 Hello and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I'm Kristen Burns, your host here at the Library Commission. Encompass Live is Library Commission's weekly online event. We cover anything NLC activities or library related activities that librarians in the state may be interested in. We do these sessions every Wednesday at 10 a.m. Central Time. It's a one-hour session on average and it is free so you can attend anything you want to. We do all sorts of different kind of things, your presentations, book reviews, web tours, Q&A sessions, maybe even mini-train sessions, whatever we think that may be of interest to those who go out there. Today we are doing our session today on computers. What to know before you buy. And Diane and Michael are here to talk about that so I'm going to hand it over to you guys to go ahead. All right. I'm busy. All right. Kristen's going to adjust the camera for us. I'm Michael Sowers of the Technology Innovation Librarian here at the Commission. Ooh, Zoom. Wow. Zoom in. Everyone is totally not just now. I'm glad I wasn't looking. And I'll let Diane introduce herself real quick here. I'm Diane Wells. I work with it. I'm part of the computer team here at Library Commission. Great. We, a lot of people don't know that the Commission actually does have a webpage floating around out there of purchasing recommendations. And we revised it recently here, kind of last summer and into this winter here. And I just figured what we could do is we could talk about that. Diane? Thanks. Really out of my mind. Well, you know, we want to keep it loose. We have notes. Yes. Yes. We have notes. We're going to walk through it. There's the link on the last slide to the actual webpage if you haven't found that already. The PowerPoint slides that we'll be showing are literally almost the exact same text as what's on that webpage. So save yourself some ink. Don't bother putting out the PowerPoint slides. Put out the webpage when we're all done. And we're going to go through the recommendations. But I know Diane and I don't always agree on the exact recommendations. And there's all sorts of things to think of. Oh, yes. Yes. That's the plan. We're going to kind of just riff off of each other. Also, we want to take your questions. Well, hopefully we'll have some time at the end. But if we say something, you don't understand what the heck we're talking about. We haven't explained it well. Speak up. Either raise your hands and we'll call on you for audio or send it into the text chat. We do have the text chat window open. We will be looking at that as we're going through. I suppose the, I'm going to hand it over to Diane to kind of tell you what kinds of computers we're talking about here today. I guess basically what we're talking about here is just the kind of computers that you might find for, particularly for public access. The web page itself is designed to kind of give you an idea of just computer purchasing in general. And so that would perhaps include workstations for your staff. But I think probably our concentration will be more on public access and maybe perhaps helpful in purchasing something for yourself. But that's, you know, not our main, not our main point. I guess one of the reasons that I thought this, that I was, Michael and I have talked about this page, for example, off and on, ever since he discovered it as a matter of fact. And when we revised it last summer. And I will say that, you know, I think that people are really, I'm intimidated when I go to buy a new computer and I know that, you know, just personally I don't feel like I know enough. And I don't know what anybody really feels 100% comfortable that they're going to like get a really good deal and that they're going to like not have paid more than they should have paid for what they have and did they get what they really need? And so I think one of the first things to note is what do you want it for? You know, and even if you just say well I want a public access computer, that's all fine. What do you see people in your library wanting to do? What do you, do they primarily come in and do poor processing projects? Do they come in and bring attachments that somebody attached to an email and for some reason they can't, their software at home doesn't allow them to do that so they brought a flash drive or, you know, or do they want to play games? Do they want to, you know, log on to a game site and play games? Do they, do they want to, you know, use some kind of phone software? What is it that they want to do? What is it as a public library that is no doubt, I mean it's part of another organization, what are you able to allow them to do based on what your IT restrictions are? And that to me is a really hard area and that's a place where Michael and I have an enormous number of conversations because I've been in government with limited, you know, where IT is pretty well restricted and Michael's job is the newest, the brightest, the best and so we constantly are trying to negotiate that line between what can we do and legitimately justify it and what can we and so we understand that you too have that issue, you know, you may not be able to offer your patrons everything that they want to do, not saying that you should do your best to try but this will help you get the equipment to do what you can and so I guess those are the kinds of things that are important for me to just say up front because it is important to decide what it is you want to do. Alright, before we get into, start talking about specifications and things like that, I want to share one piece of advice that I have always given. I look at purchasing computers, what some people consider backwards but I've never had anybody come back to me and I wish you hadn't told me that. It's always going to be cheaper, better and faster a month from now and in fact I just bought a new desktop computer for a member of my household two nights ago and for about the same computer I bought for myself in October paid about half the price so you know as frustrating as that is we have to accept that. So what I always say is figure out what your budget is first, figure out how much you're willing to spend because you could spend three grand on a computer if you really want to but if you know you've only got 800 bucks already you have to start adjusting your specs to match that and you can get literally less than 48 hours ago bought a computer that would meet every single spec and more of what we're talking about today for under $500. So it can be done, you do not have to spend a lot of money. Alright, so let's go ahead here and start working us through this and we'll start with some desktop recommendations that we have and a lot of this will apply to laptops but we do have some slides about laptops where you want to focus on a couple of issues. Okay, the processor. We probably don't want to get into too much technical detail about how processors work. Thus the late to Tom's hardware. Yes. Those comparisons and his exclamation is going to be at least as good as anything we can do because that is a great website for a computer. Mostly the couple of key phrases you want to be taking a look at right now is you have what's called dual core and quad core and this basically has to do with the number of CPUs on the central chip. I've been buying quad core. Dual core is perfectly fine mainly because most software today won't take advantage of the fact that you have basically four computers under the hood on that central chip. But future proofing maybe if you can budget get a quad core you might be able to get a little more longevity out of your computer. Then also you want to talk about you want to look at the processor speed and what we've recommended here is 2.4 gigahertz or higher. Or higher is going to be pretty easy these days. Or higher is going to be easy these days and if you want to go a little lower that's fine too. The computer I just bought is 2.2 gigahertz. Really is you want at least two point something I would say and to be honest to get into a three point something you just jumped $1,000. We haven't found that yet. You haven't found that yet? We've found that. Crisis may have changed and the other thing is because you're purchasing as a private citizen that's a totally different thing than having to purchase an option as a government entity. That's the other thing to know is that if you're willing to purchase online from manufacturer local and county and state federal government have special programs that they have in line with major computer manufacturers and you can find out about those from your city purchasing department I would think and be able to compare prices. Sometimes the problem with that is that there are limited we can almost always go and get something that is what we need for less than the consumer market but it won't have the longevity it won't have whatever we need to get some warranty options and some other things going through the government purchasing part of life of a particular manufacturer or a particular vendor may also have that and so we haven't really found that we're having a thousand dollars to get up above three because with the packages that are offered on the government side sometimes that's just the package that you have. Granted. Just so you know that. I'm not used to the government purchasing. Exactly. Yeah, I know. I'd like to thank you for talking to us. Okay, the operating system at this point you're buying Vista. I'm going to go out on the limb here we're going to see what Diane thinks but there are computers you can buy where it downgrades to XP. Okay, Vista's been out for well over two years now do not downgrade to XP buy Vista on less I'm going to throw this in if for example your integrated library system your vendor says we will not work on Vista. Okay, that's an issue that is mission critical software. Yeah, and so the package is dependent on that. But your public access machines at this point Windows Vista now there are about seven different versions of Vista we honestly recommend Windows Vista business even though home premium if you're going to go home computer home premium will completely do the job home basic is horrible but Vista has some benefit excuse me Vista business has some benefits and the networking environment in the library you want the business now then we also say here or ultimate addition which is almost which is all those things and a little more and my recommendation is this if it comes with ultimate don't complain but don't spend any extra money for ultimate you're not going to get any benefit out of ultimate that you will even notice ultimate kind of failed miserably with what they were going to offer I bought ultimate I'm talking from experience here I paid the premium for ultimate and I got nothing out of it so it's not worth it the other issue which I did add to our slide here is there is actually what's called 32-bit Windows and there's 64-bit Windows oh boy I've been buying 64-bit Windows I think Krista just bought a computer with 64-bit Windows more and more computers are coming with 64-bit Windows the benefit comes to when you start dealing with memory which we'll talk about on the next slide again if your mission critical software will not run on 64-bit then that's a reason to stick with 32-bit and that's a question you definitely want to ask right and even if you're the software that you're intending to put on public app because mission chains which isn't mission critical in a business sort of way but certainly customer service might need it but you need to know that whether that software is going to run or not especially if you purchase software and you want to be able to load it load existing software on it now most 32-bit software will run perfectly fine on 64-bit what you want to look for is not something that says it will run on 64-bit you want to look for something that says it will not run on 64-bit it's kind of a backwards compatibility issue my home computer is 64-bit I have found one piece of software in the last six months that will not run on my 64-bit computer and that's actually the software for my Sony e-book so and I would have to say that Michael is a great test case for this because I'm sure his home computer has many more things on it than his work computer and we're constantly doing Michael's got a lot of stuff so I don't necessarily be nervous about this what's this 64-bit we'll explain why in just a sec here but check on that so is Vista business a 64-bit version of Windows well there's actually business 32-bit and there's business 64-bit so it's the same Vista but it has to do with how the underlining code is written basically and it will say right on the package or it will stay in the specifications 32-bit or 64-bit it doesn't say either way it's the 32-bit if it's the 64-bit it will say the 64-bit now why does that care well let's talk about RAM let's talk about our memory minimum 2 gigabytes of RAM you can't go below that sorry just things aren't going to run and you'll see offers out there and a lot of well you did see offers out there for last RAM and you know you get that 5-12 thing as common as those those are moving off the shelves you will see that but be sure you're able to get it to 2 gigabytes really 2 gig you're running Vista you need 2 gig now okay we didn't say 4 gigabyte is feasible it will cost you a little more but if you can get 4 gigabytes of RAM that's great more the better the more memory you have the more programs you can run at the same time without slowing the machine down this is the 64-bit comes into play and it just becomes a really I think I can explain this let's see if I can do this I've been practicing on people 32-bit version of Windows you can will only support up to 4 gigabytes of RAM okay but that's total RAM in your system when you talk about video cards let's talk about a little bit later today you have a video card that is 512 megabytes or half a gigabyte you can put 4 gigabytes of regular memory into your computer but it's going to have half a gigabyte on the video card and then it will only pay attention to the first 3 and a half on the main memory so it's so if you have a gigabyte of RAM on your video card it's only going to pay attention to 3 gigabytes of main memory on the computer that's the limitation of the 32-bit 64-bit Windows will support I believe up to 64 gigabytes of RAM yeah so if you want more than 4 gigabytes of RAM in your computer you have to have the 64-bit version of Windows so I've got the 64-bit version of Windows and I have 6 gigabytes of RAM in my computer so and I can crank that up higher if I ever want to how long are you planning to keep this computer? how long am I planning to play? uh I used to be on like a 4-year cycle I'm more like 5 now I see and that brings up what I think is a real lady in addition to what are you going to do with it how long do you think you're going to have to keep it because that goes to whether you do 32 or 64 because more and more applications are going to start requiring 64 more and more are going to start requiring more RAM it will always be more RAM it will always be faster speed as just as you've seen the size of the story to go from a floppy disk to terabytes that you can carry in your pocket that's the exponential speed at which these kinds of things are increasing as well so if you're investing in a computer that you know is going to have to last 5 years you're probably going to want to balance within the budget that you have to spend today what I need to do right now and what I what I might need to be able to do that for the next 5 years long term and so that's the balancing point where you really want to actually think this whole thing through before you start looking for the big deal right hard drive okay get at least 120 gigabits hard drive space and the more the better and I can't imagine that you would even find anything out there that prompted you less than that at this point actually new computers are usually starting at 320 if not 540 here's going to be the key now the difference maybe between home and staff and public the public in most cases are not going to be storing files on your computers therefore you don't need as much space on a home computer you're going to probably start storing video files and audio files and all that so you want the bigger hard drive photos exactly stuff that sucks up that space unbelievable I watch most of my TV downloading it off the internet I need space I need space to put all of those videos and I do it in high definition so 45 minutes of video is a gigabyte of space right off the top staff probably somewhere in between do you allow staff to put music on their computers and store photos there from work or do you not but yeah get the biggest hard drive you can and if you can get a smaller hard drive but increase the CPU speed for the public machines get the slightly smaller hard drive again public machines people aren't going to be storing data on the machines you just need space to install the software that you hack monitor honestly 17 inch or larger flat screen LCD monitor you almost can't get CRTs anymore and you don't want them I don't even know that there's any it used to be that there were some industries in which CRTs were preferred and I don't even think that exists anymore but in fact LCDs are in terms of comment to throw in I'm going to ask Diana question the comment to throw in is that the computer I just got for under $500 did not include a monitor that's because we already had a flat panel 15 inch LCD monitor to go with it you don't necessarily have to buy a new monitor with a new computer if you've got old CRTs and they do the job they will work with your new computer and you don't have to buy a new monitor do you have the right VGA is what you're going to have which I don't know that I think you can get a video card that still doesn't have one but no, VGA has not been replaced I was thinking about this this morning do you have an opinion over widescreen or standard 4x3 aspect ratio I do I really do, I really like the 4x3 but that's what I grew up with that's the size of my TV screen that's the size of the first computer screen that's the size of everything I'm used to working with and so that's what I have in my office I'm going to call it the opposite I like the widescreen no, a ton of people who think the widescreen is just the way to go and it's much it's much handier and a way to decide just to do this in general and the way that we try to help people here decide whether they need widescreen or regular is what you're going to do because is the primary thing that you're going to do on this computer with intensive or length intensive do you find yourself pulling the scroll bar to the left when you're doing a lot of your work if you do, widescreen is what you want to do but if you don't then then maybe the 4x3 ratio is fine for you and then again then you look at, well, maybe there's not a big preference so in that case what you do is you figure out which one's on sale now I watch a lot of video which is in widescreen so I wanted to fill the whole screen instead of the top of the black border don't like that level actually that's true if that's what I was going to do or anywhere, I would absolutely want a widescreen if I was going to do things that were that caused them to letterbox on it and on my widescreen I'm one of those weirdos that will take the Vista sidebar which is down to the right hand side of your screen and turn it on so it's always on top and then I still have a lot of my depth space so the widescreen gives me the ability to keep that and I have tools that run on it and things like that so really it's probably going to be a preference and if you've got certain types of desks we'll hold the widescreen monitor so you know if that's the issue that's the furniture so the video card itself basically on a public access machine if you're supporting Second Life then maybe this is an issue most public access machines are not doing high intensity gaming installing world of crap halo counter strike things like that yes, there you go so really in most cases for I'm going to go out on a limb here and say if you get what's called the intel on board video for your typical public access machine this is going to do you just fine you don't need a separate video card you're a home user you're starting to edit video by definition video or you're a gamer and you probably do want a good, solid video card check that we provided to the system requirements for Second Life video benchmark links, things like that I bought a $30 video card it did everything I needed it to do Chris is more of a gamer I know people who spend $500 on a video card so she didn't spend that much she says but she probably spent more than 30 I'm guessing you can get a good one for $100 it really doesn't matter Kevin is asking in the chat room what is Second Life Second Life is the online virtual world where you walk around as an avatar and you interact with other people you can find that at SecondLife.com but you can just kind of look that up here and a lot of universities and libraries are using it there are universities offering classes and distance education in Second Life that's something you want to consider offering access to don't want to go probably much further on that gets a little away from our topic here today alright sound speakers and or headphones as appropriate really you can't not have a sound on your public express workstations anymore people have to watch YouTube videos for classes people are communicating that way by the better way to go than speakers because it's just the noise factor and really if you're going to get headset with microphones because people are going to start using other things and there are websites that don't require you to install software to access the microphone and things like that now so really you've got to have the idea of going on these machines and to be honest whatever audio is built into your machine you don't buy separate audio cards anymore unless you're really doing you're an audio engineer which pretty much if they're doing audio engineering they probably have their own equipment that are using in the library removable media DVD read write really get the read write allow people to save stuff to relax DVDs DVD read writes will read and write CDs also I know of libraries I know of libraries that offer like CDs and DVDs for people to burn stuff to sell them for 50 cents or a buck a piece make a little money on the side and then I added this thing here have plenty of UXP ports on the front of the computer because people are going to be bringing in their flash drives that's exactly right and think about that's the other another thing with that too is to think about the placement of your computer and accessibility of those ports because I know here we have people prefer to have their computers on the floor that basically means they're taking themselves upside down on a regular basis about their flash drives and the accessibility of the flash drives also I have a computer at home that has a little door you have to raise fortunately to find out how to make that door disappear when you take the front plate off slide it all the way out and put it back in but those kinds of things I think that you've got to have four you've got to have two for sure and four makes a lot of sense all right media reader writer these are your storage cards from cameras and cell phones and things like that they come in about different styles and sizes and types more and more computers today are adding those slots right into the front of the computer where the floppy drive used to be and really if you can get one of those built into the machine then people can come in with their digital cameras and they can do whatever they want with them and I think that's if you're going to let them use flash drives let them use their media cards right the differences is just not insistent and I really think that it I think it's something that I really wanted to stress and make sure I added to this page because it really is an important service for people because a lot of people have cell phones and a small card reader is not really that expensive to buy but one that will do all the different formats that you might have in your phone camera and you're whatever thinking had when you're shopping yes you can say okay I'm only going to use this format I'm going to use the mini SD because I'm going to put it in a carrier and there's just this whole range of things that you're planning but who buys things that way almost nobody I mean almost nobody it's like my cell phone provider has a deal on this phone and my contract is up and I can get it for 15 bucks so I'm going to take that and then you find it uses this weird card and then you have a camera that you got a long time ago and it uses some weird card because let's see what was before SD there's some other there's SD there's mini SD there's micro SD there was one before SD yeah there was some sort of contact oh there it is yeah there it is I used duplex to save paper and now I can't find anything you know those kinds of things so if you can trade off with your patrons some other thing and get that optional mediator that does five or six different kinds of cards I think they'll really appreciate that if you have people who are you know who have come in to try to do photos or to be able to advertise that you can do that I think it probably is worth it and what she said five or six these things we usually have four or five different slots in them slots right but they'll say we read and write 56 different kinds of media you know because a lot of times it'll use the same slot but for a different manufacturer standard so just look for the bigger the number the better and really it'll just work at that point it's not worth a mint but it's worth making an effort to buy and they're really coming built in so and we had a comment come through the text chat that some monitors have USB ports on them now and yeah that's great I mean if you buy a monitor that's good too yeah even better okay keyboard and mouse it's going to come on the keyboard and mouse um yeah exactly you know sometimes I wish I could I think I have three or four extra keyboards in my house because I keep wanting to use my same keyboard but I moved from computer to computer really PS2 is kind of the older standard it's more of a a round plug in the back of computers most computers will still come with those plugs but most newer computers are almost I found a USB keyboard and mouse coming with a computer and not coming with not being USB it's almost always USB now some people will get a USB to PS2 adapters to save the USB port really at this point it's pretty much transparent one keyboard one mouse or to another I recommend sticking to the laser mice I'll throw that in because then the kids can't steal the balls out of the mice um really that's about it so they stay a lot cleaner it's just a lot easier to deal with that we've got it out there just mentioning that if you're dealing with mice or track balls or barcode readers if you're talking staff machines any of those things most of them are going to be USB at this point if you're buying new equipment is that USB pretty much is the standard for connecting all devices that's why it's called the universal serial bus if you're trying to reuse devices printer's USB if you're going to be reusing devices another thing you need to to be sure that you take note of whether or not these reusable devices are going to work on the computer that you're buying you may just find that there's not a computer out there that will allow you to do that and that will be sad and you will feel bad about the investment that you made in this this yada yada whatever thing but it's just time to say goodbye um there's no way to deal with it you know you just think some things do just kind of outdated and it's a sad fact of life when you know as Michael said he just spent half as much for the same thing he bought three months ago and um five months ago and it's um things just get they're out of date really fast and there's no way to say this is things just don't last forever anymore I bought it at about 15 years ago I bought it top of the line HP flatbed scanner and it works beautifully and I spent $1,500 on it I and it's what's called scuzzy oh my gosh I don't think it'll plug into my new computer anymore I have to move a car I don't even know if the card that it connected to inside my old computer will plug into my new computer so I'm running it on the computer just to keep that running and at this point you know it one day it's going to give up the ghost I have to put it still works that's the problem I bought last year is a printer cop beer scanner for like less than $100 yeah exactly so you know but anyway there's other issues why I like it but yeah go ahead networking um and this is network card actually most networking is built into the motherboard you don't actually buy a separate card anymore we are recommending what's known as gigabit ethernet which means a gigabit per second transfer rate um what it might come with is called a 10 slash 100 ethernet card it's just future future proofing at this point gigabit is better is faster is newer it will work with an older network it will work with forthcoming networks you know go with the 10 go with the 1000 so it could say like 10 100 1000 whatever that's got to be the 1000 that's the gigabit I'm mixed here I mean if it how okay let me ask Diane and this question if it came with a 10 100 card but you have to pay extra to go to gigabit how much would you be willing to pay I have no idea that is what I you know somebody specifically has that question we can probably find out you know kind of give a ballpark idea get enough people weighing in on that thing but I don't know I just I think it's kind of just we know that it makes a difference we you know and so you know if you're going to it depends on people who are doing across your network and it's always really difficult to anticipate you know small libraries that didn't have you know any kind of automation at all five years ago could not anticipate now that they have you know a couple of network computers so you know the the idea that you know it's just hard to anticipate and network traffic congestion is a problem and it makes people's work experience and their their computing experience for public access just in general the computing experience for really and so it seems worth it to me and I think that's why we made it it seems worth it to the whole computer team when we put this up as well these are recommendations they're not hard and fast rolls no if you manage if you have a great deal and there's something that's you know out there that's you know going to allow you to get great computers instead of one or you know two or something well you know perhaps and not very you know with people not doing a lot you know there's going to be a year situation where that's just a perfect with a good trade off and you know I'm trying to stream high definition video through my house so I won't kick any bit all right printers your choice is the three gender laser I am a firm believer that laser printers are better they're more cost effective they are going to last longer they tend not to break I have seen those things where you know if you think four bucks for a latte at Starbucks is a high price ink in an inkjet printer works out to a couple hundred bucks a gallon or something like that I mean this stuff is expensive that's why inkjet printers are basically given away for free with computers is because they're going to get you on the ink at home I have a laser printer I paid a hundred bucks for it it's a Dell laser printer I buy one cartridge 70 bucks now granted a public printer is going to get more use but honestly you're going to get I think a better deal in the long run out of investing in a good laser printer even if you want to go color the color prices have gone down and I would agree with that I think particularly in a public situation you don't want to be dealing with constantly having ink problems inkjet's are they're fragile they're loading the cartridges if you're doing one at home then you kind of learn the way that yours works and whatever but out in a public environment people are going to want to look the lid and shake the cart because that's what they do when they're busy and they don't want to bother you because it's just something silly knowing that you can do this from when they had one or when whatever so it seems to me that it has a great deal of I don't know it makes a lot of sense to invest in that color laser printer is more expensive they have come down so much that if you can do that it's probably a good thing and if you can't there are places that I mean do a pretty good job of refilling ink cartridges and so if that really is what you have if that's what you're going to do then investigate that and see who's got that business going in your area and whether it's cost effective and what reputation is among people who are using this service I'm noticing the time here so I would keep moving along here somebody who is concerned I would say Diane and I not having enough to say so let's talk about laptops real quick this is sort of the catch-all slide what do you want, weight, screen size, battery life I added there the higher number of cells the longer the battery life will be but it will also weigh more how does the keyboard feel how big is the keyboard you're getting these little netbooks now which costs about 400 bucks 100% of an abnormal keyboard so if you're a touch type this with big fat fingers those are not going to work you need a bag to carry it around in whenever somebody says I'm looking at a laptop the first question I ask them is why do you want a laptop and I don't think for public access PCs laptops for the solution, in the lab version I think desktops you don't want those things to move they are a little more fragile a little more touchy you can't just swap out the monitor if the monitor goes bad it's the whole thing but that doesn't mean you shouldn't get laptops for, you know, maybe staff if they need to be moving around things like that right lab yes laptops take the most space or maybe you want to be able your patrons to be able to move around the library and use the whole library whatever place that they have if it's comfortable for them to work in and we just gave them a bunch of library laptops you know, whatever area of the library they're used to the laptops will get to the library in the states because you don't have to have a designated desk or area that this is all you can do for the computer you can keep them behind your surf desk, check them out and then just use them as they need so they can go anywhere in the library so smaller size libraries can have a bank computer, public access computers that are laptops overall laptop, an equivalent laptop to a desktop will probably cost a little more oh yeah without a doubt in that case if you're really looking for you know, if this is for public access laptops do think about the thing that feels mysterious for public access laptops they're not going to be caring very far they're not, you know where the battery life is probably an important issue then although you may have checkout times where you know, if they're not being used back to back to back they'll be some recharge time so you know, it may not be the biggest issue in a public access laptop so then you might want to think about the screen size and the keyboard touch and feel the primary things because again your hard drive side is it's not that essential but burning a DVD that's a big deal now thing to two remember is that some of the little laptops now in that book kind of think they do not have an optical drive we do have a slide for that after the next one so we'll come back to that one watch 5 if you're talking laptops you're generally talking wireless internet access okay this is where we start talking numbers and letters again but you basically want to make sure that there's A which has gone by the wayside nobody uses A anymore and there's B which is kind of the slow and then there's G which is kind of the standard right now you want to make sure that your wifi supports B and G that is the standard you can't get any less than that there is now what's called wireless or 802.11n I am actually using N in my house so I have some experience with this N is faster N is a stronger signal and N will go is a further signal it will increase your range however it's still what's called a draft it hasn't been finalized so if you're one of those people that don't like to use beta software you might not want to consider going to wireless N at this point if you can get your laptop to support N and you don't offer N well you're kind of future proofing but your future proofing against something that still might change and here's the other thing I've learned kind of the hard way in my own house is if you go with wireless N all the equipment is from the same company so I have like all Belkin wireless equipment because some companies implement it slightly differently oh that's yeah so honestly unless you're like me and you want it avoid N at this point it's not final yet I guess that's my best recommendation just for three months now um as to drives um laptops my same recommendations really is with the desktops give it a dvd rw absolutely but you start getting really small the really light weight ones they're not going to have one of those optical drives at all so I added to this slide you might then want to consider getting a usb dvd drive so that if somebody does need to read the dvd on the laptop or write a dvd from the laptop you can check that out to them they can use it and then return it wow I would never recommend that I told you we did not plan this at all okay why would you not recommend that okay we have one of these we have one and so you're you know it just seems to me that if you're going to buy laptops for people to use they need to have the things that they're going to use okay for you know if you have people who use dvds who want to play them want to watch them privately using your equipment who want to burn them from resources that they're finding whatever to ask them to come back or to remember to ask for it or to keep track of the okay so you have three laptops one drive okay one of them has a drive and you have one drive or a lot of times they come you have to buy the external drive with the thing and so to keep track of it and did they both come back did they come back and get one I'm thinking wow let me clarify my position right off the top you want to build that is the preference okay that's totally the preference and for a public access machine definitely that's the option if you're looking for the staff thing if you want to get a little tiny staff computers of the reference people can wander around the building and do reference without standing at the reference desk yes but at some point you're going to need to install software off of a DVD then you know get the little netbook get the thing that doesn't have the drive I built in add the drive when you need it but especially for public access the better choice is going to be a built in drive I'll clarify what I'm saying there so that consider having a USB one is if you don't and you had a good reason for not getting it in the first place so we'll leave that there then odds and ends that are pretty much going to apply across the board support warranties you're on your own no I sometimes get the extended warranty I have had a situation where my laptop died I sent it back to Gateway two years after I bought it really fixed the whole thing and shipped it back to me and couldn't cost it then there's the times where you have a computer and nothing goes wrong ever with it that you can't fix yourself and you wasted $300 on the extended warranty it's how comfortable are you fixing it are you you know do you like the extended warranties is it on the laptops I'm telling you though sometimes that 100% replacement even if you drop the darn thing in a broken half they will replace it can be worth it if you're checking out laptops to the public it's really going to be your call on this one and I can say again this is the place where working through your government entity may help you some because the warranties tend to they're packaged a little bit differently for city-state government kind of thing so sometimes that may make the big difference over what just the consumer warranty is I think it's a hard call again it's like how long do you expect it to tap to last what's going to be going on with it how far is it moving what kind of stability is the furniture that it's on there are a ton of things you have to look at your own environment and make a decision about whether that money is going to be well spent or not it's a tough one just a couple more slides here to point you out and I will admit there is more detail about some of this stuff on the actual web page which I believe is linked on our last slide software you can get discounted software through the basket department of education through soft choice and through TechSoup you can get Microsoft Office for like 20 bucks through TechSoup you've got to check these out if you've never looked at these websites TechSoup is public library specifics I don't know if we've got any academics or specials in the audience but I'm telling you if you've never looked at TechSoup you can get the most amazing software for like a processing fee of $12 I mean it's unreal the deals you can get through these circuits that is true however one of the things about TechSoup is that there's I will find and find a way to get to you the link to the webinar that TechSoup did a couple like last month I believe and when they really describe what their software program is about for public libraries it's really helpful because there are caveats to the whole thing you can get it, you can buy this many things over to your period and then you can it's a finesse thing some restrictions may apply just like the details that's exactly the thing it was very informative it was really interesting to listen to the audio about that how about we put the link to that webinar recording on the web page the web page we will add it to that web page and you can get to it from there additional restart here is the link to that recommendation web page we've been talking about I recommend that HTML that are on our website we've also linked to a computer maintenance and security checklist and another computer maintenance checklist so some just additional things for kind of long term playing around oh my gosh we've got four minutes we have to say this we have to say this we've got only 49 minutes to the session we've got about five after I need to say that one of the things that I think is really important is in addition to looking at the kind of hardware deal that you can get for the money that you have including you know whatever stuff or whatever before you actually purchase something you have a plan for what you're going to do about virus protection what you're going to do for spyware what are you going to do about backups if you're working with if you're working with actual staff computers I think that it didn't just describe another session but it just it really is something that I think is really important because the problem is once you have it on the desks it can't not use it you're going to hook it up you're going to go on the internet and are you ready are you ready do you have updates do you have automatic updates turned on so follow your software path just will be automatic do you have do you have a backup plan so that when when you have that catastrophic failure when whatever those files are somewhere else they're not just sitting on a single hard drive on a machine you know that you have a plan you know where the stuff is and that you know how to get to it and it's regular these two checklists that are listed here both talk about that in some way you go to Microsoft and search on and security and maintenance they have a page that has various links and I'm sure it's heavy I'm using Microsoft products and whatever but you still get good information out of that so I just didn't want us to stop without saying you know yeah it's great to have the thing on the desk to keep it working and to be sure that it's not out there not on that desk sending robot messages for you know someplace on another continent to everyone you know just random people you know it's just important and I do know that Diane and I agree on the concepts but on the implementation we do have some differences of opinion on how to do these things so I'm actually going to say a lot I think we need to do another session just on that and that would be a very interesting conversation sure I guess we've just promised give us a little time Chris has got the schedule probably at least a month or two but I think we can come back to that I think you and I can go for an hour without even thinking about it other people who do a lot more get six computer people in the room you'll get six different opinions and topics definitely okay it is eleven but we started five minutes late we still have five minutes are there any questions about what we talked about or maybe some other issues that we can maybe address that we haven't for you already if you want to do it via audio go ahead and click the raise your hand button or just go ahead and type it right into the text chat and we will see that we do have that open on our screen and we will be happy to attempt to address any of those issues it's exciting I know I did say something to type in in those chats we're not giving you a hard time we should put in the jeopardy music get that get that going through but I will throw up while we're seeing if there's any or last or contacts the information there give us a shout I've had several libraries in the last couple of months we got a bid on computers and sent me the bid and asked me what I thought of it and then sometimes I go to Diane and I'm like what are you thinking about this somebody else would do that and I've actually stunned them back and said look you really need another bid because this is way too much for what you're asking for I think that one was a server though I asked a few other people you know we will offer what help we can will I be able to print out additional resources information which information in particular the previous URLs those URLs are actually on this web page this one is really the key one everything that's on here that is URLs will be put into the library commission delicious account which will be linked off of the recording when this recording is put up on to our website this afternoon so all of these URLs will have been there you can click on them and yeah for all these pages to print off anything and everything that you want to so I'll have all these URLs collected from one place if you didn't catch it off of the slides here so that you have easy access to all of them any other questions what about my local computer store that gives me a good price but won't give me the original Microsoft disks ok my gut reaction is why the heck wouldn't they you don't get them hardly at all you only get restore software good point some computers now you get no physical media and then when you set up the computer you like to create your disks now or there are some other software package that you're supposed to run if that's what they're doing that's ok but if they're just installing office and not giving you the disks or not giving you a way to create disks I think that makes me nervous I don't know that much about it I would rather they should be giving you the key right and they should be giving you the key but how do you ever reinstall it if your computer completely dies if you don't have physical media yeah I would ask them some questions I would say would be non standard practice mainly because we're all really confused expression interface they have one set of disks and they install it on many computers um do you have your own license key then coming cause we do that here at the commission we buy a license for multiple computers but we're all in the same organization I don't think that a computer store can just do that there may be something we don't know about let's do it we can find out and try to get back where I place to put that information send us an email maybe with a little more detail to remind us to poke around into that but I gotta be honest I want physical media somehow I may have to burn it myself at some point well for example I bought I bought it off this 2007 and I installed it on a computer and then I got a new computer so I uninstalled it for the first one and wanted to install it on the second one so I'm still legal I've still only got to install on one computer but without physical media I couldn't have done that so yeah I want physical media well I don't know I'll have to send us an email we can poke around on that one alright anything else before we shut things down here let Christian take camera here okay as you got in on that oh we're getting some applause yay thank you as usual this hasn't been recorded it will be available I should have it this afternoon I think it's with all the URLs and everything you can contact of course Michael and Diana with any questions you do come up with in the future and answer here if there's nothing else urgent you know if you need anything then we are done thank you very much for attending thanks bye