Hopefully I'll be able to get back to blogging on Planet Ubuntu again shortly, provided I changed my feed correctly! (If I have, you're probably reading this on the planet now)

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

Initially, my machine's were named after characters from the Devil May Cry series of video games, though I changed that around 6 months ago, and went with something different, and with far more room for expansion....names of planets from the Star Wars Universe.

Currently, my desktop is kashyyyk, my laptop is naboo, my VPS is tatooine. I'm currently thinking of the less desirable planets to name the Windows PC's in the house

Regardless, I had a think about what I could do. Reinstalling XP was the first thing that came to mind, but then I'd have to spend another 5 hours doing updates to it and reinstalling everything, which I abhor doing, as I'm sure many people can relate to. I then stopped and had a think about what they all *actually* use the PC for.

They use Office 2007, Internet Explorer/Firefox (the use of each varies between people), BBC iPlayer, and iTunes. That's actually just about all they use. Now, Office can be replaced with OpenOffice.org, that isn't really a problem, except for the huge UI change from the ribbon interface back to the menu's etc. Firefox is natively installed, and they're starting to use it more anyway. BBC iPlayer is web based, but the desktop client for Linux can be installed with Adobe Air...

This just leaves iTunes, and while I'm aware there are plenty of alternatives that can be used, they all lack the one massively important feature for the rest of my family. The iTunes Store.

They use it quite regularly, which presents a great problem. How can I switch them to Ubuntu but keep the iTunes store? A VM? A dual boot? Both would work, but a VM on a P4 isn't the most practical solution, even with 2GB RAM. A dual boot would essentially take me back to step 1, and Ubuntu would never get used.

So I'm in a bit of a pickle really...I've said I'll sort the computer out for them, but it's just a case of how it gets "sorted".

So I was talking to my lecturer about Ubuntu in general (he's a fellow user) and I found out that hopefully, by the start of the next academic year at the University (Sept/Oct 09) the entire University should be in a dual boot situation with Windows, and all linked up to the network. However I'm expecting this to apply to only the Windows labs, and not the Mac labs

Either way I thought it was great that they'll be putting Linux on the desktops. I know that they run Linux servers, as I'm often connected to it via screen & ssh (coincidentally a fantastic combination), however to run it on the desktop is a big push forward. I have seen quite a few students running Linux this year though. For example the other day I saw somebody running Ubuntu on his eee, but I didn't stop to ask more

I'll post back when if I find out any more, or when I finally get to play with an one of the proper Ubuntu installs.

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

I used to hate emesene, I didn't like the way it functioned, I hated the constant updating (it's still a little bit annoying, but at least the updates aren't even half as slow as a certain other OS's updates (read: Windows <All Versions> )) and I just generally preferred aMsn, maybe I preferred that slightly because I compiled it from source, whereas emesene was a simple "

" - who knows (or cares).

But I'm now using it, and I'm just in the middle of editing my .conkyrc file (any excuse to use Vim...) And I've got another couple of posts in the works which should appear in the next day or so.

Good to be back!

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.

I'm REALLY impressed, more than I was with Gutsy (7.10)! I'll most likely be installing this later on tonight, and I'll put up the results on my other blog (blog.joeb454.com) afterwards. I'm out til later tonight, and most of tomorrow, but the results will definitely be up at some point Everything seems to be working out the box which is nice.

Also this mark's the first time I've used a Linux disc-burning app...I'm using Windows less and less now-a-days, though despite that, I'll keep it on my laptop, just because I'd find it hard to delete something I've paid for