Practical Technology

for practical people.

January 27, 2010
by sjvn01
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Anything the iPad can do, Linux can do better.

The Apple iPad has finally arrived, and as I predicted a while back, it’s really just a big iPod Touch. That’s great — I love my iPod Touch. But really, is there anything here that Linux can’t do just as well for less money?

I do think that the iPad might be a game-changer, but I don’t see it as creating some kind of new kind of computing platform. It’s also not going to replace netbooks, notebooks or PCs.

Sure, it will come with an iPad version of Apple’s iWork office suite, but have you ever tried to type on a tablet? I have. It doesn’t work. You need a real keyboard, and that’s why netbooks and their kin will continue to do just fine.

What the iPad and the Linux-powered tablets it will be competing with are going to kill off are every special-purpose handheld device out there. GPS devices and e-book readers are now officially on their way to joining Betamax and HD-DVD.

But it won’t just be the Apple iPad that does them in. I foresee a rollout of dozens of Linux-powered devices by the end of the year. In part, that may be because the content on Linux devices won’t come saddled with Apple’s DRM (digital rights management). But the real reason why Linux devices should win is price. If the vendors can’t beat the bottom-end iPad’s list price of $499, then they’re not really trying.

Here’s what I see happening. The first wave of iPad competitors will use Moblin 2.0. There are already five Linux vendors working on Moblin. These are Canonical, with Ubuntu Netbook Remix; Linpus, Novell; Red Flag; and Xandros.

Together with their hardware partners, you should look to Acer, Asus, Dell and MSI: they’ll be delivering their own take on the iPad by year’s end. Their devices will be powered by the new Intel Atom platform for netbooks and small desktops: The N450, D510, and D410 ‘Pineview’ CPUs and ‘Pinetrail’ NM10 chipset.

Novell, I should note, is hedging its bets. Not long after the iPad announcement, Novell was pointing out that its MonoTouch platform lets iPad developers use .NET code and libraries and other programming languages like C# to program for the iPad. Mono and .NET developers should be able, with some slight modifications, run their existing iPhone and iPod Touch apps on the iPad.

Besides the Moblin/Atom boxes, you’ll also see iPad-like tablets using ARM processors and Google’s Android 2.0 take on Linux coming out at about the same time. Android 2 vendors, like Motorola with its Droid, have always targeted the iPhone. The iPad will just be another arena for their battle.

And, last but not least, there’s Google with its Chrome operating system. It’s going to take longer to come to the market then the others but I can see Chrome Linux powered netbooks giving the iPad trouble as well as giving the traditional desktop market fits.

All that taken into consideration, I’m also still sure that the iPad will be wildly popular. Apple products, when Apple puts its mind to it, usually are very successful … for users who have the money for the shiniest new toys. But in the longer run, I’m willing to bet that collectively, the Linux-powered entertainment tablets will end up having more customers.

A version of this story first appeared in ComputerWorld.

January 27, 2010
by sjvn01
0 comments

The Snoopy Google Toolbar

No one is accusing Google of being Big Brother, but it certainly was eye-opening when Ben Edelman, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School, shows that newer versions of Google Toolbar, versions 6.3 and above, was tracking Internet Explorer 8 users actions even when it was ‘off.’

Of course this begs the question, “Is there someone out there who ever turns the extremely useful Google Toolbar off?” I never have. Still, it is disturbing that this bug ever made it to the public in the first place. I mean, what part of ‘off’ did Google’s developers not get?

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January 27, 2010
by sjvn01
4 Comments

And the best Linux desktop distro of all is…

hen it comes to Linux, there is no one size fits all answer. But, unlike other desktop operating systems, Linux doesn’t try to squeeze you into a system’s that’s too large or too small. Instead, Linux offers a wide variety of distributions and one of them is likely be the right one for you.

Linux, you see, is a family of operating systems. They share the same father, but each distribution has its own personality and its own audience. For example, if you really wanted to, you can have a Linux distribution that looks and act like Windows XP, but which underneath its Microsoft-like surface is actually running Ubuntu Linux. Or, if that doesn’t strike your fancy, you can always make the popular Ubuntu distribution into a Mac OS X look-alike.

Better still, you can find a Linux that will do what you want it to do. After all, despite silly tales of how you have to be some kind of technical wizard who chants “awk, grep, sed” at a shell command prompt to use Linux, anyone can run Linux these days. The default Linux desktop KDE or GNOME graphical interfaces may not look quite like the ones you’re used to but they’re every bit as easy to use and as powerful. Yes, once in a blue moon you may need to modify a configuration file by hand, but you’ll need to do it no more often than a Windows user has to do the exact same kind of thing with the regedit command.

The real question isn’t, “Can I run Linux?” It’s “which Linux is best for me?” Here’s my guide to help you find the right one for you.

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January 27, 2010
by sjvn01
0 comments

There’s No Reason to Wait for Windows 7 SP1

Waiting for Windows 7 SP1 before updating? Why? It’s ready to go today.

Historically, adopting the first version of any major Microsoft software release has been, well, a mistake. Sometimes, as with Windows NT, it took several iterations — until NT4 SP3 — before the operating system really worked well. And, with the far more recent Windows Vista fiasco in mind, no one could blame you for not aggressively looking into shifting your business desktops from Windows XP to Windows 7. But, more than six months after Windows 7 was released to manufacturing, it’s become clear that there’s no reason to wait for SP1 before moving up to Windows 7.

I’ve had little love for Windows over the years. But this time, while I can still give you chapter and verse on why a Linux desktop is worth considering, I have to say that I’m impressed by Windows 7. More to the point, after over a year of working with Windows 7 from late beta until now, I’ve found it more than stable enough to consider as a Windows XP replacement today.

People’s usual reasons for holding off on an upgrade until SP1 is fear that an early Windows version will break underneath them. That’s not the case here.

I have been beating the heck out of Windows 7 on a variety of systems and to coin a phrase, “It just works.” Along the way I have also run on the OS mainstream business software such as Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, QuickBooks, and dozens of other programs, and I’ve yet to find a need for Windows 7?s built-in XP virtualization. At the same time, I’ve also found that most everyday business peripherals such as printers, scanners, and the like also have no trouble with Windows 7.

This isn’t to say that you should just run out buy a few thousand Windows 7 licenses and start your conversion process tomorrow. That would be the height of folly. What I am saying is that you don’t need to wait until SP1 appears before starting a migration.

So why should you make the move? For me, the real corporate IT win isn’t in Windows 7 by itself. If you were to ask me to name one compelling reason to move from Windows XP SP3 to Windows 7, I couldn’t give you one.

But if you put Windows 7 together with Windows Server 2008 R2, then I think you get something that is well worth an enterprise’s time and money. Primarily, what I like is their combination of high-end networking services.

I’m not talking about cute — but not game-changing — services such as location-aware printing that makes sure your laptop users always and automatically use the right printer no matter where they are. No, it’s features such as BranchCache; DirectAccess; Secure Remote Connect; URL-based Quality of Service; and improved IPv6 support.

The net effect of all these services is to greatly improve your network’s overall performance. BranchCache makes it much easier for your branch offices to stay in sync with the central office’s servers. DirectAccess, Secure Remote Connect and IPv6 team up in a variety of ways to maximize the utility of your Internet connection, and URL-based Quality of Service helps make sure that your important network traffic gets the priority it deserves without requiring constant network administration tuning.

These advances may not mean much for a small company, but when you’re looking at hundreds to hundreds of thousands of PCs, all those network speed boosts add up to a considerable savings both for network management and overall worker performance.

Still, you should also keep in mind that, like it or lump it, you’re probably going to need to buy new computers when you move from Windows XP to Windows 7. While it’s relatively easy to upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7, it’s far more difficult to move from Windows XP to Windows 7. That said, your Windows XP systems aren’t getting any younger and their maintenance costs will only get higher.

It’s also a sad, but true, fact that some high-end equipment isn’t supported by Windows 7 or by its vendors. For example, Intel’s 82801ER SATA RAID disk controller, which was used in high-end Xeon workstations, doesn’t work well with Windows 7.

So, if you do elect to move to Windows 7 sooner rather than later, you should be certain to do your due diligence with both software and hardware. This means more than just checking Microsoft’s Windows Compatibility Center. You need to do hands-on testing. I strongly suspect that, in the end, when it comes to hardware you’ll find it cheaper to buy new computers than it will be to retrofit your older XP systems with Windows 7.

In my experience, it’s often easier and less expensive to swap out machines than it is to upgrade them no matter what the operating system. With PCs at near historic lows in terms of price for CPU power, RAM, and disk space, now may actually be a good time to move to Windows 7.

Yes, I know, I know. Budgets are tight all over. On the other hand, since Windows 7 is proving to be remarkably stable and work-ready already why not upgrade now and reap the benefits from Windows 7?s more advanced networking features today? After all, sooner or later, probably sooner, you’re going to need to update your desktop operating systems. Better to upgrade now than before broken systems force your hands into an ad hoc migration situation.

A version of There’s No Reason to Wait for Windows 7 SP1 first appeared in IT Expert Voice.

January 26, 2010
by sjvn01
0 comments

Chrome 4: King of the Web browser hill?

Firefox 3.6 has just come out and it’s great. There’s only one problem. Google has released the new version of Chrome, version 4, and it’s even better.

This new version retains its speed lead over other browsers. I tested it on one of my Dell 530S desktop PCs. This PC is powered by a 2.2GHz Intel Pentium E2200 dual-core processor with an 800MHz front-side bus. It has 4GB of RAM, a 500GB SATA (Serial ATA) drive, and an Integrated Intel 3100 GMA (Graphics Media Accelerator) chipset and was running Windows XP SP3. On this machine, Chrome ripped by Firefox 3.6 on the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark test with a mark of 530.8 milliseconds compared to Firefox 3.6’s 1007.0 milliseconds.

While faster than Firefox, Chrome 4 isn’t a great deal faster than Chrome 3.x. On the same machine, my older copy of Chrome came in with a time of 553.0 milliseconds. I was unable to test this production version of Chrome on Linux or a Mac because those versions are still in beta.

Speed, though, isn’t the real news in this latest version of Chrome. This time around it’s the addition of features that demands your attention.

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January 25, 2010
by sjvn01
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Record-setting Linux

I know the value of Pi, the irrational number you get when you divide the circumference of a circle by its diameter, as far as 3.14159 and after that I’m clueless. Recently, though, French software engineer, Fabrice Bellard, calculated the value of Pi out o 2.7 trillion numbers… with a souped-up but otherwise ordinary home PC running Red Hat’s Fedora Linux.

Bellard, best known for being the founding developer of FFMpeg, the highly respected audio/video program for converting music and movies from one format to another, took on Pi not because he was “especially interested in the digits of Pi, ” but because he was interested “in the various algorithms involved to do arbitrary-precision arithmetic. Optimizing these algorithms to get good performance is a difficult programming challenge.” You can say that again.

To pull this off, Bellard used a PC running an 2.93 GHz 64-bit Intel Core i7 CPU with just over 6GBs of RAM. The only thing really extraordinary about his record-setting PC was that he used 7.5 TB (TeraBytes) of disk storage. This consisted of five Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5 TB hard disks. These are high-performance drives with 3 Gbps (Gigabit per second) SATA (Serial ATA) interfaces.

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