Linux to the rescue

It's been an uneventful and quiet few days, cool and overcast weather giving no incentive to venture far, except for re-painting the front railings and taking exercise. I walked to St Luke's to celebrate the Friday evening Mass, and was surprised that nobody arrived. What I hadn't realised was that I'd put the incorrect time in my diary, arriving half an hour after disappointed worshippers had went away. As I was painting the fence, Fr Mark arrived with the keys, but neither of us thought to check the time of the service with each other. I was quite upset with myself, as I'd finished painting, cleaned up in good time and could easily have left and arrived in good time.

I was doubly careful to arrive in good time to celebrate the Saturday morning Mass, for which four people turned up. Mary, our neighbour from opposite asked if I could take a look at her desktop PC, which was malfunctioning. It's an ancient Windows XP box, at least ten years old. An inspection revealed that the hardware is malfunctioning. It boots, and then reboots before reaching a full desktop making a tiny click sound which indicates a motherboard trip switch being triggered, probably due to the thermal sensor malfunctioning, or doing its proper job, or reacting to a motherboard voltage irregularity.

On odd occasions in the past, I've recovered a computer from this kind of failure by taking the back off and sucking out the accumulated dust, especially from the CPU and PSU fans. As the machine is so old, and given that Windows XP is no longer supported with security patches, it hardly seemed worth the effort. Reliability and stability is a crucial issue for older users. I hear enough complaints about Windows 10, because of the way frequent updates make for variability in time elapsed from stitch on to, say for example, starting work on an actual document in a word processor. Then there are all those notifications, nags and warnings which worry people who are unsure what the can and cannot ignore. It's daunting when you just want to do familiar things, and find all those so called 'helpful' digital admonitions are distracting enough to make you forget what you intended to do.

Mary is a light computer user, doing a little surfing, on-line flight booking and emailing, nothing more. A couple of years ago I gave her Kath's old Acer laptop, of a similar age to her desktop Dell. I set it up to run a lightweight version of Linux Mint as a backup device. It hasn't seen much use until now as it involved her getting used to a different kind of keyboard. No fun for a touch typist I guess. We set it up on her workstation, attached the Epson Stylus printer and powered it all up. It booted to the desktop and started Libre Office in less time that a Windows 10 machine with ten times the amount processing power. Moreover, the operating system made light work of finding the relevant printer driver and completing a test print successfully. About five minutes from switch on altogether. 

On a Windows 10 machine this initial process might take half an hour, but not just due to boot time. The rapid expansion of the market for high street digital print-shops in recent years is an indication that occasional printing need is a deterrent to owning and managing a printer for many consumers of digital media. If you have a printer less than two or three years old, Windows 10 will find and download and install drivers automatically. For older devices, the process breaks down, search for the right download site has to be made by the user. The involves identifying the precise version and region of the world the hardware is destined to operate in. There can be thousands of options, so there's no simple straightforward solution to getting 'legacy' devices to work. 

Some older devices never get driver upgrades and have to be scrapped. The cost of all this wastage, not to mention the toxic waste generated by computer redundancy, both to the economy and the environment, is unimaginable. New improved feature sets are always touted as beneficial, but for the majority of basic users, reliability and usability are what's most needed. These essentials have certainly improved over the past thirty years, but so has their complexity, making users ever more dependent on after-sales services provided by manufacturers.

Anyway, Mary is now set up properly with a computer and printer that's quite quick and reliable, doesn't suffer from viruses, or need unending updates to sabotage her workflow. Best of all, it cost both of us nothing to acquire, and me just a few hours of set up time, some years ago. I'm starting to think my remaining laptop running Windows 10 could benefit from the same treatment. The trouble is migrating data from two separate user areas, and learning how to do a clean install from a UEFI motherboard 64 bit device. I don't spend as much time as I used, to messing about with computers these days, let alone using them. For most purposes these days I use a tablet or a Chromebook, and just need transfer files to one Windows 10 device to print with my trusty HP  lazer printer, which I know works with Linux as well. Is it worth the effort?

Redevelopment progress in Central Square

Yesterday was a cold and rainy day, enough to sap motivation to go for my usual walk, so I just stayed in and pottered about. An email notification of pending water rates bill from Dwr Cymru prompted me to go on-line and register to get access to our account on-line. It wasn't quite as straightforward as it might have been, and I had to ring the help line to check about the entering the name of our account into a database field which seemed reluctant to accept what I entered from the account holder's name line of the bill address. Once sorted, I was able to download a pdf of the bill to examine.

When I mentioned to Clare that I'd done this, she complained, saying that she'd rather receive a paper copy, and then pay on line, something she's used to doing, perhaps even more than me. I returned to the Dwr Cymru website and discovered that in signing up for web access to the account (aka eBilling), I had lost the possibility of paper billing. Oh dear! So then I proceeded to de-register from using the online account, and when asked to explain why as part of this routine, stated I needed both and, not an either/or option..

This morning, by co-incidence, the water rates bill arrived in the post. It was already on its way when I was registering and de-registering yesterday. Hopefully this won't have disrupted the paper billing sequence in future. When you only get two water rate bills a year, it's easy to forget when they are due. I may get an email reminder, but Clare doesn't. If I was away when it was due, it might not get paid if she wasn't aware it was due.

Later in the morning I walked into town, with the aim of returning some surplus equipment to the office, and to take some photos of the Central Square Redevelopment construction site. It's seven weeks since I last did so. Work had just been started on demolishing the four storey row of shops and offices flanking Central Square on the east side. Now, all but a fraction the southern corner of the row has been cleared, exposing the car park behind, itself due for demolition, some time soon.

Amazingly, two tall concrete lift towers have sprung out of the ground, the excavated car park has been enclosed at ground level, and in separate areas of the site, two large skeletal steel structures have been erected. Very impressive indeed. I circumnavigated the site and took twice as many photos as usual, but can't make up for seven weeks of absence. Just as well that I don't have any travel plans for next year, and won't make any until Clare and I can plan to travel again together.

I had a wander around the shops for a while, looking for possible Black Friday sale bargains, but saw nothing that really tempted me at all. I'd quite like a smaller Windows laptop with a hi-res screen, as the work one I have is really too heavy and bulky to take in a rucksack. Most of those on offer are not the right size, and the screens are just not what I need for photo editing, and the ones worth considering are twice the price I am prepared to pay. If Toshiba can so a hi-res Chromebook for under £300, why can so few Windows PC manufacturers do the same for under £400. My other complaint about the new generation of portables is that so many of them have the battery hard wired and sealed in the case, and thus the device dies when the battery does. It's the same with phones too. Built in redundancy - it's the curse of consumerism and on the environment.

Having completed a tour of most of the shops I wanted to visit, I began to feel bored with shopping and headed for home, whereupon it started to rain and get colder, so instead of walking for another half an hour to get home, I waited for a 61 bus. During the journey, the heavens opened, sending forth a torrent of hail as well as water. It had just about stopped by the time I got off the bus, but everywhere was briefly covered with a white slushy blanket. By the time it got dark, the temperature had dropped just enough to cover the cars with frost. Winter is certainly on its way.