Getting More Out of an Office Computer

by Nicholas Johnson, (15 February, 2006) in features > hi, tech

As a “computer guy” (and borderline obsessive, I think), I’m pretty particular about my computer. I like to have my desktop organized just so, I like to use Firefox for browsing the web and Thunderbird for checking email, I like to keep my documents folder squeaky clean. It’s pretty hard for me, then, to use a foreign computer for any significant amount of time.

For many JETs, though, using a computer other than their own for much of the day is a necessity. Whether they don’t own a computer, don’t want to lug their laptop around or can’t lug their desktop around, a lot of JETs are stuck using an office computer at work. I’ve heard some stories about these office computers that make me wonder how Japan got such a tech-savvy image; 10-year-old PCs with Japanese-only menus and restrictions on internet use can make it awfully hard for a JET to get work (or “work”) done.

Luckily, there are some solutions to office computing woes. Here are some fixes to the most common complaints I’ve heard about using clunky office computers.

My grandma’s computer is better than this

The biggest problem with using office computers seems to be the conditions of those computers. Many schools and offices don’t have the budget to replace old computers or the staff to maintain newer ones. Short of buying a new computer yourself, there’s not much you can do to significantly improve such a situation, but there are a couple of little tips to prevent the computer you are using from crashing for the 18th time in a row.

• Limit how many programs you have open at once. Having fewer applications running means having more free system resources, which translates to a speedier-feeling computer.
• Use “lighter” applications when you can. Modern office programs (like Microsoft Word or OpenOffice) are generally huge memory hogs that can put a real strain on older computers; avoid them if possible. You can write a simple memo or lesson plan in a basic text editor (like Notepad or Wordpad on Windows machines) just as well as you can in a bloated word processor.
• Restart. Computers running on Windows are notorious for getting slower the longer they are left on. If a computer is running exceptionally slowly, try restarting it; doing so will free up any misused system resources and hopefully speed things up. Also, in my experience, restarting gets rid of at least 80 percent of errors you may come across.

What do you mean SagaJET is blocked?

Many offices have filters in place that restrict workers’ internet use. These filters are there to stop users from idling their days away looking at things like message boards and porn. Sometimes, though, the filters are too restrictive and block perfectly respectable sites that JETs have legitimate reasons for visiting. Or sometimes you just need to waste a few minutes on the SagaJET message board. (That’s not really blocked anywhere, is it? Because there hasn’t been porn on there for ages, I swear.)

You can get around many filtering systems with a simple trick involving that most respectable of websites, Google. Google has a feature that you can use to translate websites to and from many languages. The trick is, when you use this feature, you don’t actually point your web browser to the website you are translating, but rather to Google, so you won’t be blocked by many office filters (as long as Google isn’t blocked). To use this trick (found via Lifehacker), just copy and paste this URL into your browser:

http://www.google.com/translate?langpair=en|en&u=

Enter the URL of the page you are trying to get to after the “u=” (like “u=www.sagajet.com“) and you should be able to get to a previously “forbidden” page. If the page you are trying to view isn’t written in English, just change “en|en” to the desired language (like “fr|fr” for French).

Note that this trick won’t work on sites like Hotmail or Gmail that require a secure login; to get to pages like those from a restricted office computer would require the use of a proxy server, which is a little beyond the scope of this article. Also note that you use this method at your own risk; if you get in trouble for bypassing office filters, we never met.

Give office computers the thumb

If you want to totally personalize your office computing experience, buy yourself a thumb drive (also called a USB drive or flash drive or pen drive or little miracle worker). Thumb drives are like small, portable hard drives that you can plug into a USB port on any computer. The obvious advantage of a thumb drive is that it gives you a convenient place to store all of your files (and since you can buy drives with gigabytes of free memory, you can store a lot of files).

Recently, though, some very smart computer folks have figured out a way to run applications from a thumb drive, too. If you use open-source programs like Firefox, OpenOffice or Gaim at home but are left stranded when using an office computer, now you can put portable versions of these applications on your thumb drive and use them anywhere. These portable versions run totally off of a thumb drive, so you don’t have to install a thing on the office computer. Best of all, these programs also don’t leave any traces of your activity on the computer you use them on, so your coworkers won’t find that email you wrote about how inept they all are.

For the truly adventurous/truly nerdy, you can also run a version of Linux, Damn Small Linux, from a thumb drive.