Internet commentary
Conductors must give unmistakable … signals[1]
Regular readers will know that I have promoted Norton anti-virus as being a good protection against many kinds of malicious software which can come our way either by browsing the internet or through e-mail. The version I used was incorporated in Norton System Works 2002, which I bought about two and a half years ago. This particular version has a number of other very useful utilities and I was very satisfied with the results.
Unfortunately, for reasons totally unconnected with the subject matter of this column, I had to re-install Windows XP Pro. When it came to re-install NSW,the installation application informed me that the version was no longer supported, after less than three years, even though I had paid for a year’s updates, only 3 1/2; months previously. This annoyed me, but I bit the bullet. I hunted around on the Symantec web site and found NSW 2006, which was available as an upgrade. After a very long download, I installed the version and started to set it up. I was appalled to find that it had practically taken over my computer but, above all, it refused to allow the anti-virus updates to be downloaded. I spent nearly two days going through the Symantec web site for help and tried several different methods of resolving the problem, to no avail. As the manufacturer offered no e-mail support, I sent a fax to the nearest offices,in Ireland. I received neither acknowledgement nor answer. At a cost, I tried to phone them, again in Ireland. A voice-mail message informed me that no technical support was offered by telephone but that I could consult their knowledge base on the internet, as if I had not been doing that for the previous two days! In the meantime, I found that NSW was more than tripling the boot-up time of the computer, which is an indication of how much it had taken over the system. Apart from that, their installation software could not even configure the Norton-protected Recycle Bin correctly, causing an error message on each boot-up.
As an aside, a neighbour, who also had NSW 2002 installed, suffered a similar fate (including 10 months of unexpired updates) except that she followed Norton’s recommendations by upgrading to a package of their Anti-virus 2006 and Internet Security 2006. She asked me whether I could sort out her computer after installing them, as it had become sluggish. On investigation, I found she had three firewalls and three anti-malware utilities operating. I uninstalled the Internet Security and switched off the Windows XP Firewall, leaving her ZoneAlarm firewall operational. The Anti-virus was still sluggish, but the computer behaved more normally.
Fed up with this state of affairs, I decided to cut my losses and abandon Norton products altogether; my policy became “Naught-on” my computer!To give Symantec their due, they refunded what I paid for NSW 2006, very promptly (I even made about three cents profit, because of differences in exchange rates!).
This left me with two problems: I urgently needed a new anti-virus and a new defragmentation tool, the other functions of NSW being less important. My first task was to find a suitable anti-virus and, after some research, I opted for the Grisoft AVG Pro package. In comparison, this installed and automatically updated like a dream. It operated transparently with almost no overheads and the updating is very regular. The only change I did to the default installation was a weekly, instead of daily, complete system scan. For the “defragger”I chose Diskeeper. It, too, had a default configuration of daily defragmentation of all the partitions, which I changed to manual, because several of my partitions rarely change and this would cause unnecessary drive wear. It is remarkably more effective than the utility supplied with Windows, which I think is actually a very old Intel software.
What about the bottom line? Well, this is very positive, because the AVG and Diskeeper utilities, together, cost about half of what I did not pay for NSW 2006. Of course, there are features in NSW that I no longer have, but there are substitutes either within Windows XP Pro or available online for nothing.
While on the subject of invasive software for internet protection, Zone Labs have been telling me for some months that, initially, version 6.0 of their ZoneAlarm Pro firewall, and then 6.1, was available. I succumbed to the temptation of 6.1 recently, to my instant regret. With it installed and set up by default, it seemed that I could hardly breathe before it shouted a warning that I was laying myself open to all sorts of dire consequences. Every software I installed or even uninstalled constituted a hazard. This was mostly because it has over-zealously assumed that it was prone to malware. The crux is that I have a very good, non-intrusive, anti-malware program, Pest Patrol, and I do not need a second one, least of all one that cries wolf without being able to stop it. Ergo, I have reverted to version 5.5, which does not have this intrusion. In a few months, Zone Labs will be asking for me to renew my update subscription and,guess what, I will not pay! I will continue to use their freeware firewall,which is all I need.
The important feature that can make or break a software house is support. Before Norton was taken over by Symantec, the support was excellent, an e-mail question being answered within a working day. Today, I can qualify it only as execrable; in fact, it is probably the worst that I have come across recently. If you have a problem that is not dealt with in their internet knowledge base,then you will have to whistle for your answer. They do not even run a forum,that I could find. So, how do I find the new contenders? I did have a question,while still on the trial version, for Diskeeper and I sent them an e-mail. Helpful and complete answer received about 8 h later. This is how it should be. I have not had occasion to contact Grisoft, but they do have a Tech Support message form on their web site, so I assume their service is probably reasonable.
The point I am trying to make is that it would be far better if all these software authoring houses stuck to their speciality and developed it to the maximum, instead of trying to be all things to all men. Adding a few bells and whistles of unrelated products to their core business does not justify extra cost, especially when many other companies have offered better solutions for many years. And if they do not offer adequate support, then they may as well place their key under the doormat straight away. At the time of writing,Symantec share prices have dropped 21 per cent over the past year, bucking the trend of the Nasdaq index at up about 10 per cent in the same period. Could this be because they are losing market share to companies like Grisoft, which has been enjoying very good press reviews of late? This company, of Czech origin,does not appear to be quoted on the usual stock exchanges, so I cannot see how its value has progressed in comparison with any of the indices, but I have found that Intel bought a majority share in it, last year.
Before we look at some web sites, let me mention that, at long last, I have a broadband connection, albeit only 1 Mbit/s maximum download and 256 kbit/s upload rates. This makes a BIG difference to the comfort which I experience while reviewing web sites, but it will not make any difference to the views I expressed on download speeds in the last issue of this journal. If I find that a site is too heavily graphics-oriented, I will not hesitate to say so. Believe it or not, I first applied for ADSL five years and eight months ago and it was installed just two weeks ago, as I write this. When the Spaniards say mañana,the Cypriots say a?pio and that makes the Spanish look like amateurs!
For this column, I would like to talk mainly about thick film substrates,overlapping into thin film ones, as well, and one or two other things around the same subject. As those of you in the hybrid business know, there are substrates and there are substrates. The problem is choosing the best compromise between the required characteristics, the quality and the price. Hopefully, some of the site discussions below will help users, particularly beginners, to find the right substrate for their particular requirements. Notwithstanding, remember that the substrate is the support for the conductors that must give unmistakable signals to the other components!
I think that this page is an excellent place to start our study. Firstly, we can see that this particular manufacturer offers two grades of material, the first one being the traditional type and the second one containing less alumina. The related literature, lower down on the page, is well worth going through, one by one. The first document, Electronic Products Overview Brochure, gives a very brief idea of the general quality of diverse substrates, the surface finish(polished down to better than 0.025 μm) and the maximum dimensions– with one decimal point displaced by two places! The next one, Thick-Film Ceramic Substrates Brochure, gives the technical characteristics of the two main materials. Of course, in addition to the electrical characteristics, the all-important coefficient of thermal expansion is given. I have one beef about the data: some of the values are given in imperial units with metric units in parentheses while others are exactly the opposite. This lends to a certain confusion. The third document, Thick-Film Ceramic Substrates Design Guideline,is fascinating because it describes how the substrates are manufactured. It gives the user invaluable information on mechanical tolerances that are possible, amongst a plethora of very useful data, including quality control. For some unknown reason, the translation to Adobe PDF format has not been very successful, as there are a number of symbolic and typographical errors. This is followed by a document related to a proprietary version of standard substrates with an exceptionally fine surface quality. The final document, Clean Ceramics– RoHS Compliance, is a little essay to tell users that the products conform to the EU RoHS and WEEE directives. Of course, I would hardly expect alumina substrates to contain excessive amounts of the banned substances!
This company has an extraordinary range of substrates with all kinds of finishes. Some of these are obviously not for hybrid applications. If we scroll down the page to product information, we can get reference to pages relative to both thick and thin film products. Some of these appear to be in sizes which exceed our normal expectations but, provided our manufacturing equipment can handle them, they could offer economical manufacture. This is possibly a good site to go to if you need something a little out of the ordinary.
This Japanese document is an interesting mini-paper describing a method of avoiding mini cracks in the sintering of thick film substrates. It is achieved by firing in a centrifuge with a gravitational field of 80,000 G. This technology has now been applied industrially. I am led to wonder whether the technique may not result in an anisotropic substrate with different thermal coefficients of expansion in the X/Y and Z axes.
Forget about downloading this massive document if you are on a narrow-band connection, unless you are really desperate. At the time I did so, I had a connection speed of about 750 kbit/s and, theoretically, it should have downloaded in a little under 90 s. The reality was far worse, nearly 11 min. This was probably because of a bottleneck on Kyocera’s server or the connection between it and the internet backbone. This happened twice, the download having failed completely the first time. As the document is bilingual English/Japanese, I surmise that the long download time may also be exacerbated by the need to have Japanese characters, which may not be standard in the Adobe Acrobat software. Page 3 shows the process flow for the various substrate products offered and these include 93, 96 and 99.6 per cent alumina for both thick and thin film applications. The following pages give detailed descriptions and specifications of the different products, including pressed and extruded ones. Besides alumina, there are a number of other materials available including aluminium nitride, which is possibly ideal for some chip mounting applications. For those requiring high-tech materials, the download wait may be worthwhile.
This is another Japanese company, an offshoot from a main supplier of spark plugs. Up to now, we have dealt mainly with alumina substrates. This page describes a range of dielectric substrates. If we click on Material Code, we will see that the range of materials is very high, with dielectric constants up to about 90 or with Q-values exceeding 40,000. Rather surprisingly for a high-tech company, the page design is rather crude, not reflecting the type of business.
Jumping quickly from Japan to the UK, we do not always want a substrate material as a simple square. Many of the companies that I have reviewed in this paper can offer machined substrates, but it would seem that we have here a firm that does not make the ceramic substrates, but laser-machines them for both thick and thin films. Obviously, this can only be custom business and they have taken great care to show clients their production process, thereby explaining where potential bottlenecks may arise. It would seem that almost any material,including organic, may be laser-machined. Perhaps the most important point with this web site is under the chapter Design Guidelines, which gives useful information regarding mechanical tolerances and what to do or not do.
We can always learn something new and this product is new to me. It is claimed to be a machinable glass ceramic with a low dielectric constant and good electrical properties, suitable for both thick and thin film applications. Apparently, ordinary metalworking machine tools can be used for shaping it, with obvious advantages. It is worthwhile exploring some of the links in this page to find out more about the product. I suspect that this product is not dissimilar to something I used over 50 years ago for making tank coil formers for 1 and 5 kW HF transmitters, comprising finely shredded mica bonded by soft glass; it,too, was machinable.
This is an interesting paper, giving details of stacking high-density thick and thin film substrates. The application is for ultra-miniaturised hearing aids. The volume density in a single package is astonishing. The company is Canadian but the origin of the engineers developing this technique, judging from the names, is truly a worldwide mixture. For those who are interested in ultra-miniaturisation, this paper is an excellent read.
This is a single page document describing substrates for thin film applications with and without metallisation. The range of substrate materials starts with the traditional alumina, going up to titanate ceramics with dielectric constants of 12,000. Five standard metallisations are offered, either photochemically etched or “as-is”. Obviously, this is a material that also lends itself to miniaturisation.
Back to Japan, this company has a large range of thick film substrates for different applications. The web site is not complete, presumably being worked upon. This makes navigation somewhat hazardous because there is no logical way,that I found, to reach a very good chart giving the characteristics of all their fine ceramics that are usable for thick film applications. The full URL for this page is www.noritake-elec.com/thickfilm/ceramic_characteristic_chart.htm,in case you cannot find it.
At least it would be difficult to accuse me of not being up-to-date, as this reference is dated just last month at the time of writing! If you are feeling very rich, you can spend $4,250 for a report on new developments in advanced glasses and glass ceramics. Some importance is given to electronics applications but it is difficult to judge from the abstract and table of contents whether it is useful to our industry or even whether it is worth the price. This was not helped by the button “Sample pages” not being implemented. Only you can judge whether it is likely to have merit for your research.
For the last review, I am very puzzled. This company appears to have a traditional range of 92, 94 and 96 per cent alumina and other substrates and there is nothing which would appear to indicate that there is anything wrong with it. Yet, in their banner heading, they give a stock quotation that, at the time of writing, is at one tenth of a cent, down by 33 per cent! As the web site has a section for investors, ever curious, I went through it and found nothing to explain the low stock value; in fact, the CEO, in all his reports, sounds optimistic, if not bullish. I wonder whether I would be wasting a dollar, by buying 1,000 shares! Please excuse me for having drifted off-topic. The company site claims to have a unique manufacturing process for producing various ceramics at lower cost and with reduced microcracking. They also claim that their various plants are working 24/7 to meet the demand for their products.
In my search for material for this paper, I found a considerable number of references to thick film piezoelectric devices, many of which contained lead compounds such as lead zirconate or titanate. I have not checked whether these have been exempted from the RoHS directive but, if they have not, is there not a problem in the making with these materials?
Brian EllisCyprus, bne@bnellis.com
“Conductors must give unmistakable and suggestive signals to the orchestra – not choreography to the audience”, George Szell (1897-1970, conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra), Newsweek, 28 January 1963.
