Rental Car, Computers and Telemetry

In this US trip, I got a free upgrade (thanks to Avis) to a Chevy Impala LS. By the time I took the car out, it has just 7 miles on it. So got to feel the new car smell again, without actually buying it.

RentalCarSep07

During the course of this trip, I have put in 1446 miles on it. That means I have seen all the 2 digit and 3 digit numbers on the odometer during these 10 days. For whatever worth this data is :-).This car has great telemetry built into that, like average mileage, average speed, potential distance with the current fuel etc. How can we provide similar kind of telemetry for our computers? This was a good lunch time discussion with Aniruddh earlier in the day.

Google does it very well. Whenever I open my gmail, it says I have 2,134 MB of space and counting. It changes these numbers dynamically, to give a sense of accuracy of data. Moreover, it is worth knowing what I am left with than what I have already consumed. Just like whenever I do a “df -h” on my system, I am more interested in the leftover space than consumed space.

We need to do the same for our computers.