Wednesday, February 09, 2011

Travelogue: Tah-Dah!

I cannot claim to have done it alone. In fact, I could not have done it alone, but I loaded all of my assigned specs anywhere near this quickly. I was able to get into the specs in for review and get out of the office around half-six this evening.

Now the fun part begins; I get to go through the revision phase!

Wherever you are today, I hope that you have something you can point to as an accomplishment!

Don Bergquist - 09 February 2011 - Maida Vale, London, UK

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi - I am curious about somethings related to the UK. When you go to a public library is it like here where there are free PC's you can use running Windows and do they give you free Internet access? Do coffee shops there give you free wifi access? Do the hotels make you pay for wifi? Also when you visit offices are their PC's and operating systems similar to here? Last question - when you are in buildings can you see the wiring or is it hidden by walls like it is here?

Cheers,

Anonymous Reader

Unknown said...

Dear Anonymous Reader.

Thank you for reading and commenting on my blog.

You sure as a lot of questions. Here are the answers that I can give you:

1) Public Libraries. The one in Thames Ditton didn’t offer free use of computers or WiFi access. At least they didn’t while I was living there. Others may.
2) Windows is the predominate O/S worldwide. The last figures I saw indicated that Microsoft Windows® runs approximately 9 of every 10 computers in the world.
3) As of office computers, unless you’re talking about specialized application computers, the predominate O/S there too is MS Windows.
4) I have stayed at only a handful of hotels in the UK in all the times I have been there. Of those three did offer free WiFi, four didn’t. I know that there are some (at which I have not stayed) that did offer it.
5) Some coffee shops offer WiFi, but the ones I have been to, you need to pay for the access. Surprisingly, Pubs tend to offer free WiFi more frequently than coffee shops (in my experience).
6) An interesting question – about the wiring, I mean… It really depends on the building. The hotels I have stayed at (with the exception of two) all had wiring inside the walls (like you would see in most buildings here. But (just like here) there are buildings that predate the days when electricity in the home (or office) was common. For example, my company’s home office (in Wembley) is a modern high rise. The building that my old company had its offices in (in Thames Ditton) was a renovated Victorian factory. The wiring ran in conduits along the outside of the walls. There are buildings here that use both of these methods. Some of the older buildings in New York that I have visited have outside-the-wall conduits for power.
I hope that this answers your questions.

Thanks again for reading and commenting on my blog.

Don

Anonymous said...

So then it looks like wiring on the outside of the wall has more to do with when the building was built than what continent you are on. I haven't seen very much of that in the US but I have spent very little time in our oldest cities on the east coast.

Regarding computers do you know if a lot of companies and organizations in the UK rejected Microsoft Vista when it came out like they did here? My guess is that they did reject it because slowness, bugginess, and lack of compatibility costs money. And will Windows 7 be accepted in the UK?

AR

Unknown said...

Dear Anonymous Reader,

Yes, I think that whole inside Vs outside the wall thing has more to do with whether the building was built with rather than retrofitted for electricity.

As far as “Rejecting” Vista, I think it has more to do with not wanting to be an early adopter. Well, that and not wanting to go to the expense of having to upgrade the software the business runs. Heck my old company was still on Office 2000 when I left because they had so many employees it would have been cost prohibitive.

Add to that the problem of compatibility and you give the end-user lots of reasons not to upgrade until you force them to. I would still have XP if it weren’t for the fact that Microsoft has made it practically impossible to buy a machine that isn’t configured with Windows 7 these days.

Besides, it was more-or-less an axiom at one point that you should always avoid the odd-numbered releases of MS Products. They tended to be buggy and the even numbered releases tended to add little functionality and fix all the bugs from the previous version.

My pc from my office was purchased with the Windows 7 O/S but was retrofitted with the XP O/X because it is a much more stable and secure environment. Personally, some of the features in Windows 7 are pretty nice; others are a bit gee-whizzy for me.

Thanks again for reading and commenting on my blog.

Don