August 28, 2007

David's Dream: Making Your PC Work Smoothly

Yesterday was the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I have a dream speech". Four years ago, David Strom a technology writer, speaker, consultant and a few other things with decades of experience wrote his own "dream" about wanting computer applications to work together.

David writes I have a dream that one day all of my applications will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood and play nicely on my PC, no matter what version of drivers and odd video adapter is inside my computer.

I have a dream that your and my children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the version of operating system running on their desktop computer, but by the content of their work output on their hard disk.

Will David's dream ever come true? I'm doubtful. As we speak, for the life of me, I can't reinstall the finger print reader software on my Lenovo 3000 N100 notebook. I've rebooted the computer with minimal software installed, but for some reason Softex Inc's Omnipass software, keeps crashing when it tries to re-enroll my fingerprints.

I know that this is one frustrating aspect of computers, especially Windows that makes computer users very angry.

They install a program on their computer, only to find out that it keeps crashing or not working properly.

Some things you can do are:

Ensure your operating system is up to date

Ensure the software you are using is up to date

Disable anti-virus programs before you install new software. Remember to turn it back on when the software is installed

Install as little software as needed

- I know some users who think their computer is a play ground and install every piece of software junk on it. From children's games, to "free greeting card software". Some of this software is downright buggy and others are virus/malware prone

One solution to this entire mess is the increased use of hosted applications. They never 'crash' or make another hosted application crash. The "only" concern you'll have is what provider to trust with your data and of course to ensure you have access to the Internet when you need to.

Read this recent post "How to be a better buyer of software as a service" to get more insight.

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