| I Hit the Jackpot Yesterday |
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I had the (dubious) pleasure of trying to get things done using 5 different computer operating systems: Windows XP, Windows 7, Mac OS X, Crunchbang Linux, and Google Chrome OS. The latter is a very early pre-release version that I’m running as a virtual machine on my Windows XP laptop. I was stoked about Chrome OS when Google announced it back in July. I thought a stripped-down, lean OS made sense — you know, less-is-more. But I have to say I’m underwhelmed. Chrome OS just feels sort of dumbed-down. The applications tab strikes me as cartoonish. (It sort of reminded me of the Linux distro gOS.) I know Google’s got a lot of work to do on it, so I won’t presume to judge until I get to play with a more-developed version. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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Comments (1)July 15, 2009
| You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby |
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Last night I decided to upgrade to the latest distro of the CrunchBang variant of Ubuntu, 9.04 (”Jaunty Jackalope”), on my Dell laptop. It took about 20 minutes to install, with 1 reboot necessary. Downloading updates took less than 5 minutes. So in under 25 minutes, I had a fully-functioning OS, less than 2 GB in size, and complete with a great suite of free apps for Web surfing, image editing, creating docs, communicating — the whole works. Compare that with my recent Windows 7 installation, which took an hour, plus 2 reboots, and was stripped down, apps-wise. I had to install most of the apps that came pre-included with CrunchBang. I knows Linux gets a bad rap for user-friendliness. Heck, I’ve even grouched about it. But it’s gotten a lot better in the last year or year-and-a-half. And if it weren’t for Linux, my circa-2002 Dell Inspiron 1100 would have been tossed in the dumpster long ago. It couldn’t even run Windows XP properly. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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July 8, 2009
| I’m Ready. Just Tell Me When I Can Download It. |
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First, there was Android. Now Google has announced the Google Chrome Operating System. It’ll be free, open source, and linux-based (actually “Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel”). According to the Big G, it’ll be: “… fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web.” And what would an OS announcement be without a shot at Microsoft? “We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better. People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files. Even more importantly, they don’t want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates.” Google says their new OS will be available in about a year. I’ll convert my new netbook to GCOS as soon as I can. Where’s the link? I’m ready to download. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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June 16, 2009
| This Is Cool. I Just Don’t Know What To Do With It Yet. |
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Opera, the browser people, have introduced a service that turns your PC or laptop into a Web server so that you can share your files and images with other people, stream your MP3 files, host a Website, and more, without uploading anything to the Web. It’s called Opera Unite. I managed to share a folder living on my USB flash drive with 2 colleagues at Jenkins. After I told Opera Unite which folder I wanted to share, it created a URL that I emailed to them. They clicked on the link in the email and could view, but not edit, the files. They didn’t need to install Opera to look at the files, either. Interesting. But is this something I want to add to my digital toolbox? I’m thinking yeah, but I need to play with it some more. (It’s still a bit wonky. After an hour I started to get a weird proxy error and couldn’t even view my own files.) I also have to read the intro and an article written by one of its developers. Anyway, until I get access to Google Wave (and I’m not holding my breath, either), this is the next best thing. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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March 18, 2009
| Wow! |
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IBM wants to buy Sun for $7 billion. The NY Times hints there might be antitrust issues involved since the combined companies would control more than 40% of the server market. Looks like Microsoft will have another target other than Google to plot against. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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February 24, 2009
| Netbooks, Revisited |
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Netbooks are all the rage. I’ve blogged about them before. I haven’t followed up on that original post, because most of the articles I’ve been reading are written by propeller heads who argue about cache speeds or screen refresh or some other esoteric thingie that 99.99999999% of computer users do not know or care about. But Wired has a quite interesting article about the Netbook Effect. Here’s one quote that jumped out at me: “For years now, without anyone really noticing, the PC industry has functioned like a car company selling SUVs: It pushed absurdly powerful machines because the profit margins were high, while customers lapped up the fantasy that they could go off-roading, even though they never did. So coders took advantage of that surplus power to write ever-bulkier applications and operating systems. What netbook makers have done, in effect, is turn back the clock: Their machines perform the way laptops did four years ago. And it turns out that four years ago (more or less) is plenty.” So true. And even though I have 2 pricey — at least by *my* standards — Macs at home, I am quite fond of my 6 year-old, hand-me-down Dell Inspiron 1100 running CrunchBang linux. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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January 28, 2009
| … And Speaking of Hard Drives |
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… Today I wiped mine and installed CrunchBang linux, a distro based on Ubuntu. I had a ton of trouble getting Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake to install on my 5-year-old Dell laptop. I couldn’t even install the last 2 releases. But CrunchBang installed in 30 minutes. Audio, video, wifi — everything worked “out of the box”. My only problem so far is that it won’t mount my 8GB flash drive. (But it will handle my 2GB drive.) |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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December 2, 2008
| Windows Plunges to 89% of Desktops Worldwide; Linux Surges Towards 1% |
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A new survey from Net Applications indicates that worldwide market share for Windows and Internet Explorer continues to drop. On the operating system side, it shakes out thusly:
For browsers, here’s the top 3 (all others need not apply):
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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November 10, 2008
| That’s What You Get For Buying Version 1.0 Of Anything |
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The iPhone 3G had its teething problems with dropped calls. Now its Android’s turn. ZDNet’s Ed Burnette reports that Android executed every word you typed into the T-Mobile G1 as a command: “When the phone booted it started up a command shell as root and sent every keystroke you ever typed on the keyboard from then on to that shell. Thus every word you typed, in addition to going to the foreground application would be silently and invisibly interpreted as a command and executed with superuser privileges. Wow!” So if you typed, for example, “<return>-r-e-b-o-o-t-<return>”, your G1 would reboot, as this person discovered: “I was in the middle of a text conversation with my girl when she asked why I hadn’t responded. I had just rebooted my phone and the first thing I typed was a response to her text which simply stated ‘Reboot’ — which, to my surprise, rebooted my phone.” Google’s sent out a patch for this. If you have an Android build number later than RC29, your phone has been upgraded. (The article tells you how to check your build number.) |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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October 27, 2008
| Netbooks |
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One of the reasons cited for declining Windows Vista sales is the rise of netbooks — cheap, small notebook computers perfect for people who want to check their mail, surf the Web wirelessly, stuff like that. They normally run Windows XP (and can continue to do so until at least June 2010) or some flavor of Linux (which, unfortunately, ain’t popular with consumers.) Netbook manufacturers have to make trade-offs with regard to performance in order to keep them small and light — they have no optical drive (even on the MacBook Air) and their screens are small. But even so, sales are taking off. I’m interested, for sure. For the past 2 weeks or so I’ve been wondering which would be a better purchase: a $199 iPhone (and the baggage of $1,800 worth of charges over the next 2 years) or a $300-$400 notebook. Both are portable. (Granted, the iPhone will fit in my pocket. The netbook will have to be toted around in a bag.) Both feature wifi. (The iPhone also has 3G, when that works.) But the netbook has a real keyboard, something a fat-fingered guy with aging eyes appreciates. (I know, the G1 “Googlephone” has a keyboard, but it’s so tiny.) So, for me right now, its advantage netbook. Not that I’m gonna buy anything right now since the economy’s tanked. |
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Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
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