Geeks2U | May Newsletter

Do you remember that computer you had in 1993? I bet you thought it was great, it processed your words, played space invaders, had a colour screen. Wow, what a privilege it was to have your own home personal computer.

Your standard run-of-the-mill computer in 1993 was known as the '386. It ran at around 30mhz, had a hard drive capacity of 50mb, and had about 8mb of RAM if you were lucky. At the time, this was considered to be more power than you'd ever need in a life time - Bill Gates stated in 1981 that “0.64mb ought to be enough for everybody” - yet only a matter of years later, a normal 2008 household computer has two processor cores that each run at about 2500mhz, a hard drive capacity of 250,000mb, and has about 2000mb of RAM.

What has happened since then that we need so much more power? After only 15 years, the computing power of your standard home PC has increased by over 200 times. Chances are, the PC you're using right now is something that NASA's top scientists were only dreaming about just a couple of decades ago.

In this age of obese home computers with so much power that each one is capable of controlling multiple global satellite networks, it seems baffling that that old '386 didn't have half the problems that your computer is having today. One explanation for this is because the software industry, in it's attempts to utilize all this new super computing power, has had to improvise the way they go about business and over the years has resorted to an increasingly convoluted series of short cuts to assist them in their programming – though it's nothing much to worry about when you have several gigabytes of ram and a ridiculous amount of processing power ready to gobble up any bits of cyber spaghetti that have gone AWOL here and there, which is why these days it's important to stay up-to-date with the latest computer gear.

So next time your computer gives you that blasted error message and you emit an incoherent string of object-hurling gestures and ape noises, just take a step back and consider how amazed the archaeologists of tomorrow will be at this particular stage in our technological evolution, then call us.

Technician of the Month

Anthony Hill

Anthony joined Geeks2U very soon after we commenced our computer repairs business back in 2005. He is very highly regarded by everyone on our team but, more importantly, by the thousands of our customers he’s absolutely delighted with his skill and courtesy.

Anthony is also renowned for his ability to explain technical issues (provide computer technical support/help) in plain, easy-to-understand terms, without the technical mumbo-jumbo. His IT knowledge extends all the way back to the days of DOS in the mid 1990s.

With such an extensive IT background, Anthony is well equipped to tackle any IT problem.

His IT skills include, but are not limited to:

• DOS, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista
• Office 97, Office 2000, Office XP, Office 2003
• TCP/IP networking
• Microsoft SQL Server
• Antivirus / Spyware / Firewalls