Saturday, October 31, 2009

Of long breaks and others

For how long can you hold your breath under water?

I felt as if I was doing just that, only this case I was not writing instead of not breathing. Kind of purposely, I did not do it partly because of business and partly to focus on reading what others in the field of IT were saying.

Well, there have been many developments happening, the Windows Seven launch and parties; new and more intrusive worms in the wild; more and more new companies offering cloud services, the list is endless and each time longer.

Praise for W7 has been the central topic for most. Although I have been using it for roughly a month now, I still have a wishing list that I suspect will take many months to be entirely checked off.
While it is true that W7 is better than its predecessors, the fact is that Vista should have been 2 years ago what W7 is now. Period.

There are so many topics to retake. I’ll start with something that ends in a “9.10”

What has kindda gone under the radar is Ubuntu. Putting aside the long times for downloading the image file (only when you do it on the launch date), the fact is that it is a breeze to install and use now. My Netbook is a Dell mini with only 4 GB HD, therefore the need for a small footprint OS, and one that simply works.
From the moment I created the USB bootable flash drive to the minute I declared my lil machine ready to start using it was just 86 minutes. Except –in my case- for a glitch that forces you to reinstall the wireless “proprietary” drivers; everything else went smooth. Easy wizard, quick process, nice graphics, … it comes with Open Office 3.1, Firefox 3.5, Evolution email... it's just great. Even adding a network printer is so quick, i.e. a newer HP p1505n is listed among hundreds of other brands and models, and works like a charm.

So, have you had enough already on W7 praise and critics? Check everything Linux, you won't be disappointed this time.

Promise.