Archive for May, 2007

Are the new type “N” routers worth buying?

For some time now, manufacturers have been working on a new standard called 802.11n for routers. It’s supposed to be faster and more efficient. The standard is not finalized but vendors are already selling routers with interim versions of the new standard. Should you buy one? PC Magazine has some reviews.

Juxtaposed headlines

My latest newsletter from PC World includes these headlines:

Dell Opens New R&D Center in India
Motorola Lays Off 4,000 in Search for Missing Profit
IBM Lays Off 1,500 Employees

I make no statements and give no conclusions. I just report the coincidence of events.

Google Gears

Google is going full tilt at breaking into the software market. The company has already been involved in online applications and now it wants to get into offline as well. An announcement was made today about an open source project called “Google Gears”. The Business Wire says:
Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) today announced at Google Developer Day [...]

Linux chronicles

The release of the new Ubuntu distro of Linux, the adoption of it by Dell for some systems, and the desire of many to find an alternative to the Microsoft monopoly has led to a raft of articles. There are too many to cover in this blog but a list of ZDNet articles is here.
Some [...]

Ubuntu vs. Vista

A nice study of using Ubuntu Linux compared with using Vista has been done by Serdar Yegulalp, who was one of the fine crew of editors and writers at the late lamented Windows Magazine. He writes:
The prevailing wisdom about Linux on the desktop runs something like this: “I’ll believe Linux is ready for the [...]

More about Google and GreenBorder

The acquisition of GreenBorder by Google that I previously posted about was done very quietly and almost no one seemed to notice for a while. However, some comment has finally started to appear. Ryan Naraine blogs:
It’s clear that Google is pushing aggressively into the anti-malware market to clean up its own search results and [...]

The taxman cometh

I have posted already about the desire of the IRS to levy income tax on transactions at auction sites like eBay. Now local governments are after your money. Always looking for new ways to tax people, the states have been unhappy about all the sales tax that slipped through their fingers because of Internet transactions. [...]

Free downloads for Office 2007

Blake Handler’s blog is a good source for finding Microsoft downloads. Go to this link for a list of free things for Office 2007. Even if you have an older version of Office, you will want the converter pack that lets you read the new file formats of Office 2007, as I posted previously.

Chez McAfee

Do you use McAfee security software? Go to this link to see what you helped build.

Googlephobia

According to the search expert Danny Sullivan, a wave of concern about Google snooping on us all is running around the blogosphere. Writing at Search Engine Land, he surveys some of the fearful comments and then concludes:
So many companies today offline (banks, credit cards, loyalty cards, credit reporting agencies) hold much more information about me [...]

Dell doings

Dell is in the news a lot lately. Having fallen out of first spot for computer manufacturers, the company, under its returned founder Michael Dell, has been making a number of changes. The Dell business model of doing business only on-line or at some mall kiosks is being dropped modified and it has been announced [...]