Edit 1 (17/10 6.30pm) : Some paragraphs at the end about the PC/laptop industry.

Today we were supposed to hand in our final WR. Everything was fine for my team, up to this morning. I suddenly remembered that we are supposed to email our final WR to out ST. Then during the exam briefing, discovered another flaw, the WR I printed had fonts smaller compared with those of other groups.

Immediately "chiong" to library to print. At first ok, then end up must print two more photocopies. Print out new content page, print out appendix again. To save costs, we had to split up the printing of the coloured and non-coloured pages thus adding to the confusion we already had in the computer lab in the rush for computers.

The printing of the two photocopies were like very unnecessary lah. I ask my ST the rationale of this, even he did not know the reason. He merely postulated that the the OP assessors may need the copies for reference.

But anyway, I feel its a waste of paper and money lah. It harms the environment and results in the chopping of more trees lah. Didn't the school think of that instead of blindly pursuing the quest of convenience?

Human beings all about the same lah, its the "me" first attitude before the welfare of others or the environment. The only way to change this is if the collective majority changes. For people to be less mistrustful of others in the first place. This can be seen from details as small as lending of handphones on the street. If someone wants to borrow your phone on the street to make an emergency call, will you lend compassionately in the assumption that he is telling the truth. Or will you take the risk of his life because you mistrust his intention after taking your phone (read: steal your phone).

In Singapore, its statistically proven the latter will most likely happen. But in others especially more developed ones , the former will tend to occur.

This can go even bigger into the realm of economics. Everybody knows that in order to correct the US current account deficit in the long run, everybody has to appreciate their currency relative to it. But this will hurt a country's export competitiveness if it is the only country that does it. Thus everybody, fearful of the moves of each other, will not make any attempt to do anything. The problem gets worse. The need to correct this imbalance grows ever passing day but everybody choose to ignore it for the sake of thyself and their people.

What about the Cold War? The reason why the US and USSR were engaged in such an arms race was to make sure they could outdo each other in the event war occurred. They both acted rationally in the hope that that was the best course of action in the interest of their country. None took steps to pursue a peace accord as both sides were mistrustful of each others willingness to abide by the accord if it was signed. So it was their own interest first.

So many things we do in our lives are governed by this herd instinct and pure irrationality. We know what is the morally right thing to do but we do not do it because we fear others will not reciprocate. This as shown by the above examples, are not limited to politicians, we as the commoners are vulnerable to this mindset too. And as Yoda says, fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering. So in the end, everybody suffers. And then we start another round of blame game of why some other people did not take action earlier to avert the problem.

So you may ask? If I make the first move, and others do not follow, won't I lose out or lose face? The answer is, in many situations, it is not possible to predict the actions of others. But you can predict the actions of yourself, knowing the act of compassion that you have carried out has benefited the ignorant collective majority even though they may call you stupid/ the guinea pig. But in such situations, someone will still stand up to make the change because they know its right.

The bigger question here is, whether the people in societies today could be too accustomed to their comfortable daily lives that none will be willing to make the potential sacrifice. In the past, where one's basic needs are lacking, people are willing to do this knowing that they have nothing to lose. In the era of materialism and the need to money for survival, could we have conditioned our minds so much so that we fail to take necessary risks?

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Roy just came to my house to have his laptop fixed. His was a Lenovo Thinkpad T60! Just one notch lower than my dream laptop. I was so elated to have this opportunity to touch a machine so similar to what I desired!!!!

Anyway, the reason for coming was to replace his Windows Vista with its predecessor, the Windows XP. He felt that Windows Vista was running too slowly for his needs. The main bottleneck was actually the Intel 945GM internal graphics chipset. Despite the 2GB RAM and a Core 2 duo 1.83 Ghz, performance was still hampered by the inadequate graphics. Turning off the Aero interface was a no-no as he wanted to preserve what ever identity Vista has left.

And so I did. And I ran into problems right from the start. The XP installer program could not detect any available hard disk partitions during the initial "checking hardware" phase. It was then I realised the interface was actually a SATA one. The only way to bypass it then was to copy the SATA hard disk controller drivers into a FLOPPY DISK for loading. Please, how many desktops still have floppy drives much less their much smaller counterparts. Fortunately, I have a USB floppy drive so I set about copying the files.

I tried loading the disk. The installer recognised the drivers but even then, the hard disk still could not be recognised. As a last resort, I took a look at the machine's BIOS settings. Turns up my savior was buried in one of the settings. There was an option of swapping the SATA firmware from AHCI to compatibility mode. This allowed the rest of the XP installation to continue smoothly.

But as most geeks will know, the installation of Windows itself is actually chicken feet. The relentless hunt for all the drivers is what can make us tear our heads off. Usually, PC manufacturers would place their drivers on their websites. But they could be be sometimes outdated. Most notorious are graphics and sound drivers. For the T60's case it problem lay with the mini-PCI a/b/g wireless adapter. The Intel driver I tried could not work. This despite giving no indication during its installation that it was incompatible with the hardware it was intended for. I was initially quite convinced that it was the Intel driver as I caught a faint glimpse of the word "Intel" with wireless when I scanned device manager prior to reformat.

Fed up, I installed the Everest Home Edition 2.20 to detect the hardware. It turned it up as an Atheros a/b/g wireless-PCI card. Spirits lifted, I went in search of Lenovo's website but turned up empty. Surfed to the Atheros website, even worse. I found out that it is just a chipset manufacturer and had no hand in the writing of drivers.

Fed up even more, my last of the last resort, ask Windows Update. I do not usually do this as the drivers in Windows Update are usually quite outdated, and I have some tales to tell about it giving the wrong driver. What came up was even more absurd. It detected it as an SMC PCI a/b/g adapter. Wallou, how can three different companies be detected out of an adapter which obviously could only be made by one or none of them. But turns out it was correct. I could not explain my joy when the wireless icon finally appeared in the system tray. The graphics, Synaptics touchpad and power module drivers were also installed in the same session saving me precious time.

Next was the sound and Bluetooth. The sound driver part was really my stupidity. The Lenovo's website was arranged in a way that a drop-down menu would bring one to a sub-category. I did not see it!!! And I had to wade through almost a hundred files to find only that particular one which I initially could not locate. I installed the Realtek High Definition Audio driver from the Intel's website despite knowing full well the chances of it working were very slim. As expected, I reached a dead end. Finally after I searching again, I managed to locate the driver. It was for a Soundmax High Definition audio chip. Installed it and everything else went smoothly.

Now, this is stupider. The bluetooth driver I downloaded was correct. But the adapter refused to let itself to be detected. I thought it was a driver problem so I reinstalled multiple times. Turns out, its because I did not even turn on the function in the first place. It required a key-combination of Fn+F5. That magical shortcut really did save me additional time. And how did I find out?? Where else but the manufacturer website. Proving once again that no computer geek can be an island. Knowledge and skills in a particular field can never be gained in its entirety even if one participates fervently in specialising in it.

The problem also lies in the way laptops are manufactured. In the quest for doing more with less, manufacturers have to keep on innovating their products. The ever growing necessity of increasing processing power and features coupled with the need to reduce power consumption and heat generation, has made the market for laptop components ever more vibrant. Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) have to keep updating their products to keep up with the latest technology.

Hence as such, components used in laptops are usually proprietary. They are built this way as laptops are designed in the assumption that there will be no future upgrading. Thus parts among laptops are simply not designed to be mass-produced in the scale of desktop computers. This partly explains the higher costs of ownership associated with laptops.

This is even more so with Thinkpad computers now built by Lenovo. With technologies like the magnesium rollcage design and hard disk active protection, conventional components have to be redesigned to accommodate the physical constraints imposed by the chassis. Off-the-shelf components available to mainstream laptops usually cannot be used with the Thinkpad.

Now the issue with drivers. Desktop users can have it easier as its parts are more standardised throughout the industry to maximise economies of scale and reduce costs. Thus driver writers have an incentive to ensure that their code is compatible with the majority of the market. This is not so true for laptops. Certain sensitive technologies like the Biometric fingerprint reader cannot possibly be written industry wide. With a smaller user base, drivers are less likely to be available for users in other than the small amount of manufacturers who incorporate these technologies into their products. They are also less likely to be available for other platforms such as Linux.

Drivers are thus harder to find for laptop hardware. This problem will explode if the manufacturer goes bust. Normally in the past, third-party programmers will fill the gap. Not so laptops, their small user base after the machine has reached the end of its service life does not justify the cost of writing a driver.

Wow, thinking about such stuff really gave me a headache. Computers really come in all shapes and sizes., Their problems come in several times more than that. Although I like computers, sometimes the endless supply of problems when I deal with them really pisses me off. But strangely, I seem to like it that way. Computers have always been very interesting to me no matter how much it also annoys me sometimes. Irony huh??? Wonder does this have any correlation to the way I treat people?

Labels: Anthropology, computers