TriedIT - Software and Hardware News and Reviews

The One Laptop Per Child computer is now $175 up from $100 and will also be coming to the U.S. officially. They also plan to support Windows. This will seriously change how OLPC was going to help Linux spread throughout the world. Considering that Microsoft plans to offer Windows and Office for $3, I can’t see many people choosing Linux over that.

In any case, check out the article.

Here’s a cool step-by-step guide on how to run Windows XP under Linux using only free virtualization software and not VMware.

I have used QEMU myself to test different Linux distributions on several times. I have never tried installing Windows XP in it. I might have to try this out soon and see how well it works. If anyone has tried it, let us know.

From lifehacker comes this comparison between FileVault and BitLocker, the two respective native file encryption systems for OS X and Vista.

The main differences boil down to BitLocker being used to lock down the entire operating system, while FileVault only locks down the user’s home directory. BitLocker requires much more setup in that you have to have a special encrypted partition that Vista is installed on, as well as have the unencryption keys stored on a USB stick. This USB ‘key’ is needed to allow Vista to boot. The author of the article feels that BitLocker is better because of the total lock-down of the hard disk. While that is overall more secure, FileVault I feel is more efficient since it only encrypts the user’s home directory which is where all the sensitive information is going to be stored anyhow. While I haven’t benchmarked either encryption method I’d imagine that FileVault probably has higher performance since BitLocker would have to do on the fly encryption and decryption of every single file the OS needs access to. Not only that I feel like backups would probably be more difficult to do on a BitLocker partition than simply backing up FileVault’s encrypted home directory.

In any case it is good to see that OS vendors are including such basic security mechanisms directly into the operating system. The more security the better.

Here’s an operating system of a different flavor I am intending to try out soon. ReactOS 0.3.1 was released today. Its goal as an operating system is to be a free and open source OS that is compatible with applications and drivers written for Microsoft Windows and it is based on the Windows architecture. The reason for its existence is quoted here from this ReactOS web page:

The raison-d’etre of ReactOS is the simple fact that some people, or especially companies, will -never- switch to Linux. No matter how much Linux gets better, or is better, it is not an option for them. Some people out there still use the 2.2 Linux Kernel and refuse to upgrade to a new version of the same OS; it is understandable that others will be totally unwilling to switch to a whole new OS. Until now, open source had no way to reach out to those people. Sure, other free applications could slowly get rid of the Microsoft applications, such as Office and IE, but the OS itself is hard to get rid of. This is the target and intended audience of ReactOS. Because of its compatibility and visual consistency with Windows, it removes many of the problems that people or companies face when switching to Linux: training everyone on the new OS, increased support costs, acquiring or writing new software, hardware incompatibilities, and the list grows. With ReactOS, all those worries vanish, except perhaps for the fact that any support contract with Microsoft will be rendered useless (however, any technician or 3rd-party personel in charge of this would have no problem).

I think this sounds like quite an interesting project that I want to try out soon. I had heard of ReactOS before, but I didn’t have much motivation to try it since I’m a Linux and Mac person primarily. But since I’ve started this site I’ve been interested in all sorts of different things to try. Look for a ReactOS review sometime in the future.

Some people prefer to use Microsoft Windows, and other people have to. Just because you use Windows doesn’t mean you can’t use some good high quality free open source software. This topic has been done before, but it never hurts to add another person’s opinion. Without further ado, here are my choices for the 25 best open source applications that you should use on your Microsoft Windows PC.

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Ok, so… say your university’s online classes *cough* UMD *cough* doesn’t support OS X and you’re left wondering how exactly you should use that expensive MacBook Pro to take your online classes. Well, fear not, here’s a complete walk through on how to get Vista installed in OS X using Parallels. Of course, if you’re using Windows XP still, you can do the same thing using this site. And if you want to use the (currently free) VMware Fusion beta, as my review of Vista shows, it works well there. I really hate dual-booting, but using Apple’s Boot Camp, you can install Windows in a dual-boot configuration on your Intel-based Apple computer. Also, for the love of god, can people please stop coding to a single platform?

After the post from a couple days ago about reasons for and against upgrading to Vista, I found this article from TG Daily that does some tests to find out if the Ready Boost feature of Vista (using a USB 2.0 memory stick in place of RAM) had any impact on application startup time in Vista.

The main feature behind Ready Boost, Super Fetch, pre-loads the most used applications in RAM to reduce startup times. The idea is that since most users have 512MB RAM, and many USB 2.0 memory sticks are faster than hard disks, the memory stick can be used as Super Fetch cache. What TG Daily found is that although Ready Boost does make an impact (in their tests they experienced up to 50% decrease in load times) adding just 512MB RAM more made far more of an impact in performance. It allows Super Fetch enough storage to cache several applications and prevents excessive swap usage. So while I still don’t feel it is a reason to upgrade to Vista, Super Fetch certainly seems like a cool and useful technology that will improve application load times for many people. Maybe they could try putting the swap on a USB memory stick and seeing how that affects performance.

This is a pretty good list of reasons for and against upgrading to Vista. I agree that there are definite improvements in Vista (check out my review) but overall some of his reasons for upgrading to Vista aren’t very good, in my opinion.

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On January 30, Microsoft will release its next-generation operating system, Windows Vista. Microsoft’s previous OS, Windows XP, was released October 25, 2001, more than 5 years ago. Given this long development time and Microsoft’s massive amount of development dollars, what is the new OS like? More importantly, should you upgrade to Vista?

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