One of the aspects of being a computer professional (or geek if you prefer), is being asked to look at computers with problems by friends and acquaintances.

On at least two occasions when I’ve looked at computers that were either having errors on startup, or running very slow, there was something immediately obvious. In the mistaken belief that the more anti-virus programs the better, more than one anti-virus program had been installed. This is a case of two not being better than one.

Brian Krebs’ blog at washingtonpost.com has a transcript of a security question and answer session, and he says this is response to the question of running two different anti-virus programs on the same machine:

“…Having two anti-virus programs running at once is at the very least asking for your system to slow to a crawl. At worst, each could identify the other as a potential threat…”
There are a few exceptions; some anti-virus programs like ClamWin Antivirus “…don’t load when Windows starts up, …and they don’t do real time protection… If you felt you really wanted that, I don’t see the problem with it…”

My advice is - don’t even try to have more than one anti-virus program running on your computer. It will save a lot of headaches.

I noticed that on Pricegrabber.com, the Anti-virus with the highest User Rating currently is Kaspersky Lab Anti-Virus 7.0. Hmm, maybe I’ll try that one once my current anti-virus subscription runs out.

Windows 7 was announced on June 24 with a ship date of January 2010, (see “Microsoft VP confirms Windows 7 ship date: January 2010” from Info World). This is quite a big deal, as Vista was only released in January 2007, and now the next version of Windows is being announced with a ship date. On top of that, to quote from Information Week, Microsoft has promised support for Windows XP through 2014 ( see “Microsoft Pledges Windows XP Support Through 2014“).

Another gem in the same article says:
“(Microsoft) has apparently accepted the fact that many of its largest customers will skip Vista altogether and will continue using XP at least until Windows 7 becomes available three years from now, and possibly longer.

In addition to supporting XP through 2014, Microsoft is now actively promoting a program that allows customers to downgrade Vista systems to XP through a loophole in the company’s licensing terms. Microsoft’s software license allows customers who purchase a copy of Windows to install and run a previous version of the OS at no additional cost.”

Windows 7 gives something for companies and individuals to wait for. If you cannot wait until 2010 for a new PC, Vista should be fine if bought on a powerful enough PC, although research any possible peripheral incompatibilities (Palm handhelds etc) first.

As for extended support for Windows XP, I don’t think this is completely unheard of, as Windows 98 was supported until a few years ago. Then companies were installing Windows 98 on PCs which been shipped preloaded with Windows XP.

What is a GPS doing on a computer blog? Well, this particular GPS is a converged device. Not converged with an MP3 player (although it can play MP3s), but converged with a Windows Mobile handheld computer.

It is is the HP Compaq iPAQ rx5915 PDA, otherwise known as the HP iPaq rx5915 Travel Companion. The design is more like that of a GPS, although it is a fully functional Pocket PC with Wi-Fi (b and g), Bluetooth, standard Windows Mobile applications and it runs Windows Mobile 5.0. The main difference it that is has 2GB of onboard flash ROM, in which the maps are stored. The device comes preloaded with the maps for North America (US and Canada) including Alaska and Hawaii as well as Tom Tom navigation software, so after the first charge it is ready to go. The screen also has transflective antiglare coating designed to reduce glare and improve readability outside.

Prior to an upcoming trip I decided to update the map files, since I haven’t updated them since getting the iPaq rx5915 almost two years ago.

The installation instructions with the map update were not very positive – to get it to work you either had to delete the “iPAQ GPS” folder from Rom, which meant all your maps and the mapping software would be gone if the update wasn’t successful, or “Run the update four times. The fourth time the update is run, it will proceed successfully…. This map update requires at least 45 minutes to complete“.

I tried the map update once, and got an error message about an invalid system configuration. After re-reading the install instructions figured I would rather take a chance on map data which was a bit out of date.

The 3G Apple iPhone was announced with a price drop of $200. It features new apps developed with the official Apple SDK, as well as the Apple SDK or runtime. The new firmware for the iPhone is version 2.0. Existing iPhone owners will be able to upgrade to this new firmware around July 11. Since the price drop of the 3G iPhone is subsided by the cellphone carriers, the monthly plan for the 3G iPhone will be more expensive – between $10 to $15 per month.

It remains to be seen whether the iPod Touch will have a price drop – somehow I doubt it, as there are no cellphone carrier to subsidize the Touch. The apps which are free on the 3G iPhone cost $10 for the iPod Touch. I have seen a lot of rants about this by irate iPod Touch owners in various forums, most of it not repeatable.

As an interesting point, anyone who bought an iPhone after May 27 is eligible for a free upgrade to the 3G iPhone. Since the iPhone has been out of stock almost everywhere for a few weeks, that may be a handful of happy people. As for the iPod Touch users, Apple should not forget them.

If like me you are feeling a bit of a “3G iPhone!!” information overload, here is something to possibly counteract the high-tech marketing hysteria.

A story is told of sometime ago in the days of Windows 98, about a father who used to let his young son play games on the family computer. The father was quite proud of his son, who could find his way around the computer without a problem. Then one day the son cried out “Help me dad, I’m stuck in the black space”. Puzzled, and wondering what game his son could be playing, the father went to have a look. The son was really stuck, no amount of mouse clicks could get him out of the DOS Prompt. The Dad quickly typed “exit” and the computer was back into colorful GUI Windows.

Since then it has become harder to get into the black space of the DOS prompt, it will now open in a non-maximized Window which can be closed with a mouse click. It no long gives dire warnings about closing a Dos Box, since it is no longer DOS, just an emulation.

Out of interest I found a Y2K compliant version of IBM PC DOS right here on PriceGrabber.com. This is real DOS, it actually comes on a CD, like software sometimes still does.

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)

After suggesting in my previous blog posting that Linux is worth trying since it is free to use and to copy, more secure and more stable than Windows, we now look at Linux distros, or distributions

I’m not going to even try to list the over three hundred Linux distributions, but hopefully clarify just what is a distribution.

The Wikipedia article on Linux distributions defines a distribution as consisting of “a Linux operating system and a collection of applications. The operating system will consist of the Linux kernel and, usually, a set of libraries and utilities from the GNU project, with graphics support from the X Window System“.
Here I may need to explain that the X-Window System is an application layer on top of the operating system kernel which provides the basic framework for building a GUI environment. On top of this is a X Window System desktop environment like KDE, GNOME, Xfce and a number of others.

A Linux distribution can be commercial (Linspire, Red Hat Enterprise Linux) or non-commercial (Debian, Slackware). What makes each Linux distribution unique is the mix of packages, which are determined by the purpose of the distribution, the type of user, hardware and a number of other factors.

These factors should be considered when choosing a Linux distribution.

Sometime ago I mentioned Desktop Linux as a viable alternative to Windows Vista. The usual response to that is: “Linux is for Geeks, just give me Windows or something really simple“. Linux is not just for geeks, but I would be lying if I said it was “really simple”. What I would say though is that it is worth trying. It costs less than Windows. (Exhibit A: Novell SUSE Linux 10.1 for less than $15)

So why Linux? The website Why Linux is Better lists more reasons (in multiple languages!) than I could ever think of, although it is slightly out of date. In regard to running Windows software and games on Linux, major advances have been made in this area. Also, defragmentation is not so much of a problem on Windows XP as it was on Windows 98 - with NTFS defragmentation still happens, but not as bad as on previous versions of Windows.

Most Linux distributions (I’ll try to explain what a distribution is later) are free or have a free version. If you had a broadband internet connection you could download a couple of Linux distributions (preferably “Live CDs”), and burn them to CD. The definition of a Live CD is in the article What are live CDs, and how do they work? at Free Software Magazine.

Next: Linux Distros – what and why?.