(ISF) Re: Excel

Any computer running Windows 98 is woefully beyond its life cycle. The easiest way to upgrade the operating system is to get a business account with Dell and buy a new computer for as little as $300 for a box without any bells and whistles. Or go to Wal Mart and get whatever they have on special that week. The machine you have now is best used as a boat anchor. It's too big and clumsy to make a good door stop. Also, Windows 98 was a dog from the first day Microsoft released it, and they never did make it any better.

You'll get a computer that's much faster, has loads of disk space and internal memory, and will have Windows XP Personal installed on it.

Better yet, splurge and spend $500-600 and get a package with a new flat-screen monitor and the "free" printer thrown in. These days they may even be giving away an MP3 player as a bonus.

If you wait a few months, the computer will come with Windows Vista installed at about the same price. This will give you even more advantages.

Using a Windows 98 computer in a business today is sort of like using a rotary dial phone. Most computer applications available today are based on the assumption that you have lots of internal memory, a bunch of disk space, and a fast processor. Using Windows 98 is sort of like trying to figure out what to do on a rotary phone when the the voice on the other end of the line says, "Press 1 to...."

If you want to get an indication of how obsolete your machine is, call up some place that takes computer donations and ask them if they want your computer. There should be a significant pause on the other end followed by the person telling you politely they don't want the computer.

Linux is great if you get a version that more-or-less installs itself the way Windows does. It can sometimes be a bear to configure, and a bear to troubleshoot if it ever does go south. Spend the extra hundred bucks and get a new machine with the operating system already installed.

-----original message-----
>>;I was wondering if anyone can help me with a problem I am encountering with Excel software. I am using windows 98 machine and have Office 2000 installed. Everytime I use Excel it freezes up. I tried downloading updates from microsoft for excel but still it does not work. I even uninstalled and reinstalled the office 2000 but still the problem persists.>>

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For those who read Theron's last 2 responses to the Information Systems Forum ServList:

* (ISF) Re: Excel (This one); and

* (ISF) RE: From CIO Magazine: "Being an IT chief at a nonprofit is often a lonely, thankless job - but somebody's got to do it";

Know that wiser words couldn't be purchased. I would also add the following notes to what he advanced:

1. If you are requesting donations for computing equipment, go for the cash and buy the latest standard configuration machine (See Theron's recommendation or contact me for our Ujima 2007 Workstation standard sheet). Only take the "tech-out-used-up" computer leftovers offered when it's a last result to nothing. A computer is now antiquated at purchase and should be considered "disposal property."

2. Please consider not accepting any old monitors and began to look at flat screen (no-butt monitors) that have better energy usage, much lower/safer radiation levels and give you back desk real estate.

3. Maintain all computing property (Hardware and software in your inventory database (or in a simple word file). Use this information to make boarder decisions on in regards to future purchase, hiring a tech person, computing transition planning and general knowledge about what you have and how long you had it. Let this advised be an organization policy with procedure and process).

4. It is very important to keep accurate records of you software license and workstation location as software vendors have made substantial gains in prosecuting copyright violators and are continuing they efforts to collect on any illegal use of their product rights. Let this advised be an organization policy with procedure and process).

5. Stop collecting computers by the parts. Most of the items in expand cards (modems, sound, video and network cards) are now being installed with equal or better quality on the motherboard's of must computers. Most standard configurations are ready for daily work (with word-processing, spreadsheets, databases, drawing/presentation applications, etc) and only specialty workstations (i.e. scanning/OCR or surveillance/DVR purpose units).

6. Microsoft is no longer supporting their application release 2 generations back. What that means is once VISTA is commercially released, anyone with less then Windows 2000 will not be supported on the tech-lines and any one with less then Office XP (There was a release of Office XP2003!) will not be supported. Those folks that decided to stay with old machines will have to maintain old support ready). Other software vendors are drafting similar or like or more restrictive (1 year) company policies.

7. Process Management is a critical methodology required for any business operations and necessary for decision making. It (Process Management) loans itself quite easily to maintaining the overview of what tools (technologies) will fit best for any part (process step and subtask) of the process activities. It your organization has not identified and documented it's core processes and they are not generally known by your staff, management and board/execs, then the organization is being robbed in its effort to effective uses of resources, changing for improvement or getting the best bang out a your dollars as everything in fluidity and not solid information to make measurements or decisions on. Let this advised be an organization policy with procedure and process). Capture your best potential by capturing your process! Write Ujima for a free boiler-plate process (template tool).

8. When deciding on tools, base your decisions on the staff that will be using them. Persons more attuned to devices will have much better ideals on how such tools can be employed in an organization to increase productivity and make life at work easier. Use them! Let your technology decisions be based on: 1) organizational processes; 2) staff technology committee; and 3) desire reasonable solutions into the foreseeable future. Complete some reasonable cost benefit analysis (ROI) and then present the information to the decision makers to go get the dollars.

Isom Taylor, Ujima Consultants

<http://www.ujima.biz/> www.Ujima.Biz - Consultants%40Ujima.Biz">ConsultantsUjima.Biz

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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>>Any computer running Windows 98 is woefully beyond its life cycle. The easiest way to upgrade the operating system is to get a business account with Dell and buy a new computer for as little as $300 for a box without any bells and whistles. Or go to Wal Mart and get whatever they have on special that week. The machine you have now is best used as a boat anchor. It's too big and clumsy to make a good door stop. Also, Windows 98 was a dog from the first day Microsoft released it, and they never did make it any better.>;>

Although I agree in principal with the idea that Windows 98 is woefully beyond it's lifecycle (and was a dog), I also know have had experiences (with friends of mine - I don't run Windows) that installing versions of MS office on one generation back of Windows (like 2000 on Win98, or Office XP on Win2K) is often prone to instabilities, which I chalk up to basically not caring on the part of MS, so you'll upgrade (or worse, on purpose so you'll upgrade).

That computer isn't best used as a boat anchor. Someone in this thread suggested taking the same machine, putting Linux on it, and using Open Office, which is a great alternative suggestion for being able to use older computers in a way that is stable, but still interoperable (in other words, using Excel documents.) It's amazing how older computers can run recent versions of Linux quite well - and do everything you need them to do. The computer can also be used as a great email station, web surfing station, fileserver, print server, or can be turned to any of a dozen useful purposes. I once used a 5 year old computer as a robust router and firewall. Worked fabulously (and when the hard drive died, I slapped a new one, in, and I was up and running again quickly.)

The approach of just throwing computers away, and buying new ones just because MS software doesn't stand the test of time is, to my mind, extremely unfortunate, and certainly is not helping our environment. I struggle with this - I want nonprofits to have machines that will work for them - that they won't spend more resources (time, which is, of course $) supporting old machines than they would buying new ones. But the amount of petroleum products used in building computers (and shipping them), as well as the rapidly decreasing landfill space (or, more petroleum products used to ship the garbage to China) is giving me serious pause. If gas prices and warm or unpredictable winters are any indication, we can't keep doing business as usual, IMHO.

Michelle
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Michelle Murrain, Coordinator
Nonprofit Open Source Initiative
michelle%40nosi.net">michellenosi.net
http://nosi.net

http://www.zenofnptech.org

"One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of
the shore for a very long time."; -- Andrés Gide

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