Hari's Corner

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Computer 'experts' and technology

Filed under: People and society by Hari
Posted on Sat, Jan 21, 2006 at 19:52 IST (last updated: Wed, Jul 16, 2008 @ 21:17 IST)

I'll begin this essay with a question. And that is "how many times have you thrown away a computer in the last five years out of sheer frustration of not being able to get it fixed by a competent support technician/department?"

I've been having computer trouble for a while now. My home machine has been down thanks to a host of issues with the motherboard and the PSU. And it's got me thinking about computer technology as a whole and the level it's at now.

It's amazing, but finding a real hardware expert has got to be one of the toughest tasks in today's environment. Sure, there are a lot of technicians, but the less said about their knowledge the better. Leave alone a rudimentary knowledge of electronics, most of these "hardware" experts know much less than I do about how a computer fundamentally works. I can quote a couple of examples. When I recently went to test the system RAM at my dealer's tech support department, all he did was to fit the RAM into a system, booted into Windows and just left the computer idle. Five minutes later, nothing happened and he just took it out and returned it saying, "no problem." But the fact was, I tested this piece of SDRAM using the memtest86 utility which came with Knoppix and it threw up hundreds of errors. Leave alone diagnosing the problem, he couldn't find any! How could he, just by running a computer for five minutes idle in Windows? And testing the CPU? Fit it into a motherboard and switch on the computer. The display showed up and he promptly concluded that there was nothing wrong with it either! Without even booting into the OS! It's amazing that these people get jobs as hardware technicians just by knowing how to assemble a computer. Even a child could do that with the right instructions. The true test of an expert is in knowing how to diagnose hardware problems and for that, you need at least a basic knowledge of electronics. Computers are complex electronic machines and you need a certain level of basic expertise in the field of electronics before you can proclaim a working knowledge of computer hardware. Unfortunately these days, so many computers are thrown out for minor problems that could probably be fixed by a half-competent technician.

I'm more worried about the implications of this present-day "use-and-throw" culture in the IT sector in the long run. Going by my experience, I can imagine how many computers are thrown away as useless every day. I have no statistics, but I believe that five out of ten discarded computers probably could be fixed, but people simply don't bother at all to get them fixed, preferring just to discard them. The trouble in getting a computer fixed is simply not worth it these days when you can get new and better components at dirt cheap prices in the market. A single chip failure can render a whole PCB useless. Maybe a couple of decades ago, people might have picked up the soldering iron to sit down and fix it. Today, you just dump it and move on. And so a huge mountain of silicon waste is being generated every single day. Since a large majority of this waste can be classified as "non-biodegradable" there is a huge environmental problem just waiting to come out in the open. Compound this with the problem of the rapid rate at which this technology is getting obsoleted year after year and we get a clearer idea of the problem at hand.

I think the current era of technical problems has a lot to do with the fact that we are cramming in more and more transistors into less and less space. Modern processors run at terrifying speeds and their crystal oscillations produce a tremendous amount of heat. Motherboards are getting more and more complex with so many components being fitted into less space. And a majority of these modern monstrosities are still air-cooled. In tropical countries there is a real problem of computer components just wearing away due to these reasons. As a result of all this, the lifetime of a computer is just shrinking. Just to give an idea, a ten-year old Pentium machine might still work today, but I wouldn't bet that today's 64-bit processors would last two years, let alone a decade. The technology has just become too fragile and the level of complexity has grown exponentially. In other words, the manufacturing sector in the computer hardware industry has far outrun the after-sales service side of things. Or maybe it's been deliberately kept that way so that you buy new stuff rather than reusing or recycling the old.

Because, you see, I think the solution to this growing problem of silicon waste can only be in recycling some of the older technology. It's not such a bad thing if we can put an old but perfectly working printer to use. The only reason it might have been discarded today would be because it is no longer "supported" either by the hardware port or the software drivers. Neither are difficult problems to fix if only the hardware manufacturers stopped this deliberate obsoletion of perfectly sound technologies just to boost their sales. Maybe the memory chip you threw away a few years ago was in perfect condition but just didn't fit the slot in the new motherboard. If only those devices could be used again, we would save not only economically but also environmentally. There are a dozen examples of how many of these devices could be used again if these hardware manufacturers didn't work hand in glove with the software manufacturers to obsolete our current technologies at such a pace. It's not as though there has been a revolution in the computer industry in the last ten years or so. We're still using the same basic technologies that we were using ten or fifteen years ago. With a few exceptions, the majority of the "advancements" have been mere technology upgrades and not innovations. There is no reason why a perfectly working device should be discarded just because a modern motherboard doesn't support it. It's a criminal waste to throw away good money and unfortunately we've been doing just that for some time now, thanks to the way the market has been manipulated and the way we've been fooled into thinking that we've been having computer revolutions every six months or so. Throw in a few buzzwords and then force them to upgrade by throwing away their old systems. So, unlike your television, your refridgerator or your music systems which have a shelf life of ten or fifteen years or even more, you are led to believe that computers can only last a couple of years at the most before you're asked to move on with the rest or be left behind. The heartening thing is that with growing technology awareness, people have wised up to this and hardware vendors can no longer bamboozle the customers with such a marketing strategy.

And finally, it might just be a good idea to make it compulsory for these computer technicians to obtain a basic diploma in electronics before they're allowed to touch these machines. If nothing else at least ten percent of computers can be recycled rather than being thrown away as gigantic pieces of paperweights.

7 comment(s)

  1. Best way to spot a decent technician is to hand them the manual for your kit. If they read it, throw them out - real techies don't read manuals :)

    Comment by ray (visitor) on Sun, Jan 22, 2006 @ 05:02 IST #
  2. I would be glad if some of them could read. ;)

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on Sun, Jan 22, 2006 @ 08:33 IST #
  3. The industry is full of wannabees, great-pretenders, fly-by-nite operations etcIt took me ages to find a local tech who knew what he was on about, and he makes no pretense of Linux knowledge freely admitting that he is not up with the play. In fact its his honesty that seems to be driving others slowly into the ground.Some of the operators around here are real shockers taking advantage of peoples ignorance, selling dodgey gear, selling pirate software and encouraging piracy.floppy

    Comment by floppywhopper (visitor) on Sun, Jan 22, 2006 @ 15:27 IST #
  4. The standard of computers nowadays definitely has fallen. I've got a laptop which I bought about six years ago, and although it isn't the speediest thing on the planet, it runs Gentoo perfectly - or rather, it did until a couple of weeks ago when its battery charger died. So, I've only gotta fix the charger.But, my newer laptop - only one and a half years old - is already causing problems. Not only has the battery stopped working, but at one point the HDD began to overheat and I've had to underclock it since! The battery still doesn't charge though... :(

    Comment by J_K9 (visitor) on Sun, Jan 22, 2006 @ 17:19 IST #
  5. Floppy, that's a good point about honesty. A majority of these "techies" are pretenders with loads of arrogance and little knowledge.J_K9, yes. I definitely agree. Maybe this has got to do with the fact major equipment manufacturers are now based in places like S.Korea, Taiwan and China over the last decade or so for lowering their costs of production. I'm not anti-Korea or anything, but never been the greatest fan of the quality of products that come out of these countries, although they have come a long way since the early days of "outsourcing". I think the cost-cuts over the years have resulted in manufacturers cutting corners in quality in this industry.

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on Sun, Jan 22, 2006 @ 18:11 IST #
  6. Of course, if you solder it yourself you'd probably void the warranty- but who cares if you are saving a packet by not having to buy a new chip/card/computer.

    Comment by titanium_geek (visitor) on Fri, Jan 27, 2006 @ 13:54 IST #
  7. Of course one also needs to know their stuff before they start fixing their hardware themselves. ;) I am not recommending that everybody should do this, but we definitely need more expertise in the computer hardware industry in general.

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on Fri, Jan 27, 2006 @ 20:30 IST #

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