Friday, January 23, 2009

Turn your Flash Drive into an OS

Do you have one of the old 512MB flash drives sitting around? I know I do. Do you want Linux to fit on your flash drive? Or do you want your Mac to be more portable then your phone? I have the solution:

Damn Small Linux:

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

This is a 50 MB installation size. You get a browser, firefox and many other options, and it can fit on your flash drive!

Mac-on-Stick (minivmac)

Wow, pretty cool. Not super-useful for much, but it is small, and has your bare operating system.


Benny

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Windows Vista, Yes and No

Okay. Don't think I am one of the normal computer bloggers who says Oh My God Vista is Crap. No, I want to give practical views on Vista.

Let's say you are at work, and you tell someone under you to do a task. They say "Are you sure you want to do that?" You say "Yes." Then they say, "Are you really sure you want me to do this?" Wouldn't this get annoying? Yes, I understand you can turn this off. But there are plenty of people who don't have computer savvy and don't know how to turn it off. I wouldn't have a big problem with the security feature, except that whenever it comes up, it has to darken the whole screen and load.

Another problem I have with Vista, it takes a while to load up, even when I don't have much on my computer. I have two computers, one with Windows XP and one with Windows Vista. Windows XP loaded much faster.

Now, on my laptop with Vista, I wanted to put XP back on it. I am not saying this is Microsoft's fault, but it is annoying. So I replaced that partition with XP (you know the drill). Let me make a list of what it didn't have:

  • Sound Drivers
  • Wireless Internet Drivers
  • Graphics Drivers
  • Video Drivers
I was perplexed at what couldn't be put on there. I even tried to go to Hewlett Packard's website and download the drivers, and they didn't have any.

So I'm stuck with Vista right now. However, Vista does have good points. It has a very cool sidebar option, which I decked out. It is also very user friendly, having parental controls.

Here is what I acquired from what Microsoft wanted Vista to be. They wanted it to be a family oriented OS, that was user friendly, but it didn't work out how everyone wanted.

Good luck Microsoft. Please Digg http://digg.com/software/The_Computeress_Blog

Benny