Web statistics: Linux overtakes Windows 98

This report was generated 08/30/2007 based on the last 33,640,022 unique visits to 5,553 websites. The last 25,000 page views to each website are analyzed to identify unique visits. Some visits may occur before the month of the report.

1	Windows XP	83.48%
2	Windows 2000	3.94%
3	Mac OS X	3.73%
4	Windows Vista	3.46%
5	Linux	1.34%
6	Windows 98	1.34%
7	Windows 2003	0.69%
8	Windows ME	0.47%
9	Windows NT	0.06%
10	Mac PowerPC	0.04%

Windows and Mac are split in to OS releases, Linux is not.

News Source: www.w3counter.com

Blueprint for a Green Laptop – problems and solutions

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PROBLEM: Petroleum-filled plastic SOLUTION: Make cases from corn New bioplastics—plant-based polymers—require less oil and energy to produce than traditional plastics. One challenge: upping heat resistance so electronics won’t melt them. Fujitsu makes a laptop with a half-natural, half-conventional case and is now testing a castor-oil plastic that’s up to 80 percent bio-content.

PROBLEM: Landing in landfills SOLUTION: Upgrade, don’t trash The EPA estimates that Americans discard 19,000 tons of laptops a year. But soon it may get easier (and cheaper) to upgrade your laptop than to replace it, keeping e-waste out of dumps and saving the energy and materials needed for a whole new computer. Laptop-maker Asus recently released a model that lets users change the processor, graphics card and other parts just by removing one panel, instead of spending hours disassembling the computer.

PROBLEM: Power-sucking displays SOLUTION: Create greener light An LCD can eat more than half of a laptop’s power, mostly due to its fluorescent backlight. Some laptops are lit with more-efficient LEDs instead, but the next step may be to nix backlights altogether. Displays made of OLEDs, or organic light-emitting diodes, form images with electroluminescent films. In small sizes, as in cellphones, OLEDs can significantly cut power use (depending on the image’s colors); companies hope that this advantage will scale up.

PROBLEM: Guzzling power from the grid SOLUTION: Harness the sun Portable solar chargers suited for laptops already exist. A company called MSI Computer has even developed a prototype laptop with photovoltaic cells integrated directly into its case.

PROBLEM: Toxic waste SOLUTION: Get the lead out Concerned that dumped gadgets could leak poisons, the law is cracking down on dangerous ingredients. (The lead in solder, for example, is now being replaced by silver and copper.) Last year, the European Union enacted legal limits on toxins in electronics sold there, and the U.S. introduced a similar (though voluntary) rating system for computers. President Bush recently mandated that 95 percent of government-purchased electronics meet the American eco-standards, eliminating about 3,000 tons of hazardous waste by 2011.

PROBLEM: Tricky recycling SOLUTION: Make a digital parts list Recycling computers can be expensive and time-consuming. Dismantlers usually pull out valuable parts for reuse or resale, but they have to examine each computer individually to determine what’s in it. If manufacturers add a radio-frequency ID tag to a laptop, says Valerie Thomas of Georgia Tech, it could instantly tell recyclers how to recover components.

PROBLEM: That spinning hard drive SOLUTION: Switch to flash memory Future laptops could knock 10 percent off their energy use just by replacing hard drives with solid-state, or flash, memory, which has no watt-hungry moving parts. Dell debuted a laptop with a 32-gigabyte solid-state drive this year. By 2012, manufacturer Samsung says, the drives may hold about 30 times as much data.

PROBLEM: Energy-intensive manufacturing SOLUTION: Build more- efficient factories Producing a laptop requires nearly as much energy as it will use over the rest of its life, but new plants may slash this consumption. One of the world’s greenest computer–chip factories could go online as early as 2009. The Texas Instruments plant in Richardson, Texas, will consume 20 percent less electricity and 35 percent less water, spit out 50 percent fewer nitrogen oxides—and cost 30 percent less to build—than TI’s previous plant. In one energy-saving measure, the plant uses the waste heat generated by its huge air conditioners to warm water for free, eliminating the need for four polluting gas boilers.

Source: POPSci

Vista RC1 build 5728

 

Vista RC1 build 5728

 

 

Ok so what’s changed in this build compared to 5600? Here are some of the changes listed. I believe 5728 does not deserve a new review therefore this is in addition to my previous review of 5600. Please refer my earlier review of 5600 for detailed comments.

 

Bad Stuff (5728)

 

1. No relief from UAC prompts

2. Display resolution still has to be common between different user accounts

3. While attending UAC prompt Window in the background shows the rough edges of UI

4. Right clicking a link on the links bar in IE7 should have an option of

5. Changing clock time requires admin privileges and prompts

6. Help & Support incomplete.

7. Black patches while moving windows more prominent (using the same set of drivers)

8. Text on the breadcrumb bar and taskbar out of focus

9. No recall of individual folders

10. Copying/moving files at very slow speeds laced with prompts

11. Windows defender fails to start at times (error 0x800106ba)

12. Double the time to startup and shutdown compared to Windows XP

13. Quick tab switching in IE7 not available

14. Calculator gadget missing

15. Deleting MS shortcuts from Start Menu requires UAC and other prompts

 

Good Stuff (5728)

1. Throwing around the system more successful than before. Reliability is ahead of XP now

2. Icons come in tile view now in ‘select a destination’ window while saving files

3. Work has gone into improving setup, e.g. hardware performance check

4. Overall setup time to useable desktop 25 minutes. Down by 10 minutes.

5. Icon set seems complete now

6. Performance gains can be seen with faster tab switching, smoother windows rendering effects

7. Compared to 5600 only one driver was not installed by default, a TPM chip.

8. 30 days of activation is allowed now compared to 14 days previously

9. Security centre recognizes more anti virus programs now e.g. McAfee 8.5 beta refresh III

 

 

Conclusion

Broadly speaking nothing spectacular has changed looks/performance wise also UAC is still stuck where it was. Software compatibility will eventually catch up.

However additional drivers are present and that should help successful test runs of this software on a wider spectrum of hardware globally.

Vista does not excite me in anyway like it should. However the stability of the OS is amazing and for that reason alone I will recommend an upgrade to this version.

Windows Vista Review RC1

Windows Vista RC1

 

 

 

Having spent considerable time with RC1 I decided to write a review.

 

It discusses in brief where Vista is and the direction it is taking and the marketing surrounding it.

 

TEST MACHINE

 

IBM Thinkpad T42

 

Pentium M 745 1.86 Ghz

ATI Radeon Mobility 9600 64 MB

1 GB RAM

80 GB Hard Disk 5400 RPM

CDRW/DVD Read 24x24x24x/8x

14.1 inch screen

Native Resolution 1400×1050

 

SETUP

 

Clean install Vista: 35 minutes. XP: 20 minutes

Upgrade from Windows XP took around 75 minutes

 

FIRST IMPRESSION

 

Vista greets you with all the bells and whistles enabled and all drivers installed. The welcome centre and sidebar are better disabled to reduce boot times. Incase any driver is missing Microsoft Update comes in handy.

 

For those upgrading their machines from XP the driver up gradation is not as seamless. Bothersome Issues crop up. Broadly speaking hardware compatibility is the best at the moment including Linux and it is only going to get better.

 

A machine rating of 2.0 left me disappointed. The graphics card being the culprit I downloaded the latest drivers from ATI. This pushed up the score to 2.7; Acceptable.

 

PROGRAMS

 

With the drivers worked out let’s see how Vista performed in the software compatibility section. I tried both a clean install/dual boot and eventually an upgrade of my main system. The following table gives a summary of issues encountered in both scenarios

 

What works and what does not.  (Applications installed)

 

As is evident the compatibility under Upgrade is better. The question is should you be running the programs which clean install does not respect? This purely depends on the functionality intact post upgrade e.g. IBM Active Protection. The working of this was rather suspect. It loaded and protected but the control console never showed up.

 

If you are thinking about the compatibility mode then smart thinking but how long can u keep going back to it? Notwithstanding the fact that half the time it fails on you.

 

Eventually the program has to be ditched.  

 

 

TIME TO NOTE NUMBERS

 

With all drivers and programs installed its time to test the system a bit.

 

Taking a look at the Task Manager the RAM usage stood at 450 MB in clean install and page file at 600 MB of total 1500 MB allocated.

 

From a cold boot to a useable desktop it took 120 seconds (clean install) and 90 seconds (upgrade) on average compared to 30 seconds in XP.

 

For Shutdown the figure was at 70 seconds (clean install) and 60 seconds (upgrade) compared to 20 seconds in XP.

 

Yet again the upgrade performs better than Clean Install.

 

IN A FEW HOURS

 

Vista is replete with far more options in a single window (say my computer) than XP. It certainly does not look clearer / simpler as the marketing goes! Rather it looks more complex.

With only a few windows open my 1400×1050 display looked rather crowded.

The UI is a tad gaudy and gets to you in a few hours before you want to get rid of all the weight and move back to windows classic view. Thankfully Windows Basic is not the only option. Microsoft did listen.

The marketing slogan of Clear, Confident and Connected is more applicable to XP SP2 at the moment. Vista makes one lose confidence as soon as glaring UI inconsistencies are encountered e.g. hidden tool bars, back buttons etc. 

 

However as far as ‘Connected’ is concerned Vista performs and the upgraded Network sharing centre is very good. Better than XP here.

 

 

VISTA TO CATER THE AVERAGE JOE

 

To answer this question I went back to XP. It felt cleaner and with 3rd party solutions reasonably secure without being in your face like vista’s User Account Protection and Security Centre.

UAP in its current form will force users to look at hacks to disable it along with Security Centre in favor of less intrusive 3^rd party solutions. Running Vista in this crippled form could be the norm unless something drastic happens.

 

So does any OS evolve when it gets a fresh dab of paint, high resolution icons, in your face security and an unthinking UI?

 

Not quite. It is essential that Vista UI be minimalist and elegant in look with intelligent categorization and modular operation rather than every sort of button splattered all over the system.

 

The Start menu now demands more mouse clicks and keyboard taps to find the same program which a few mouse clicks could do previously.

 

Today an application like Calendar is better as a web application rather than integrated in the OS.

 

What Vista could do is to provide a framework for 3^rd party software to work on whether it is Calendar or One care. Put the men where it really matters!

 

 

NOTEWORTHY

 

Moving on from what could have been possible.

 

ATI Radeon Mobility 9600 card with 64 MB dedicated RAM was automatically assigned additional 64 MB from the system RAM on shared basis. Smart. This is not replicable on XP.

 

The system runs hotter than XP due to increased access of Hard Disk. Using Ready boost (USB Key to act as temporary RAM) did not make much impact on system temperature.

 

 

FINAL THOUGHTS

 

With 5 years gone since last Windows release, Vista is not very close to its predecessor in terms of either performance or footprint or ‘value for money’ just yet (you will be forced to upgrade your RAM at least or buy a new computer).

 

If at all any marketing slogan goes with it then it is “Pricey or Complicated? It’s all connected”.

 

So what will save Vista? That is the million dollar question. Whether freebies, more marketing, hardware discounts or OEM copies will save the day or not only time will tell.

 

What is clear however, Vista is not something you can recommend to your friends or family blindfolded unlike you could with XP.  

 

In fact as things stand XP is the more intelligent and practical OS of choice and will be for quite sometime to come.