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have, for years, included pages at my Web site, which discuss or illustrate my various hobbies and avocations...with the exception of technology, the field in which I have made my career. Most of my reluctance to devote a page to this topic is due to the transitory nature of the subject. Technology changes. Quickly. A page written on topic today will scarcely be relevant two to three years from now, and much less so in a decade. Hardware or software that I might recommend today might not even be my continued recommendation, three to four months from now, so quickly are new products, versions and models released throughout the industry. The clich� is: Nothing is constant, except change itself, and the pace of change is increasingly faster. However, there is one piece of advice that I would offer, even though I have found that it is something that many people do not care to heed, and even though you might think that someone like me, who earns his living in the computer industry would not, or ought not be so-inclined to offer, but here it is: �Can�t the computer do that?� Yes... BUT ... just because the computer CAN �do that,� whatever �that� may be, does NOT always mean it is a GOOD idea. The more you entrust to the computer, the more you depend on the computer, and on the technology staff who maintain the software, hardware and the database. Manual filing and data entry are tedious tasks that few want, but once those tasks are eliminated by the computer, you are dependent upon the IT folks, and we are a WHOLE lot more expensive and less-interchangeable than file clerks and data entry staff. Also, once you create the technological monsters that performs massive amounts of highly complex tasks, and keep passing increasingly large and critical components to that machine, it can become nearly impossible for people to figure out how to perform those tasks manually in a timely and dependable manner. As the systems grow increasingly complex, so too does the likelihood of a catastrophic failure of technology-dependent and potentially mission critical functionality. Backup and recovery capabilities, a reasonable level hardware redundancy and elimination of single points of failure can truly prove worth their cost. It also begs the question: Is it truly cost-effective in the long-run to migrate the proposed task or functionality over to the computer system, to save a $20/hour employee 15 minutes a day, if you will have to pay a $40/hour or even higher-paid employee (or vendor @ $80+/hour) twice as much to develop the solution over a 3-month or longer period of time, and potentially need to acquire new hardware, too? Hardware cannot be viewed as a one-time expenditure, as few last more than 5 years befire needing to be replaced to accomodate growth or new sofware. Even if the software development takes just a month and your company's own programmer(s) can complete it in one month, that= $40+/hour x 160 hours = $6400. The $20/hour clerical employee's 15 minutes/day working an average of 240 days/year means it would take you over five years to justify the software development cost alone, and possibly another 2-5 years to reach the payback period for the cost of an addtional PC or server, if one needed to be added to perform the task. Since both software and hardware entail ongoing support costs, the actual payback period could be even longer. As for vendor recommendations, I have had good experience with Dell hardware and support. I have had bad experience with Hewlett-Packard equipment and support, and that includes many of their printers. As for Apple, I like my iPhone, I my iPad. These may be outdated quickly, as well, but for now here are some of my favorite or most useful) iPhone and iPad apps: IBooks is a free ebook reader that will also read PDF files. I now read more than twice as many books via my iPad as hard copy books. Penultimate is a notepad uitilty that allow you to write freehand with your finger or an iPad stylus, but it does not covert the writing to typed text. I use it a lot in meetings now to jott down quick notes and reminders Amazon Kindle reader. Not all ebooks are available for iBooks, so it is useful to have both apps. It is really nice not to have to pack four to five paperbooks for the plane or a weeklong vacation, when you read as fast as I do and can get through 4-5 novels in a week. StormSpotter is another weather app, but this one just shows a radar displaying any severe weather alerts in the target area. Good for keeping an eye out for thunderstorm and tornado warnings and direction, during sporting events. Free Wi-Fi can be used offline to give you locations of free wireless hotspots, when you either don't have a 3G or 4G data plan or don't wish to exhaust that data plan. If you have an HBO subscription on your cable account, HBO GO will let you watch On Demand HBO current movie offerings and specials, as well as past and current season of HBO series, right on your iPad, when the regular televisons sets are being monopolized by other members of your family. COx TV Connect does the same for Cox cable channels as HBO Go does for HBO. The iTunes store also offers similar ABC, NBC, AMC and ESPN apps that allow you to watch live programs, on those channels, when you need an extra set. Photosync allows you to sync photos to Dropbox, SmugMug, another iPhone, iPad, Flickr, FTP server, Google+/Picasa, Facebook, or to a few other options. If you have one of the iPad/iPhone camera kit adapters, this app is useful for saving the photos from a digital camera's SD card to your iPad and then uploading the photos for quick sharing or as a backup. Sometimes, that iPhone or iPad camera just doesn't have the same pixel count or quality as your regular digital camera. The Scrabble app is a nice game to have on a plane or when you are waiting on a tardy physician, or are otherwise sitting somewhere waiting on someone, or something. If you don't have an opponent, you can play the computer, instead. You can always just go to Google.com on the Safari browser with either the iPhone or iPad, but the Google App gets you there with a touch, and also has a pretty slick microphone feature, so that you can search by voice, with usually dependable voice recognition Back to Previous Page Back to Michael Marcotte's HomePage

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