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My Computing Equipment

Well, I'll admit to being a bit of a computer nerd, though not as much as I used to be. What computer equipment others use plus their comments about it interests me, this page was in fact inspired by a similar page written by John Patrick , former vice-president of Internet Technology at IBM. So, if you are like me in this regard, this may interest you.

Hardware

My work machine is a IBM Thinkpad T41p laptop (see specifications below) supplied by Micromuse, my employer. My private computer is a Dell Dimension 8400.

Server

I'm putting more and more functions onto the server I've set up. I have changed my main system so many times that having so much function and data reside on the server has already saved me lots of work. The server is an older system running Linux. Because of all the functions running on it, I do fear what would happen if it should fail one day.

Backups

Server functions

Connections

Fast Ethernet: In 2001 we had the 1'st floor of our house completely rebuilt, and while we were at it, I had the electrician pull Cat-5 cable to every room as well as drilling through and putting network points downstairs as well. A Dell PowerConnect 2716 Gigabit Ethernet switch now connects all systems and I can easily link up in more or less any room. Each room as at least two network points. I also purchased a small ISDN PBX from AVM. It allows me to connect up to 4 analogue phones. Phone calls can be moved to any of the connected phones, and a phone can be connected in any room with the biggest effort lying in figuring out which room is connection 103 in the wardrobe where all connections originate.
Wi-fi: Despite having network points in all rooms wi-fi is an added convenience. I could have made do with "just" a wi-fi access point, but I bought a Linksys WRT54G wi-fi router/access point.
The Linksys runs Linux internally. As it runs GPL'ed code several people have found ways to modify the standard firmware and add functions to the router. Nerd that I am, I have also added third-party firmware. When setting up my parents system, I got them the same kind of router. Highly recommended...

Internet

As time goes, the technology I've been using for internet access has been changing as well. Originally I accessed the internet via a modem, an x2 upgraded USRobotics (now 3Com) V.Everything modem. I used to get connections between 44 - 48 Kbit/s with the x2 modem, and that was considered blisteringly fast. May 1998 I had ISDN installed in my home. My access to the internet was through a Netgear RT328 ISDN router (actually an OEM'ed Zyxel Prestige 100) connected to an Ethernet hub or switch. I still have ISDN, but it is now only used for voice. For data I now have a 2048/512 kbit ADSL connection from TDC. I started out with a 512 kbit upstream connection. This was upgraded to a 1 Mbit connection. I could "feel" the difference when I switched. Web surfing was noticably faster. Later again I switched to the 2 Mbit connection that I have today. That switch I could not "feel" when doing ordinary web browsing, but obviously downloads are twice as fast. I have also watched movies over the internet at qualities only made possible by the higher speed, so 2 Mbit is of use, it just isn't felt in "normal" internet usage.

Multimedia

PDA

In February 1998 I bought a 3Com PalmPilot Pro (just 2 weeks before they released the Palm III). I used to have one of the very first Psion Series 3 PDA's (bought in 1991), and I needed a replacement. I was quite happy with the Pilot. I used Intellisync from Puma Technologies to synchronise my data with Outlook 2000. But it became a nuisance constantly getting the synchronisation set up. Whenever I moved jobs or got another laptop, the whole thing had to be set up again. Now the Palmpilot is languishing somewhere in my office.

My printer, shared via the network (connected to the Linux system), is an HP Deskjet 990cxi.

Software

The application suite I use on my work-supplied system is Microsoft Office. All other machines in this household use OpenOffice though.

I used to do Internet browsing with Netscape Communicator. I then switched to Internet Explorer. It was the frequent house calls from Dr. Watson (Dr. Watson is the name of the program that pops up in Windows NT when a program has been naughty) that made me switch when Microsoft's Internet Explorer v5 was released. Despite the crashes with Netscape, the previous Microsoft browsers were too slow compared to Netscape. Internet Explorer was my preferred browser for some time, but since v0.7 of Firefox, I have used that instead.

"Other" software I use is primarily Intuit's Quicken for looking after my finances. When it comes to games, Microsoft's Flight Simulator is my preferred time waster. I've been playing with Flight Simulator since v2 and I'm now at Flight Simulator 2004. I also use software for genealogical research , to look after my ancestors. I've tried various genealogy programs until I settled Personal Ancestral File (PAF), the grandfather of all genealogy programs. It is a free-of-charge download from FamilySearch. There is also the data issue I commented on when discussing the software I use for photo administration. Data formats change all the time, so it is preferable to use programs that use dataformats that are likely to be around for a long time. I think PAF is such a program.

Various Tips and Tricks

Booting Multiple Operating Systems

The usual way to have Windows 9x and NT co-exist on a PC is to first install Windows 9x on a FAT partition, and then install Windows NT, either on the same FAT partition or on an NTFS partition. If you choose the first option, both 9x and NT share the same C: drive, which can be problematic. Should you choose the other option, 9x will be drive on drive C:, NT will boot from drive C:, but will mostly exist on drive D:. Either way is messy, the only benefit is to be presented with a boot manager where you choose which OS to run.
Well, I want NT on an NTFS partition only, and I want it presented as being on drive C:. I want Windows 98 on a FAT32 partition, and I want it presented as being on drive C:. I also want to be able to boot Linux. The secret is a cool little program called BootPart . What I did on my system was first to install Windows NT. I then ran FDISK and created a new primary partition and made it active. On this I installed Windows 98. Next step was to install Linux, but I did not allow LILO to sit in the boot sector, I wanted to use Windows NT's boot manager. So the Red Hat Linux installation routine was told to place LILO in the first sector of the Linux partition. FDISK was run again and the NTFS partition was made active, this made it possible for NT to boot again. I now ran BootPart and got it to create a small 512 byte file for each of the other OS', and it modified BOOT.INI, it now looks like this:

[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows NT Workstation Version 4.00"
C:\win98.bin="Windows 98"
C:\linux.bin="Linux"

And whenever the PC starts up, I have the choice to boot whichever OS I want with each OS having a "proper" default drive.

Using Briefcase to synchronise files between a laptop and a desktop

I want to have access to the same documents, datafiles, emails etc. when I'm on the road as well as when I'm at home. What I have done is to create a new Briefcase on the laptop, not on the desktop as the default, but as a "sub-directory" of C:. I then (via the network) dragged the sub-directories containing my various datafiles into this briefcase. Before I go on a business trip, I make sure to synchronise the briefcase. If I make any modifications to files on the laptop, I have to make sure I synchronise as one of the first things when I get back home, before I use the desktop system.