The Desktop Computer Isn't Dead Yet

According to news articles in the past year or two, the desktop computer is beginning to cry "I don't want to go on the cart." According to this article, the arrival of real tablet PCs is going to take a slice of the computer market, and it won't be coming from notebook or laptop sales.

I won't deny that laptops are everywhere these days, and getting more powerful all the time. Currently, I use a laptop as my main computer, and have a 10-year-old desktop kicking around used to play YouTube videos and such on my TV. I, for one, plan to buy a desktop computer as my next major computer purchase, for several reasons.

Firstly, my laptop hardware went obsolete REALLY fast. I bought it in July 2007, and by the fall there were far more powerful models out for the same price. I bought a model with a decent-enough video card in hopes of playing a few games, but even games of several years earlier than 2007 had to be run with minimal video settings. As far as 2010 games go, the situation is hopeless.

Secondly, I dislike very much that for my laptop's processor to run at full advertised speeds, the bottom of the computer gets hot enough to cook pizza pops on. If I hadn't bought the 12-cell battery that lifts the bottom of the computer off the desk, providing extra ventilation, the computer would be hot enough to cook two pizza pops on. It's possible that newer laptops are better now and don't run as hot, but I've always found myself running in power saver mode at 600 MHz just so I didn't scald my lap.

Thirdly, one of the main arguments against desktop computers is that they are chained to your desk. While it's nice that laptops have batteries and can go anywhere, they still need to spend some amount of time chained to a wall outlet every so often. Until wireless power is brought to the consumer market, laptops will still partially have the same chained problem as desktops. After a few years, your laptop battery goes and you have to stay chained to the wall all the time anyway.

Desktop computers have much more longevity than laptops for several reasons, meaning that they're more worth the money you spend on them in the long term. First and foremost, desktops are super upgradeable if you buy a system with future upgrades in mind. You can always pop in more RAM, another hard drive, another video card, etc. Laptops are almost always not so. Also, the hard drive in a desktop will last much, much longer than that of a laptop, because it remains stationary all the time. Laptops bounce around all over the place, and usually the hard drive will give out in a few years' time at most. My current 10-year-old desktop still has its original hard drive running fine. When your laptop eventually does need repair, one needs to either send it away to a manufacturer for weeks, or attempt to dismantle the entire computer, just to tinker with whatever is broken. When a desktop computer is opened up, everything is easily accessible and within reach.

It used to be that you could make a valid argument against desktops and their space requirements. You need room for that giant CRT monitor, and someplace to put your tower. These days, you can buy compact desktops that are about the size of a laptop standing on its side, or even smaller if you look at the Home Theater PC market. LCD monitors are the standard these days, so they don't require much space either.

I can't speak for the rest of the computer user world, but when I need to sit down and focus on work on the computer, I work more productively if I'm sitting at a desk. If I'm sitting at a desk, I enjoy having a big screen to spread out all my windows on, and a mouse and keyboard. I could use all these accessories with a laptop, but it seems more practical to me to have a dedicated desktop hooked up, rather than plugging and unplugging from my comparatively underpowered laptop all the time. I can especially see this situation if I ever found a job doing computer work from home, as I imagine is the case for a significant portion of the working population in the computer industry.

In the past year or two I've seen home servers come out on the market for the average computer user. Regular users are beginning to realize the importance of file backup and the convenience of central media servers. Combine this market with the home theater market, and you have one desktop-dominated market area. Laptops just don't make sense to be run as always-on servers.

Desktops can clearly offer more performance power than laptops if you are willing to pay for it, and it's not just hardcore gamers that need the power anymore. Users of CAD software, graphical design software, video editing and encoding software, and virtual software all need a large amount of RAM, processing power, and storage space. Even software developers would enjoy faster compile times for development projects, even if it means less time to use as a valid slacking-off excuse.

In short, if desktops are losing share of the PC market, it will stop losing and eventually stabilize. The desktop computer is not going away any time soon.

Are You A Tradesman or a Gardener ?

Leaders do not always act rational. Or they act rational in a way that seems irrational to others. Especially in situations of crisis personal interests change quickly, and often the good of the organisation is scarified for personal protection or gain.

I knew directors at Chemviron Carbon who, in the face of an approaching crisis, hired extra staff only because they knew that soon they will be asked to reduce overheads and make redundancies, and by making those redundant they just hired they got away with not touching those who had been there before, effectively cementing their status quo and ending up with exactly the same number of people they had before. This is irresponsible, despicable gambling with human chess figures.

I knew of directors at 4711 who, in the face of an approaching crisis, had to make suggestions about cost savings and instead of making real contributions, though about ideas that would sound great on the surface but could never been implemented. Their motivation was protect their fifhdoms and not end up with smaller budgets, less staff and reduced importancte.

I knew of directors at Chemviron Carbon who deliberately hired the second best person for a job because the best one was “too ambitious” and was perceived a threat to those less qualified but yet above him in hierarchy. If you deliberately hire the second best and deprive your company of the best resources because of personal interest, that’s criminal.

All these behaviour patterns seem totally irrational to an outsider who doesn’t see the underlying motivation of the leader (who, in this examples, hasn’t deserved that title). It is therefore vital for any controlling organ such as a non-executive board or a CEO to understand what drives their leaders, especially in a crisis, and to to take them out of control temporarily and replace them with a neutral, external crisis manager who has no personal interests and no political agenda and acts for the best of the organisation without regard for personal gain or loss.

The problem is, many organisations still feel bullet-proofed, even if they are already bleeding to death. Human nature promotes denial. Military analysts had long predicted a possible Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, but America fell victim to complacency and megalomania and denied such a possibility. Over night, the opinion of many so called “experts” changed dramatically.

Similarly sad was the shock the US suffered on 9/11. America felt bulletproof because of its superior military power, but simply did not see that that an envelop with Andrax or a few suicide bombers could make their airplane-carriers and nuclear missiles redundant. Over night, perception changed.

Just because something is too horrible to even imagine does not mean it will not happen.

Many commercial organisations are in a similar situation: They are highly vulnerable and perhaps disaster is already knocking at their door, yet they still think they are bulletproof. Why? Because the worst case scenario is so terrible that they simply deny the possibility that it might happen. They are blind and think that history can be projected into the future: “It has worked all the time in the past, so it will too work in the future”. But as every stock investor has learned, past performance is no guarantee for future performance. Personal power is not stronger than life’s reality.

How to change that and make managers see the risks? By changing views and perspectives. If you can’t see around the corner, change your position. Step a few yards aside and all of a sudden you can see what’s around the corner. For an organisation, this means to bring in external views, new ways of looking at things, adding external experience that does not exist in the current structure.

But this leads to the next problem: Why change a system that benefits yourself and do something that seems to disadvantage you? This is were we need a paradigm shift. As long as leaders are rewarded with bonuses based on 12 weeks results, all they will ever do is thinking in 12 weeks horizons. They give a damn investing in new technologies that saves 20% of the corporation’s cost over the next 10 years but will reduce the cash flow position next quarter. They give a damn about hiring extra staff to deal with high growth if this means that profits take a short term dip because hiring means recruitment and training costs.

Only if leaders start being rewarded for long-term performance and when leaders are rotated and taken out of a job after a number of years regardless of their performance, their motivation to protect and cement their status quo will become superfluous and attitudes will change.

At this moment, most leaders treat their organisation like a tradesman bending and forming a work piece until it fits him, while what we need is a culture where leaders treat their organisations like gardeners, creating an environment where organic growth and development can take place, fertilising and enabling that organism that’s called a company.

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Corporate gifts can promote your products

Before going to give a gift, it is very important for a detailed analysis of the recipient to consider. For example, the corporate gift giving to your boss appreciate you into him. What if your business is important that your donations can be with you. Your gifts to employees should improve their self-esteem and reward them for their work performance so far. Totrading partners, a memory of those gifts should be recognized for their help they have offered repeatedly to the company.

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Types of Electrical Inverters

An inverter is an electrical device that is used to change direct current (DC) into alternating current (AC), which is the type of electrical energy in your home that comes from the power company. There are various types of inverters including pure sine wave, modified sine wave and square wave inverter.

1. Inverter Uses

   • Inverters are used for different purposes and the electricity, or energy, produced by the inverter is used to power various types of electronic equipment. Inverters can be used for household appliances such as televisions, computers, refrigerators, stereos and lighting, which all operate with AC electrical energy. Of the three types of inverters (pure sine inverters, modified sine and square sine inverters), pure sine inverters are used for most household appliances and provide a regular form of sine wave energy conversion unlike modified and square sine wave inverters.

   Pure Sine Inverter

   • A pure sine wave inverter, also known as a true sine wave inverter, uses sine waves, which oscillate regularly in order to produce electrical energy to power appliances. The sine wave inverter produces sine waves with AC machinery that rotates and creates the type of electrical wave that is usually produced by the utility company with the use of a generator. There are many benefits to using a pure sine inverter since all electronic equipment is designed to be used with sine waves. Additionally, some appliances such as light dimmers cannot work without the use of sine wave power and microwaves cannot operate at full output without sine wave power. Pure sine wave inverters are more expensive than other types of inverters.

   Modified Sine Inverter

   • A modified sine inverter differs from a pure sine inverter because it operates by creating step waves instead of regular oscillating waves. As a result of this, most appliances cannot work with this type of inverter because they require a regular energy output that cannot be produced using step waves. However, some appliances can operate with modified sine inverters though they require more power to run since the level of energy output from the inverter is irregular.

   Square Wave Inverter

   • Square wave inverters make electrical energy conversions using a series of waves that have a rectangular form. The signal from the inverter is very noisy and most appliances cannot function with electrical currents produced by a square wave inverter. The square wave inverter is one of the earliest types of inverters and, as such, the device is incompatible with most modern types of electrical equipment. Moreover, the power produced by this type of inverter can damage some electronic equipment that is sensitive to the square waves of electrical power.

Read more: http://www.ehow.com/info_7919144_types-electrical-inverters.html