Valentine's Day
You will all want to read the March issue of PC magazine. It has two excellent articles.
The first is on currently available (and top rated) freeware. Why I think this listing is better than others is that the software descriptions include the platform(s) it runs on. PC's are no longer just Windows boxes. I have always believed that good freeware is comparable to (and sometimes better) than commercial software. The classic example is OpenOffice. Why pay Microsoft over $100 when you can have the same capabilities for free? And of course, the Microsoft browser, Internet Explorer, struggles to keep up with the Mozilla browser, Firefox, which has been free from the start.
The second article that deserves attention is "The Battle For Your Desktop." It gives a good comparison of Windows Vista, Windows XP, Mac OS (Leopard), and Ubuntu Linux (7.10). Despite what Kim Komando will tell you on Saturday morning, Windows XP comes out ahead of Windows Vista. My experience with Vista on my laptop confirms this. It is slow, it is fragile, and I have had to turn off several features including Aero and User Account Control to make it tolerable. It is the only OS I have ever used that collapsed in less than 90 days and required a complete re-install.
I have converted my older desktop to run Ubuntu only. Yes, Linux is still a bit "geeky" but it seems to work out of the box with most equipment. Over the last two weeks I have done some "geeky" tweaks but an average person can use it without any modification. I also installed it as a "dual boot" on my laptop. Now there, I did have a sound problem that took some internet searching and a command line installation to resolve.
You may differ with PC Magazine's ratings of various aspects. In the Security section they give Mac OS and Ubuntu 4 stars with Vista and XP getting 3 - 1/2 and 3 respectively. I don't think that's enough of a difference. Spyware and virii are a plague to Windows causing much grief and the time consuming nuisance of running counter measures. When friends ask me to tune-up their machines they often only need spyware removal. So, I would bump down the Windows OS ratings by at least 1/2 star. Why not bump up the rating for Mac and Linux?? Because the one thing I have learned in this computer age is that the scene changes rapidly. As the non-windows OS's catch on, the malware will not be far behind.
The first is on currently available (and top rated) freeware. Why I think this listing is better than others is that the software descriptions include the platform(s) it runs on. PC's are no longer just Windows boxes. I have always believed that good freeware is comparable to (and sometimes better) than commercial software. The classic example is OpenOffice. Why pay Microsoft over $100 when you can have the same capabilities for free? And of course, the Microsoft browser, Internet Explorer, struggles to keep up with the Mozilla browser, Firefox, which has been free from the start.
The second article that deserves attention is "The Battle For Your Desktop." It gives a good comparison of Windows Vista, Windows XP, Mac OS (Leopard), and Ubuntu Linux (7.10). Despite what Kim Komando will tell you on Saturday morning, Windows XP comes out ahead of Windows Vista. My experience with Vista on my laptop confirms this. It is slow, it is fragile, and I have had to turn off several features including Aero and User Account Control to make it tolerable. It is the only OS I have ever used that collapsed in less than 90 days and required a complete re-install.
I have converted my older desktop to run Ubuntu only. Yes, Linux is still a bit "geeky" but it seems to work out of the box with most equipment. Over the last two weeks I have done some "geeky" tweaks but an average person can use it without any modification. I also installed it as a "dual boot" on my laptop. Now there, I did have a sound problem that took some internet searching and a command line installation to resolve.
You may differ with PC Magazine's ratings of various aspects. In the Security section they give Mac OS and Ubuntu 4 stars with Vista and XP getting 3 - 1/2 and 3 respectively. I don't think that's enough of a difference. Spyware and virii are a plague to Windows causing much grief and the time consuming nuisance of running counter measures. When friends ask me to tune-up their machines they often only need spyware removal. So, I would bump down the Windows OS ratings by at least 1/2 star. Why not bump up the rating for Mac and Linux?? Because the one thing I have learned in this computer age is that the scene changes rapidly. As the non-windows OS's catch on, the malware will not be far behind.
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