KJS Associates

TODAY

KJS Associates primary interests include:
Accounting
Taxes
Creative Ideas
Web-Based Training

For additional information; or, if you have questions, send a note to the Information Desk.

HISTORY

This organization had its humble start when Gary Kendal's operating system, CP/M, was the rage in an eight-bit world running at the blinding speed of two megahertz using an 8080 central processing unit. The Tarbell standard on audio tape was in fierce competition with the KC standard for the defacto storage of data and programs. Memory was in kilobytes and storage on eight inch diskettes was the vogue. Altair and Imsai battled for platform supremacy with front panels to easily and quickly enter code and debug in hexadecimal. The three and one-half inch diskette was also introduced. It stored 90 kilobytes (single side). CBASIC was the power language of choice; and, assembler did all the dirty work. Communication was by software modem (or acoustic modem if there was enough money) at 110 - 300 baud.

This period began the advancement of "small" iron in private hands outside of government and corporate accounting-department control.

In August 1998, life moves at 233 Mhz, several gigs of harddisk storage with Iomega Zip or Jaz on the side. v90 is the standard for dial-modems. 15" .28 pitch monitors are the reasonable low-end. Retail shelves are stocked with 400 Mhz platforms and 17" monitors sporting 11 gigabyte hard drives for about $2,600. Memory is common at 64 Megabytes and sometimes 128 Megabytes. 128 Meg SDIMMS are about $180 each.

The early moments of 1999 hasn't really brought with it a new plateau for the computer. It has only confirmed that the computer is now legitimate in its role as an appliance in the residential setting. Computing platform, monitor, printer, software, and operating system sell for as little as $700 in the high-volume discount-stores.

unix in the form of Linux has come out of the closet as a possible alternative operating system for the enterprise; and, to some degree, the more technical residential computing buff. Some of the larger companies (IBM, Oracle, Netscape, ...) have begun to offer products that support Linux.

The language that seems to peek a lot of interest is Sun Microsystems Java(tm).

The y2k (Year 2000) issue is seemingly of interest only to those who have a financial interest in the outcome. Some are stocking provisions and weapons for the disaster that will be upon us when 1999 passes into history. Only time will tell if the civilizations which are heavily into technology will crumble and fall into chaos. In the meantime, it is necessary that we deal with the blue-screen of death; and, the platform, whose operating system shall remain anonymous, which no longer responds to any commands of the operator.

The last year of the 20th century is nearly gone. There are the Intel Pentium III processors that allow the curious to catalog each computer when the user visits a web-site. The speed of processors has exceeded 600Mhz at the retail level. A, now small, computer from Hewlett Packard sells for $600 that includes a 14 inch monitor, a 6-gig harddrive, comes with 64mb of real memory, and its clock speed is around 500Mhz. There are now flat LCD monitors for the desk-top that are less than $1,000 and have a 15" viewing area. AMD has produced the Athalon CPU that the trade publications indicate is much faster, and cheaper, than the Intel Pentium III of the same clock speed. There is a growing concern of privacy. Most do not know that when a web-site is visited, the cookies residing on their computer can be harvested. The Internal Revenue Service is going great guns on their electronic-filing of the individual and business federal tax returns. By the year 2007, 80% of all returns, according to a mandate from the Congress of these United States, will be filed electronically (BTW, 60% by 2003).

Somewhere in the first half of the year 2000, an AMD Athalon can be purchased at a local computer store such as Best Buy, under $2,000, with a clock speed of 1GHz. Intel, not to be out done, has demonstrated a Pentium III operating at some 1.5GHz. Intel also tossed into the mix some 144 new instructions and inserted a 400MHz system bus. It doesn't stop there, COBOL has been suggested as the newest internet language (really!). RPG now works with XML to extend its useful life. FireWire (IEEE 1394) has yet to really gain the foothold that was expected. USB remains something of a curious sort-of-thing. It sometimes works and mostly it is given the "new technology" label to overshadow its short-comings. SCSI has a new flavor available (Ultra160 - so named by Adaptec)

C-Generation™ and the Refrigrator
Computer technology is no longer separate from the family.
Computer technology is not just for the geeks and for business.
The C-Generation™ accepts computer technology as a retail computer-appliance.
This retail appliance is being designed for the C-Generation™.
These consumers have integrated and internalized the computer.
Its need and usefulness is somewhat akin to the refrigerator.
The C-Generation™ and the Refrigrator create a model
for storage (long and short-term), rapid accessibility, indifference to what is stored,
location appropriate for those that are hungry-for-knowledge,
comes in a variety of colors to match decor or mood,
sports a wide range of sizes and options,
and so much more ...

This has been a sad time. A father-in-law dies June 12, 2001. On September 11, 2001, the Twin-Towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan, NY were destroyed by zealots who used two commercial airlines as the objects of destruction. The zealots also used a commercial airliner to damage the Pentagon on the same day. The fourth commercial airliner, used by the zealots, crashed before hitting its 'unknown' target.

The good news is a granddaughter born at 11:59 a.m. on September 14, 2001!

As the technology-saga continues, a 2ghz computer appeared on the market in early September 2001. Dell began selling what they called the dream machine that featured a Pentium 4 processor. 10/100 ethernet may be replaced by 1ghz Ethernet. In August 2001, Western Digital 100 gigabyte harddrive was available to the retail community for $299 at Best Buy stores with a $100 merchandise rebate. The first DVD burner was available, in September 2001, from Panasonic for a little under $800. A Canon 8200v video camera sporting 20x optical and 700x digital magnification with single picture capability, night vision and picture stabilization was being sold on late night TV for less than $400. 802.11b seems to be the thing for the consumer market even though this wireless communication has an identifies security hole. The v92 standard for modems has appeared.

Privacy of an individual's data is mostly a joke. It must have been about July 2001, that companies were basically forced by law to expose their privacy policy. If you were to take a moment to read what was sent to you from your insurance company, your bank, your credit card company, your financial investment firm, you would quickly determine they have done nothing more than put into words a bunch of gibberish. Take a look at the terms these companies use to describe nonpublic and public personal information. What they have done is say that anything you give them they can share with certain groups. This seems to mean: affiliates, credit agencies, third-parties, and others. The stranger statement is, in part, "... as permitted by law." The Privacy Policy for most firms is not there to protect you or your data -- they appear to be a "policy" of ways to protect themselves while they continue doing business as usual.

At the close of 2001, one could purchase a computer with a processor speed of 1.3Ghz, 40Giga-bytes of harddisk space, 128mb of real memory, a 10/100Mhz NIC, a CD-R/RW and the XP operating system (Really NT 5.1) with a 15" monitor for $599. Connections to the internet for those with several computers at home could be done using a LAN Modem getting adequate through-put for most home use on a single analog telephone line. The ADSL fad seems to have faltered since the user has to be within a certain distance from the CO and it must be a copper circuit from POP to CO (not fiber).

Actually, there really no longer seems to be a race for more power; rather there appears to be posturing and attempts to show product differentiation using mostly marketing "fluff!"

Never ever think the cycle race is slowing. Though Dell may have been the first with a retail computer in September 2001, a little more than seven months into 2002, HP presents a retail package that has a processor speed of 2.26GHz with a front-side buss of 533MHz and almost 100GByte of disk space. The computer is equipped with six USB ports and three 1394-ports. Standard memory is 512Mb of DDR SDRAM. Another jump in technology is the retail availability of drives sporting 120Gbyte of space for under $300. 256Mb of memory is available for about $45; and, there is a video camera that burns DVD's for under $1,000. Wireless is cooking with 802.11a. 802.11a is much faster than the 'b' version.

(200210) AMD has been saying for a long time that processor speed makes not the speed of an application faster. Seems in the second quarter of 2002, Intel is beginning to say that processor speed may not be all that important. There are rumors of a 3Ghz processor starting to enter the retail market. 512mb of SDRAM is not readily available in the retail market. Probably because the computer hardware vendors seem to be using DDR SDRAM in their computers.

(200210) If you think computers are changing, take a look at the digital camera. 640x480 was the hallmark for many of the last five years. Even today, the 640x480 appears in many of the digital cameras being sold. The metrics are changing. The digital camera ability is now being measured in the mega-pixels. It is said that five mega-pixels rivals glass-optics and film. The digital SLR is now appearing. Canon seems to be the only vendor that remembered the photographer's investment in lens and made the digital camera lens mount the same as that of film camera-body.

(20021203) The 3GHz retail computer is available. The 200Gb harddrive is available for $219.99 and working even though the OS company set an artificial barrier for harddrives at 137Gb.

Also very noticeable is the trend for the electronic/computer business to establish a pattern for the worker to encourage the customer/client to refrain from talking to the "human" and to use the idiotic, incomplete, point-and-click labor-intensive, cookie-ridden, invasive, intrusive, slow website they claim to be a wonderful corporate information portal (yea, right! Maybe from "a worst nightmare!"). In the end, the worker is displaced often out-of-work and the customer/client is charged more for service that "stinks!"

January 2003 a Nikon D100 SLR digital camera with 6-million pixels is now avaukabke for under $2,000 for the body. The art of picture taking took a mighty jump with this addition to the working toys. To give it the finishing touches, a 300mm zoom, a wide angle and a micro lens were added. The size each JPEG frame (other options are available) is about 1.5 mega-pixels providing a 3000x2000 pixel (40"x26") output that can easily be doubled with minimum aliasing! Even now, the next generation of professional digital camera is being crafted with 14 million pixels!

(20030513) Looking for the latest reason to junk that ink-jet printers whose ink cartridges are always full of dry ink when there is a color print job? Consider the Minolta 2300DL. It is a laser printer that gives professional CMYK output. Even better, it is less than $700.

(20030826) Wandering the electronic toy stores I found a 160GB "external" hard drive USB 1&2 compatible. I bought three at less than $200 each. I was expecting the usual issues and calls to technical support for at least one of the computers where the drive was not all that compatible (did not work). The target computers were using XP Home, Win98se, and Win2000 Professional. The boxes rattled which is sometimes an indication that there will be problems. I just added power and plugged into the 2000 pro and it worked. Not satisfied, I changed from FAT32 to NTFS added and deleted partitions and copied about 50gb before I accepted the fact that Western Digital made a product that cost, installed, and worked beyond my expectations. The connection to Win98se was just as pleasant. The driver had to be downloaded from their web site (this could be impractical for anyone that is not connected). The Win98se driver even worked. Technology, on a USB port, that actually is a consumer device - now is that nice!

Just a March 2004 note. CF (compact flash) cards, not that long ago, were maxed at 64mb. Today, the 256mb CF card is readily available for about $45. The 1gb micro drive is seldom seen. The new frontier is the giga-byte CF card. At first there were 1gb cards. Now the CF cards are available in 4gb and larger sizes.

There has been a change in retail desktop and laptop computers and LCD displays beginning in the first quarter of 2004. Can you believe that an HP Pavillion desktop computer could be purchased for about $350 with the following specifications: 2.7Ghz Celeron processor, 256 DDR SDRAM, 80gb HD, CD-RW Drive, DVD-ROM Drive, USB 2.0 ports, 7-in-1 imagery card reader, Firewire ports. The HP Compaq laptop was another incredible buy at $850. It sports a 2.8Ghz processor, 40gb HD, a 15" Display, DVD-ROM/CD-RW Dirve, 802.11g enabled, and Ethernet LAN. Finally, a 17" LCD display that has 1280x1024 pixel resolution.

In this same period, DDR SDRAM became very inexpensive. 256mb could be gotten for about $49 and 512gb was selling for about $69 through Best Buy with the PNY label.

2004 also had AMD delivering their 32/64 bit Opteron processor that made Intel think again about the viability of their Itanium processor that could not handle 32 bit needs. Intel made the change to 32/64 to challenge AMD's Opteron success.

2005 brought the $399 laptop from Compaq. The laptop sports a 14" screen, wireless b/g, Celeron 2.6Ghz processor.

January of 2006, provided the opportunity to purchase a $299 desktop with a 17" monitor and a printer. 1gb PC3200 400Mhz DDR memory was $89. A four-port USB2 card was $19. It appears the vendors are attempting to get the 32-bit computers out of the channel so that they can introduce the 64-bit computers.

Maybe the 2006, Christmas buying rush will do a lot for the 64-bit computing. Right now, in November, computers are deeply discounted attempting to get them out of the channel. 2 gig DDR2 is going for $199.99. There is not all that much excitement in available computer hardware. The marketeers are trying to push skins, sounds, and a lot of other frivolous things that the cell phone and the small hand-held hold the market captive with their neat stuff - quality? Well quality is another matter. Digital cameras have gotten much better. Nikon offers a GPS unit for its D200 digital camera. It is unfortunate that Nikon does little to help demand by keeping products out of the channel to cause a 6-month or longer back-order wait!

Nikon D200 and Garman make a great combination! There is no longer any doubt where and when a picture was taken since the informaiton is encoded into the digital frame. The next advancement MUST be less clumsy!

It is October 2007! Halloween is just around the corner. The importance of this moment is not Vista. Rather, it is the availability of a Western Digital 1TB (1,000gb) external harddrive for only $299.99. This harddrive is super impressive. Vista, 2048DDR2 memory,HD Radio and TV do not even come close to the importance of storage of this magnitude.

October 2008 and paintball has become a way of keeping track of technology that has nothing to do with computers. The past 12 months has brought quad-core computing into reality for some $500 with two 500gb harddisk drives and multiple gigs of memory in one box. Unfortunately, Microsoft VISTA is the OS and it has some unique issues. One persistent BSOD is the Multiple_IRP_ ... error that seems not to have a solution that fixes the problem. Digital CCD size is now equal to 35mm film in a camera like the Nikon D700 (which means goodbye to the lens crop that happens with the older and smaller CCD). 4 and 8gb CF cards are now available and sometimes there is a 16gb CF card that can be obtained. SD to CF use converters are available that sometime work when a cheap card is needed - unfortunately, the SD card has an evil twin called the SDHC that is incompatible with many of the older readers for the plain SD card. Life is good. K-Food is still the greatist. The mountains and the Mojave are beautiful places (except if married to someone that does not like them)!

C-Generation™ is a trademark of KJS Associates.

All trademarks, such as Opteron, Celeron, Compaq, etc. are owned by AMD., Intel, HP and any others mention are owned by their companies!

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