It recently occurred to me that with all of our wireless technologies, we still have not been able to overcome the tangle of wires that radiate from the back panel of our computers.  In fact, it just gets worse -  now manufacturers are all putting various jacks and connectors on the front panel as well.

 

The Media Center computer above has the following cables:

1. Power cord
2. Monitor cord
3. keyboard cord
4. USB cable for wireless? mouse
5. Ethernet cable to router
6. Many cables and wires for the 5.1 sound system
7. USB cable for the Media Center IR blaster receiver
8. USB cable for the External backup hard disk drive
9. Headphone cord
10. Microphone cord
11. USB cable for web cam
12. S-video input cable from satellite TV decoder box
13. Two (L and R) audio input cables from satellite TV decoder box
14. S-video output cable to Sony television
15. Two (L and R) audio output cables to living room stereo system
16. Dipole radio antenna
17. Ethernet cable to connect the satellite modem to the router
18. Coax cables (2) connecting the rooftop satellite dish to the surge suppressor
19. Coax cables (2) connecting the surge suppressor to the satellite modem
20. Parallel printer cable

Along with this, each device seems to need power, so unless it is USB powered, there is a power cord/supply associated with it.  I count 10 power cords plugged in around my desk. Entergy Corp is probably very happy to have me as a customer!

I will not detail all the cables and cords involved in my digital darkroom computer, but with film and slide scanners, flatbed scanner, 2.1 stereo, ink-jet printer, dye-sub printer, etc. it is just as tangled as the Media Center computer. I fantasize about the day that you can just take a device out of its’ box, set it on your desk, and presto – it just works! Well, hop to it, guys.

My research into the networking problems that I am having hasn’t been encouraging.  I thought that I was approaching a solution – something in the software configuration of the computers, or maybe a missing protocol, etc.  Eventually, I made my way to a Gateway support document that indicated that there is an issue regarding Windows ME computers running multiple network adaptors (in my case, wireless network card and 1394 network card) not being able to access resources on a Microsoft home network.  Apparently, I can either disable my firewire card, or sit on the phone with Microsoft support in order to obtain their “hot fix” (I pay for the support, of course).

Considering that Windows ME was obsolete even before its’ release, and that Microsoft is abandoning support for the product soon (I believe June ’06),  I thought that the simplest solution would be to upgrade to Windows XP.  I thought that having two XP systems would make it easier for a networking neophyte like myself to set up the network.  So I surfed over to MS to download their XP Upgrade Adviser.  After downloading this utility (32MB – thank goodness for broadband) and running it, I discovered that my photolab computer had numerous upgrade issues with XP.  That, along with numerous other issues regarding either Windows ME or the Gateway system (fails to boot or shut down properly, HDD is showing signs of eminent failure with intermittent squealing, among others), made me decide that the best, simplest, and probably cheapest solution in the long run was to buy a new computer with XP preloaded.

So yesterday I did some shopping – Thursday I’m expecting delivery of my new HP Slimline s7320n Media Center PC.  It’s amazing to me what you get nowadays for $500 – 1GB RAM, 1MB L2 cache, 200GB SATA hard drive, LightScribe Dual-Layer DVD burner, comprehensive software suite, etc.   It makes me think back to some of my past computer purchases;  DEC Rainbow 100 computer – $3500,  10 MB HDD for my DEC Rainbow – $2500,  15″ monochrome monitor for Rainbow – $1500.   Back then, you did not get software bundled with your new system.  I recall spending over $500 alone on 3 pieces of software: Digital Research’s CP/M, Microsoft’s MSDOS, and a very early Microsoft attempt at a spreadsheet called Multiplan.  Later on, for my IBM PC, I purchased a 2400 baud (yes, that’s 2400 bits per second) Hayes modem for $500 – imagine downloading a 32MB file with that! How about a dual-cartridge Bernoulli Box (20MB x 2) for $2000?  I can’t even remember how much the 20MB cartridges cost, but I do remember that they were about the size of a textbook!

I am feeling very excited about getting my network going – I just hope I am not being overly confident about easily setting up the network.  I’ll post my results soon.

I ran across this interesting post by David Byrne (of Talking Heads fame) on his blog.  Seems that copy protection will always be an issue.  This sucks.  As it is, I can’t legitimately download purchased music from MSN Music or Walmart.com (see earlier post).  Now, it looks as if I might not want to even bother buying CDs, if they are going to trash my disk drive when I load them onto my computer.