Purely Technology

So there are some exciting times ahead it seems in the tech world…  Google have just announced their [small] range of Chromebooks which on top of their rather good looks have an extremely attractive subscription package.  We’re now on Internet Explorer 9 – and Microsoft are evening helping us to remove the curse that is Internet Explorer 6…

Choosing your OS on your netbook is pretty important although they all do pretty much the same thing.

I just wanted to share with you our recent experience with netbooks though as a word of caution.  Ours came pre-installed with Ubuntu from Dell – 8.04 NBR (netbook re-mix) which was ok for a couple of months until it stopped updating itself and no matter what we couldn’t get it to install any more updates.  So we bit the bullet and installed 9.04 NBR.  Which was straight forward and cured the problem of updating.  Some in the office were unhappy though with the difference between Ubuntu and Windows so we decided to put XP on instead.

At this point its worth noting that for speed we opted for an 8gb SSD hard drive rather than default 160gb SATA.  Which effectively ruled out installing Windows 7 Starter as you need 16gb HD space….

Installing Windows XP in the end was easy as long as we prepared a USB stick using a copy of XP and a programme called “WintoFlash” by Novicorp.  Once done booted up the USB on the netbook and the install was pretty quick.  Then came the pain.  On day one we installed 135 updates for Windows alone which given the lack of processing oomph took a good six hours.  Day two brought another 59 updates!  This time we had service packs, Windows Media Player and so forth.  So at the end of day two we had a full HD even though all previous documents, pictures etc… had been moved to an external SD card in the side of the netbook.  We hadn’t installed a single programme and we had 141mb left which was so little there wasn’t even enough room to act as a buffer while we tried to install Lotus Symphony 3 beta 2 on the external SD card…

So we had to go back to Ubuntu – I was personally willing to try something a little more left field such as Moblin or CrunchBang but there was a certain amount of familiarity to Ubuntu for other in the office so I stuck to Ubuntu.

Anyway, using another Ubuntu install on the office laptop I created a USB start up disk on a USB flash drive (5 minutes) and then installed Ubutnu and ran all the updates in another 15 minutes.  So twenty minutes roughly start to finish, with a whole host of additional software such as the whole of Open Office 3.1 and there was 4.4gb spare on the HD.

So our advice for a netbook OS? Linux all the way.  Smaller, faster, lighter on resources and most of all FREE!  And also infinitely more secure as 99% of viruses and malware are written to exploit Windows…

In the Purepages Office we predominantly use Windows for two reasons I guess.  Firstly it’s what ships on the machines we buy and secondly, like most people, we are reluctant to swap operating systems because we like familiarity and don’t like change – we’ve been brought up on a Microsoft diet!

So why should we move?  To be honest there’s isn’t one single large and compelling reason to start erasing Windows from our hard drives and pick up our preferred Linux distro, Ubuntu 9.10, but there are, however, a number of lesser, but still reasonably important reasons.  Number One is security-Linux is virtually virus and trojan free, primarily because Linux is currently only used by between 4-6% depending on who you read, so there’s much less of an incentive to hack Linux. Secondly, emotionally, using Linux means you’re ‘buying’ into a community of like-minded spirits, not lining Bill Gates’ pockets. Thirdly we have price, Ubuntu is free, as is much of the software that you need to run everyday office or domestic functions.  Open Office costs nothing, whereas a single user licence for Office 2007 is £330!  I have yet to be given or sent a file created in any Office 2007 programme that I haven’t been able to open correctly in Open Office 3.1.

The savings argument is dependent on your needs though. If you’re a 24/7 professional then maybe the Microsoft route is more traditional and logical. By contrast, my mum only surfs the internet and browses through pictures off her camera – tasks any quality OS will do easily. In my professional capacity as digital manager I need to create a lot of graphics and video content for both ourselves and clients.  And on this there is one package that covers all bases – Adobe CS4.  I find the Adobe monopoly irritates me no end as there is patently no viable alternative. That said, it’s very easy to use especially when I don’t always have time to learn how to use a new programme.

Some people go on about how great GIMP and its other open source variations are, but I personally find GIMP hard to use.  I have never been able to get Flash 4 Linux to work (on this subject I am hoping someone will send me a tutorial on how to install it…)

Importantly though, irrespective of what distro you’re running, when you design a website you cannot ignore testing in IE7 or IE8 as IE has such a massive market share. So if you’re running Linux, install Virtual Box and setup XP inside there.  I think Virtual Box is truly awesome and recommend it whole heartedly.