John Farley OBE, former test pilot, author of 'A view from the hover', lecturer, aviation consultant:
IT technical support, consultation, computer design build and installation, and data transfer.
Back in 1990, after forty years in the aircraft industry working for various employers, I decided to become a self employed Aeronautical Engineer and shortly after purchased a Dell Desktop P60. This was then the very latest thing and advertised as ‘multi-media ready' because it used something called a ‘Pentium' processor (those were the days!). Six Dell machines later the year had reached 2006 and the days of the ‘Dual core processor'. With each of these upgrades I chose the spec myself from the Dell website and when the machine was delivered spent countless hours (OK days) setting it up to suit my needs and transferring my existing data. By then believe me I had a lot of data. In fact a Dell service engineer who came to change a dodgy component looked at what I had and with a slightly stupefied expression asked if I knew what a‘ USB external drive' was? I didn't but found out and two years later had five of them, all nearly full.
Earlier this year I realised that I was pushing my luck in relying on a middle aged and hard worked machine so decided to replace it. A friend had told me of
ESP Computers who he said would spec a machine to my needs, build it and commission it for me.
Since I now work in education with several universities as well as run residential courses for specially selected bright sixth-formers, I need to make the most of up-to-date kit (and it's capabilities with high end graphics) if I am to have any credibility with my students who are some 50 to 60 years my junior. I also need reliability and in the event of a hardware problem must be able to recover my capability ASAP.
Talking to ESP Computers they explained how the right system architecture could not only speed up my work and improve my lecture visual aids, but also provide rapid recovery following a component or software issue as well as protect my data. I decided to take a punt and was that ever a good decision. Their personal service was an eye-opener and over a day at my home office I went from a dodgy slow Dual core to a specially tailored Quad core ‘Raid Array' blisteringly quick machine with all my programmes up and running and all data transferred. The only snag is that I now get no time off now when I click on something - not like last week!
Read extracts from John Farley's latest book, 'A View From The Hover'
