean?

• Buy new equipment from reliable vendors instead of building computers from pieces

• Buy on-site service contracts when purchasing.

• Avoid accepting donated equipment which requires retrofitting to meet your current hardware standard.

The fact is as soon as you or your staff start unscrewing the case of a computer, you are loosing money big-time. The repair will cost at least a quarter of what a new machine will cost. So you do this four times, you could have bought a replacement machine. Not only that, if you manage to fix the old machine, you still have…an old machine.

With new computers going for $1200 or so at this writing, it doesn’t make sense to try to build computers from scratch. Moreover, upgrades of existing machines should be considered only for those machines that were bought in the past 12-18 months at the most, and then only for a specific requirement. The reason? Even after upgrading an old machine you still have an old machine. As the technology improves, you will cling to the older machines longer, in an attempt to pyschologically justify both the initial investment and the cost of the upgrades. Again… you are not in the hardware business. so upgrades should be considered only rarely.

The Onsite Service Contract

Dell computers can be bought with a three-year on-site hardware service contract for about a hundred dollars over the price of the machine. The irony is, you won’t need to use this very often. Dell isn’t stupid, they know that the cost of the contract will be eaten up with a single service call for that machine. But when you need it, you call the technical support number with the machine’s service tag. They walk you through some diagnostics over the phone, and if they determine that there is a hardware problem, a guy in a cape appears the next day and fixes it. This keeps you out of the hardware business.

Sources for Hardware

Most likely, you may have the opportunity to obtain hardware from several different sources:

• Equipment purchased outright

• Equipment received as a donation

• Equipment received as part of a grant for a specific program

Vendor Recommendations

For workstations and servers: Dell for both. Compaq, HP or IBM as alternatives for servers. But again, if you end up getting XYZ workstations, why not get XYZ servers too and simplify your vendor relationships.

Operating System: Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional or Windows XP Professional. These allow much more control over the security aspects of the workstation than the “home” versions, like Windows 98 and ME.

Office Suite: Microsoft Office – Word, Excel

eMail: OutLook Express (not OutLook that comes with the Microsoft Office Suite)

The more you can standardize the more you can save of individual items. Some other benfits standardizing:

• Users can learn from each other. If one user learns a procedure they can teach it to another. You begin to build an “institutional memory” among the users that transcends the individuals.

• Support is less involved because you spend less time negotiating between incompatible systems.

• You may be able to save by purchasing equipment and supplies in larger quantities than you would otherwise. You can buy software with a site license, often at dramatic savings.

• You can manage and secure the workstations centrally.

• You can substitute an identical or similar computer for one that malfunctions so that the user’s downtime is minimized.

• If everyone is using more or less the same equipment you avoid one-up-manship or primadonnas who insist on this or that configuration.

I’ll admit my prejudices are coming through here. But, pick a platform and stick to it. The benefits of standardization will outweigh any spurious gains and good-feeling that your staff have as they cling to their old familiar machine. Eventually, even the die-hards will get bored with the whole computer thing and realize that they have a real job to do. And if they don’t, then you’ve got a personnel problem, not just a computer problem.

Is this your agency? You have Apple Macintoshes in one office, and in another, a mix of Windows PCs running Windows 95, 98, ME or NT4. Everything is connected via a Novell Network. using Novell’s propriatory network protocol ,You access the internet using a second protocol. You all print to a variety of laser, dot-matrix and inkjet printers. Many printers were purchased one at a time over the years and several sit on the desks of petulant managers who insist that they must have their own personal printer. Of course, since these were bought ad-hoc, you felt you couldn’t justify more than a home-grade inkjet printer, so you have a few of the older ink-jets which cost 50 cents per printed sheet, in cartridges and regularly jam and smear. Several folks have spouses who have purchased their own laptop computers (from multiple mannufacturers) and they are now coming to you asking whether they can use these at home to access the office network.

Consider: Let’s say you’ve got the aforementioned Macs in 2 versions, and computers with three different versions of Windows, and maybe 4 different printers. Let’s say these all have to talk to each other. That’s at least 2x3x4 – 24 combinations of hardware and software which need to talk to each other. At this point, I hear you saying “it really isn’t that bad”..but think about it:

• The Apples need software drivers for each printer.


• The Windows machines need software drivers for each printer.


• Wordprocessing, eMail and spreadsheet and database programs need to be able to read attachments created on the other machines.


• eMail setups will be different between Apples and Windows and among the Windows versions


• Virus protection will be different between the different platforms and versions


• There will be little opportunity to centrally manage anything on the workstations.


• You can’t easily replace one person’s machine if their’s goes bad because you have nothing else in the office that matches.

The above example is a real one. A more recent example is an office with 15 users. They have Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000 and Windows XP workstations and a Windows NT file server for the network. WordPerfect versions 6.0 and 10. A proprietary application uses Microsoft Word 2000 and Excel for writing reports. Each machine has at least two word processors and sometimes three. The office has two HP LaserJet2P printers, a LaserJet 4P, a couple of 6P printers and a LaserJet Series II circa 1986. (Guess which printer is the most reliable?)

Ten years ago technology was expensive enough that it may have made sense to build things up incrementally. However, over the longer term the cost of supporting multiple versions of everything will eat you alive. It is a luxury you really can’t afford.

Pick a platform that you can live with. Windows or Mac. Reduce your operating systems by half. (if you have five different versions of Windows, work out a scenario that only supports two, to start). Replace the earlier versions with the later versions. Repeat every six months until you have a single O/S, (which, frankly, as of 1st quarter of 2003 I hope is Windows XP Professional, or Mac OSX). If you have multiple printers, do the same.

If you can follow this halve-every-six-months regime, after two years or so, even the most diverse office will be narrowing down the multiples. You can reverse the incremental build-up in the other direction. Of course, if you have a solid technology plan which calls for wholesale replacement of large numbers of machines at once, so much the better.

Voice input to a computer

I have had several people ask about voice-input for a computer, to solve the problem of students who don’t have good keyboarding skills or an inability to coordinate their hands sufficiently to manipulate the keyboard. Here is my limited experience with one program:

1. I bought an application called Dragon Naturally Speaking for about $80.00 at Staples. The program comes in three flavors; I got the “standard” version which lies in the middle of the price range and capability.

This is software which comes with a headset (microphone and headphone). The software sits “between” the operating system (i.e. Windows) and the application that you are working with. The version I got works with Microsoft Word, Excel, OutLook Express, and Internet Explorer.

2. I installed this without problems on a Pentium 450Mhz machine.

3. The software adjusts itself to your own voice, that is, you must “train” the software to recognize your voice. Accuracy improves with training.

4. I played with this for a couple of hours, using Microsoft Word. The accuracy was quite good; I would say maybe 90%. The software also accepts commands like “Open File”, and “Save File” and it is indeed somewhat amazing to see the screen change as these things are accomplished on command.

5. The software is not terribly adaptable to non-mainstream applications. If you want it to work with WordPerfect, or WordStar it most probably won’t.

6. They include a “mini-word processor” as part of the package which is optimized for the voice input. It might be possible to enter the bulk of your text that way, and then copy or insert it into your word processor of choice for further editing.

7. Response time was adequate but not snappy. I’m sure with a faster machine (like the IBMs) it would improve.

8. The software stated requirements are a Pentium 400 processor and any version of Windows.

9. Clearly the software must be optimized for the speaker. It isn’t something that you can sit down in front of and play for a few minutes and be productive. For students that are strongly keyboard- challenged, however, and who have full control of their ability to speak, this might be an interesting thing to try out.

10. The program will also read text back.

11. Windows 2000 and Windows XP will already read text, and there are several other “adaptable” modifications that are built in to Windows. For example there is a thing that enlarges text on the screen. There are also ways to modify the response of the keyboard so if you have someone who can only type with one hand, for example, the shift keys can become “sticky”.

Reading and Writing Programs

Here are a couple of links for several teaching programs for Adult Basic Education that have been used in the past several years. Most run on a CD-ROM and use sound.

OMTI Rogers is a program for multisensory reading, spelling and penmanship CD-ROM.

Write Out Loud This is a program that speaks words as they are typed on the keyboard.

http://www.picturedictionary.org/opd/> The Oxford Picture Dictionary $149.00 each for 1-10 copies Network version is available.

LD Online is a commercial sites for various links and discussion for students with learning disabilities

Pronunciation Power

This program is a pronuncation program which allows the student to speak into a microphone. The program checks and corrects the student’s speech.

ESL Cafe is a site with discussion and links for teaching English as a second language.

eBay for inexpensive hardware

If you know pretty much what you are looking for, and if you know current prices for computer hardware, eBay, www.ebay.com the online auction site is a possible source. I recently purchased a used machine for a second file server on eBay and here is what I found:

I was looking for a commodity system from a brand name vendor. My favorite hardware vendor is Dell, and I know the product lines fairly well. I was looking for hardware that was less than the current state of the art. Especially for a low-impact network file server a 450Mhz processor, with a 10 gigabyte hard drive was sufficient for my purposes. There were at least 50 of these available on eBay, starting at about $100.00. The Dell Optiplex line is their “corporate desktop” type of machine which has a fairly long design life. The Optiplexes use standard components and they are very easy to work on with convenient access in the roomy cases.

Many of the available machines were from Dell Financial Services. These are machines that are returned from corporate leases so they are usually three years old or less. Once returned the cases are cleaned inside and out, and the hard disks are reformatted. Mine came with Windows 98, a keyboard and a mouse and 128KB of RAM. I was able to purchase this on eBay for $265.00. With about $20.00 for shipping and the same for tax, the total was just a little over $300.00. Note that there was no monitor included. I tried bidding $40.00 for a 17″ Dell monitor but was outbid by $20.00.

Once the machine arrived, in about a week, I plugged it in. It started right up but the hard drive had a very annoying whine. It was so bad that I took a quick trip to Staples and purchased a 20 gigabyte drive and another 128K of RAM. These went into the machine without much difficulty; and I removed the offending 10 gigabyte drive. The new one runs quietly, and so my final specs are 20 gigabytes 450Mhz Pentium II processor and 256K RAM, for a total of about $425.00 and two hours of time. I’m using this for a Windows 2000 server and the specs should be more than sufficient.

The $425.00 should be looked at in the context of what new or refurbished machines cost. I would price these out at the Dell site first. For example they are currently offering a “starter” server for under $1000, and since this is new machine it may actually be a better deal if you have the cash. However, I’ve found that often the low starting price goes up quickly, if you want normal options like more RAM, or a Pentium processor. The nice thing about the refurbished or returned machines is that they represent “real-world” configurations that you really need.

eBay isn’t for everyone. I think the chances of success are higher when you know the commodity that you are bidding on, and you bid on a fairly standard specification. But it is a useful option when you have a more time and less cash.

Quick and Dirty Web Sites.

Although its publisher is foundering, NetObjects Fusion, http://www.netobjects.com is a great program for quickly putting up a web site. I’ve used it for several temporary sites that I expected that I would either re-write using a real web builder tool, or where the organization who owned the site would take development in-house, or contract out to a web-building firm. Either from sloth or adequacy the sites have remained more-or-less permanent, for now at least.

NetObjects Fusion, not be be confused with ColdFusion, is a WYSIWYG web editor that works without you having to learn html coding. Although the program allows you to see the code that it generates, the code isn’t particularly easy to change or enhance.

The best thing about Fusion is that it comes with 50 or so graphic templates which contains headers, footers, banners, and navigation buttons. You can drop these items on to your pages, and Fusion will generate the code for you. The process is relatively quick and easy, and the results are far better than any “amateur” web site, and better than many professionally-developed sites. For non-profits, low-budget, quick and temporary sites, this program has no equal.

The progam is still available for now for about $100.00. For just the price of the graphics, you get an excellent web creation tool thrown in for free.

Linux as a Network Server

After experimenting with Red Hat Linux 7.1, with Samba, I’m thinking this may be a good replacement for a simple file and print server combination, as opposed to Novell Netware, Windows NT or Windows 2000. The Linux+Samba combination looks like a Windows NT Server from the perspective of a Microsoft desktop workstation. The Red Hat Linux “boxed set” distribution is available for around $40.00 and includes an innovative on-line update service which will automatically patch your copy of Linux to the latest version. Linux can also be downloaded from the Internet for free, if you have the stamina, bandwidth and knowledge to get it up and running. Samba is included with Red Hat, so it doesn’t need to be installed separately.

Advantages

• Very low initial cost: the software is free.
• Good support from Red Hat. There are support forums for peer support, and you can submit installation support questions to Red Hat and they will actually reply!
• Stability. Linux is known for being more stable in general than Windows.
  

• Versatility: Linux includes a grab-bag of network utility programs including a decent mail server and firewall, as well as programs to connect the server to the internet and share the connections among multiple workstations.
  

• Linux does not require additional software to be installed at the workstation. Novell requires the installation of the Novell client software at the workstation.
  

Disadvantages

• Linux is less well known than either Novell Netware or Windows. Getting local support may be more difficult and expensive
• Unable to run Windows-compatible applications on the server. SQL-Server and Access (to cite two examples of databases that are often run on a network server) cannot run on Linux.
  
  There are others, however, including the open-source (almost free) MySQL and PostResSQL as well as commercial products like DB2 from IBM and Oracle databases from Oracle.
  

In short, I think Linux is worth considering, when thinking about buying network server software.

Several developments from Microsoft make one wonder whether it isn’t time to think about alternatives to the same old Microsoft Office/Microsoft Windows desktop computer combination.

A year ago, I would have (and did) encourage the Windows 2000 Professional operating system for new desktop computers, and Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Outlook Express and Internet Explorer) for a standard software suite for staff and students. This is a solid, reliable combination, and represents some of Microsoft’s best efforts to date.

Now what? Microsoft has announced Office XP, the next version of office. It is available in the open licensing program for $54.00 a seat for the academic version. The OLP basically means, you must buy in lots of five seats. Office 2000 is no longer available. Of course, in the short term, we’ll be compelled to buy XP licenses. If you buy onesees and twosees, (I know a few non-profits who do this), you’ll pay a lot more for single-user copies, and end up having to register them on the phone or over the internet when you install them. The same applies for “activation” of Office on new computers from Dell. You can use Word or Excel up to 50 times before calling Bill and registering.

I do not install software illegally, and as a network manager I spend considerable time educating clients and end-users about the

perils of pirating software. What I find galling is the lack of good software tools for license managment, and a sensible policies for selling software. A sensible policy would include things like concurrent licensing, so that organizations could buy and use what they need and not what Microsoft thinks they should have.

Furthermore, Microsoft’s sales model is moving toward a time-limited “software subscription” or rental, the “software as electricity model”. In other words, at some arbitrary point after you have paid for your software, you will need to pay for it again just to keep using it.

The upshot is that users and IT managers should be keeping their eyes open for alternatives. Right now this seems to mean the Linux operating system and two or three office suites, including Star-Office and the Corel WordPerfect Office suite. In the past both of these suites seemed seriously flawed, but they are improving rapidly. I hope that in a year or two, I’ll be able to confidently recommend one or more alternatives to Microsoft’s offerings.

Maintaining public computer labs, or even private computer labs that are used for teaching is a real pain. One thing that may help is PCR-Dist, a program which maintains a master copy of a disk and registry image of a computer workstation and allows the the workstation to be refreshed on demand. This is the ultimate way to nail down the look and feel of a computer and also allow the user to change things without fear of messing something up.

The program is used by many universities. It is for Windows-based computers. An earlier version 1.x can be used with DOS and Windows 3.1 machines.

The program is difficult to use and figure out. In fact, to date I haven’t managed to completely figure it out to the extent that we have it in production, however, I’m reasonably confident that we will be able to have it working. http://www.pyzzo.com