Continuing on in this short series on Computing In Poorer Countries Part Two.
For many access to computers is limited in all countries that have a population that have an indivual income earnings below what is concidered to be below povety level, that still are able to access the internet and make post on facebook videos on Youtube.
Of course with the ever growing popular use of smart phones even in countries that we in America would consider to be below poverty level, many have scraped enough cash together to purchase one of these phones on time payments with cameras and Internet access they are able to to upload video's and pictures to Facebook, Twitter and I don't know how many social media sites.
I was forced to start using Facebook as my own family stopped using their Yahoo and and Hotmail email account and well as the instant messaging services provided by these web based in favor of Facebook as have many of our relatives in the Philippines which is the country that I am basing these series of post on.
My daughter-in-law is still in the Philippines she is blessed with a mother who worked hard and earned her nursing degree went abroad as many in Asian countries looking for work do, so Diann was able to go to school at one of the better schools the the area where lives a very sharp young lady who has earned 2 collage degrees one in Computer Science the second in Nursing following her mothers footstep and now works as a nurse. She enjoy using her computer skill to make all kinds of interesting different kinds of picture arrangement of her friend coworkers family on Facebook while raising my granddaughter.
My wife's family is from the island of Leyte which is one of several large island that make up the southern part of the country much of the family still lives there and did not migrate north as many of the sisters and brothers have done. In order for one of my nieces to go to collage the girl had to travel for an hour by bus to go to school guess they live in a rural area her mother works hard in what is called a Barangguy which is a small local community government with in a province at a Well Baby Clinic her income is 1,000 peso per month but has put 2 of her kids through collage.
"Tita" may know how to use a computer I don't know, but when her daughter asked me for help in completing her last year of education for her Computer Science Degree I did so and provided her a laptop that my son took to with him to the Philippines. That I purchased in a Radio Shack store in San Francisco, California took it with me on the ship that I was working on to Guam, where I use to live and gave it to him.
"Elmera" just graduated a few days ago and used the laptop for writing her theses and is now job searching I wish her luck. We communicate via Facebook messages in order for her to access the Internet she has to travel for 20 minutes on a bus to get to the nearest town that has Internet access.
"Tita's" son "Earl" worked his way through a Philippine Merchant Marine School to get his third mate License. When I met him the first time he was working for Shipping Agency that provides crews for ship around the world. He had 2 cell phones and earned extra income from selling loads to people and merchant sailor he was in contact with for their cell phones and wireless Internet connection. Though his income is low his greatest dreams in life are to work as a Merchant Seaman under his License and to own a laptop.
This was during a period of time before my wife passed away, his mother had come up from Leyte to assist in caring for her. It was during this time of of waiting to say good-bye to her that I decided for lack of anything other to do to teach my nieces and Earl basic computer repair. Earl has a great desire to learn more about computers to learn to repair them I sent him and my nieces a book from this website; diy-computer-repair.com which is the site that I found the books that I used to learn computer repair building servers and my favored source for information on computing I have.
I had an email chat with a lady in the Philippines that know a different sister-in-law that lives in a city and rural farming area south and east of Manila called Cavite this lady is a school teacher is raising her children on her own has no idea as to where her husband is, they parted company some time ago. "Daisy" is a 30 old school teacher who greatest wish is to have a computer she cannot afford to buy one not new at least. But she does stop of at an Internet store to use one a couple times a week.
Understanding her desire to have her own computer, I suggested she build her own said that you can buy one part at a time a case or find some one to give you an old no longer working computer and learn which parts are still usable. Said, look you say you have no time to do that but you have time to sit and chat with me in IM video. Go to this website diy-computer-repair.com you will learn most of what you need to do to do so free at this site.
There are people in all of the poorer countries of the world that do the exact same thing daily. Desiring to have a computer but do not realise that they have the power to build a computer, part by part; some parts they can get for free out of trash dumps daily computer cases are placed in land fill that have perfectly good working power supplies memory motherboards CD Rom's, hard drives. The just are not the latest and greatest.
People don't understand a computer with a MAC or a Windows OS are rich man computers the Linux/Unix operating systems are free most of which will run from a CD Rom, a CF card, flash drive. A windows OS is the single most expensive part of building the computer from parts if you choose to use it $100.00 average additional cost for the build.
So you have an old P3 processor motherboard that is good has 256 meg memory power supply works you have a keyboard maybe a mouse (We are so use to using a mouse that we forget that the same inputs are on the keyboard we have to learn to use them.) Just because the hard drive may be bad does not mean the rest of the computer is.
The point of this story is we as humans have an natural desire to improve ourselves as a whole unless we are a drug dealer that uses their own product and limit themselves to what they have income wise from their product. No I will not get started down that road.
We not only need to do new things our minds require us to do so. I have given examples of people involved with Computing in Poorer Countries.
What is computing in this world today it is not just the PC I am writing this on, it is the computers in the power plant that create the electricity, I use to power the computer.
The digital watch on my wrist to tell me how late am staying up late, the TV set using a microprocessor to run the LCD digital display, the wireless remotes that we have for our TVs, radios, the radio in your car ( factory equipment on many new cars guess looking for the remote can cause you to keep your eyes off the road same as that computing device called a cell phone) the fan in the ceiling with a light or 4 in it, your webcam, the ignition system of your car everything we do including our satellite communications.
The one thing that all of the people who I have in mentioned have is a deep belief in God; the salvation of Christ and that through daily prayer the will have the means to be able to live through another day and that some day they may own a computer.
The price of a laptop computer made in the Philippines of good quality and 1 year warranty is around $400.00 us or around 20,000 pesos.
On the subject of Computing in Poorer Countries I will include the United States in this list. according to a news story in today's new there are 85 million plus persons in the United States that are not receiving unemployment benefits that are jobless that may have just given up on trying to get a job any kind of job that do not receive any form of Government Assistance.
I a couple of weeks I fear that I will become one of them if I don't get a job on a ship soon.
I may continue with this series at a later date and I trust that you will be reading every one of them.
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Computing In Poorer Countries!
Computing In Poorer Countries,
Here we are 12 years since all the computers in the World were suppose to stop working.....
The year that Microsoft created 2,000 OS or so I am told, and all the nuclear arms in the world were to launch themselves destroying the earth's population.
According some news stories in 1999 due to MAJOR COMPUTER MAL-IF-FUNK-TIONS!!!!!
The cause the motherboards internal clock was not programed to go beyond 1999 according to thinking of the time but they rolled over into 2000 on their own as the earth was saved at least that is the story as I remember it. Now most people don't even remember how the world nearly came to an end.
We had the Fireworks in every country in the world and nothing eventful happened and the world was at peace for a day.
All 747 airplane's would fall out of the sky as they are the first commercial aircraft to be fly by wire designed to take off and land by auto pilot not human hands 1968 computers did this. (Bet you didn't know that; one of the perks of being an airplane buff and Private pilot)
So what has happened in the world of computers well we have 8 core processors from both AMD and Intel for a large price. Intel now has a new processor called 2011 (Really don't know why I am still building computers with 775 socket motherboards; though processors are getting harder to find for these boards, as are the boards.)
We have now newer versions of processors for the 1155 series which are only 2 years old and near the cost of the old 775 processors in many of the old favorites. A little more expensive but the price of fuel for the ships that travel across the seas to the manufacturing plants has increased 50% in the last 2 years.
The world economy in on the skids and the rich just keep getting richer world wide not just here in America, so you ask what does this have to do with Computing in Poorer Countries well everything.
I am going to use one of the poorest countries in Asia to example this in this post the Philippines. To give you some background I have been there several times, my wife was from what many of us revere to as P.I. so I will use this form in future reference during this post.
In the P.I. the most popular subject to take on a collage level is Computer Science that is if you are able to go to collage only about 5 % of each high school graduating class gets to at the expense of the government which award a full scholarship to the top 5 students in every high school public and private.
The population is fanatical about 3 things Basketball the national sport, Cell Phones or should I say text phones as no one there talks on their phones they text while eating, singing, dancing, in the CR yes the CR or COMFORT ROOM as it is called in the P.I. the restroom to us Americans.
Sometimes in their sleep you can hear texting not snoring.
Why not for 10 pesos we can get a load for just texting and text for 24 hours non stop from Smart Brothers or Globe wireless providers.
Third thing Computers.
For computing there hundreds of Internet cafes all around the country even where there is nothing but rice farms and if your Smart Brothers wireless broadband router can receive a strong enough signal you can set up an Internet cafe 10 /15 kilometers from the nearest town 4 computers but at what cost, you see computer parts at retail stores in the P.I. are the same price as here in the states from the big 3 suppliers New Egg, Tiger Direct, Directron, and hundreds of other computer parts outlets in this country.
There are several computer manufacturing companies in the P.I. most laptops are made there some are imported Sony and Acer, these companies may have factories there. I have a CD ROM that is made in the P.I., that I took out of some computer it still works or is it a floppy drive, oh well.
How do I know, I have been there and as I have a great interest in computers, which is why I have this blog; I have priced the local inventory in relation to U.S. dollars.
I set up my niece with her own Internet cafe which is also a small store in the northern part of the main island of the P.I. Luzon in the land of the Ilacano as it is referred to as that is what the people who live there are called. I also taught her computer repair and provided her the books that I used to learn what I know about repair, building and installing, Operating Systems weather, Windows or Linux /Unix distro.
With her Computer Science degree I hope she will do well. Without my help she would not have that source of income to go along with the family's small store and her Load Business, that she sell broad band and cell phone loads to all of her neighbors who are farmers, police officers, owners of other Internet cafes, construction workers, fishermen, students, and all around hard working people that have an average monthly earning of 1,000 pesos or $22.00 in the farming area where she lives.
My sister-in-law's store earns about 500 pesos a day at around 20% profit, their farm land yield around 30% if a typhoon does not destroy the rice crops days before harvest time so they have a little better income and my brother-in-law drives a motorbike with a side car that is a taxi, has done so for years and does odd jobs in addition to his farming. The few tools I bought him over the years, the electric drill 1/2 " chuck and a $90.00 welding machine made him a big man with his neighbors.
When I was visiting in 2006 my niece had 2 computers, both she received from the government as part of her educational scholarship, one had windows 95 and a old 20 pin power plug on the MB, the other had a 24 pin plug and had windows XP home.
Neither were working good thing Carmencita and and her son Brian came up from Caviti ( I hope I spelled that right) for a visit now Carmencita had been a Computer Programmer for the National Government in her younger years before quiting to raise her 2 sons.
Her oldest son Brian started fooling with all the old computers he could dig out of the garbage cans and became a self taught computer tech, in high school he was repairing all the computers in school. With a 4.0 grade average he earned his scholarship and was working at the time for a major business in the P.I. earning 10,000 pesos a month and working on his Engineering Degree.
In short Brian took the computers apart pulled out all of the electrical connector to the MB replaced them 3 times then pulled the memory cards asked for a pencil with an eraser cleaned the grime off the gold plated contacts on the chips reseated them 3 times plugged in the computers which booted ran some DOS commands for self test and both computers worked again.
Said to me for a friend that is 60 pesos for a business 6,000p; when I get tired of doing my work and want to take a break I tell my boss that the computer need to be reformatted which really doesn't and it will take 10 hours all I do is defragment it and he does not really know what I am doing so I go spend time with my girlfriends. Age 21 at the time and already had a degree in Computer Science doing computer programing and repair in the IT department.
Which got me to thinking "I got to learn how to fix these things myself".
As this is starting to get a bit long in the tooth I will stop here and continue with part 2 at a later time.
Here we are 12 years since all the computers in the World were suppose to stop working.....
The year that Microsoft created 2,000 OS or so I am told, and all the nuclear arms in the world were to launch themselves destroying the earth's population.
According some news stories in 1999 due to MAJOR COMPUTER MAL-IF-FUNK-TIONS!!!!!
The cause the motherboards internal clock was not programed to go beyond 1999 according to thinking of the time but they rolled over into 2000 on their own as the earth was saved at least that is the story as I remember it. Now most people don't even remember how the world nearly came to an end.
We had the Fireworks in every country in the world and nothing eventful happened and the world was at peace for a day.
All 747 airplane's would fall out of the sky as they are the first commercial aircraft to be fly by wire designed to take off and land by auto pilot not human hands 1968 computers did this. (Bet you didn't know that; one of the perks of being an airplane buff and Private pilot)
So what has happened in the world of computers well we have 8 core processors from both AMD and Intel for a large price. Intel now has a new processor called 2011 (Really don't know why I am still building computers with 775 socket motherboards; though processors are getting harder to find for these boards, as are the boards.)
We have now newer versions of processors for the 1155 series which are only 2 years old and near the cost of the old 775 processors in many of the old favorites. A little more expensive but the price of fuel for the ships that travel across the seas to the manufacturing plants has increased 50% in the last 2 years.
The world economy in on the skids and the rich just keep getting richer world wide not just here in America, so you ask what does this have to do with Computing in Poorer Countries well everything.
I am going to use one of the poorest countries in Asia to example this in this post the Philippines. To give you some background I have been there several times, my wife was from what many of us revere to as P.I. so I will use this form in future reference during this post.
In the P.I. the most popular subject to take on a collage level is Computer Science that is if you are able to go to collage only about 5 % of each high school graduating class gets to at the expense of the government which award a full scholarship to the top 5 students in every high school public and private.
The population is fanatical about 3 things Basketball the national sport, Cell Phones or should I say text phones as no one there talks on their phones they text while eating, singing, dancing, in the CR yes the CR or COMFORT ROOM as it is called in the P.I. the restroom to us Americans.
Sometimes in their sleep you can hear texting not snoring.
Why not for 10 pesos we can get a load for just texting and text for 24 hours non stop from Smart Brothers or Globe wireless providers.
Third thing Computers.
For computing there hundreds of Internet cafes all around the country even where there is nothing but rice farms and if your Smart Brothers wireless broadband router can receive a strong enough signal you can set up an Internet cafe 10 /15 kilometers from the nearest town 4 computers but at what cost, you see computer parts at retail stores in the P.I. are the same price as here in the states from the big 3 suppliers New Egg, Tiger Direct, Directron, and hundreds of other computer parts outlets in this country.
There are several computer manufacturing companies in the P.I. most laptops are made there some are imported Sony and Acer, these companies may have factories there. I have a CD ROM that is made in the P.I., that I took out of some computer it still works or is it a floppy drive, oh well.
How do I know, I have been there and as I have a great interest in computers, which is why I have this blog; I have priced the local inventory in relation to U.S. dollars.
I set up my niece with her own Internet cafe which is also a small store in the northern part of the main island of the P.I. Luzon in the land of the Ilacano as it is referred to as that is what the people who live there are called. I also taught her computer repair and provided her the books that I used to learn what I know about repair, building and installing, Operating Systems weather, Windows or Linux /Unix distro.
With her Computer Science degree I hope she will do well. Without my help she would not have that source of income to go along with the family's small store and her Load Business, that she sell broad band and cell phone loads to all of her neighbors who are farmers, police officers, owners of other Internet cafes, construction workers, fishermen, students, and all around hard working people that have an average monthly earning of 1,000 pesos or $22.00 in the farming area where she lives.
My sister-in-law's store earns about 500 pesos a day at around 20% profit, their farm land yield around 30% if a typhoon does not destroy the rice crops days before harvest time so they have a little better income and my brother-in-law drives a motorbike with a side car that is a taxi, has done so for years and does odd jobs in addition to his farming. The few tools I bought him over the years, the electric drill 1/2 " chuck and a $90.00 welding machine made him a big man with his neighbors.
When I was visiting in 2006 my niece had 2 computers, both she received from the government as part of her educational scholarship, one had windows 95 and a old 20 pin power plug on the MB, the other had a 24 pin plug and had windows XP home.
Neither were working good thing Carmencita and and her son Brian came up from Caviti ( I hope I spelled that right) for a visit now Carmencita had been a Computer Programmer for the National Government in her younger years before quiting to raise her 2 sons.
Her oldest son Brian started fooling with all the old computers he could dig out of the garbage cans and became a self taught computer tech, in high school he was repairing all the computers in school. With a 4.0 grade average he earned his scholarship and was working at the time for a major business in the P.I. earning 10,000 pesos a month and working on his Engineering Degree.
In short Brian took the computers apart pulled out all of the electrical connector to the MB replaced them 3 times then pulled the memory cards asked for a pencil with an eraser cleaned the grime off the gold plated contacts on the chips reseated them 3 times plugged in the computers which booted ran some DOS commands for self test and both computers worked again.
Said to me for a friend that is 60 pesos for a business 6,000p; when I get tired of doing my work and want to take a break I tell my boss that the computer need to be reformatted which really doesn't and it will take 10 hours all I do is defragment it and he does not really know what I am doing so I go spend time with my girlfriends. Age 21 at the time and already had a degree in Computer Science doing computer programing and repair in the IT department.
Which got me to thinking "I got to learn how to fix these things myself".
As this is starting to get a bit long in the tooth I will stop here and continue with part 2 at a later time.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
An Intresting Product Review On Newegg.com! (RANT)
I know it has been some time since I written anything on this blog but have some time on my hands so I am.
My subject today is An Interesting Product Review On Newegg.com. (RANT)
The other night I was reviewing some products on New Egg's website and came across a external powered, multi hard drive, USB2.0 adaptor. What this adaptor does is allows us to transfer data, partitions and the entire drive to an external hard drive without using an enclosure, there are several different companies that make these adaptors. They work with both 3.5/2.5inch PATA hard drives and any sata hard drive.
I have one myself and have used it several times to clone a failing hard drive; the problem lies in the fact that we are using a USB2.0 port to do this well not all computer have the fast USB 2 port many depending on the year of manufacture have a "High Speed" USB port which is about 260 kbs as apposed to the fast USB2.0 port of what is suppose to be around 460kbs. Depending on the chip set of the controller.
We who have read any motherboard spec. sheet know that USB2.0 ports are backward compatible with the original USB1.1 that the new industry standard USB3.0 is in theory also backwards compatible to a USB1.1 port. Is very slow upwards of 10 hours to clone a 80gig PATA hard drive I know from experience using the USB2.0 port on my old PATA Acer Aspire 5100.
My 3.0USB external 320gig will not work with my laptop; the power LED will not even light up but will work on any of my desktop PC USB2.0 rear ports; for information only.
On with the story of the review of one of these adaptors on newegg.com the guy was irate as to the speed of the hard drives with the antiquated equipment and amusingly stated that SATA hard drives were around before USB2.0 ports and that the maker of the product should not insult the buyer with this outdated electronics.
Hay dude! Where did you come up with this the industry released the first SATA hard drives in early 2008 and they were 1.5 gig transfer speed. later the SATA 2; 3.0 gig hard drives and it was a couple of years ago that we received the SATA3; 6gig hard drives. This is 2012 that is only 4 years, look how far we have come. My first build used a SATA hard drive and that was in 2009.
I have 2 of the 1.5gig hard drives in 2 different computers that were purchased in 2008.
I have an ASUS motherboard I removed from a Compact 7360 Pesaro that has 2.0USB ports that had Windows 98 installed on the hard drive that I am now using in a different case as well as the AMD K6-2 processor in my FREENAS (which can be viewed on Youtube the video of or my previous post below) how old is that motherboard? I will let you tell me! This processor is equal to a P3 Intel.
USB2.0 has been around for a long time and there are actually very few products that are USB3.0 on the market now near 3 years since the introduction. Most motherboard manufactures offer 2; USB3.0 ports and 3, USB2.0 port today.
One last note; Newegg.com is a very good supplier of computer part I have purchase from them often.
Hope you enjoyed this as much as I did in writing.
My subject today is An Interesting Product Review On Newegg.com. (RANT)
The other night I was reviewing some products on New Egg's website and came across a external powered, multi hard drive, USB2.0 adaptor. What this adaptor does is allows us to transfer data, partitions and the entire drive to an external hard drive without using an enclosure, there are several different companies that make these adaptors. They work with both 3.5/2.5inch PATA hard drives and any sata hard drive.
I have one myself and have used it several times to clone a failing hard drive; the problem lies in the fact that we are using a USB2.0 port to do this well not all computer have the fast USB 2 port many depending on the year of manufacture have a "High Speed" USB port which is about 260 kbs as apposed to the fast USB2.0 port of what is suppose to be around 460kbs. Depending on the chip set of the controller.
We who have read any motherboard spec. sheet know that USB2.0 ports are backward compatible with the original USB1.1 that the new industry standard USB3.0 is in theory also backwards compatible to a USB1.1 port. Is very slow upwards of 10 hours to clone a 80gig PATA hard drive I know from experience using the USB2.0 port on my old PATA Acer Aspire 5100.
My 3.0USB external 320gig will not work with my laptop; the power LED will not even light up but will work on any of my desktop PC USB2.0 rear ports; for information only.
On with the story of the review of one of these adaptors on newegg.com the guy was irate as to the speed of the hard drives with the antiquated equipment and amusingly stated that SATA hard drives were around before USB2.0 ports and that the maker of the product should not insult the buyer with this outdated electronics.
Hay dude! Where did you come up with this the industry released the first SATA hard drives in early 2008 and they were 1.5 gig transfer speed. later the SATA 2; 3.0 gig hard drives and it was a couple of years ago that we received the SATA3; 6gig hard drives. This is 2012 that is only 4 years, look how far we have come. My first build used a SATA hard drive and that was in 2009.
I have 2 of the 1.5gig hard drives in 2 different computers that were purchased in 2008.
I have an ASUS motherboard I removed from a Compact 7360 Pesaro that has 2.0USB ports that had Windows 98 installed on the hard drive that I am now using in a different case as well as the AMD K6-2 processor in my FREENAS (which can be viewed on Youtube the video of or my previous post below) how old is that motherboard? I will let you tell me! This processor is equal to a P3 Intel.
USB2.0 has been around for a long time and there are actually very few products that are USB3.0 on the market now near 3 years since the introduction. Most motherboard manufactures offer 2; USB3.0 ports and 3, USB2.0 port today.
One last note; Newegg.com is a very good supplier of computer part I have purchase from them often.
Hope you enjoyed this as much as I did in writing.
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