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 [...]
How much should you pay for Windows Vista?
In addition to having a complex array of versions, Vista also has confusing pricing. I have given a table of prices at this link but I want to enlarge on the category with the lowest prices. It is called Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) or System Builder software. These prices are around half of what a [...]
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 [...]