21st Century Computers

[flintstone mop]

WHY are computers still doing old fashioned things? When first turned on, what does it do? It has to go to the BIOS to find out who it is and what hardware is still connected to it. Then the stupid computer has to find a "drive" with the OS, and usually in about 2 minutes you have a system. OOPS I forgot about updates from the internet, THEN you finally have a computer ready for work.
After April 2014, the wait for updates for XP will not be an issue. M$ is abandoning XP support.
WIN 8 seems to be a lot faster than XP or WIN 7.
Fred

[N2DTS]

They are working on new computers that are designed to use one memory, not the cash, the regular memory, and the hard drive type memory.
There will just be one one chunk of fast large memory, no hard drives.

They have been waiting for a memory that is fast, cheap, and needs no power to keep its memory intact.
The current memory is little capacitors that need recharging from time to time, and the stuff that did NOT need that was too slow or expensive or something, but I hear they are close to being able to eliminate all the seperate memories, which will allow a different operating system, and instant on.

The current design goes back to punch cards and magnetic tape, you had short term storage, and long term storage and still do, but when that goes away, watch out!

You used to have to wait for your TV to warm up, then they came out with instant on and solid state, now you have to wait for your cable box to boot up, along with the TV, and changing channels is even slow....such is progress....

 

[W3RSW]

Operating systems that sleep and thence can be instantly on are now the norm in iPad and similar tablets' world.  Major brainpower's expended to guarantee security plus speed along with popular applications.

 You point the iPad, shoot a picture and mail it to a buddy almost in one effortless operation.  You FaceTime a relative with instantly available real time video and audio. Play with the grand kids interactively for as long as the parents/kids can stand the connection.  Pan around the room to show stuff.

You write a short missive in your lap, (tied to no wires) to AMfone.net, while listening to an audio live from distant station or canned stream.

These goodies plus Instant on are major reasons for iPad and similar tablet computer success.  Many of us are using older PCs only for large journalism and printing tasks, working up spread sheets, doing taxes and heavy, nailed down stuff, but the list of convenient   apps for iPads keeps growing.

Win 8's struggling to keep up and trying to marry both old desktop and new app world. kludgesoft has made no secret in wanting to eliminate the desktop.

The steady decline in PC sales simply matches the trend.

[W2INR]

Today in history  one of our first computer programmers

Grace Hopper
Computer Scientist
Grace Murray Hopper was an American computer scientist and United States Navy Rear Admiral. A pioneer in the field, she was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, and developed ... Wikipedia
Born: December 9, 1906, New York City, NY
Died: January 1, 1992, Arlington County, VA
Buried: Arlington National Cemetery, VA
Awards: National Medal of Technology and Innovation, More
Education: Wardlaw-Hartridge School, Vassar College, Yale University

Talk about hard drives

[steve_qix]

It depends on how you have things configured... bios wise and otherwise.

For instance, my windows laptop - I almost *never* reboot it.  I put it into hibernate when I need to turn if off, and it's back up in approximately 15 seconds when I turn it back on.  My droid phone takes quite a bit longer than that (a couple of minutes) if I turn it all the way off, which is very rarely.

Usually you can set the bios to do a quick startup if you need to turn things off.  Hibernate saves a LOT of time.  The shack computer is set up the same way - startup from hibernate is really quick.

[K6JEK]

Today in history  one of our first computer programmers

Grace Hopper
Computer Scientist
Grace Murray Hopper was an American computer scientist and United States Navy Rear Admiral. A pioneer in the field, she was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, and developed ... Wikipedia
Born: December 9, 1906, New York City, NY
Died: January 1, 1992, Arlington County, VA
Buried: Arlington National Cemetery, VA
Awards: National Medal of Technology and Innovation, More
Education: Wardlaw-Hartridge School, Vassar College, Yale University

I met her once. She was tiny, attired in full Navy dress uniform and as intense as a flame. Very impressive. A thousand years ago two other guys and I wrote a COBOL compiler that saw a certain amount of use. I'll say one thing for COBOL: You knew when you'd done it. There was a series of acceptance tests called the Navy tests. You want to call it COBOL, you passed the tests -- none of this subset with extensions BS that has plaqued many other languages. Three cheers for her.

[KB2WIG]

She didn't want to go, but she was retired, for the last time, at age 79.


klc

[Steve - K4HX]

I have a laptop with a solid state drive. Boot up time is about 30 seconds. Like QIX, I rarely turn it off, just put it in the sleep mode by shutting the lid. When I open the lid, it's ready to go from immediately to less than 5 seconds.

Then again, I've never shut off any of my computers since the early 90s. There's little reason to do so.

With the advances in cloud technology and ever increasing  availability of high speed data connections (even in the mobile environment), the days of needing any on board memory (and really much on board processing power) are already here. It's just a matter of time until the users and some of the OS and HW manufacturers catch up. On/off is a thing of the past.

[flintstone mop]

That seems to be the trend now for computers. USA thinking to bring the updated technology around when it only costs $20. to mass produce it.
With the wifi and 4G networks and high speed internet available the horsepower for the computer is in the cloud.
Less need of the burden of technology to be in the computer. Which was a relief for me to get a popular game our son likes to play in his XBOX, instead of the PC. The PC would slow down and freeze and then sit there. I wasn't investing in a "gaming computer". XBOX live subscription and a 'server' is setup for you to play online with his friends.
We'll all be APPS one day.
WIN 8 tries to keep folks like me happy with a "desktop" and then there is the section of APPS like a smartphone.
Which are just shortcuts without having to know the URL or starting a Browser.
I agree that SLEEP is faster than a cold start. But sometimes the computers need to dump all of the garbage collected in RAM and get a fresh start and updates are still needed. Especially the virus software. FREE Microsoft defender WIN 8 or Essentials for XP and WIN 7. Dumped those Mcafee and Norton things long ago.
Fred

[N2DTS]

It was my understanding that sleep, or suspend, or hybernate still had the cpu running, with the ability for people to access your computer, and the power draw.
The AC feed to the computers goes off when I shut down, never had lightning or other failures, or a virus, even though I do not run anything to keep them out.
My laptop is about 6 years old, maybe more, no problems in all that time.

[WA2OLZ]

It was my understanding that sleep, or suspend, or hibernate still had the cpu running, with the ability for people to access your computer, and the power draw.

(Emphasis added)

Putting all of your data and apps in the cloud is an open invitation to get ripped off. Call it paranoia, if you will, doing so tremendously increases the probability for identity theft and even worse. The private sector, as well as segments of the public sector, are finally waking up to the reality that cloud computing cannot be made secure. Increasingly more companies are retrenching to self-maintained data-centers despite the increased cost. Off-shoring and cloud computing have been the nexus of numerous security and business continuity events which you will never hear about.

Luddites just may be right!

[Steve - K4HX]

Given the regularity of companies being hacked and identity theft suffered by individuals, it's not clear to me how cloud security could be any worse. That said, I do prefer having all my data (or most of it) stored locally. Call me a luddite. 

[steve_qix]

In hibernate mode, everything is actually shut off.  You can disconnect the computer from a power source, etc.  There is nothing running in the background.  The computer at the exercise station is always put in hibernate mode, and then turned off completely (power strip turned off), and boots up in approximately 15 seconds - ready to go!

Hibernate is a good mode to use.

And, I'm with Steve - keep your data LOCAL if you want to be able to get at it all the time.

[N8ETQ]

   When I started with DEC on the PDP8 you had to
"Toggle" in a routine to get the cpu to learn how
to deal with the PTR. The next step was to load
the driver for the PTR.. (Paper tape reader). Then
load the first  paper tape for the OS.
If all went well the cpu would respond with "  . ".

Life was gud.  Core mem was nice in that the data
was there for ever,  after the fix we would load
a sys exer into core, halt it, remove that mem and
reboot with the cust mem..

   the next service call all we had to do was put
in our mem, Load add. 200 and hit go. Work it out
from there...


    Pre. NSA, internet, virus, hacking.

"Speak softly and carry a big rifle".

/Dan

[flintstone mop]

   When I started with DEC on the PDP8 you had to
"Toggle" in a routine to get the cpu to learn how
to deal with the PTR. The next step was to load
the driver for the PTR.. (Paper tape reader). Then
load the first  paper tape for the OS.
If all went well the cpu would respond with "  . ".

Life was gud.  Core mem was nice in that the data
was there for ever,  after the fix we would load
a sys exer into core, halt it, remove that mem and
reboot with the cust mem..

   the next service call all we had to do was put
in our mem, Load add. 200 and hit go. Work it out
from there...


    Pre. NSA, internet, virus, hacking.

"Speak softly and carry a big rifle".

/Dan

I certainly remember the early dayz where corporate computers occupied an entire floor. The "DISK DRIVES" were called juke boxes where several disks were spinning at scarey speeds. Someone posted earlier.
The company I worked for, had a little tiff with IBM and ripped all of the equipment out and went to RCA. Nothing but overtime and they could not get their billing out. This was when companies still sent bills out via mail. Eventually they ripped out the RCA computer and went back to old faithful blue.
I went to a card punch school to try to get into the "IT" department. But computing was advancing in the early 70's and they were switching from cards to tape drives. Racks and racks of "tape decks" and huge heavy reels of tape. The tape was pulled through the read/write heads with vacuum.
My one win 7 computer that always seems to need to repair itself is put to sleep and not turned off.
An interesting thread. Thanks
Fred

[K3ZS]

The good old days of computing.  I remember toggling in the "bootstrap loader" into a Data General Nova computer to get it started.  Later an option put the little loader program into a ROM.  You then could bootup by a switch.   Most newbies probably have no idea what is really meant by "booting" a computer.

[W3RSW]

You guys must have already been on the inside..  Booting the computer, no less,  --The sacrosanct computer chapel.  Somewhat later in computer refinement time, We others (the great unwashed, yes even petroleum engineers) had to wait outside the door, put our card stacks in the in-basket and wait for the inevitable error kickback of the whole stack.  After three or four tries, days later, we got the printout and then discovered the damn program needed to be rewritten again because of the usual fatal forgotten formula, constant.... X & 0 graph mislabeled,...Whatever.

If we were regulars we got to type in our own cards (80 colum) and move our pile up the queue, but never ahead of COBOL boys..., payroll, FIT stuff, etc. 

Fortran IV G all the way baby. 
As close as we got to flashing lights was the "tour" along with most everyone else.

[K3ZS]

If we were regulars we got to type in our own cards (80 colum) and move our pile up the queue, but never ahead of COBOL boys..., payroll, FIT stuff, etc. 

Fortran IV G all the way baby. 
As close as we got to flashing lights was the "tour" along with most everyone else.

Now your talking about ancient history, key punch machines and all of that.   I was involved with minicomputers, before the microprocessors, but smaller than the IBM 360's.   They generally used TTL IC's but no large scale integrated devices.   They were still expensive so they were still repaired at the component level, not board switching as became the later practice.

[W2NBC]

Computers.. we all can't live without em! Right?

... What was once a science novelty project, with IBM's and punch cards printing, "HELLO", was soon put in-line long before it was ready for prime-time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otiMil1kt1Y

How do I know? I work in Broadcasting where many a show was a 'fade to black' by a lack of 101010's

I say, keep the TUBES glowing!