Practical Technology

for practical people.

September 3, 2008
by sjvn01
2 Comments

Dell’s Ubuntu-powered mini-laptop arrives tomorrow

Sources tell me, OK friends actually, that tomorrow, September 4th, is the long-awaited day that Dell will announce the release of its Inspiron 910 mini-laptop. It will come with your choice of (Boo!) Windows XP Home SP3 or (Yea!) Ubuntu 8.04.

Before any Windows business users rush out to spend their hard-earned money on this spiffy little computer, they should keep in mind that Ubuntu Linux is actually friendlier with Windows-based business networks than XP Home, which can only do security-less, peer-to-peer networking. So, if you want to be a business road-warrior the Inspiron 910, chances are you’ll actually want to use Ubuntu.

The Dell Inspiron 910 will use the Intel Atom 270 Diamondville CPU. This chip is already being used in other mini-computers such as the MSI Wind and the Acer Aspire. Dell’s CPU will be using the same 1.6GHz model. While I haven’t gotten my hands on Dell’s 910 yet, I have played around with both the Wind and the Aspire. Ubuntu will find it more than fast enough for their purposes.

More >

September 2, 2008
by sjvn01
0 comments

Google Chrome: First run around the track

I like the idea of Google Chrome, a lot. But, then I like a lot of ideas, and then the reality turns out to be another matter entirely. Once in a great while, though, something comes along that lives up to its promise. Google Chrome lives up to its promise.

That promise, as I describe in The real reason Google is making Chrome, is to take out Microsoft Office and, in larger terms, replace the desktop application metaphor with a Web application one. I don’t think, however, that Google wants to get into the operating system business or replace Windows.

I do think that Chrome, once it moves to Linux, has the potential to be a big help for desktop Linux. If Google is successful with its Chrome scheme, then a side-effect will be to dwindle Windows’ market share.

For some basics on what’s what with Chrome, Barbara Krasnoff does a fine job of reviewing Chrome. What I did was to see if Chrome lives up, in practice, to its promises of faster, much faster, Web application, specifically JavaScript performance.

To do this, I installed the Chrome beta on a Gateway 503GR. This system uses a 3GHz Pentium IV CPU, 2GB of RAM, an ATI Radeon 250 graphics card, and a 300GB SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) hard drive. On this older PC, I was running XP SP3.

After I installed it, and imported my bookmarks from Firefox 3, I just roamed around the sites I visit multiple times a day such as ComputerWorld, NewsForge, and NetworkWorld. One of the things these sites have in common is JavaScript-based ads. With Firefox 3, these sites are often slow to initially load; with IE (Internet Explorer) 7, these sites are painfully slow to load; with Chrome, "Wow!"

"Wow!" is these sites exploding, instead of crawling, on my display. A quick run of the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark revealed that it wasn’t just my perception. The test showed that IE 7 had a result of 59,682.1 milliseconds; Firefox 3.01 came in with 11,267.1 milliseconds; and Chrome ripped off a remarkable 3,617.8 milliseconds.

This, I might add was on a PC that was state of the art for 2005. On a newer system, Chrome’s results would be even more impressive.

OK, that’s great, but what about JavaScript-based applications like Google’s own applications. To find out, I ran Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Calendar.

Guess what, these applications on Chrome blasted by the same applications working with the same data on Firefox and IE. It seemed to me that Chrome was running at least twice as fast as did on Firefox. I won’t even mention IE.

How fast is that really? Fast enough that, for the first time, I can see ordinary users using Web-based applications instead of desktop-based applications for their every day work. Microsoft Office look out.

A version of this story first appeared in ComputerWorld.

September 2, 2008
by sjvn01
0 comments

The real reason Google is making Chrome

The real Labor Day storm wasn’t Gustav, it was Google’s announcement, by comic book no less, that it was releasing its own Web browser: Chrome.

So why is Google doing this? First, off let me tell what it’s not. It’s not an attempt to kill off Internet Explorer or Firefox. Google just renewed its partnership with Mozilla and that deal, which runs through 2011 accounts for 85% of Mozilla’s income.

So what is it then? There are five reasons why Google is doing this, and, if you read the comic book closely – yes, I’m serious – and you know technology you can see the reasons for yourself. These, in turn, lead to what I think is Google’s real goal for Chrome.

More >

September 1, 2008
by sjvn01
0 comments

Businesses don’t need to buy Linux

The 451 Group has issued a report that shows that companies are beginning to pick up something serious Linux users have known since day one: You don’t have to buy Linux to use it.

Oh make no mistake about it, if you don’t have experienced Linux administrators on staff trying to run your business on Linux while picking up how to run it is just plain stupid. But, if you or your staff already knows Linux, it’s another story entirely.

The 451 Group found that free community Linux distributions can be viable alternatives for major corporations. As Jay Lyman, a 451 Group analyst wrote, “Community distributions such as CentOS, Debian, and Gentoo are gaining enterprise respect for quality code, stability, response and, of course, for being ‘free as in beer’ and ‘free as in freedom.’ These community distributions are becoming a more significant market factor with growing enterprise acceptance and use of them.”

More >

September 1, 2008
by sjvn01
1 Comment

Linux Server Share Keeps Growing

While the worldwide server market’s factory revenue grew 6.4% over the last year, according to the IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Server Track, Linux server revenue was running ahead of the curve at a growth rate of 10%.

The economy may be tanking, but the worldwide server market still did $13.9-billion worth of business in 2008’s second quarter, making it the best second quarter since 2000. What’s diving this are businesses replacing older servers and adding new enterprise, SMB, and cloud computing servers. Curiously, considering the overall bad financial news it’s the high-end enterprise server market that’s leading the way with a 22.1% increase year over year.

Continue Reading →