Gordon Woolf's Blog

What's best for travelling?

My most recent trip away was three days by car and for the first time I took my 3kg+ laptop. Usually I travel with what was almost the first of the netbooks, the eeePC 701.

So how do they compare?

Travelling by car, the hefty laptop is more convenient and there can be everything available that you'd expect at home. It'll run Windows if that's what you run at home - in fact it can be your main computer even at home, so you know how to do everything.

The down side is the weight (it would have accounted for half the total baggage for one allowed on our recent trip by air over Lake Eyre, and once you are out of the cities you realise the effect of all your regular internet checks for things like desktop gadgets (weather, shares, exchange rate etc) add to slowing up your 2G mail and other web downloads. It may be a good idea to set up a specific "user" for travelling.

So, for air, train etc I'll still go for the little netbook. Yes, the screen is too small (it is one of the original 7" screens, there are 10" ones now which would be better) but it weighs just over 900g or 1200g with mini-mouse, charger and modem and it is a third the size of the laptop.

I'm tempted by a tablet, but so far it is only temptation - and there's that additional benefit in favour of the netbook: it cost $500 but that's when they were something new and most of that value has been written off over the years. I could replace it for around $250 so its loss or damage isn't going to hit me hard (though its replacement could just possibly be a Galaxy if I have to make a decision while travelling and a store has one).

As to wireless availability, my experiences in central Australia late in 2010 still appear to be current. Something simpler such as a netbook with Linux will get and send email faster than most laptops but I can't yet compare that to a tablet, especially one of the cheaper ones running the Android OS. I never like throwing out something that is still working well, so for the time being my almost ancient netbook will be my main means of communication when away from home and office.

On this latest trip the wireless connection via our second major national carrier was excruciatingly slow - and the motel's wifi, running from a landline link, was not much faster. Perhaps when the networks get better outside of the capital cities I will give way to the tablet temptation.

Is the future in The Cloud?

It was only a few years ago that Bill Gates and others were promoting the always-connected theme and even formed an always-on association to promote the idea of never turning your computer off; computer manufacturers were encouraged to not have a power switch, just a button which could leave the computer able to wake up on a call from the local or wide area network.

At the time I was not only sceptical but wrote articles pointing out the cost to the economy of wasted power usage and dangers from hackers having that always-on access to millions of computers.

They trashed the always-on promotion in response to pressure worldwide and most computers got their on/off switch back. But what they forecast has happened.

I still switch my computers off overnight, but the modem/router stays connected so we can still make and receive VOIP calls and the PCs immediately reconnect to the Internet when they are switched on.

A recent trip reminded me that there are large areas of this country where there are no Internet connections (nor mobile or cell phone coverage) because there are so few people, and where it exists outside capital cities and so the idea of working in the cloud is impossible.

I was wrong the first time. Maybe not this time as I've changed sides. We need better connections outside major cities before it can happen, and probably need a better and smaller way of satellite connection so mobile country connections can be usable and affordable for travellers (a permanent outback resident can opt for a satellite connection now and most large farms/cattle stations etc, even some communities, already have them).

The cloud does make sense, but to be usable outside of city centres it needs technological advances that, in my view, put it at least 3 to 5 years away.

What's green and what isn't? Paper v online

The paperless society has not happened and is unlikely to happen. The danger is that companies who supplied us with printed reports, especially to shareholders, and other organisations, to members and supporters, are still using the "greening" of communications to tell us that they want to send things electronically.

As a first point, and despite all the times I have criticised the post office for late communications, they have very seldom lost anything. On the other hand, how many email communications go astray? While this might be partly due to user settings on spam filters etc I would still suggest that paper delivered by the postie on his motorbike is an inherently more reliable means of communication than email.

Paper is greener than many people think, and electronic communications are not as green as people think. Paper is renewable, and much of the energy that paper mills use is carbon neutral, or at least renewable: bark, lignin, wind, hydro. On the other side, according to the EPA, computer servers use 1.5% of all electricity in the US, and more than 2.2 million tonnes of electronic waste were generated in 2007. Of this, 1.8 million tonnes went to landfills, up 7.7% annually since 2000.

You might consider answering on those lines when you next find an organisation trying to get you to "go green" by accepting online communication instead of paper. It may be mainly an attempt, not to save costs, but to transfer them, from them to you.

Open letter to a publisher thinking of switching to online

Yet another magazine sent me a notification that it was going online. This time it was to be just a trial, but here is a slightly edited version of my reply:

While I can understand the desire of publishers to change to online provision of magazines, I would suggest that this is not as much in a reader’s interest. It is largely a transfer of costs from publisher to reader rather than a true saving in costs (and therefore in resources).

For example, I have a 10GB monthly download limit and while I usually stay within that, it means that on the occasions when I might not, it is quite likely that a magazine file will have to wait until the new month or be ignored altogether. My minimum cost to add an extra couple of GB of download is a one-off $20 payment or, alternatively, to increase by $10 every month to go to a higher limit which may not be used.

If I wish to show something to my wife or look at it more closely it means printing it out which again increases costs at my end, and though I’d often choose to print on my relatively ancient laser printer at a few cents a page, it might have coloured content that makes it more likely that I’d print on my inkjet at perhaps a dollar or more a time for a 2- or 3-page article.

The print edition will also normally be passed on to someone at the local computer club or U3A or community house (or even the local branch of the Australian Shareholders Association  (though that I no longer attend with any frequency). At any of those it may well attract further interest and possibly subscribers before being recycled (at least I can hope it is recycled). The online edition, if downloaded, will consume electricity and broadband fees before being deleted, i.e. gone for ever. Online for you it will continue to cost storage fees.

I can see a lot of sense in making some content available only online, especially the tables which have to be printed in such small type that they cannot be read by most people with my aged eyes. News too may be better online but most articles tend to be scanned much more quickly on screen than in print...and therefore not read as thoroughly.

So, unless you plan to also reduce article lengths and their number and interest, I’d suggest that at the very least you investigate a thinner, more cheaply printed edition with web links, preferably in a short form or linking to an index page online for more information.

I note your comments that the online version is just a trial but it does take several seconds to go from low to high resolution on a page and I note that links within pages are not live.

Lastly, it is a Flash file and I presume you have noted that the iPad does not accept Flash files and does seem to be the only real eReader suitable for viewing online magazines, at least until we see HP’s contender.

I clone: it's the easy way back after a crash

The ultimate problem on a PC. It just would not boot up. The BIOS was trying to boot from the second hard drive and could not find the first. When I disabled the second hard drive the BIOS could not find a drive at all.

Removing the tray and then the drive from the tray I could feel it spinning but there was no sign of recognition even from my SATA docking station.

This was the disaster I knew would come and fortunately I was prepared.

My hard drives are mounted in removable trays, so I could easily swap from Win 7 to my XP drive, and that booted perfectly, proving, if I still needed proof, that it was a problem with the drive and nothing else.

But I had an easy way back to business. A month ago I had cloned my main drive using software called HDclone from Miray Software in Germany.

All I had to do was replace the faulty drive in the removable tray with the cloned one...that means loosening the tray cover, sliding that off then undoing four screws, replacing the drive, doing up the screws, sliding on and tightening the cover (one screw) and sliding it into the caddy. That takes about three minutes.

Reboot and there is my OS as it was a month ago. Copy back some files from the usual weekly backup via DriveImage (OK that software is ancient and I'll go for TrueImage when the Win7 version of that is out next month, but the old one still works perfectly) and the past day or so's email and Firefox history plus the password safe data from my thumbdrive (thanks to MozBackup).

I've since cloned the drive again and updated the cloned copy of my XP system. That takes time, but not when I have to be present. The PC will chug away for the 5 or 6 hours the cloning process takes.

The Mira website states that the latest version can create cloned drives even from within Windows but I'm currently using a bootable CD made by copying their .iso file to a CD-R. And the paid versions claim to work at twice the speed, and to be able to clone partitions as well as a full drive.

Even so, the company suggests that, to prove that the software will work on your system, you first download the free version and create a cloned drive. The appeal of then being able to do it in half the time will woo most users. The Basic edition as a download costs about US$25 (they price in Euros).

As I said, the software will work within Windows but as a self-booting CD it will copy just about any drive with any OS to any other drive which is at least the same size. And since the downloaded zip file includes an .iso file, Mac and Linux users should be able to create the bootable CD.

I'm not making any special claims for them, more for cloning as an adjunct to other backup systems. There are at least five other ways to clone a drive. See this page at Downloadquad

This was the second cloning application I tried and it did all that I needed, and simply, so I've stuck with it.

Oh yes, unless you want to read the manual, have one of those (usually green) converter plugs ready to put your mouse in via the PS/2 port instead of USB, though Mira may well have solved that with the new version that I'll download shortly.

Next time someone asks if you backup you can then say "I clone".

What happened to the failed drive? It was out of warranty with the dealer I bought it from, well over 12 months, but he suggested I look at the drive maker's website. That was Seagate. They have a page to enter the model and serial numbers and if it is within 5 years of manufacture, they replace it. I got a return number, sent it off and within two weeks a replacement came back. Only cost was one-way freight to get it to their depot.

Telstra forces a customer to switch

Nick Renton is an author of more than 60 books on taxation, investment, financial planning, public relations, corporate governance, meeting procedure and use of English. He is also a skilled copyeditor. By profession he is an actuary and is often called upon as an arbitrator. He is Member of the Order of Australia (entitled to 'AM' after his name) and was the first president of the Australian Shareholders' Association.

He also has an extensive web site which provides information of all his specialist areas. It is a source referenced by many other sites throughout the world.

However, Nick Renton AM has been forced to move the whole site because the hosts decided they did not want to provide web space for their broadband and dialup customers any more. So, with a couple of months notice, he was told the site will be gone. No, they had no way they could point the old address to a new one.

It serves as a lesson for anyone who has a web site that is not reached by their own domain name. Now, Nick Renton has moved the whole lot to http://nickrenton.com, and while we know the new hosting company, and know they have been around for many years, it cannot be a problem again: the site can be moved to a new host at a few hours' notice with no one who uses the site being aware of any change.

But now comes the surprise: the hosting company that was being used by Nick Renton was not a newcomer from the continuing dotcom revolution. It was Telstra, the first and largest telecommunications company in Australia, which has the lions' share of the Internet business in this country.

So, if you need information such as a guide to all the Latin phrases you are likely to come across, at http://nickrenton.com/310.htm then make a note that it is all now at http://nickrenton.com