I'm unsure where these ads are being shown - but they appear to be on far too frequently in the UK, to the point where some people will probably get sick of the sight of them. The thing that interests me the most, however, is that Microsoft feel the need to advertise these...I think I understand why they are, but it shows that times have changed from when Microsoft was almost guaranteed to be on any PC.

I believe that the IE8 advertising is probably limited to Europe. The reason I make this (fairly large) assumption, is because of the EU ruling which ruled bundling IE8 was unfair to competitors, only last week did Microsoft push out an update which advertised alternative browsers to those users who still had IE8 as a default browser. Admittedly, more than 1 of these was based on the Trident engine, the same as IE8.

As for Windows 7, I've got a strong suspicion that a slow (but steady) decline in the OS market share has Microsoft a little worried, and they're starting to push Windows 7 as much as they can, not to mention the catastrophe that came before 7...more commonly known as Vista

Unfortunately, I can't try it out on Ubuntu just yet, as there's no Linux builds, and trying to build it from source won't work, many have tried. People were hopeful that it would run in wine...No dice. So we'll just have to wait. Until then, I can continue merging and moving threads about on the forums. Which have been literally inundated with threads regarding the browser, so there is now a "Google Chrome MegaThread" :p

I have to say, I actually quite like it...now that the EULA has been revised that is. And it renders very quickly (Yes - faster than Safari, which according to Apple is "the fastest, easiest-to-use web browser in the world" - perhaps they should rethink that statement?).

As this blog seems to be getting a lot of hits still concerning Acid3, I tried Google Chrome from the same acid test website. And it gets....78/100! I think that's pretty respectable, though it fails the LinkTest (screenshot supplied below).

Anyway - more on this later, possibly when there's major improvements or a Linux version

Update: I forgot to add the screenshot of the Acid test, here it is!

 

Acid3 Test Results

Windows, Ubuntu Linux, HD DVD & Gaming, so that said, onto -

Performance: Windows Vista

For those of you who have used Windows Vista: The Windows Experience Index tells me that the laptop scores a respectable 4.6 rating.

I've noticed that occasionaly, the laptop will boot fine, I'll log in, and then it will take a good 3-4 minutes to load up everything before I can start using it. Other times it's <1 minute, but on average, I would say between 1-2 minutes.

Obviously this gets quite annoying. I don't even have many programs loading on startup, I turned off most of the Toshiba apps, I didn't need them. All that starts is Windows Live Messenger, AVG Anti-Virus, Daemon Tools Lite, and that's it (that I've added anyway). Having said that however, after the initial pain of waiting for it to load, it runs pretty quick, and is generally very snappy and responsive, even with Aero enabled

Overall I'm pretty impressed with the responsiveness on Windows, I've been running a Game (full screen, high settings - and I'm not saying what game yet) and minimised it to check some stuff on the net, and ended up writing a document in OpenOffice.org Writer, and there was no noticeable lack in performance.

1 Gripe I had however, is that the battery life is pretty average (verging on poor). Though I realise that the size and components in this laptop scream "my battery life is rubbish", and I expected this, it does have 1 issue:
The battery lasts around 1 hour 30 minutes - 2 hours 10 minutes with full screen brightness (it depends on the activities), which I find I have to have, because dimming the screen makes it very difficult to read.

That aside, I'm pretty pleased with the performance when running Windows Vista on the laptop.

As I'm sure nearly everybody who has bought a new computer, has had the torture of preinstalled (a.k.a bundled) software. Most of us will remove it, as they're usually 30, 60 or 90 day trials of some program you probably won't need.

Some of the worst in my experiences are:

1. AOL, it is truly terrible, though I've not seen it for a few years now
2. McAfee/Norton, if I want anti-virus, then I will get Anti-Virus!! [Note - I use AVG Free for my Windows machines, it works perfectly well, at no cost!]
3. Manufacturer software (I've noticed HP have a lot of software coming on their laptops still:()

So, with a brief history of that, here comes the details of the bundled software on the Qosmio G40 I received:

• Loads of Toshiba Apps
• Norton Internet Security 2008 Trial (90 days)

Now as I stated above, I don't really like preinstalled software...I can cope with the manufacturer applications, in fact, they actually seem pretty useful on this laptop, as they include an HD DVD player, which for some odd reason, wouldn't work unless I opened the app then inserted the HD DVD, more on this in a later part. Also included was the Fingerprint reading software, which allows me to log-on (and more!) using a Fingerprint, which is pretty cool.

And Norton...well...I make it no secret that I dislike Norton software, I think it slows the system down after a while, so the first thing I did (after installing Firefox) was uninstall it, re-enable the Windows firewall, and then download and install AVG Free.

That's really all the software that came bundled with it...a couple of useful ones included to (I noticed Adobe Acrobat Reader was already installed). So that was quite good to see, I'm glad manufacturers are cutting down on the amount of software preinstalled.

Update: I have to say that I did in fact forget the most important piece of bundled software. The laptop came with Genuine Windows Vista Ultimate Though annoyingly I had to go through the process of installing all the updates

Anyway, I reinstalled GRUB as I said I would, but only got round to doing it 6 days later, and when I finally booted back into Ubuntu, I realised just how much I'd missed Ubuntu/Linux during those last 6 days, it was a strange feeling, though it leads me to believe that I'm beginning to prefer using Linux over Windows, and my usage habit shows this as well

Still, it can only be a good thing

I think it's really good, I'm not a fan of KDE anyway, but it looks very nice, and I think the widgets could help Mac users migrate to Linux. Problem for me is that it reminds me a lot of Vista...you know, that 'new' OS from Microsoft .

Anyway I'd still say that it was definitely worth a look

I'm well aware that there's many change's 'behind the scenes' which make improvements here and there. But to the end user, there's not really much difference, except the disappearance of the "Search" option on the Start Menu.

I also have service pack 1 for Office 2007 (Ultimate Edition) and I haven't really noticed anything different about that. Speaking of Office, I received my back-up disks today I only wanted them because I knew they'd be official printed disk's