Any port in a storm refers to a ship on the high seas. It definitely doesn’t apply to input and output ports on PCs.

Most of the legacy ports have been around so long I’m pretty used to them. Mouse and keyboard (both the PS/2 type ports and the newer USB ports), VGA for the monitor, the fast disappearing parallel printer port, serial port (are there still any serial devices?), audio in and audio out port (and some ports I’ve probably missed).

My Dell Inspiron 530 threw me with another port, a DVI port. There were also two cables for the Dell SE198WFP LCD monitor, a standard VGA cable, and a DVI cable.
DVI is “a digital connector which is the ideal way to connect to an LCD monitor.”
DVI-I (Integrated) can carry both a digital and an analog signal to support VGA monitors, and DVI-D (Digital) provides only a digital signal. DVI was intended to replace VGA.

HDMI is backward compatible with DVI. HDMI carries both digital video and audio signals in a single cable. Most gamers would know about HDMI as the Xbox 360 Premium began shipping with a HDMI port last year.

Early in May I wrote about the Symbian Operating System which is used in more than 50 percent of the smartphones worldwide.

I decided to have a look and see what was available in the US with regard to a smallish Symbian smartphone, in a reasonable price bracket. It appears that none of the US cellphone carriers currently carry a Symbian smartphone (although there is a rumor that AT&T may be offering the Nokia N95 later this year). This means no subsidized Symbian smartphones, so you pay full price.

Initially I had a brief look at the highly acclaimed Nokia N95. Somehow I had expected that the dual-slider design meant it had a QWERTY keyboard. Instead it had a phone keypad and music controls. Since the N95 is well over $500 (anything cheaper than this could very well be a Chinese knock-off), I gave it a miss and looked for something cheaper.

I found out that I should be looking at the Nokia E Series of cellphones. According to Wikipedia the Nokia Nseries “is a product family consisting of multimedia smartphones“, while the Nokia Eseries consists of “business-oriented smartphones, with emphasis on enhanced connectivity“.

The first smartphone I came across was the Nokia E61. It has a “Blackberry” look to it, and a QWERTY keyboard. There is also a Nokia E61i, which is an update to the E61. It has a 2 megapixel camera and an improved design. The Nokia E61 looked promising until I compared its size with the Treo. Then it looked uncomfortably wide. The Nokia E61i was also over $300, a bit more than the $200 to $300 price range I had in mind.

The E90 Communicator I discounted because of it’s price and the fact that it was a brick.

Then I came across the Nokia E51, quite an unlikely looking smartphone. A candybar style phone without a QWERTY keyboard, it is easy to use just as a phone. Delve into it’s menus though, and this is a powerful business tool which can browse the web or read your emails to you. Compared to a Windows smartphone, this one flies!

Virtualization is one of the safest ways to try a Linux distribution. Unfortunately it is limited to those who have broadband internet connections, as software and files of 650GB or more need to be downloaded.
First you would download the free VMware Player - which allows you to run virtual machines but not create them, and then download from the selection of “Virtual Appliances” at the VMware Virtual Appliances directory - which includes a large number of pre-installed Linux distributions. Basically you open the “Virtual Appliance” with VMware Player, run it and you have a installed Linux distribution running inside a Virtual Machine. Alternatively, if you already own VMware Workstation for Windows, as well as running the Virtual Appliances, you can install almost any distribution you like on a Virtual Machine - “virtually” the same as installing Linux on a new PC.

Additionally, I tried the new installation option in Ubuntu 8.04 - install into Windows. With this option, Ubuntu (or Kubuntu in my case) installs and uninstalls like a Windows program. When you reboot your computer after the Windows installation, a menu is displayed giving you the option of your current Operating System of Ubuntu. The first time you select Ubuntu it completes installing itself, and subsequent times you boot into an Ubuntu Linux Desktop, which works like you had installed it in it’s own partition, except it is in a large file on Windows. This was pretty impressive, a much easy than creating a dedicated partition for Linux.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of Linux Distributions, just some that I would recommend.

I’ll concentrate on Distros which can be tried without making major modifications (for example re-partitioning) to your current Windows system. Also, I’ll limit the list to Distributions which are free to download and install without further cost. Note: a Live-CD refers to a bootable version of Linux which can also be installed.

Knoppix – fully bootable Linux from a CD or DVD.

Ubuntu – Live-CD and installer. I’m not just recommending this because it was started by a fellow South African . This is one of the most popular Linux distributions.

PCLinuxOS – this one I haven’t tried, but it is based on Mandrake Linux which I have used and liked. This is also a Live-CD.

Fedora – this is the free version of Red Hat Linux. I would recommend only trying this if you have tried another Linux distribution first. It is a big distribution, only available on DVD (or via the download of a DVD ISO). It is also updated at least once a year, when I last used it, the updated version required an uninstall and re-install.

Debian GNU/Linux - Very stable distribution, Live-CD is available. It is available for multiple platforms (processor architectures). Packages may be older than in other Linux distributions, but this is a totally free Linux.

For further information about Linux distributions, see Popular Linux Distributions on Wikipedia.

Before moving on further I need to explain something about Linux Distributions.
Most Linux distributions include just about every application you need right “out of the box”. This is not bundled software, but free software which you can uninstall if you don’t want it.

These applications are generally called packages.
Some notable packages are:
AbiWord - a free word processing program similar to Microsoft Word. A Windows version is also available.
Amarok - music player for Linux with an intuitive interface, features Album Art, Lyrics support, and supports Apple iPods, Creative Zen and many other players
Evolution – similar to Outlook, but free
GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program) - often used as a free software replacement for Adobe Photoshop, although it is not designed to be a Photoshop clone
MPlayer – a movie and animation player
MySQL – a SQL database server
OpenOffice.org – an open-source office suite consisting of a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, graphic and database program, which can read Microsoft Office formats.
Pidgin – a multi-protocol instant messaging client.
Mozilla Thunderbird – a fully featured email and newsgroup client.

These packages, as well as the Linux Operating System itself, all use the same update mechanism. You have a choice in this of course, but it is easy to keep your Linux Desktop up to date.

Here’s some reading material:
Test Driving Linux (From Windows To Linux in 60 Seconds)