TriedIT - Software and Hardware News and Reviews

I profusely apologize about the lack of updates to this site. I have not gone away! Things have been hectic in my life lately, but things are finally clearing up. I went on vacation for awhile, and just recently moved. Work has also been busy lately, and when I come home I haven’t had the motivation to get back on my computer and get a review of a distro cranked out.

As I said, I have just moved. My desktop hasn’t even been hooked back up yet. I have 2 reviews half-written that I’m going to have to go back and revive. In any case, I plan on getting some updates here very soon! Thanks for your patience.

Techgage takes a look at the latest release from Gentoo. There are some critical comments about the revamped installer. Without having tried the distribution myself, I’d have to agree that any installer that you have to baby sit constantly is very annoying. I prefer to get all the configuration done straight away, or at the very end, so the install can go without constant user interaction.

Unfortunately you can’t read the full article, but here are some details about a forthcoming 1 terabyte Blu-Ray recorder that has been announced by Hitachi. It will be $2000 Australian but I’m sure they will come down in price quite quickly. Hitachi was also the first to deliver a 1TB hard disk.

Apple’s Steve Jobs, during the annual share holder meeting, answered questions about the stock options scandal as well as the company’s direction. He also shed some light that Apple is “wrestling” with allowing 3rd party applications. In my opinion, it will be critical to allow 3rd party apps to help with the usefulness of the iPhone. I would like my Nokia N75 far less if I couldn’t load a bunch of 3rd party applications on it.

Anyway, check out AppleInsider for the details of the share holders meeting.

There’s a nice review of Mandriva 2007.1 over at lunapark6. Included are a number of screen shots. Like Linux in general, Mandriva certainly continues to come a long way with its desktop distribution. It also looks like the live CD mode of 2007.1 is pretty solid.

An Ars Technica article discusses Red Hat’s new desktop Linux offering, the Red Hat Global Desktop. An excerpt:

Designed to support a wide range of hardware, including minimalist budget computers, the Red Hat Global Desktop platform is highly scalable and will include open-source productivity software and a modern user interface. Primarily intended for local government and small business adoption in developing countries, Global Desktop, which will offer a very competitive pricing model, was developed in collaboration with Intel to ensure that it would be compatible with Intel’s Classmate PC and other low-cost hardware lines.

To me it just sounds like a bunch of marketing, considering that there are numerous Linux distributions out there and a vast majority of them are completely capable of being used on low-end budget PCs and yesterday’s hardware. They all more or less run the same software. There is no need for Red Hat to start selling a Linux distribution aimed at people who can’t really afford the software, let alone a new PC, when there are many distros already available for free that accomplish the same thing.

I’m not anti-Red Hat, though I do not like their Linux distribution very much, but can they really do something better than has already been done?

Check out the article at ars.

An article over at Yahoo! talks about a forthcoming version of Ubuntu Linux for hand held internet-enabled devices. Scheduled for release in October, check out the article for more information.

Google rocks. I use Gmail, and the Google Homepage (er iGoogle) and Gcal all the time these days. But over at lifehack.org there’s a great list of the things Google needs to get. I agree wholeheartedly with the list and I feel that Google probably will implement some of the suggestions contained therein. I would like a bit more offline access, even though I’m always online when I’m at a computer. You never know when you need to get that important message or event information and your internet is down.

I see Google has been working even more on integrating their service with cell phones. My new Nokia N75 (review coming soon) gives me the ability to access Google’s services wherever I am. Even if they don’t have a mobile version of an application out. The phone’s browser and internet access speed are good enough for me to use even the full versions of Google’s applications.

There have been a number of N95 reviews recently and here’s OSNews’ review. Part of me wishes I had gotten the Nokia N95 because it seems like it does a number of things a bit better than the Nokia N75 I just got yesterday from Cingular/AT&T. Unfortunately the Nokia N95 does not have 3G in the U.S. and is also quite an expensive phone. I got the Nokia N75 for $200 (after $50 mail-in-rebate which I have yet to do) and it has 3G (albeit UMTS not HSDPA). It is my first Symbian S60 phone and so far I really like it. I will write a formal review of the Nokia N75 in a few days.

Released on April 30, GoblinX 2.0 is a live CD Linux distribution based on Slackware from Brazil. According to DistroWatch, “the primary goal for GoblinX is to create a more pleasant and functional desktop, standardising (sic) all icons and themes to make it easy for novice users to learn about available applications.” Never having heard of it before, I decided to download it and give it a try.

Read the rest of this entry »