Just a Leaf

Life goes on and there’s just not a whole lot to blog about right now.

My sister just turned 20 on the 30th and Aaron has beamed away to Israel. I got to see Max & Jenny’s house, which I think is quite nice, while we interviewed them for the forthcoming “special thing” that someone I know is putting together.

I really did get an iMac, in case you didn’t know, and yes, it is a good thing. Now I have 3 functioning computers running Windows XP (NOT Vista), Linux (Ubuntu), and Mac OS X (10.5). So no one can call my opinions uninformed anymore… unless they are running BSD or something.

Here’s some iSight fun to prove it:

If you made it this far, I applaud you.

-Garrett

The ease of the Wubi installation is self-evident so that newbies are without excuse.

Wubi installs Ubuntu linux as a program on your Windows computer and uninstalls just as easily.

• No Reformatting or Partition changing, it runs in a Windows folder
• Easy Install/Uninstall
• No changes to the Boot record in Windows
• 100% safe to your Windows machine

So everyone who’s been wanting to try installing Linux, give it a shot! It’s free.

One Warning: Takes longer than a typical install of Ubuntu, so set aside a good hour for the installation (uninstalling is much faster).

So I’m an active tech user… I can’t help it!

When my XP Pro installation gets too bogged down, I like to reformat it to try and reclaim the “new computer” performance.

• Windows, like most other software, allows you to make unlimited installations.
• Like some other software, it requires a Product Key / Serial Number.
• Like precious few other software, it requires online activation.
• Like NO other software, when it feels you’ve installed it enough times, it forces you to call in to activate.

I’m not the only person that feels that this is completely unreasonable. I would gladly call if it weren’t for all the horror stories online. Apparently, MS Authentication Support individuals are trained to treat you like a criminal if you are have authentication issues (because, only pirates have those problems, right?).

I really don’t think MS’s overpriced software is really worth being on the phone with a foreigner trained to try and “bust” me (a long time paying user).

Be glad if you’re not a geek. We are weird people.

For the speed buffs among us, here is a good page that details and graphs the raw speed of many web browsers.

For those who would rather I just tell you … here’s the five fastest (1 being best):

1. Opera
2. Konqueror
3. Firefox 1.5
4. IE 7
5. Safari

These are MY ranking. So don’t take them as technical holy doctrine.

Edit: Yes… Firefox 2 did NOT make the list. It definately lost some speed since 1.5. If you run linux, the SwiftFox build of 2.0 might perform very well, however.

Oh, happy day! ^_^

Thunderbird 2.0 is out

=)