Monthly Archive:: January 2009

Instant-on Technology to Take Netbooks?

Guest post by weildish 2009-01-14 Hardware 9 Comments

Nobody ever liked looking at a boot screen, especially when in a hurry for quick access to a bit of needed information. Quick-boot technology has been around for ages, it seems, going seemingly nowhere, as if taunting. However, a number of new products displayed recently at CES by companies such as Sony, Lenovo, Phoenix, and Qualcomm, gives one the idea that the quick-boot technology will soon be implemented into netbooks, and all for the better (quicker, at least).

Guest post by Flatland_Spider 2009-01-13 Hardware 7 Comments

In the future people may interact with computers via a touchscreen or voice commands, but presently, keyboards are still one of the major ways to interact with a computer. The Tech Report has acquired a modern buckling spring keyboard, the Das Keyboard Professional, for review. Being a hardware review site, they have to compare the Das Keyboard Professional against something, so Cyril pits it against his personal Model M.

Submitted by fsmag 2009-01-13 Ubuntu 2 Comments

"I discovered recently the truth of the old saying that necessity is the mother of invention. Yes, I finally did it. I bricked my beloved EeePc. I had just installed the Smart package manager and a subsequent reboot saw me stuck in, well, an eternal boot loop. Impulsive mixing of repositories always ends in tears - but not being able to boot? Argh! To rub salt into the wound I had mislaid the Xandros DVD to do a reinstall and I didn't even have an external CD/DVD drive anyway. Organised or what?" Read the full story at Freesoftware Magazine.

Windows 7 Beta Reviews Pop up

Thom Holwerda 2009-01-13 Windows 7 Comments

Several reviews of the Windows 7 beta popping up. El Reg concludes: "All told, this will likely be a strong release, as it needs to be after the Windows Vista experience, just do not expect miracles. This is Windows Vista with a new face, not a major new version of Windows." Ars reviewed the beta as well, and concludes: "All in all, Windows 7 is shaping up well. It's a far more modest release than Vista was, but it's no worse for that. The new OS introduces a compelling combination of welcome innovations and much-needed polish, and that's exactly what Microsoft needs right now. Vista's foundation was solid, and Windows 7 just makes it better."

iPhone, iPod Touch Aren’t Netbooks

Thom Holwerda 2009-01-13 Apple 53 Comments

While we're on the subject of netbooks today, I ran across a story by Ars Technica's Erica Sadun, who writes for Ars' Infinite Loop (Apple) section. She poses that Apple already sells a netbook: the iPod Touch and the iPhone. I've heard many people make this claim before (including Steve Jobs himself), but I find it very hard to see the iPod Touch and the iPhone as netbooks.

Via’s Nano Plans: Too Little, Too Late?

Thom Holwerda 2009-01-13 Hardware 19 Comments

At the end of 2008, the OSNews team made a short list of the tech-related things they would like to see in 2009. On my list was the hope that we'd see more competition in the netbook market, which is now dominated by Intel's Atom platform, resulting in manufacturers all releasing essentially the same machine, but with a different badge and case colour. Where are Intel's competitors? We know AMD is on its way, we know that the Chinese are producing some noteworthy chips, and that the ARM chip is jumping up and down screaming for attention - but where is Via's Nano platform? Shouldn't it be here already?

Should Microsoft Open Source Windows?

Thom Holwerda 2009-01-13 Windows 76 Comments

Every now and then, some blogger working for a big website will write a story about how company Abc should make radical move Xyz in order to better, eh, well, that's usually left in the dark. These are generally more akin to said bloggers hoping for radical move Xyz rather than there being a well-argumented reasoning. Radical moves in the technology business don't happen very often, but when they do, there's generally a good reason for them.

Guest post by weildish 2009-01-12 Windows 5 Comments

In a blog post on the Windows 7 Team blog, it was announced that the 2.5 million unit limit of the Windows 7 Beta will be lifted for two weeks. Whether or not the limit is reached, those wishing to get the beta will be able to do so until January 24th.

Mozilla’s Ubiquity Logo Contest

Submitted by Sebastiaan 2009-01-12 Mozilla, Gecko 11 Comments

You may have thought Mozilla could not open up beyond its current state, but you may be wrong: Aza Raskin, Mozilla Labs' UX Lead and Sebastiaan de With, a freelance icon designer, have completely opened up the process of designing a new logo for Mozilla Ubiquity. The second round of conceptual exploration has just started, and the popular vote is very welcome on the blog or in the comments. What's your favorite concept, and why?

KDE 4.2 Progress, New NetworkManager Plasmoid Coming

Thom Holwerda 2009-01-12 KDE 78 Comments

When KDE 4.0 was first released, it was met with quite some criticism. Even though people saw the huge potential, the lack of functionality and stability, as well as quite a few bugs detracted from the experience. The KDE developers continued to work on implementing their relatively radical vision, and with the release of KDE 4.2 creeping ever closer, it seems they're well on their way.

Submitted by diegocg 2009-01-12 Linux 13 Comments

Versin 0.17 of the Linux filesystem btrfs has been released. The main news on this release is that it has been included in the Linus' tree. The changes include support of transparent compression, seed devices, improved block sharing while moving extents, improved block allocation and many bug fixes and performance improvements. Also, the disk format is not expected to change unless a critical bug is found.

Windows 7 SDK Beta Released

Thom Holwerda 2009-01-12 Windows No Comments

Microsoft has released the Windows 7 SDK beta. "The Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1: BETA provides the documentation, samples, header files, libraries, and tools (including C++ compilers) that you need to develop applications to run on Windows 7 BETA and the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. To build and run .NET Framework applications, you must have the corresponding version of the .NET Framework installed. This SDK is compatible with Visual Studio 2008, including Visual Studio Express Editions, which are available free of charge." Note that the SDK will most definitely change before Windows 7 goes final.

Create High-Resolution Displays for OS X

Thom Holwerda 2009-01-12 macOS No Comments

"In essence, CoreUI is a low-level framework that - ultimately - will be responsible for drawing all the user interface widgets in OS X. Among other things, CoreUI will define the look and feel of the Aqua interface. I say 'will' and 'ultimately' because at the time of writing CoreUI is still something of a work in progress. Some folks have reported that CoreUI isn't used at all in Leopard, unless you change the scale factor from its default value of 1.0, but this is simplistic. By default, CoreUI is used for drawing a number of user interface elements in Leopard."

Submitted by M-Saunders 2009-01-12 Solaris 1 Comment

While Sun continues to push OpenSolaris as an alternative to Linux and *BSD, hobbyists around the net are making their own spin-offs from the Unix flavour. Linux Format looks at some of the most notable, including MilaX, Belenix and Nexenta.

Ballmer: Vista Does Not Fit on Netbooks

Thom Holwerda 2009-01-11 Windows 56 Comments

People who work for for-profit companies, especially large ones, are always a bit uninteresting to interview, with media training and marketing instructions taking out all the sharp edges. CNet interviewed Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, and they got some very interesting quotes from the love-him-or-hate-him CEO.

MacWorld, Windows 7, Palm

Thom Holwerda 2009-01-11 OS News 16 Comments

This week, we start with a new regular occurence on OSNews: the imaginatively named Week in Review, where we do a quick rundown of the preceding week's most important news, and maybe add in a few new items that didn't make the cut earlier in the week. We will close off each of them with My Take, a short random musing about whatever subject we please. This week, the news was dominated by MacWorld, Windows 7, and Palm.

Submitted by Hiev 2009-01-11 Mono 75 Comments

Arstechnica reports that Mono, an open source implementation of .NET runtime, is bringing Microsoft's development technologies to some unexpected places, including the iPhone, Android, and the Wii.

More Information on Pre Hardware, SDK

Thom Holwerda 2009-01-09 Wireless No Comments

More and more information regarding Palm's new webOS platform and the accompanying Pre phone is surfacing from the floors of CES, thanks to the hard work of our colleagues at Ars Technica. Jon Stokes has been poking and prodding Matt Crowley, Product Line Manager for the Pre at Palm, and got a lot of interesting information about the hardware. They also have a detailed article on the webOS SDK, with information about the Palm equivalent of the App Store.

Creative Launches Zii ‘Stemcell Computing’ Platform

Submitted by Almar 2009-01-09 Hardware 22 Comments

Late last year, Creative launched a website and teaser campaign for a new product called Zii, with the only clue being its tagline: "Stemcell computing". While you can argue whether or not it's smart to focus attention on such a sensitive subject, the product that has rolled out of this campaign today is quite tantalising.

Windows 7 Beta Released to general Public, Servers Hammered

Thom Holwerda 2009-01-09 Windows 12 Comments

As promised, Microsoft has released the beta to Windows 7 to the general public a few hours ago. Don't get your hopes up yet, though, as Microsoft's servers are completely hammered right now - which isn't too hard to imagine, seeing the 2.5 million download limit Microsoft imposed. This probably led to everyone rushing to Microsoft's servers to get their hands on the beta, clogging the servers (2.5m times a 3GB image file, do the math). You will have to be patient, and hope for the best if you want the beta and its product key. The beta will expire August 1st, 2009.