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Title: Are you becoming
OBSOLETE?
Author: Cameron Mclay
Wow, Technology is being developed and accepted a lot faster nowadays
that I just can’t keep up. Yeah right, you just
don’t want to keep up and that’s why you are slowly
but surely becoming obsolete!
Many IT professionals and enthusiasts think technology is being
developed at a painstaking slow rate. But the rest of the public think
technology is being developed at light speed.
Now why is that?
Well because each year, Intel and AMD, who are the major CPU chip
makers in the world bring out faster and more efficient CPU’s
doubling the number of transistors on the chip every 18 months (or
that’s how Moore’s law goes). This means that every
18-24 months, we see increases in speed and decreases in speed which
drives people to upgrade their equipment and therefore makes your 5
year old computer virtually worthless. You are literally loosing money
and time because you don’t know what you should when it comes
to computers.
Now I am not saying you should go out and start learning C# (a computer
programming language – not the musical note) but one language
that may help and is actually very easy to understand is HTML. This
HTML language is the basis of the Internet. Its limiting for
programmers but a slight understanding of it can go a long way. Now for
a sample of the coding – click “view” on
the application toolbar (ie: Internet Explorer or Firefox) and then
click “source”. This should bring up a whole lot of
text in a notepad or similar application. That’s the HTML
coding for this page. Most of it is actually just normal text like
this. The HTML coding is just the “ ” or
“<>” tags throughout the page with
different things in between those tags. Now I am not saying you have to
learn how to code it, you can just learn how to navigate through it to
find what you want. Or if you want to put something on the net (like
most want to do nowadays), you may sign-up for a free page or buy a
website and you don’t want to spend thousands on web
designers, and you don’t want just text, so your little
knowledge of HTML can help A LOT.
Well maybe I don’t want to learn that, what else should I
know in this day and age?
One big thing about using a computer is using it to its capability. So
the faster you can do things on it, the better for not only you but
most likely, your work place. This means touch typing comes into it.
Typing practice can be fun – 2 words – computer
games. Yes computer games can help your typing skills because they use
keys that are scattered around the keyboard and if you have to keep
looking down at the keys, you will loose the game very quickly. Now I
just said typing practice, because you can use the Internet for
practice to but it won’t help you type properly, only typing
lessons from a typing program or lessons from an instructor will help
you type the correct way, using the “base line” and
that lesson time on the keyboarding program can take maybe 30 minutes a
week. The rest of the time you “practice” can be
playing games or chatting with friends on the net. It is that simple
and you can track your progress with a typing test on the typing
program.
Now I personally don’t type correctly, my right hand sort of
goes all over the place depending on what I have to press. I can do
around 60wpm (words per minute) with 98% accuracy but I do wish I could
type the correct way as it does help with accuracy and speed. So do
spend that time on the typing program to learn to type the correct way.
Once you have learned to type faster, you should be able to navigate
through any computer a lot faster. This is also where gaming comes in.
Not to brag or anything, but people always ask me to slow down when
clicking through the file system. Even when I think I’m going
slow. You should be able to get through 15 file paths in around 5
seconds. Eg: from “my computer” get to
“c://house/1/2/3/4/…./15/file.php”.
So by increasing typing and using your computer a little more, you
should be able to learn the file system and be able to navigate it very
quickly.
Ok so what else?
Well that depends on what you want to do on a computer. The above two
things are just general things that I most may need to increase the
efficiency that have on a computer. Also what comes in on the
navigational increases are things like you can look at a web-page and
glance at it to find where you need to go and not be sucked in or
confused about where you need to go to find the information you want.
As many know the internet is a very good research tool where you can
find literally anything. So if you afraid of your computer, you are
loosing out on a ton of information which can make shopping or anything
else a lot faster. For example: you want to buy an LCD TV, and you
don’t want to be sucked in by salesman. You hop on the
internet and search review sites and electronic online stores for the
best prices and best quality so you can go into your local store and
within a few seconds decide if the LCD TV there is good quality at a
good price or good quality at a very high price.
Sorry I’ve got sidetracked. I haven’t answered the
question yet.
Why don’t I think technology is developing at a fast rate?
Because I probably know more than you do about computers especially in
the area of hardware and so when you hear Intel quad core, 3.2ghz etc,
etc. You might think, wow 4 cores, 4 times the processing power of my
single core computer. Well that just isn’t the case right
now. We have multiple core CPUs coming out but they are not 2, 4 times
the power of the single cores, they do work a lot faster, some of them
but they are only 70% more efficient at best. And then you get things
like software which make the computer run slower than expected because
they can’t handle the multiple core technology yet. Windows
Vista should allow some support but the other applications you use may
not support multiple cores so run like a single core processor would.
Also a major reason I don’t think technology is being
developed as fast as it could be is because I am “in the
know” when it comes to technology. You may hear some new
development come out that sounds cool to have but the thing is, it may
take 2-5 years before its available or takes 2+ years to become
affordable enough to work to your advantage.
Knowing a little about something can excite you or allow you to better
understand what is meant when something comes out. For example, many
new things are just little advancements on the old. If someone who was
a master at the first word application was to be brought forward into
this generation and used the latest word application, he or she would
still be a master or near master at it because each new operating
system or application may add 5-100 new little things that make the
application “better” in some way. The basics are
still there and that’s why you should learn the basics and go
from there.
A little can go a long way.
Need Computer
Help?
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"I thank you with EXTREME
thanks. My
computer works perfectly once
again."
Pearl Hartman
"Thanks guys, that did the
trick. Man, it is sure nice and quiet on
the net now!"
Joe Samson
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