Feb 182008
The computer I built last fall has been operational for four months now and the thing runs like a champ. I don’t think I’ve asked my nurse to press Ctrl-Alt-Del once since I first powered it up. It’s amazing how stable Windows can be if you throw enough memory and processing power at it. How nice to have a system that does what I want without freezing, generating error messages, or slowing to a crawl. If anything, I’m not pushing the computer anywhere close to its limits.
I’m sorry I don’t understand why you should have to ask your nurse to push these buttons, Marc. It’s simply because I don’t know how you work at the computer: don’t you use your fingers, then, or- in case you work with a stick or something else, is it impossible to combine several buttons? In one of your posts you mentioned a “headset”. I am curious to learn how this device is being used.
Of course, now that you said it, your harddrive will die, or your motherboard will have a meltdown, or your boot sector will get overwritten by a malicious virus. Jinx!
Marc: OR you could get a MAC! : P
Mieke: I don’t know how Marc does it, but FYI there’s tons of ways to work a computer without using your hands: you can use any body part from your toe to your head to tap a switch and scroll through an onscreen keyboard; you can use your eyes and a set of cameras that track your gaze to “type” by looking at another onscreen keyboard; you can blow into a tube, you can use your voice and dictate, you can hit a laser beam with your eyelashes when you blink…and yes, I’ve seen people use sticks held in the mouth or attached to their chins. There’s even a guy up in Canada who uses a computer by twitching a muscle in his cheek in morse code. It’s kind of amazing how many solutions there are out there.
My advice is don’t try Vista. It’s user-punishing.