LITTLE ROCK — Bob’s brother-in-law used to race toward the next traffic light, brake hard, and scare the living daylights out of Joy when he was a teenager. Too bad the “Car Chip” wasn’t around then: His driving could have been monitored.
The Car Chip is easy to install. You plug it into the car’s “On Board Diagnostic Port,” which is in every car sold after 1996. Don’t know where that port is? Neither did we, but we found it’s just under the dash to the right of the steering wheel and easy to reach. The OBDP, as the mechanics call it, is the very place to plug in the chip that will track a driver’s driving habits, as well as diagnose the car’s engine efficiency.
That is not a spying device, as it’s quite visible stuck there under the dash. Of course, if someone isn’t paying particular attention to how a dashboard looks, there’s nothing unusual about it either. After you or anyone else has been driving around, unplug the Car Chip and plug it into your computer with the supplied USB cable. Graphs will give provide the driver’s behavior, even down to what was happening during the last 20 seconds before a crash.
Data can be collected continuously for up to 300 hours, using any four parameters you choose out of 23. Some of those parameters can be preset. For example, the Chip can be set to give drivers a warning beep when they go over a certain speed limit. This can be especially helpful with new drivers. (Experience counts: Studies show that after the first 1,500 driving hours, the risk of a crash drops by two-thirds.)
The Car Chip also gives information about the car itself. For example, it will tell whether the fuel injectors need cleaning, the car is likely to fail its emissions test or the cooling system isn’t working properly.
Now for the cons. The Car Chip doesn’t know who’s driving, so you need to reset it every time the driver changes. It works with most cars, but not every model. Luckily, Amazon has an easy return policy. We found it there for $76. More info at carchip.com.
An alternative is “Safe-Driver” from Lemur Vehicles. We saw it discounted for $70. It has a “tamper” control that lets you know whether the driver has tried to disable it by removing the batteries or unplugging it. It reports on speed, sudden braking and distance traveled, and can be reset for each trip. Information is available at lemurmonitors.com.
NUMBERS REPORT
According to iYogi, a tech support service, 63 percent of American households spend more on technology than utilities, such as heating and electricity. It’s estimated that 6 percent to 12 percent of household income is spent on those utilities.
Eighty-nine percent of medium-sized businesses report they expect to buy a tablet computer in the next 12 months, according to the NPD Group. And by “tablet,” most mean “iPad.” That’s a lot of iPad sales. “Mediumsized” businesses are defined as those with 500 to 1,000 employees.
IPAD INTO LAPTOP
The first time Joy took an iPad on a trip, she was floored by how much she missed a regular keyboard. But most iPad keyboards are bulky: You might as well take a laptop. An alternative is the new folding keyboard from Logitech.
The Logitech “Fold-Up Keyboard” wirelessly connects to an iPad 2 and is about the same size as a laptop keyboard. So with a screen facing you and a keyboard below, it’s almost as if you were using a laptop. Closed, it stays under your iPad and goes to sleep. It’s $130 from Logitech.com.
WI-WHAT?
Just as everyone is feeling comfortable with Wi-Fi, Wi-Gig is coming in 2013. If yougo to YouTube and type “Panasonic WiGig” in the search box, you can seen Panasonic’s demonstration.
The difference between the two is speed. With Wi-Gig, you could take your iPad out to the car and within 60 seconds, beam a full-length movie to other tablets hanging off the passenger seats. The trade-off is distance. The range for Wi-Gig is only 3 to 10 feet, compared with 65 feet for Wi-Fi. And Wi-Fi penetrates walls. Wi-Gig doesn’t.
INTERNUT
GetHired.com offers free job postings for employers. The GetHired link can then be posted on Craigslist or other popular sites. The site encourages video resumes and virtual interviews through video chatting.
BIG USER TIP
If you type almost any computer problem into Google’s search box - just literally type it in - you will almost always get a solution. This also works for searching newspapers and magazines online. Google’s search works better than most publications’ built-in search function.
BOOK
Microsoft Excel 2010 Formulas and Functions, Inside Out; available for $60 at Microsoft Press.
There are more than 350 functions built into the Excel spreadsheet, and several experts have gotten together here to explain how to use them. Spreadsheets were originally written for accounting but they quickly expanded to enable users to do statistical analysis and probabilities. Their primary use remains the “What-if?” scenario. What if we changed some things like price, size, availability, etc. How would the business change? The answers usually come back in seconds. Believe it or not, experienced spreadsheet users say they’re fun.
NOTE: Readers can search several years’ worth of On Computers columns at oncomp.com. Bob and Joy can be contacted by e-mail at bobschwab@gmail.com and joydee@oncomp.com.
Business, Pages 20 on 02/13/2012