As the opposite of my recent look at feature phone nostalgia, today we have typical events from the early days of the IT revolution that one cannot imagine today.
Dial-up seems such a distant memory, and I moved to ADSL in my first couple of years in Japan, which was a revolution for both my internet speed and my wallet, as it was cheaper than dial-up.
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This survey from Ringrow, a computer and other electronics refurbishment company, looked at university students and computers.
I am far too old to have experienced any of this computer stuff at university, and my dissertation was prepared on a terminal in Tex and vi, if I remember correctly.
One interesting figure you might spot is that 7.7% use a smartphone and 21.9% a computer for lecture notes, leaving about two-thirds presumably taking notes on paper. I would have thought that a computer might be faster, but I don’t know if it a typing speed issue, kanji conversion bottleneck, using pen and paper makes it easier to remember, or if just that many lecturers ban computers as distractions. Or if you want to go all Japan Cultural Expert, is the sound of tapping on the keyboard rude? Any current students or lecturers out there with an insight? Previous surveys of the general population have indicated that there is about a 50:50 desktop to notebook split, so it isn’t just that everyone has a desktop, I don’t think.
Here’s some classic art brought up-to-date…
A recent survey by the electrical superstore chain Edion into Windows 10 usage found that although satisfaction was high with their Windows 10 computer, slightly less were actually impressed with Windows 10 itself, suggesting that a good number of people liked their faster machine despite the operating system.
We’ve done the free upgrade to Windows 10 here, and although it’s less messy than Windows 8, as a power user the big blocky menus get in the way and overall feels a bit dumbed down. I’m happier with Ubuntu Linux at the office and some Debian version on my blogging netbook! How have my readers found Windows 10?
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goo Research recently conducted a survey on, for a change, not mobile phone upgrades, but computer upgrades.
Between the 15th and 18th of May 2012 1,093 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 16.2% in their teens, 18.3% in their twenties, 21.3% in their thirties, 16.3% in their forties, 15.6% in their fifties, and 12.3% aged sixty or older.
I am thinking of buying a new desktop – my primary computer is my wee netbook, but our desktop is getting filled up with photos and also running short of memory due to the newer browsers being a bit more hungry. If I were to get a new portable, I’d be in the market for something netbook-sized, but that niche seems to have been squeezed out of the game by a combination of tablets, ultra-portables and over-speccing pricing themselves out of their niche.
Ultrabooks are getting heavy advertising in Japan – the “tra” of “ultra” sounds like “tiger” in Japanese, but don’t ask me why they are dancing in front of a Planet Moon of the Apes backdrop…
According to a recent survey from goo Research, published by japan.internet.com, their fourth regular email usage by mobile phone users, the numbers prefering their smartphones, etc, as their main mail address is ever increasing.
Between the 9th and 11th of April 2012 1,077 members of the goo Research mobile monitor panel completed a mobile phone and smartphone-based private questionnaire. 59.5% of the sample were female, 3.4% in their teens, 25.6% in their twenties, 38.0% in their thirties, 23.1% in their forties, and 9.8% aged fifty or older.
It would be interesting to hear (perhaps the question was asked?) what mobile email addresses people use and how they use them. Do they keep the mobile carrier’s as their main, do they use first party apps to access specific services like GMail, or third party apps to unify multiple mailboxes? What do they do with their home service provider’s mail? Read it through their PC or access it when mobile?
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japan.internet.com recently reported on goo Research’s second regular survey into web site viewing, specifically comparing computer versus mobile phone (including smartphone) browsing habits.
Between the 28th and 30th of November 2011 1,092 members of the goo Research mobile monitor group complete a private mobile (including smartphone) internet-based questionnaire. 58.2% of the survey were female, 3.3% in their teens, 22.8% in their twenties, 37.1% in their thirties, 26.0% in their thirties, and 10.8% aged fifty or older.
I’ve now finally joined the odern age and got my smartphone, a dinky wee P-01D job. However, I don’t have an unlimited packet deal, and as one of the reasons I signed up was to get access to my carrier’s wifi system, any mobile browsing will tend to be done on my netbook, not smartphone. Anyway, it also supports tethering, so if I do go unlimited, it will be spending a lot of time acting as a hot spot for my real computer.
Note that tablet computers were not asked about – it doesn’t say if they were specifically excluded, but the impression I get from the text is that they were. However, the article does mention that it would be good to start explicitly asking about tablet habits too, as they combine many of the good points of both smartphones and computers.
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A recently-reported, but not recently-conducted survey conducted by DIMSDRIVE Research looked at computer security.
Between the 16th of September and the 7th of November 2010 7,937 members of the DIMSDRIVE penetration test and monitor group with a home computer completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 51.1% of the sample were male, 0.7% in their teens, 11.2% in their twenties, 31.9% in their thirties, 33.1% in their forties, 15.4% in their fifties, and 7.7% aged sixty or older.
My main security software is Microsoft Security Essentials, which does the business. On my desktop PC running Vista, the daily updates then scans really bog the machine down for 30 minutes, despite setting it to only use 30% or less of the system resources. I used to run Avast!, again free, but it prompts once a year for a free license update, but last year I just couldn’t get the message to go away. It’s quite sad that most people get stuck with commercial packages that they don’t really rate very highly just because it comes bundled on the computer.
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Yet another new survey series starts, web site viewing from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com. This is a reboot of a previous mobile phone oriented survey that has now been reworked to be more smartphone-friendly.
Between the 29th of August and the 1st of September 1,094 members of the goo Research mobile monitor group complete a private mobile (including smartphone) internet-based questionnaire. 58.2% of the survey were female, 3.2% in their teens, 24.6% in their twenties, 37.4% in their thirties, 25.8% in their thirties, and 9.0% aged fifty or older.
I think even if I had a smartphone it would only ever be a backup device for on the move surfing. On the other hand, if I had on the move surfing, I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off it long enough to get these translations done on the train!
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The previously-reported on regular goo Research survey into computer use by mobile phone users (the last one I translated was the 26th) has now become the first regular mobile phone users’ mail use survey. As usual, japan.internet.com did the reporting.
Between the 4th and 6th of July 2011 1,081 members of the computer-based (or perhaps they might have signed up via a smartphone browser?) goo Research monitor group who had also registered as mobile phone monitors completed a mobile phone-based (including smartphone) questionnaire. 58.1% of the sample were female, 2.8% in their teens, 24.4% in their twenties, 37.0% in their thirties, 25.7% in their forties, and 10.1% aged fifty or older.
I suppose if I think about it I actually send more email (on a message count basis) from my mobile phone than from my computer, as I send a bare minimum of three mobile phone emails to my wife per day. Home PC-based mail is much less, as I either use social media for communication or just don’t bother… Yes Mum, I’ll get round to an email soon…
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With the very real threat of brown-outs, if not complete black-outs in not just the Tokyo area but Nagoya too, saving electricity is a commonly-heard term, with the government setting a 15% cut as a target, people are looking to even cut down electricity use of their home computers, the subject of a recent survey from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com.
Between the 9th and 13th of May 2011 1,088 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.3% of the sample were male, 16.1% in their teens, 18.2% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16.2% in their forties, 15.8% in their fifties, and 12.3% aged sixty or older.
I do just all of the PC power-saving activites except for turning off my router, as it is built-in and hidden in a box in the back of a cupboard.
Talking of power-saving, at work we’ve been asked to ensure our computers are set to go into standby mode after 30 minutes of inactivity, and I saw that Panasonic are releasing a power management utility for their Let’s Note portable computer range that will force a plugged-in computer to switch to battery power at predefined times, to reduce the load over peak hours.
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