Your first peripherals

Separating the toys from the tools

By Rod Lamirand

After you bring your first computer home and play with it-excuse me, I should say, worked with it-for a few months, you discover that there is a world of things you could do if you only had a scanner, or a fancy printer. You are perfectly happy with your machine but if you only had a business-card reader, or a joystick, or that neat little optical character recognition (OCR) pen.... Well, my friend, you are thinking about peripherals.

You are thinking about what you need, what you could use, and what you want. As a long time-computer lover-and I say this with a tinge of embarrassment-I have been bitten by the every-little-gadget bug. And after all the fun and bother of getting the thing home, it is sometimes the case that you bought yourself an expensive toy, not a useful tool. Read on and I will dispense a little advice purchased over the years through sad experience.

A birthday to remember

I went out for breakfast with my wife on my birthday and she gave me a card, which contained money from her and both our families. Rather than give small presents, that day I was to take the money and buy whatever computer thingy I wanted. By "thingy" my beautiful betrothed meant peripheral and the envelope contained $300. Talk about technophile heaven-breakfast lay forgotten as we sped off.

In the end, I brought home a hand scanner which, at that time, cost $325. It sits here now. I never use it. It will scan a small image but only in 256 grayscale or black and white. I have used it for OCR, but how often does one find something that is only 10.5 cm (four inches) wide or less that needs to be converted to text, and that is too long to type? I'll tell you how often-once in three years.

There is the ability to auto-stitch two scans together but it works poorly at best. Now, there is nothing wrong with the product and for someone with a laptop who needs to capture clipart on the go, it would be perfect, but it was bad way to spend $300. (I have never admitted this to my wife or family, and if they read this I will add that it was one of the best birthdays I ever had). I've told this sad tale to make an important point. It takes a lot of thought to understand the difference between something we want and something we will use.

The useful and the alluring

And so, what things are useful out there? I would recommend that if you don't have a modem, a CD-ROM drive or a printer, that is where you should start. As for the type of modem, CD-ROM drive or printer, that is another article, but suffice to say my personal preferences run toward US Robotics for the modem (the faster the better), a 4x or faster CD-ROM drive, and a color inkjet from Epson, Hewlett-Packard or Canon (and don't buy their entry-level machines-do your research, four colors not three).

But after those essentials, which probably came with your computer, what then? Well, of course it is a matter of preference, but I would go with a sheet-fed personal scanner. These babies are hot. They are small, one sheet at a time, scanners. When you stick a piece of paper in, they grab it and the software comes up on your screen to ask if you want to copy it, scan a picture, scan text and OCR it, or scan and file it away for later use.

Some, like the Logitech PageScan Color, have color and are great for scanning personal photographs into your computer to make Christmas or business cards. There are a number of these devices, such as the Visioneer PaperPort, and they have various features but their main function is to let you get the paper off your desk and out of the filing cabinet. If you use your computer as a tool to work, process and fax, and organize, then a small sheet-fed scanner would be a good choice. They run from $400 to $600.

If you are a gamer, or have kids around, then a joystick can be a good choice. There are dozens of them on the market. It is probably best if you get one made by a big player such as Gravis or CH Products. You can buy little joysticks and big joysticks; they have large game panels and foot pedals for car racing and/or plane flying. You can buy a steering wheel if you are serious enough about your games. There are even body vests which thump your back and side to the beat of the action if you are so inclined. This category can even go more esoteric, with 3D headsets and 3D mice.

I have assumed above that your first computer has a sound card-most do. If for some reason you do not have one, get one. There are many different cards for many different budgets, and in this area, you get what you pay for. I have long been a SoundBlaster customer and the products have been good to me, so I don't mind recommending these cards.

A few things about sound cards: If you are relatively new to the computer, have the store install it. PnP (Plug and Play) is like a United Nations resolution-they work great when everyone follows them.

Secondly, don't buy those little tiny, tinny, speakers that go beside your monitor-they are terrible. Either buy bigger, better computer speakers (they have a built-in power supply) or simply run the output from the sound card into a small amp, or receiver with a built-in amp, and out to regular stereo speakers. You probably have an old pair in the garage and if you hide them under the desk or behind a curtain they work great. Just remember that you must have a way to amplify the signal because the little card in your computer can't power your big, old stereo speakers.

Video, the coming thing

A whole range of peripheral products are geared toward video buffs. This is an area that you should initially stay away from, unless you have purchased your computer with this intention. There are video capture boards that will let you take the output of your VCR or camcorder and translate it into a digital format so that you can then do special effects and very accurate editing. However, you need the right software and just the right card, as well as a good SuperVHS VCR.

One inexpensive product (around $300) called Snappy will take a snapshot of a video and give you a color still picture. Useful, perhaps, to the police, but hard to justify for your home machine-unless you have kilometres of family videos, in which case you can grab still shots with the Snappy and use them in your personal greeting cards in the same way that you'd use scanned snapshots.

What about backup systems?

A consideration for your first peripheral might be a storage device of some sort. This is a tough area to recommend because there are so many offerings. You can buy a tape backup system, a Zip system, a portable hard-drive, a WORM CD-ROM drive, and many more.

If you have reams of data to secure, then go to our Web page (http://www.tcp.ca) and search back issues for any one of our storage features.

Summing up

And that is about it. There are small OCR machines that are made solely for reading business cards. You drop in a few cards and the machine attempts to read them. They work to a degree but are confused by some fancy business cards. Besides, a sheet-fed scanner will do the same job and many others.

There is a little pen that can scan and OCR text one line at a time. The ads suggest that we might all benefit from being able to grab a sentence or two out of the encyclopedia. Perhaps.

As you may have guessed, there are all sorts of other things you can hook up to your computer and there will continue to be others. I haven't even mentioned graphics tablets, plotters or the computer assisted sewing machines.

The best advice I can give to a new user is to think long and hard about the device. If you have a hard time explaining to someone why you are going to get a particular piece of hardware, you probably won't use it.

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TCP Online January 1997 Issue