The Coburn Blog

I found this article interesting today, as I was reading Chapter 11 of my A+ Essentials book

A look at the EU Ruling against Microsoft

Personally, while I do not entirely agree on how this ruling is being implemented, I am glad to see someone finally stepped up to the plate, in doing something about Microsoft’s monopoly.

I mean, really, who uses WMP anymore? I use Winamp or iTunes pretty much exclusively, so it is nice to see that programs like WMP and IE, may no longer be included in Future Windows Operating Systems. I say, its about time!..

While I do understand why IE is included in Windows, most people use Firefox anymore. About the only time I ever use Internet Explorer anymore, is for going to Windows Update, or using some other ASP.NET application that specifically requires IE. I don’t see what the big deal is though. I mean, if a user prefers IE, they can always download it just like they would firefox, so I don’t see why it HAS to be included. Like I said, the only time I ever use IE anyway, is for Windows Update, and thats only because the web designers require IE specific activex like instructions, so its not like Microsoft couldn’t make it a separate package and allow windows update to work in Firefox, it would just be a website design change on their part, so I just don’t see what the big deal is.

What I think is interesting, this article talks about Windows N products. I think the only reason products like that haven’t sold, is because you don’t see them in stores, or advertised anywhere. I mean, most people obtain Windows XP or Vista thru either 1 of 2 ways; either purchasing it at a retail outlet (like best buy or Staples), online thru system builder licensing agreements, or bundled with a new computer. I’ve yet to see Windows N advertised anywhere, have any of you? honestly, you have to advertise for stuff to be sold I mean common.

I know alot of people are Mac OS X fans now though. In this house, there is a reason why we don’t have Mac machines. When my wife and I got married, one of the first decisions we made, was to keep separate checking accounts, instead of joint like most married couples do nowadays. Basically, my wife and I do not agree on how to keep track of the finances. She prefers to write everything down in her little checkbook, consolidating with the statement at the end of the month, so on and so forth.. Well, me being a “computer” guy, I’m not into carrying a checkbook around with me, nor can I see well enough to write in one, so I do my checkbook differently. I carry around a portable recorder in my pocket, and when I make a purchase, I make a voice recording of it into my little recorder. Then, when I get home, I plug those numbers into my Excel Spreadsheet. Then I look at my online bank statement and compare it to the Excel spreadsheet at the end of the month. I also have an Excel spreadsheet, of my bills, my income sources, and at the bottom I have a calculation adding up all my expenses, subtracting from income, which tells me how much I have left.. With this spreadsheet, I can see at a quick glance, how much money I need for all my bills, and how much I have to play with, which isn’t much, but I do that for every month of the year, Jan-Dec, I’ve done that since we were married, and works out rather well for me. My wifes manual method works for her, so what we do is we each keep separate checking/savings accounts, with our own set of bills.. Mine mostly include the rent, utilities, groceries, hospital bills for myself that type thing, while my wifes expenses include the Car, Car insurance, groceries for her and her daughter, and loan payments she’s been paying on since she don’t have dental insurance..

When her and I both were working at KMC, making identical salaries, we were just barely getting by every month. Our incomes were about equal, right around $1,000 a month before taxes. My expenses total up around the $800 a month range, and hers slightly higher then that around $900-1000 every month, Part of this is because she leases her car, which is $310 a month, plus she has to buy food for not only herself, but her daughter as well..

Keeping track of our finances separately, gave us a method to budget our money separately, so like, if one of us wanted Computer parts, for example, we would take what was left over after the end of the month budget, and use that, which worked out well for the computers we have in this house, but as many bills as we have, with the low amount of income we have to work with, none of us had a space $1,000+ to work with, so we couldn’t just go out and buy a Mac, for example, we had to find a cheaper alternative.. What we ended up doing, since even $400 was asking too much for an HP or Compaq PC, was going the custom built route. One month, I’d buy a $50 processor, next month a $50 motherboard, next month a $50 case and power supply combo, next month a monitor, so on and so forth.. Once we had the whole computer purchased, we’d start building it, part by part. Thats a generic example of what we did odiously, since my server PC was built from using spare parts I had lying around, and my wife and step-daughters computers they purchased, but some parts were “hand me downs” from old stuff I had lying around, but thats basically what we did.

Unfortunately, because we went that route, we had to find a way to hook everybody up to the internet at the same time, since my wife had no desire to wait for me to get off (since my wife spends as much time on the computer as I do, if you guys can believe that. LOL) and odviously, hooking 5 computers up to the internet, was not an easy task in the beginning, back when Warsaw only had dialup, but when Warsaw came out with Broadband a couple years ago, it solved that problem. First we had ISDN, which was costing us over $200 a month easy, then when DSL came into town, the price we paid dropped to about half that. Then when Comcast came into town, that was real heaven sent for us. With Comcast, we were able to get that VOIP thing, so we don’t have a long distance telephone bill, which cut our expenses down dramatically, about half of what we were paying with DSL, so I think going to broadband really saved us money in the long run. I mean, think about it, 5 separate phone lines, plus 5 dialup accounts from a provider, would cost us over $400 alone, so we save alot by sticking to Cable Internet. Right now we pay $140 for cable TV + internet + telephone with unlimited long distance, which is pretty good I think.. We could probably cut that price down even more if Vonage came to this area of the state, but they haven’t as of yet, and even if they did we wouldn’t save a whole lot. It would be $88 for cable+ internet + 24.95 for Vonage, which I suppose would be about $20 cheaper, every litle bit helps I know so we have been waiting for vonage to come here, but not as of yet..

Anyway, my point in all this, building computers from scratch like this, only come in the IBM PC Platform. You can’t just custom build a Mac Computer. I mean you can but the price of parts is much more expensive, so we went the cheapest route we could, and thus, have to stick with the Windows platform, at least for now until Apple decides to make Mac OS X compatible with the AMD platform. Up until 2005, there was no way of accomplishing this, but I was reading in my A+ book about how Apple went to Intel / AMD in 2006, so this may change in the future, but from what I understand, we’re still restricted to the Windows and linux platform. The thing is though, even if Mac OS X does go over to the Windows platform, I would have to dual-boot between XP and OS X, to be able to continue learning about both platforms, since I plan on finding employment in the IT field someday, I have to continue familiarizing myself with the latest OS’s and platforms, as best I can anyway. A person can only learn so much as home, and not having a job where I’m working with Computers all day, home exposure is all I got for now. The good news though, having to find a way of setting up all these computers here at home for my family, and maintaining them, has given me plenty of Networking and Sever experience, that I can use in the future to gain employment in the field.  At least thats the plan so far anyway.   Of course, I’d love to get a job hooking up 200+ computers to the internet, similarly to what I do at home with these 5,  or working for a datacenter with clusters of computers,  but all these things are just far off dreams for me right now. My goal anymore, isn’t to go for what I want,  but will put food on the table for my wife and family, so that was why I decided, instead of just going for an associates in Networking, go for a bachelors, aiming for a salary position, so that my wife and family are well taken care of in the future, so when I graduate close to being the time my wife retires,  we will no longer have to worry about money, in the long run anyway, so even though I may be without a job now,   I figure its only a temporary solution until those college degrees are in my hand, where I can really start job hunting,  not just some job working at walmart or mcdonalds that would keep me from concentrating on my schoolwork,  that I probably would have a stressful time doing anyway with my vision as low as its gotten.