The Survey Says:"What I'm Doing On My Summer Vacation"Once upon a time, when the personal computer was still something new for most people, summer vacations were spent trying out new software and hardware and ways to get them to work together. It was fun . . . once upon a time. Over the last couple of years I have been taking an unofficial poll of heavy computer users, both the PC and mainframe variety, to see how they spend their summer vacations. This year I discovered something rather interesting; a majority of the people I polled said they were spending their hard-earned time off away from computers in general. Not surprising if you consider that new programs today tend to be easier to learn than in years past. When WordPerfect was the word processing program of choice, the company flew in instructors to teach the latest macro programming and formatting techniques. But those days, like the program itself, sadly are things of the past. These days computer users are placing more emphasis on hardware maintenance. Many I spoke to talked about spending the summer vacuuming out the machines to remove the Tokyo "black dust" that can lead to over heating and burning out motherboards. One poor soul told me he was given the task of vacuuming out all of the Pentium II machines in his office. This job has become more of a necessity in recent years due to the CPU temperature rising almost as fast as the megahertz rating. I haven't heard yet of any PCs with built-in liquid cooling systems, but give it time. Among the executives to whom I spoke, many said they were spending their summer vacations working on their personal home pages with the aim of attracting more lucrative job offers. It seems that having your own Web page for business purposes is slowly becoming as common as an e-mail address on a business card. I know of at least one man who got a pretty lucrative job in Japan in sales because an executive overseas came across his personal Web page. There are no guarantees that a Web page showing off your accomplishments (in a tasteful way) might help you find a job, but it won't hurt either. Given Japan's current economic recession, the smart people are hedging their bets. As recent history has shown, mistakes made by a few, highly paid Japanese executives can screw up the lives of thousands of employees in middle management. I found lots of electronic data processing managers were spending their summer vacations looking into the Y2K problem, but that's a story for another time. Disaster recovery also seems to be coming back in vogue. The 1995 Kobe earthquake did wonders for the business but it seems to have fallen off in recent years due to the economy. I suspect that the Y2K problem has made more people realize how valuable their data really is. As for the non-computer-related activities that computer executives enjoy, some of the answers were rather interesting. Finding that many like reading books was no surprise, but one executive I spoke to was very excited about the prospect of reading books about ancient history. ŅIt's wonderful, just wonderful to read something where electricity does not come into the picture," he told me. "If you ask me, there is no better way to get your mind off of operating systems, CPUs and Bill Gates." Others were a bit more, well, creative. Like the fellow who planned to rent two seasons worth of the television hit, "Twin Peaks" from his local video shop and spend his week off watching them . . . all alone, in the dark. Maybe a in-depth familiarity with the work of David Lynch will give the individual in question a distinct advantage in dealing with the Y2K problem. Yet there are still some that spend Japan's hot, business-free months learning something new. Some I spoke to are going to give Linux a try. Which leads me to the next query. . . . Japanese Red Hat Linux To the overseas readers who are wondering, yes, it does exist. More precisely, a Japanese-language add-on exists. It seems to be growing in popularity in some circles. There are even those who believe it is becoming an alternative to Windows 95 or Windows 98, pointing out that although it may take months to learn, the same could be said of Windows in many cases. However, it is a long way from becoming an alternative to the Microsoft way of doing things, no matter how many people want to believe otherwise. To see this Linux yourself, check out the Laser 5 shop in Akihabara (tel: 03-5296-0670, fax: 03-5296-0671). The Japanese-language module of Linux goes for \6,800. English is not spoken at the shop, and I was told that they don't ship overseas. Up-to-date information on Linux can be had at the Red Hat website (http://www.redhat.com). Tom is a freelance journalist based in Tokyo. You can reach him at caldwell@gol.com.  |