Ok, fun stuff, If I could change rule the world
Not saying anything political here, just looking at small inconveniences that bother me, and should be fixed fairly easily. On my previous site I mentioned this one and it has to do with the radio, I know many people now are listening to satellite radio or commercial free entertainment of some sort, but I still get most of my new music from the radio. I have always wondered about the programming directors that push the concept of playing back to back songs for roughly the number of minutes equal to the station number. My problem has been that everyone does this and everyone that listens to the radio knows that when the commercials do come on, it will be an uninterrupteable block of about 15 minutes of commercials, which to most people means time to flip the channel. Now think of this for a second, radio gets it's revenue from selling commercials, commercials are sold based upon the rating(or demographics) of the station and the long play time probably pushes the ratings up, but now we have trained the listener to flip off the radio station to a new one once a commercial airs which effectively negates the value of the commercial, I mean if I'm not the first commercial in the block, my advertising dollar is completly wasted.
I've always said that radio stations should instead of airing long uninterupted commercial free music, they should advertise no more than one commercial per commercial break. (or something similar, I'm not a marketing director of course they could make it more savvy for the listener) Think of it this way, you are listening to a music station, and a commercial comes on, some people automatically flip it, and try to find another good station with music in it, well you hit your pre-sets and find nothing worth listening too, which station do you go to? the one that is on commercial number 4 of a long block of 20 commercials? or the one who's on commercial number one of one commercial?
Another minor complaint I have had against radio stations is the selection of the music, I understand playing the top songs from the genre of music that you represent, and I almost always prefer to hear newer songs over older songs, but on a pop/alternative station which has a large catalog of music, what is wrong with rotating in older songs from a band that is currently having a hit song? Pirate radio in California used to do this and got very good ratings if I remember correctly. If Alanis Morrissette has a hot top ten song, that is appropriate for the genre of station that the music is playing, then it would be a good idea to reduce the number of times you are playing that particular song and putting some of her older stuff in there to add variety but still stick with the hot sounds. (numbers made up out of my ass right here) say that a station normally in a 24 hour time frame will play a top song 8 times(once every three hours) how about instead of doing it 8 times, you do it 5 times and the other 3 you put in a song from that artist's previous work(assuming it's not a new artist of course)
that is of course just the way I see it, others probably are just fine with hearing the same song every three hours or so.
maybe what to look for in buying a computer
ok many of my rants here is going to be for fellow retail sales people that is just sick of stupid things people do. I sell computers for a living(actually electronics, and it's not much of a living either) and I have to deal with trying to educate people that admittedly don't know anything about computers, and who are getting conflicting reports from their friends(who they will always swear are experts), magazines (who's recommendations nearly always coincide with the number of ad pages that is by their top rated products) their wallet (which tell them they can get a computer for $400) .
My first rant is a simple rant, how to buy a computer. It's not tough people, a computer is a piece of machinery that is it. this isn't a decision about where your daughter is going to college, it isn't even a car purchase, it's a simple piece of equipment that does what you want it to do(or not) A few rules, don't trust any one source 100%, because they all have their own view points and most, if not all of them won't fit your needs. A computer expert at work (say a network administrator) has a skewed sense of peformance, because of the equipment that they use and need for their job isn't nearly as long term investment as a home user needs.
we'll start with the absolute minimum rules you should follow when buying a computer. Rule number one is huge, and that is to buy the fastest within the budget you have assigned. It's that simple. if you assigned a budget of $400, then don't waste your time buying a computer, instead get a word processor and an x-box.(ok, sorry, but I guess you can get buy with a $400 computer, just don't expect me to jump for joy when you come in to buy that piece of crap, because I know I'm going to have to listen to you complaining about your piece of crap when you come back to buy a new computer, but of course in your skewed view, you will tell me you bought yourself a high end machine that cost over $1000 so this time you aren't going to spend the big bucks on a new computer---sorry about that, went on a quick tangent, back on point)
ok lets look at minimum specs, a quick thing to remember when looking at specs, is you don't want to compare it to your old computer, as everything out there now is going to look 'bigger or better'. Right now is 2005, and to be honest, you should not buy a computer with specs minimum than 512mb ram, 2.8(or 2800)athlon xp processor or better, 80gb hardrive(although I usually recommend to get 60gb, plus 10gb per member of the family, plus 10gb per teenager, and plus 10gb per each gamer..these are minimums and larger is always better, even if these seem high to you, one thing I have discovered over the years is that hardrive space will always get filled) cd-rw(dvd-rw is becoming standard pretty quick though) dvd-rom drive. If you have any chance of using this computer for any type of gaming then make sure you have an available agp/pcx slot(Celerons don't have agp slots, and most cheap pentium 4's don't have an agp slot). and don't buy a Celeron, spend the extra 50 dollars and get yourself an athlon. As far as extra equipment, firewire and usb2 are both musts(there is always a chance you may end up buying a digital camcorder, and firewire will have the highest percentage of being compatible with it), accept the fact that the floppy disk is dead, and get yourself a usb/thumb drive, they start around $30 and are worth every penny.
that is the minimum recommendations of course, once again always buy the fastest within whatever budget you have assigned, in the retail world you will get other performance within each budget tier.
earlier I mentioned that you shouldn't trust any one source 100%, so I'm going to explain that a little more. Every possible advisor you have will have their own agenda, or viewpoint. If you ask your computer expert at work that is a network engineer, he'll probably undervalue your needs, because he is trying to look out for your expenses. I've had computer experts recommend a computer system with 256mb ram and windows xp. (the reason why is that they are thinking windows Me or windows 98, and don't realize that these low end computer systems do not run well with xp and 256mb, especially when you consider that most low end systems have shared video cards that is using up 64mb ram, windows uses up usually around 100 mb just turning it on. that gives you less than 100 mb to run your computer, not acceptable most of the time, especially after adding anti-spyware, virus software and other software that is running under the service) your work computer expert nearly will always underrecommend the performance that you should have, which effectively shortens the lifespan that you are going to get out of this computer.
If you ask a gaming friend, but tell them you won't game, they may also have a tendency to underrecommend, the reason why, is gamers have a tendency to change computers frequently and think that it's perfectly normal, in their case it is, but for the typical buyers, most home users plan on keeping their computers for probably 4 or more years, once again buying low, means needing to replace soon.
magazines are an utter joke. I'm not kidding. I'm sorry but magazines are more corrupt than any three used car dealerships you will see out there. I remember at a time that PC world used to say 1. don't buy anything except from a reputable dealer, 2. don't buy extended warranties, 3. only buy brands that have 3 year warranties. conveniently the only two brands that fit those descriptions were gateway and dell at the time, and I wouldn't be surprised if they had 50 pages of ads in those same issues. You weren't allowed to buy hp, compaq, because although those received a ratings by their readers, they didn't have three year warranties. you weren't allowed to buy from a host of smaller companies that may have had 3 year warranties and even have high ratings, because well to be honest, they were going to be out of business inside of 6 months. (it became kinda a joke to read their 'watchdog' comments where they seemed to have a form letter "dear readers, remember
that we profiled 6 months(coinciding with their 15 page ad) that we recommended you all go out and buy, well they are out of business, and since it's a mail-order company, there is no laws to protect the consumers, so you people are screwed, but please turn to page 156 where we profile a new company, see their ads from 157-200, and we highly recommend them, they are a mail order company stationed out of the domincan republic, but don't worry they have a 4 year warranty so you don't have to worry." to put it nicely it's absurd.
other people that are funny, is what I call the techno geeks, they believe everything they read as long as it's positive comments dealing with a small company, and negative comments about a big company. I mean if I wrote an article claiming that an Athlon processor could actually produce a formula that would let you go back in time, every techno geek would believe it. If I said something like Microsoft is attempting to take over the world by financing the Iraq invasion, they would also believe that, but if I said that Intel produced a better processor than AMD and show true bench marks from 3000 independent sources, I would be accused of helping the man keep the truth down.
of course you can't believe sales people either, mind you other than extended warranties, there is no push whatsoever to sell computers. There is no profit in computers, there is no markup and they have one of the lowest satisfaction rating of many products. Still they have their own agenda to push, personally my thought is to make you buy at least something that isn't utter crap (otherwords no e-machines, I'm an atheist, but I believe a portion of my soul goes to hell every time I sell a Celeron, e-machine, or a windows xp machine with 256mb ram) personally I don't care what you buy, just nothing that I have to listen to you bellyaching in a few years, faster you get, less likely I have to hear from you in the future. (I do push Hewlett Packard printers though, not because I think they are better, I really don't think there is much of a difference, just if I sell you an Epson printer you will yell at me in a couple of years when you can't find the cartridge, and if you get a Canon, there is no way that it's going to actually survive without having the print head go bad for more than two years, with hp, you'll be able to find the cartridges and they won't break because you changed the cartridge more than twice)
oh well, I'll probably be back to this later.
