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.

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)

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?.

One of the things which distinguishes the Sony PlayStation 3 from its competitors is that you are legally allowed to install another operating system onto the the gaming console which will run alongside its gaming system. This is particularly unusual, especially for Sony, who are in a constant battle to keep hackers from running homebrew applications on the Sony PlayStation Portable. Of course the only operating system you can install is Linux. This is not really restrictive, since there are so many different flavors or distributions of Linux. Also there probably would be some legal ramifications if Sony allowed you to install Windows XP on the Sony PS3. This functionality has been available since the PS3 was released.

There is a small problem though; the Sony PlayStation 3 currently comes with a maximum of 80GB of hard disk space. This is really not enough for a modern PC. The PS3’s hard drive can be upgraded, although not as easily as a PC hard drive.

Popular Mechanics has an article on “How to Turn Your PlayStation 3 Into a Linux PC“, which describes in detail how to upgrade the hard drive of a 40GB PS3 to 250GB and install Ubuntu, one of the most popular Linux distributions.

Today I was listening to the Buzz Out Loud podcast from earlier this week when I heard this interesting news item:

According to the NPD Group, Apple’s retail market share of PCs for the first quarter of 2008 is 66 percent. Hold on – that is market share for PCs costing $1000 or more. Apple’s retail market share for all PCs is 14 percent. The share for PCs costing $1000 or more makes sense, as most of Apple’s computers cost more than on thousand dollars. Their competitors (Dell, HP, Gateway etc) usually sell PCs for less. The most remarkable thing about these figures is that while Windows notebooks had hardly any growth, Apple notebooks had more than 50 percent growth. In the Desktop PC arena the figures are even more remarkable – Windows desktop sales are down 25 percent, whereas Apple desktops are up 45 percent. (see the Apple Watch Blog) Keep in mind though that this refers to high-end PCs which make up 14 percent of the total market, like this Apple 15 inch MacBook Pro Notebook.

In the other 86 percent of the PC market, Apple’s only product is the Mac Mini, which is more of a niche product, although it seems to be highly rated by users.