The Year of the Geek

TESTING!

When I am given a computer to repair by a customer (or anyone to be exact!) I do my best to be quick with the job as well as do it RIGHT. I test everything about the computer that I changed/fixed/replaced. I do not want people bringing their computers back to me for the same issue, it doesn’t make sense for someone to have to bring their machine back after I just fixed it. Unless it’s something totally different.

Why am I writing about this now?

My MacBook Pro iSight seemed to stop working randomly one day. I tried to use it and it didn’t work. System profiler didn’t show it, something was wrong. I brought it to Tekserve first. They claimed that it was hardware but since I had a small dent on my computer (no joke) they wouldn’t cover the warranty because Apple would deny it. I found another place in the city which I was told would take laptops in almost any condition as long as the condition wasn’t the cause of the issue and repair it under Applecare. Sure enough they replaced my logic board and my iSight worked again. I got my computer back in 2 days time.

I get home I try to use my DVD drive and find it doesn’t work. System profiler acts weird saying it works sometimes….then it doesn’t….whatever. I open the laptop and re-seat the cable. It loads a DVD but when I start doing reading from the drive it loses it. Something is obviously broken. I take it back and explain to them the issue. They take it and call me 2 days later saying they cannot reproduce the issue and it seems to work fine. I say, well, if you say it’s working fine, I’ll come by to get it. I get my laptop home and sure enough, same issue. I bring it back the next day. They claim they put a DVD in it and it read it so they deemed it as fine. Really? You did exactly what I told you I did and didn’t think to read from the drive?

After a conversation I tell them to replace the drive ASAP; meaning get the part and call me when it comes in so you can install it right then and there because I’m tired of not having my laptop. They install it and tell me to come back because it’s fixed! GREAT! I go and ask “Do you have a disc I can boot from?” He hands me a Leopard install disc and sure enough the disc does not load at all. Mr. Tech then tells me “Oh you have a third-party boot software (rEFIt), it’s probably the issue. It wasn’t hardware, it was YOUR software.” I then need to explain to him that it was fine until they replaced my logic board. I also ask “did you replace the ribbon cable also?” to which I never get a straight answer for (No). The tech doesn’t believe me, so I uninstall rEFIt on the spot and boot. The disc gets loaded, oh my god! He then gets a smug look on his face and says “It was obviously the software, see it’s loading.” After waiting 15 minutes, it doesn’t load. This was about the time where I wanted to shove the guy’s face into a wall; he finally takes my advice and boots from an external drive, HIS DRIVE, and goes into system profiler. The drive is no where to be found. Thank you. Hardware failure.

Now, I am told that they need to send it to Apple for repair. Why? All you need to do is replace the god damn ribbon cable, and if that doesn’t work, the logic board is bad. It’s not difficult to diagnose!

So, after 4 trips to this place I lost my laptop for at least a week now all because the tech’s didn’t test the repair properly. If you install a new optical drive, or if a user says “something is wrong with my optical drive,” what should you do? Should you pop a disc in and say “Oh it showed up, it’s obviously not broken at all?”

NO!

You put in a disc, read from it, install something, burn a disc, ANYTHING THAT TESTS THE DRIVES OVERALL PERFORMANCE! NOT THE EJECT MECHANISM! NOT THE [does the disc load, software?] MECHANISM!

What have we all learned (except Digital Society apparently)? Test your repairs!

Sometimes it’s tough to stock a lab full of computers with software. You want to get the best software of course but that usually means the most expensive. Sometimes the expensive programs aren’t even the best either.

The lab is primarily used for video editing and 2D/3D graphic design. These are three very expensive fields when it comes to software. For video editing we use Final Cut Studio 2. We have a lab license which allows us to run 5 copies at any single time; this license costs us a one-time upgrade fee of around $2000. Of course we had to have Final Cut Studio before that so you need to factor that cost into it also. I’m not sure how much it was originally, but I’m guessing between 2 and 5k. Now, we don’t pay a yearly fee or anything, it’s installed, and it works. No fuss. Is there anything else out there we could use, something free? Maybe cheaper?

In short, no.

There really is nothing like Final Cut Pro out on the market. (And don’t tell me Adobe Premiere Pro because I’ll just have to punch you in the face) Avid is around, it’s been around, it will probably always be around; but it’s not FCP. Avid is a whiny little pain in the ass that doesn’t work if it doesn’t get it’s way, not to mention it’s about $2000/license. No thanks. So FCP is something we’re stuck with it looks like, no big loss. (I know there are open source editors out there, but they’re just not as good and intuitive as FCP is at all, so don’t bring that up.) With respect to Adobe, we do have 1 license of After Effects. It hardly gets used, but it’s really a good program from what I’m told.

Next is 2D graphic design. This one is a bit simpler. We use Adobe Creative Suite 3 (no, we didn’t upgrade to CS4) which comes with Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Flash, and Acrobat Pro. We’ll ignore Flash for now because we really can’t use anything else that I know of. Photoshop is the standard graphics/photo editing software, the weapon of choice for graphic designers if you will. Without this piece of software your digital media lab (or in this case, my lab) is a laughing stock of the DM world. However, there are freebies out there, although they might not be as good they sure as hell will do the job well. GiMP and GiMPShop are around and have been for a long time. This Linux counterpart to Photoshop gives users who cannot afford the price tag from Adobe the ability to make beautiful graphics like the pros. It’s tools are almost 100% similar, and it’s interface can also be with the help of GiMPShop. I would show screen shots comparing the two, but I can’t seem to get GiMPShop to run on my laptop. (BTW, the two run with X11, not natively.)

InDesign and Illustrator are programs I am not so sure about replacing, I’ve never tried alternatives to them. I know there are a few out there though. Inkscape is one that looks like a promising Illustrator replacement, it’s free too! For InDesign we have Quark of course; although Quark is rapidly getting replaced my InDesign, and one called Scribus, another open source replacement. I’ve never used any of these so I cannot speak for them, but if you’re looking, try them out!

Dreamweaver is for web-development. It’s more of a helper for most new developers. It’s gotten a lot better over the years, but it’s still nothing that cannot be replaced by good ol’ hand coding with TextMate or whatever editor you prefer. These are all wonderful, some are free, some are not. However, for true web editing I have to give props to Coda by Panic. I’ve mentioned before that I love this program. I do. I really think this is probably one of the best code/web/css editing programs on the market, ever. It’s beautiful, and it’s functional. It’s also $99. Does this bother me? No. Each penny of that $99 is worth it. If you’re just doing web stuff, don’t go near Dreamweaver, get Coda, as a matter of fact, get multiple copies of Coda to give to friends. That’s how much I love it.

Look at this beautiful CSS editor! I can also edit the code of the CSS and ANY OTHER CODE WITH CODE HINTING!

Now we come to 3D graphics. Our choice program in the lab is Autodesk Maya 2008 Unlimited. Maya is the “industry standard” for 3D graphics, right with 3D Studio Max; both of which are now owned by Autodesk…weird huh? Maya comes with so much stuff that it’s very hard to find a comparable program. Some difficulties come up with licensing (you need to be running a license server if you have a set number of licenses, and you need to make sre you get Unlimited or Complete. The difference is just what kind of fluids or fur you get, whatever. I like Maya to a certain extent. it’s powerful and fairly easy, but it’s licensing is annoying, and it costs a good amount for upkeep. We need to constantly upgrade if we want the bugs to go away (because lord knows you don’t want to keep fixing your software after the first service pack which we paid a few thousand dollars for in the first place) and if we want service for the license we bought, that’s also more money.

Maya's starting interface.

To replace Maya many people opt for Blender; Maya’s open-source cousin from the Dutch. Blender is completely free, and it does a lot of the things Maya does. It really is an excellent replacement for Maya; however, it’s got a steeper learning curve than Maya. While Maya may still be considered difficult to grasp anyway, Bender is like a nightmare to some 3D artists I’ve known. So if you can learn Blender (which by the way has all documentation online free as all good programs should) you will probably be very happy with the results.

A random screenshot from Blender 2.4 from Wikipedia.

Besides these main programs I have taken liberties to find free versions of other programs for my lab machines as replacements to troublesome or other non-free programs. Adobe Acrobat 9 has a nasty issue with network users on Mac OS, it crashes…all the time. I’ve taken Acrobat off and replaced it with a PDF plugin for Safari and Firefox. If someone wants to use Acrobat Pro, which is VERY rare here, then they can ask me to install it for them, for now Preview works just as well. AppFresh is a free program that checks all of your programs for updates and allows you to install them at once. very handy for updating the lab machines. And I can’t forget my favorite free buddies Carbon Copy Cloner and DeployStudio, without these FREE tools I would have be dead trying to deploy the lab and backup systems.

So, if you’re on a tight budget and you’re looking for cheaper alternatives, try out some of these. They might end up being better for you in the long run. If you have any other programs to suggest, drop a comment, I’d love to try some new programs out. Just remember, sometimes you don’t get what you pay for.