Linux goes mainstream

You don’t get much more mainstream than coverage on the beeb. Linked from the front page no less. Now if only Dell could do that so people could find and buy the systems… (not that anyone is buying Dell anymore right?)

I have noticed that most of this new breed of cheap sub notebooks from the Eee and OLPC onwards tend to come with Linux installed. And there seems to be hundreds of them now. Perhaps one day PC World will catch on and start stocking them, I believe one of the most likely places to get an Eee when they were (are?) scarce was Toys-r-Us.

Anyone else got one of these new cheapo things?

I’m very pleased with my Eee, looking forward to trying to justify getting the 900 which has a more usable screen size.

Chers

Simon

Decent UK ISP

I am planning on changing my broadband ISP anyone got any recommendations?

I’m currently on an 8 Mb (arf arf) pipe, _allegedly_ - I have never seen a download speed greater than 300k.

I was going to change to BT, but not after this phorm fiasco. Phorm have just fessed up to changing some wikipedia stuff about themselves - not the sort of org I want to deal with.

Any suggestions welcome, ones to avoid?

cheers

Simon

April fools fail

So the big plan was to get a 2007 screenshot and tart it up and claim it as Excel 14 as an april fools gag. I was going to increase the size of the silly blob and the buttons on the ribbon and just have copy, paste, and undo ones.

Sadly I didn’t get time to do it, so you’ll have to imagine.

Anyone get caught out yesterday?

cheers

Simon

Blog stats

Just some info on where we are at since Jan 07:

Number of posts: 382

Number of comments: 2,783

Number of visitors: roughly 3-400 per weekday, 1-200 on a weekend.

Best day: 900 (Excel 2007 calc bug presentation bug test code)

Most popular post: The spreadsheet disadvantage (2,253 views)

I think there are a hundred or so people who follow the feed (don’t know how to check?)

In terms of time taken, some posts take a few minutes (kicking MS mainly), but most take hours or days (some of the performance testing and data type stuff).

On the Codematic website - sadly the host has moffed up my logs so I don’t have any figures for the past few months, but it was running at about 1,000 visitors /1,500 page views a week in November.

I don’t track uniques or do anything clever, I assume most of the codematic stuff is new traffic because the site doesn’t change much. I assume most of the blog stuff is the same bunch of work dodgers day in day out!

As a matter of interest do many people use google analytics on their sites? I browse with no-script which breaks it I think, so I have never bothered.

If you have any stats to share feel free to comment or link to your site/blog info.

cheers

Simon

Monday bounce

Every Monday I get a ton of ‘message undeliverable’ returns from all over the place. Some spammer is clearly spoofing my domain name in their spam as the return address. Thanks for that…

Anyone else get that?

Also anyone else ever wonder how something as fragile and insecure as our current email system got to be so business critical?

I’m finding more and more messages to me and from me are not getting through spam filters, anyone else see that? anyone beginning to lose a bit of faith in the system?

I find more and more I put receipts on stuff, and often even follow up with a call.

Lots of replies to proper emails I get have [spam] as part of the subject, which seems a bit harsh.

Does everyone else find the system extremely reliable or is everyone seeing the same issues? have you seen other ones?

cheers

Simon

MicroHoo

Microsoft are trying to buy Yahoo.

(Could be YahSoft I spose)

What do you think? good move? had to do it?

It smacks a bit of desperation to me. I wish they would just focus on what they do well - desktop.

Cheers

Simon

DVD rant (OT)

Anyone else have problems playing DVDs?

One of the kids DVDs wouldn’t play right (stuttering and sticking)(player a), so I tried it in my laptop. It didn’t freeze, but would only play in black and white, and no sound.

Of course I cleaned all their grubby fingerprints off it first.

As it happens we have another DVD player (player b) so I tried that and everything was fine, fair enough - player a is knackered.

Last night we were watching a different DVD in player b (a is on the verge of retirement). It got part way through and froze. hmm.

I tried the dvd in player a out of desperation, and guess what - it worked, fine, no problem.

So what the chuff is going on with dvds and dvd players?

We now have some dvds that will only play on player a, and some that will only play on b, some that will play on both, and some that won’t play on my laptop. And we don’t have some that we threw out because we thought they were knackered.

Call me naive but I thought dvd players played dvds (the clue is in the name!) wtf??

I heard a rumour that its all to do with DRM. That sounds about right, I have never met an industry that hates its customers as much as the entertainment industry.

Anyone else had any problems?

cheers

Simon

Quiet week warning

In case you hadn’t realised its the UK Excel User and Developer conference this Thur Fri and Sat.

The chances of me fitting in any blog posts are slim to zero so dont hold your breath for the next ribbon moan. Actually I think I have run out for the time being (although I’ll be doing some 2007 stuff at the conf, so I’ll no doubt be raging and ranting next week!).

I’ll probably start on the xll series next week too.

cheers

Simon

Asus Eee 0.9 impressions

0.9 cos I’ve been using it a fair bit at home, but not been travelling yet.

It looks a bit like its on life support here. I’ve got network and USB mouse plugged in one side, and USB keyboard and external screen plugged in the other.

Effectively when at home it’s just like any other machine, except, and this is a big thing I think - it comes with Linux installed. ‘Big thing’ in a market changing kind of a way. Bear in mind the most common way to get a pc without Windows is to build it yourself. Shop around, Linux machines are hard to come by. The Dell/Ubuntu deal is a bit of a damp squib, and damn hard to order (I have tried a few times). Stop press more Linux machines appearing daily…

In truth the OS has between minor and no effect on my web world (although I guess I’ll soon meet some Linux unfriendly sites). I have the same Firefox, with the same theme and the same extensions as my Windows box. The MS Office site doesn’t work well with Linux (the intrusive spyware fails).

In terms of non web apps, I havent done much yet as I have bought it mainly as a web machine. The fact that it drives all these peripherals so well is brilliant.

Of course being Linux it doesn’t run my beloved Excel (2003 of course), and I have no current plans to try Crossover office or Wine. A fair chunk of my basic spreadsheet stuff is in OpenOffice anyway so should just work fine on this machine,

Visually I reckon the Eee is spot on, usability wise, on its own, I think the keyboard is fine, although I think I would struggle to work all day on it. The screen is the biggest compromise I would say. Quality wise its very good, but it is a bit cramped for anything too involved. (but it is better than my blackberry).

About an inch (25mm - for us metric folks) either side of the screen is taken up by speakers (which are ok sounding actually (for a laptop)) personally I would rather have had a wider screen and crappier speakers wedged in somewhere else. I estimate I’ll look at the screen ~100% of the time, and use those speakers < 5% of the time, if ever. I assume its more of a cost thing than optimising the wrong thing.

I havent done much away from mains power yet, but a 3.5 hour battery life is better than any other machine I have, but probably not enough for hardcore road warriors.

For 200 quid I think it represents stunning value, and a cheap safe and easy way to play with Linux. I’m interested to see if the Windows (XP btw) version due in the next few months will cost more, if so I’d recommend this Linux version, because those essential Windows apps you need probably won’t fly on this machine.

Rumours of an 8Gb 10″ screen version have recently been quashed, but that would be a killer spec I reckon, even for 50-100 quid more.

Oh and Asus supply the hardware and the OS like Apple - so there is no driver pain. Compare and contrast with the battles MS are having with rogue drivers on Vista, on hardware they don’t control. Maybe the Asus/Apple approach is the way forward?

cheers

Simon

Asus letterbox blogging

This is me blogging on my new Asus eee.

neato

I’m thinking of doing some proper work soon.

cheers

Simon