the last word

If a personal computer is a computer that you have all to yourself, my first personal computer was a Hewlett-Packard 2114, which was assigned to me in 1970 when I was working at hp. It came with a form of onsite service; if anything broke, I’d either swap the new part in myself or call… [Read More]

With the Lenovo D20 looking like it could be too loud, I reduced the list of possibilities to the hp Z800 and the Dell T7500. The hp workstation wins the design competition: nearly everything snaps together and requires no tools to access – it’s actually a step ahead of the Mac Pro, and the Mac… [Read More]

In the last post, I said that having a quiet machine was an objective of mine. Measuring acoustic levels is tricky if you want valid comparisons across manufacturers and models. Fortunately, there is an internationally standardized test procedure for computers and workstations, ISO 9296. Unfortunately, it’s difficult for prospective computer buyers to get the numbers…. [Read More]

In 1955, C. Northcote Parkinson proclaimed an adage, which is now stated: work expands to fill the time available for its completion. Parkinson ’s Law has many corollaries. I have recently run into one: computer memory usage expands to fill the available RAM. Two years ago, I upgraded my computer hardware to gain more memory,… [Read More]