Gadget Wisdom

As Wired reports, Justin Long, well known as the face of the Mac in their recent Get a Mac campaign, will not appear in that series of commercials when they resume.

Long plays opposite John Hodgman, who plays the role of a PC. Now, we think Hodgman steals the show from Long, despite the fact that Long plays the product that Apple is trying to push.

For years, we did criticize the Mac when you had to buy all the hardware from Apple and could not do anything with it yourself. We still recall the Performa which we spent hours trying to disassemble to replace the battery that controlled the clock. Even that supposedly required an Apple technician. The Performa(feel free to comment to disagree) stunk as a computer.

But in recent years, the Mac unveiled OS X - which is actually a UNIX based operating system. That allowed hundreds of open-source programs designed for UNIX systems to be easily ported over. The creation of USB as a standard had already made the purchase of peripherals that were Mac compatible easy, and then Apple opted to switch the processor line for the Macintosh to Intel, the processor that most PCs are based on(No, we aren’t forgetting AMD). Intel processors aside, the hardware standardization and the switch to an operating system that incorporated the best Apple GUIs had to offer with the power of UNIX removed most of our fundamental objections to the Macintosh.

That just left the price point and the fact you can’t build one yourself from parts. But, we have no trouble considsering them as an option for those for which they are suited. For those of us with tight budgets, a PC running a free Linux distribution might be almost as good. Of course, Linux and free means no tech support.

CutePDF is a third-party software package for the creation and manipulation of PDF files. Several of these products have come onto the market as Adobe’s Portable Document Format(PDF) becomes more and more popular to offer alternatives to Adobe Acrobat.

CutePDF offers a free product, the CutePDF Writer, which uses a Postscript to PDF converter, for example Ghostscript(A staples on UNIX-based systems) to create a virtual printer that turns the printer output of any program into a PDF. There is also an optional free addon that requires you to install adware in order to use it. However, the Writer itself has no such strings attached.

For those of you who want to eliminate the free Adobe Acrobat Reader there is the Foxit Reader from Foxit Software.  Adobe Acrobat Reader is a bloated and slow program which installs resident on your system, using resources even when not being used, and requires you to wait through a long splash screen to pull your file. Foxit Reader allows you to read and print PDFs. There are addons for the reader that cost money. They allow annotation, saving PDFs to text files, etc. Foxit also offers a Creator and Editor which are available at a charge.

For the simple creation and viewing of PDF files, these two pieces of software work.

The other day we received an email advising us that Vista was coming and suggesting we download the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor. Vista is due to be released in January, and the smart move is to review the information. We all know eventually we won’t be able to hold onto XP and be forced to shell out money to Microsoft.
So, we tried the Vista Advisor on a Dell E1405 laptop running Windows XP Media Center Edition. It informed us that Windows Vista Home Premium appeared to be the best version for us. Home Premium is akin to XP MCE, it includes Windows Media Center.
The other flavors of Vista are Home Basic, Business, and Ultimate. Home Basic is equivalent to the current Home version. Business includes not only the advanced networking functions that are stripped out of every XP version but Pro, but extra security tools and backup. Ultimate includes all the business functions and the Premium Media functions.

The question you must ask is: Why Switch? Ultimately, as we mentioned, XP will be obsolete, fewer and fewer programs and drives will run, and we’ll feel the peer pressure. But for the early days, until it is time to replace a computer…what makes Vista worth it?

Pricewise: Home Basic will retail at $199, $99 for upgraders; Premium $239, $159 for upgraders; Business, $299, $199 for upgraders; Ultimate, $399, $259 for upgraders.

Now…you could buy a computer for these prices…not top of the line…but should your OS cost as much as the system? If you buy OEM, they will probably give you one of these options, most likely Home Basic. But for an upgrader or a builder…let’s get into more detail.

Vista overall makes useful improvements in multiple areas. The majority of XP Users log in using administrative privileges to have full access to features and thus leave themselves open to various security issues. A new feature called User Access Control allows one to log on as a standard user but perform certain tasks with enhanced privileges. This is possible under XP using the RunAs command…however its implementation is not convenient. Either way, many programs written for Windows do not properly implement their own security under the XP Security model and may not under Vista. PC Magazine noted that the feature is plagued by implementation problems and frequent popup windows that may cause users to disable it entirely, negating its point. Other security improvements include Microsoft Defender, an antispyware program and IE7 which was just released for XP.

On the useless, or at least minimally practical side of things is Windows Aero, a new graphical user interface that will require state of the art processors and graphical hardware to be able to run. It looks nice, but those who buy Home Basic won’t even get it and many power users will turn it off to avoid the performance hits.

There is more…increased search functions, new designs, and it will come out at the same time as Office 2007(Another product to dump your money on).
If you decide to buy a computer from a manufacturer before Vista is released though, note that some manufacturers as well as Microsoft itself will be offering free upgrades to Vista if you buy during the holiday season, since it was unable to release in time for the lucrative holiday sales market. For more details on the various manufacturers, click here.

In conclusion, if you get Vista…enjoy it. But it is not yet worth the investment. For those of us a bit more frugal, we will be unveiling a new category here on Gadget Wisdom…Free Software. Remember, Free does not mean bad.

Knoppix is a distribution of Linux developed by Klaus Knopper. It is designed to be booted off of a CD or DVD. There are many customized versions of Knoppix designed for various different functions. It is useful to users not only for those who wish to run their system off of read-only media, but as part of an arsenal of tools for computer diagnostics.

Damn Small Linux is an even smaller distribution based on Knoppix. It is a 50MB mini desktop designed to be booted from a Mini-CD, a USB drive, or even within Windows. There is a larger variant available that is currently around 85mb for those who wish to take advantage of certain technologies that the smaller footprint does not allow.

KnoppMyth is the Linux equivalent of Windows Media Center Edition. It is a Knoppix distribution that attempts to automate the setup and usage of the MythTV DVR package. It can be used in a variety of ways. We’ll have more about MythTV in the future.

There are numerous other variants. But a plain vanilla Knoppix CD or DVD can mount Windows drives when the Windows OS is corrupted, resize partitions, and thus is a valuable tool. The graphical tools included as well as the standard command-line Linux tools can be a lifesaver.

Recently, a Windows XP computer failed to boot. We could not, no matter how we tried, get it to boot even to Windows XP Safe Mode. We booted the system with Knoppix, backed up the data over a network, then did a wipe, reinstall, and copied the data back.

For most people, the most involved they get into updating the software that runs their company is when they buy a new version at the store, see the pesky Windows Update notice, or if some technical support technician advises you to as a way of avoiding actually trying to solve your problem. Remember this…the companies who manufactured your software put out updates to improve its functioning and correct bugs. Top of this list is Microsoft, which seems to patch a new security hole every day.
Assuming you use Windows, here is our advice:

1. Check for BIOS updates. The BIOS is the most basic part of your system. BIOS updates can improve the functioning of your processor, allow you to adjust the clock speed more efficiency, add new control options…etc.
2. After that, look for driver updates for your hardware. It may not necessarily be working poorly…but couldn’t it be working better? Have the latest versions of everything.
3. You probably have Automatic Windows Update enabled, but try running it manually every so often. Or disable the automatic and run it manually once a month. It will save on those annoying required restarts.
4. After this, periodically check the websites of your frequently used software for updates.

Note: Periodically to us means about once a month for these things. It will take a few minutes, and ensure your computer has the latest updates to your software.