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Category Archives: review/preview/tests

Everex Cloudbook – a worthy competitor to the popular Asus Eee PC

Posted on by Posted in desktop & laptop pc, hardware, review/preview/tests .

At $399, its an obvious competitor to the ASUS Eee PC. The Everex Cloudbook is intended to be a UMPC meaning that it is ultra mobile, easy on the battery life, and at least semi rugged. Everex calls this notebook “The Ultimate in Mobility.”

How about those specs:

  • 1.2 GHz Via C7-M Processor ULV
  • 512 MB DDR2 533MHz SDRAM Memory (maximum is 1 GB)
  • 30 GB Hard Disk Drive
  • 7″ WVGA TFT Display for 800×480 resolution
  • Via Unichrome Pro IGP Graphics
  • Via High Definition Audio
  • 802.11 B/G
  • One 10/100 Ethernet Port
  • DVI-I Port
  • 2 USB 2.0 Ports
  • 4-in-1 memory card reader
  • 0.3 MP Webcam (not a typo, zero point three megapixel)
  • Headphone/Line out port
  • Microphone/Line in port
  • Set of stereo speaker
  • Touchpad
  • 4 cell lithium ion battery
  • 2 pounds
  • Up to 5 hours battery life
  • gOS Rocket OS based on Ubuntu
  • Software includes Google Apps integration

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Enlightenment on Ubuntu

Posted on by Posted in debian/ubuntu based, desktop environments, review/preview/tests .

Many Linux distributions try to be visually appealing. Some use Beryl-Compiz for cool 3-D effects on resource-laden boxes, while others turn to desktops like Enligtenment for a little bit of gloss at the expense of functionality. Geubuntu is a new distro that combines the best of those two worlds, equipping Enlightenment with bits from GNOME and Xfce on top of Ubuntu.

Geubuntu 7.10 “Luna Nuova” is only the second release of the distro, which seems to trace Ubuntu’s release cycle. As the version number suggests, Geubuntu 7.10 is based on Ubuntu 7.10, from which it borrows the kernel and user conveniences like the restricted-drivers management utility.

Geubuntu is an installable live CD, but it can also be installed on top of an existing Ubuntu distro by installing specific packages from the Geubuntu mirror. Currently there’s only a 32-bit ISO available. To run Geubuntu on 64-bit hardware you’ll have to take the longer route of first installing a 64-bit version of Ubuntu and then getting Geubuntu packages that are compiled for 64-bit platforms.

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Puppy Linux. The small but powerful distro.

Posted on by Posted in linux/unix/os distros, other distros, review/preview/tests .

Yesterday, Barry Kauler, the founder of Puppy Linux announced its latest version Puppy Linux 3.00. He said that this version is the massive upgrade to its predecessor Puppy Linux v2.17.1.

What exactly is Puppy Linux?

If you dont know what am I talking about…read this:”Puppy Linux is the Slackware 12 based Linux distribution designed especially for low-end computers and because of its small size (80-100 MB) it can run from live CD or from USB stick”. It is based on Slackware than it doesn’t mean that it is a clone of Slackware but it is totally a different distribution from base. And if you run this from USB stick then it will transfer caching and flush data to RAM in every 30 minutes and hence will not affect your USB.

Whats new in 3.00?

Here is the list:

  1. All base packages upgraded, including glibc v2.5, gcc v4.1.2, GTK v2.10.13.
  2. Application upgrades (incomplete list): pptp v1.7.1, Isomaster v1.1, KP2 v0.2 (gray), Pbdict (zigbert), pure-ftpd (getnikar), trashcan (disciple), Pbackup v3.0.0 (zigbert), Network Wizard (Dougal, tempestuous, BarryK), JWM v2.0.1, Xvesa Wizard (gray, BarryK), Burniso2cd (BarryK), Busybox v1.6.1, TkDVD v4.0.6, various small utilities (gray), Pidgin v2.0.2, SeaMonkey v1.1.2, Xorg v7.2, Unionfs v2.1.2, Pfind v2.4 (zigbert), PDF-printer v0.8 (jcoder24), WakePup2 (john doe, dgi), v1.6.9pre7, NoteCaseHomeBank v3.5, Universal Installer (BarryK), Pmirror v0.2 (zigbert), PRename v0.6 (plinej), partview (PaulBx1).
  3. Massive improvements achieved with new boot and shutdown scripts, including pup_save file custom naming, frugal install into a subdirectory, correct recognition of multiple pup_save files at bootup, pup_save file resizing.
  4. New kernel: 2.6.21.7, configured with ‘tickless’ option. Initrd.gz is now a cpio archive.
  5. NetSurf web browser v1.1 as our internal HTML viewer.
  6. True flushing for Flash drives (andrei, BarryK). Finally.
  7. Also a great number of bug fixes.

Resources:

For more information on Puppy Linux go here
For announcements and release notes click here
Download the ISO image from here (size=97.63 MB)

Some screen shots:

Here I put some Puppy Linux screen shots for you to see[Obviously :D].



KDE 4 Preview

Posted on by Posted in desktop environments, kde, review/preview/tests .

KDE 4 is coming. It’s starting to look and behave mature enough to use it on a normal desktop. This article is a little introduction to what you might be expecting from the brand new KDE due later this year.

It’s been a whole month when I’ve investigated the new environment called KDE 4. Honestly I wanted to wait till “Beta 3″, which should have appeared on 5th October. But as you all can see it has never happened. On the IRC channel #kde4-devel I was informed that the “Beta 3″ should have been tagged yesterday but unfortunately it didn’t turn out to be true. Not waiting any longer I made my mind and I have updated the SVN and have run the cmake.

First glance

Right after running the KDE you can tell at once that new wallpaper is far more beautiful than the grey old one and the marvelous contrasting flower is well matched to the bottom bar. Unluckily it does nothing more than displaying the clock. The taskbar despite the fact it was on the bar didn’t display processes and all the effort I made to add there any applet or the Pager was in vain, and ended with a complete crash of the bar. The only thing I succeeded in was to put there the Kickoff menubar.

desktop

Kickoff – the new KDE menu

The first appearance of Kickoff was in SUSE Linux 10.2 as a new menu for KDE. The icons were arranged in five categories: Favorite, Applications, My Computer, Recently used, Leave. There is nothing more than the search box that helps you finding applications and documents. It’s too early to discuss about the new KDE menu even talking about its appearance. IMHO I wish that the searching engine wouldn’t be based on Nepomuk or Strigi. I’d like to mention that it is only the initial version of this menu in KDE.

kick_fav

kick_app

kick_com

kick_lea

Kget – is still surprising

I’ve talked about this program a lot so far. Even now there has changed a lot of stuff, not only the appearance but the functionality. I’ll shortly remind that Kget is the download accelerator that provides you quequing, placing files in a specific directory chosen by some criteria. This version is enriched with the Transfer Graph applet, which shows you the graph of the download speed of current file. It’s the third applet like this. The first two are: Pie Graph and Bar Chart.

Kget

Kget_bar

Kget_pie

amarok

Kget_all

Plasma – new applets

I’m used to some sort of nice rule. All the time I check the state of KDE 4 I meet new Plasmoids – so is now. The first one is the old well-known Network Monitor which transformed from two flushing monitors to the graph that shows the traffic flow.

pla_net

The next two applets are quite new. The first one is the System Monitor. This applet in the intention of the creators will inform you about the state of the main parts of your PC. In the future you can expect for reading ACPI information such as temperature or fan speed. Unfortunately at the moment the applet tries to perform only the usage of the disc space.

pla_sysmon

Today the best applet I’ve tried was the Color Picker. It helps you to “pick” the color of any pixel on the screen. Using the standard tool, the “pipette”, you are provided with the color in a few color formats. Very interesting feature it seems to be the probe history that shows a few earlier tries.

pla_color

KWin Composite – defaultly enabled

It seems that KWin Composite effects are defaultly enabled. You can notice shadows under windows and the animated windows’ minimization. There are also available features from Compiz Fusion that pointing at the left top corner of the screen you are starting something similar to Scale plugin. Switching between windows using Alt+Tab displays thumbs of the windows. Quite interesting is the fact that KRunner looks different from when the Composite effects are disabled.

krunner

switcher

KSysGuard – the system guard

The System Guard has also changed its appearance by the new background under the graphs.

system_monitor

KStyle / KWin – styles and decorations

It is a rule that I always look very carefully at the appearance comparing Oxygen with Bespin (the unoffical style). IMHO Oxygen still seems too less contrast. I think authors are deserving of credit for continuous improvement. From the last version they improved the appearance of tabs and the highlightment of elements and buttons. The scrollbar turns to green under the mouse point. But still it is far away from mockups in the Internet.

oxygen

bespin

At last the buttons have tooltips. Now you don’t have to think which button closes the window :)

oxy

plastik

Dolphin and Kate – the new appearance

It is the high time to see how some applications look like in Oxygen. I’ve tried the file manager Dolphin and the text editor Kate.

dolphin

kate

Amarok – at least there is some noise!

At the end I’ve checked my favourite audio player. The best way to describe it is to say “sometimes better. sometimes worse”. This time I couldn’t manage to make a collection, not even play one mp3 :/ But instead I could connect to Jamendo and listen to their songs. Thanks to that you can see how the Amarok looks like.

amarok

This article is a direct translation of text published on author’s blog: KDE 4 rev 723381

Google wins in blind search test

Posted on by Posted in review/preview/tests, surveys .

In a blind “taste test” searchers chose Google, then Microsoft and Yahoo. That’s according to the results of a poll created last week by the Google Operating System blog. Participants could try out three unidentified search engines and vote which had the best results. The results are in and 51 percent of the more than 2,000 people who voted said Google had the best results. That was followed by 35 percent for Live Search and 30 percent for Yahoo. In comments to the blog post people said they were surprised Microsoft was ahead of Yahoo, but also surprised Google’s percentage wasn’t higher.

Interestingly, some of the most frequent queries included “Google,” “Microsoft,” “sex,” “cow” and “Liverpool.”

OpenOffice.org 2.3: New features, extensions and the much anticipated charting tool

Posted on by Posted in applications/software, office suites, open source, review/preview/tests .

Unlike previous 2.x releases, OpenOffice.org 2.3 is a new and enhanced feature release rather than a bug fix. There are several smart changes, a whole new approach to adding new features and of course the much anticipated new charting tool. This is definitely a release to get to know.

I’ll plunge right into what’s new:

  • A bunch of new and enhanced features like restoring the user-defined movement path in Impress and applying better default print settings in Calc. Check the release notes for complete information from OpenOffice.org.
  • A significantly different chart tool.
  • New extensions provided by Sun and other vendors. You will need to run 2.3 for the extensions to work. Read more about the new extensions on the OpenOffice.org web site.

Top 10 Tools I Can’t Live Without

Posted on by Posted in general topics, review/preview/tests .

We all have our own unique ways of working. A large part of any persons individual productivity is the tools they use. Here is my top 10 Must Have Tools (and why), please add yours in the comments!

  1. FirefoxFirefox – I started out with Mosaic, then Netscape. For years I was an Internet Explorer user but then Microsoft dropped the ball and the Mozilla team ran with it. Firefox is stable, extensible and fast enough. One of the killer features that made me defect was the tabbed browsing. Of course most web browsers now have that feature. Firefox plus Greasemonkey takes an already rockin’ browser into a world of its own.
  2. ScribeFire – One of my main jobs is writing on blogs. This means lots of linking, bookmarking, making notes and of course the actual writing. I would say using Scribefire I can do it all in half the time. Scribefire is a Firefox plugin that provides blogging tools including a centralized word-like text editing interface.
  3. SkypeSkype – Many of my calls are long distance as it is rare for me to have a client in the same country as I live. Skype makes these calls free or much cheaper and allows me to roam around and not be tied to a land-line. With my trusty headset I might look like a geek but I can hear and be heard right across the globe.
  4. Fastmail – While many people swear by the free Google GMail my web email service of choice is the paid service at Fastmail. The main advantage is as well as having a web client you can also access your email using imap, allowing me to sync my desktop client and see in a web browser exactly the same email store.
  5. WebDav – Talking of web based storage, a fantastic way to get your files on the go is WebDav. Drag and drop your files and folders just like you were working locally. Check out your web host to see if this is an option.
  6. SSH – This is an extremely nerdy choice but it has been a life saver in the past. SSH allows you a secure command line login to your remote server. On Windows of course you can use Remote Desktop, and other platforms will have VNC, but when the proverbial hits the fan you can rely on SSH and old school commands to get the job done.
  7. WordPress – I love WordPress, I wouldn’t recommend any other blogging platform for the individual or small team. But WordPress can be so much more than a blog! Use it for publishing your corporate website, internal project documentation, team collaboration, making notes, bookmarking, even as a discussion platform.
  8. Photoshop – There are cheaper options. I will probably never use even half the features. Photoshop still rules. There is little it can’t do, and if you wander into any design studio you can be sure there will be at least one machine running it. Productivity means being able to do what you need to do well and fast. Once you have learned it, Photoshop makes that happen for working with images.
  9. BlogBridge – I need my RSS feeds and I need them with me. While many people can argue in favor of their fave web clients I keep returning to BlogBridge happily time after time. It is a Java based desktop application so works wherever Java works and stores your feeds offline so you can read on the train, in the air or bus home.
  10. Flickr – Flickr for me is more than just an online photo gallery, it is a photography archive, a community and a source of royalty-free images (Creative Commons Licensed pics). It’s useful, fun and a constant source of education.