Month: March 2007

Jeff Ventura is wrong!!!!

[update: Correct spelling error]

Jeff Ventura, a blogger over at Graceful Flavor, has written an invective about the Linux desktop. He claims that Linux on the desktop is not viable and remain so for the foreseeable future.

LOTD is, and has always been, a total non-starter outside the hobbyist and tech-elite crowds, and it will remain so for quite some time, if not forever.

Well, Jeff, I think you are wrong and I will prove it.

About three years ago I converted my wife's Dell laptop into a Linux desktop. It took me a few hours to download and burn the ISO image of Fedora Core 3 to disk but installation progressed smoothly after that. I ran into a small snag with the drivers for the Linksys 802.11g wireless NIC but after a few weeks of lurking in the message boards I had successfully compiled and installed the driver code.

I went about the task of configuring her desktop environment. She was used to inserting movies into the DVD drive and Windows would launch her movie player software. After a few months I had that working quite well. It took a little less time to find a suitable media player that would launch and play her music CDs but once I had that working we were home free.

My wife was very happy with her Linux desktop. So Jeff, given enough time and effort and 24⁄7 tech support Linux is definitely a viable desktop alternative.

I am not quite sure why I switched her back to Windows. Now let me get back to reading the blogs. My MacBook is getting lonely.

Faugh a Ballaugh!

War drums from Apple. « Graceful Flavor
The PC war is being waged on so many fronts, which, believe it or not, behooves Apple more than Microsoft. Technology outstrips the average user’s ability to understand it, which, again, falls squarely into Apple’s wheelhouse.

Pardon my dramatics, but if Apple’s field general makes the right decisions, we all we have a chance to witness a company with all the potential in the world — after many hitches and near-death experiences — finally realize it. The armies are amassing now, and only a fool can’t hear the drums.

I feel it too.  The excitement can not be contained.  Every time a friend or family member calls me to ask what they can do to make their computer work better, I answer "Get a Mac".  Recently my Uncle, who suffered under a series of "custom built" Windows beasts, took my advice and bought an iMac.  He now sees the light.  "It just works!".

"But it's expensive", other complain.  A BMW 3 is expensive compared to a Toyota Camry but the Camry won't do 0-60 in 6.12 seconds or the quarter mile in less than 15 seconds.  You get what you pay for.

AppleInsider | Intel introduces first solid-state drives based on flash memory

While these are still too expensive for the average budget the race is on. I expect in the next few years we will see dropping prices and increased capacity.  Although I do not expect that flash drives will match the cost per megabyte of magnetic storage at some point in the very near future the price/performance curve will make flash based HD a very attractive alternative for laptop hard drives.  The SanDisk drive mentioned in the article is already at the right capacity for most corporate notebooks.

AppleInsider | Intel introduces first solid-state drives based on flash memory

Conceived as a drop-in replacement for other notebook drives, the "SATA 5000" fits into a standard 2.5-inch space without any changes but consumes less than half the power. The 32GB drive will run system builders about $350.