Everything Express
Archive for March 2011
Long March to Windows 7
Remember when we first said Windows XP was getting old? I know, about six months after it went on sale. The surface gloss rubbed off as the hardware market rushed ahead of software, the internet mushroomed and new security concerns loomed large in the technorati’s thinking. Microsoft had a plan, a grand plan, a visionary … Continue reading
File Systems Part Two Not Invented Here
(Part Two of an article on files-ystems in Linux. Catch up on Part One) There’s more to file-systems than the descendants of our Unix ancestors. ‘Plethora’ doesn’t even begin to describe it. Why do we care? Sadly we don’t live in a Linux bubble, un-enlightened colleagues family and friends insist on using other non-native file-systems … Continue reading
The Netbook is Not Yet Dead
2007: the launch of the Asus eee-PC created a market in ultra-portables. Almost five years on, the popular press would have you believe it’s a market that came and went. They don’t explain why two of my local supermarkets are pushing HP-Compaq netbooks at £199 and there’s a thriving sector of on-line retailers promoting refurbished … Continue reading
Netgear G834GT Firmware Upgrade
So Virgin Media’s broadband seems unreliable, insofar as it drops the connection a couple of times a day, sometimes more. Is it them, or is it me? I’m using my G834GT Router, rather than the GT384G that Virgin sent me, as mine has a Hawking aerial that I can’t plug into theirs. I’m thinking it’s … Continue reading
Full Circle Magazine no 47 Out Now
Full Circle – the independent magazine for the Ubuntu Linux community are proud to announce the release of our forty-seventh issue. This month: Command and Conquer. How-To : Program in Python – Part 21, LibreOffice – Part 2 and eBook Reader Software. Linux Lab – File Formats Part Two (by some hack called Catling). Review … Continue reading
Toshiba Powerdown Peril
The most recent upgrade to Lubuntu 10.10 on the Tosh Satelite 2610 went well enough until I tried to turn it off. The only way to power it off was to pull the battery and the cable. A previous Linux distribution as well as Windows 2000 both powered the system off correctly. Evidently I was … Continue reading
Network One Graphics Nil
So I downloaded the latest ISO of Natty Alpha-3, put it on the Pentium-4 and still had 272Mb of updates to run immediately after! This thing is in so much flux, I’m not sure anyone can keep up with it. The good news is the wireless network is back, aided by my swapping out a … Continue reading
Not so Natty Networking
Can you hear the sigh of despair from where you are? Natty Alpha-3 just fell over, big time. Thinking the network stack was running worse than usual – the usb wireless dropping very two minutes or less – I decided to reinstate the windows wireless drivers for the Belkin adapter. I followed my own instructions … Continue reading
Not Intuitive
Remember the scene in Star Trek IV where Scotty tries to operate a Mac workstation? I may be mis-remembering the dialogue, but it goes something like this: McCoy: “You have to use the mouse.” Scotty (picks up mouse and speaks into it): “Hello, computer.” McCoy: “Just use the keyboard.” Three things: one, I apologize for … Continue reading
Memory Upgrades: When the Manual Says No
Look in the manufacturer’s manual for your machine or its’ motherboard and it will probably give a maximum memory capacity and configuration. You may think that’s that: fini. Not necessarily. Take the Dell Inspiron 6400/1505 as an example. Dell states that maximum memory is 2Gb. A quick search around the Internet (remember, in most things-upgradeable, … Continue reading
Beginners Web Guide: Browsers (Re-post)
The web browser: your gateway to the internet. Simply put, the web browser is the type of software program you use to access standard web site pages. The browser is a shell that translates the markup language in each page (called HTML) into words and text on your screen. Here’s a little on how to … Continue reading
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