FIVE REASONS TO TRY UBUNTU LINUX OPERATING SYSTEM

Okay, I'm a Linux guy maybe you already know that and
I'm going to come down in favor of Ubuntu 13.04.  But, I actually like Windows 8 as well. Which
lead me to the question, why do I still prefer Linux? 

1.         Security

Windows 8 is no more secure than Windows has ever
been. Is it better than Windows 7? Sure. Does it run a ton of popular
applications? You bet it. But is Windows 8 still prone to an endless array of
malware programs and stuck being with a pre-activated model? Yes, it is. 

Meanwhile I'm able to keep a
Windows PC safe. I run my own Windows PCs and servers and also help some friends. While I'm good at computers, I'm sure anyone who's reasonably smart can manage
it as well. But I'm lazy: I don't want to always be keeping my eye on Windows
threats; I don't want to worry about being hacked while trying to shop online; and I don't want to be careful
about avoiding clicking on a crooked link in yet another malicious e-mail
letter. 

With Linux, I can
be lazy and safe. 

2.         Cheap

I might sometimes be cheap. I use older computers
until they fall apart. I have the recently release Ubuntu 13.04 working great
on a 1.8GHz Dual Core LG E510 laptop with 2GB of RAM - a machine I got back in
2008. 

But forget about
the hardware: let's talk upgrade prices. You can get Windows 8 a bit cheap, for
example, Windows 8 Pro goes for N6,000 as an upgrade, but you can do a clean
install for N18,000. Or maybe with some tethering by a Windows freak, you can get
a "Crack Version" of Windows 8 install for you and you end up parting with a less
amount of money. Compare that to Ubuntu, where the price is... uh... zero. 

3.         Easy Install/upgrade

This is how I upgraded Ubuntu: I downloaded and burned
a DVD, booted up my Ubuntu system with it, and installed the new version. I was
done. Total time was less than thirty minutes.

Beside I didn’t have
to bother about going online to buy a product key or pay a certain amount for a
‘cracked version’ as it is the case in Windows 8. I only connect online and
downloaded the necessary apps and plug-ins – all free of charge. Besides, I did
not have to spend money securing an antivirus to install before going online as it should be when using Windows O/S.

4.        
Hardware compatibility

There is a persistent delusion that Linux only supports
a limited set of peripherals. Wrong. Ubuntu Linux supports pretty much every
piece of hardware out there. Yes, there are some items, especially graphic
cards and chipsets, for which you may have to download the driver to get the
most out of your graphics. 

5.         Applications

Conventional
wisdom is that Windows has the software advantage because it has more polished
applications than Linux does. And it does. But how many of those do you actually
use? Sure, if nothing but Adobe Photoshop will do, then you're not going to
want to run Linux. Of course, my question to you then is why aren't you running
Snow Leopard on a Mac but that's neither here nor there. 

But, with the
exception of games, I don't see any reason to favor Windows. Ubuntu Linux comes
with a free office suite, OpenOffice. If you want an office suite for Windows 8,
you're going to be paying extra for it. Want an e-mail program? Outlook Express
doesn't come with Windows anymore. Ubuntu has Thunderbird, the best e-mail client
on the planet as far as I'm concerned. Need to back up your system? Both can do
that, but only Ubuntu has its own online back-up service, Ubuntu One, with
5GB of storage. 

Want a program
that doesn't come with the operating system? Easy. use the Ubuntu Software Center,
Ubuntu's new one stop application "store." I put store in quotes
because it's all free. With Windows, you know the drill. Go to your Windows 8
App Store, poke around what's available: games songs apps etc, etc. Just be
sure to have your credit card ready since a good deal of Windows software isn't
open source or free. 

 

Meanwhile, I don't
really expect to convince any Windows fans out there to switch. What I do hope
for though is to give you some food for thought. Give Ubuntu a try; there are many easy ways to try Linux without changing anything on your Windows PC. You may
just fine that Ubuntu or another desktop Linux distribution will do everything
you want to do on a computer with a lot less trouble and money.

  

Follow this link to download a version of
Ubuntu Linux: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current

TOP TEN: WINDOWS 8 ENTERPRISE FEATURES

See how Windows 8 meets the needs of
large organizations

A lot has been made and said about how Windows 8, with
its new touch interface, is oriented more toward consumers than toward
businesses. I think it's clear that Microsoft's primary push behind Windows 8 has been toward the consumer, but that
doesn't mean Window 8 features for enterprises are any less compelling. Here
are the top 10 Windows 8 features for large organizations.

10.
Windows 8 Enterprise Edition—Windows
8 Enterprise is the edition that's focused on the needs of larger
organizations. All the features listed in this column are available in Windows
8 Enterprise. If you're interested in a more complete breakdown of the features
in the different Windows 8 editions, check out this excellent
article "Windows 8 Secrets, Beyond the Book:
Guide to Product Editions."

 9.
DirectAccess—First introduced in
Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7, DirectAccess lets remote users access
resources inside your corporate network without having to launch a separate
VPN. DirectAccess makes it easier for users to connect to corporate networks
and for IT departments to keep remote systems in compliance with the latest
policies and software updates. In Windows 8,  DirectAccess can be deployed
with an IPv4 infrastructure.

8.
BranchCache—BranchCache,
introduced with Windows 7, essentially lets branch office servers or local PCs
cache files and other content from remote servers so subsequent file access can
come faster from the local copy. The Windows 8 implementation of BranchCache
streamlines the deployment process and optimizes bandwidth over WAN
connections.

7.
AppLocker—Another Windows 7
enterprise feature that made its way into Windows 8, AppLocker lets you specify
which users or groups can run particular applications in your organization
based on unique identities of files. When you use AppLocker, you create rules
to allow or deny applications from running. Windows 8 AppLocker can restrict
Windows 8 apps (formerly called Metro-style apps) and regular desktop
applications.

6.
RemoteFX—RemoteFX in Windows 8
and Windows Server 2012 provides support for remote touch and USB devices.
RemoteFX provides host-side rendering of graphics-intensive workloads and is
important for supporting rich virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI)
environments. Windows 8 RemoteFX multi-touch lets you run Windows 8 desktops in
a VDI environment with complete support for the new touch-enabled UI.

5. Secure
Boot—The Windows 8 Secure Boot
feature prevents unsecured operating systems from loading during the start-up
process. The Secure Boot feature takes advantage of the Unified Extensible
Firmware Interface (UEFI) to store certificates that identify secure operating
systems that can load during the boot process, preventing malware such as
rootkits from loading when the system boots up.

4.
BitLocker—BitLocker was
introduced with Windows Vista, but it was restricted to the Enterprise edition
and above. With Windows 8, BitLocker support is now in both the Windows 8
Professional and Enterprise editions. The new version can protect system drives
and removable drives, as well as Cluster Shared Volumes and SAN storage. You
can find more detailed information about the new Windows 8 BitLocker features
in "BitLocker Changes in Windows 8."

3. Windows
To Go—All new with Windows 8,
the Windows To Go workspaces feature lets you create a bootable and fully
manageable Windows 8 desktop on a USB drive. Windows To Go requires the Windows
8 Enterprise edition. When you boot a system with a Windows To Go USB drive,
that system's internal hard disks are taken offline—any
Trusted Platform Module (TPM) is not used, hibernate is disabled, and the
Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) is not available. You can enable
BitLocker protection for a Windows To Go workspace. You can learn more about
Windows To Go from the Microsoft TechNet article "Windows To Go: Feature Overview."

2.
Scalability—Windows 8 supports
maximum memory configurations that were formerly available only in the realm of
servers. Windows 8 Core supports up to 128GB of RAM on the x64 platform.
Windows 8 Professional and Windows 8 Enterprise both support up to 512GB on the
x64 platform. The x86 versions of Windows 8 support a maximum of 4GB of RAM.
Windows 8 supports a maximum of two physical CPUs, but the number of logical
processors or cores varies based on the processor architecture. A maximum of 32
cores is supported in 32-bit versions of Windows 8, whereas up to 256 cores are
supported in the 64-bit versions.

1. Client
Hyper-V—Apart from the UI
changes, the most significant enhancement in Windows 8 is its support for
Client Hyper-V. The Windows 8 Professional and Enterprise editions provide the
same hypervisor technology that's in Server 2012. Client Hyper-V requires a
minimum of 4GB of RAM and support for Second Level Address Translation (SLAT).
With Client Hyper-V, you can move VMs between Server 2012 and Windows 8
Hyper-V. Windows 8 Client Hyper-V is also laptop-friendly: Closing the lid to
your laptop and putting it to sleep causes Client Hyper-V to save the state of
all your running VMs. You can get more details about Client Hyper-V from the Microsoft TechNet article "Client Hyper-V."

HAVE YOU HEARD OF NINITE INSTALLER YET?

Are you upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 8
or buying a new PC? In both cases, you face the same tedious chore:
reinstalling all your apps.

That
means digging out a bunch of CDs and/or downloading programs from various
sites, then installing them one at a time. I don't know about you, but I can
think of better ways to spend several hours.

Ninite is a web app that lets you quickly download groups of
software. Useful for quickly setting up computers, this automatically downloads
programs in the right language without any toolbars or additional files.

The Ninite interface is just one page, with categorized popular applications. To install a
package you simply select those programs you need, click 'get installer' and
then the download starts. The selection of applications is good, from browsers
and messengers, to security and file sharing software. It's not comprehensive,
but has what most people will need to get started on a fresh PC.

Ninite creates a custom software installer with all the freeware
and open-source apps you want. Just choose from the dozens of available
programs--everything from AVG Free Anti-Virus and Dropbox to OpenOffice and
uTorrent--and the service builds an installer that will download and load them
all.

Once
you start the installer, you can sit back and relax: Ninite automates the
entire process, meaning you don't have to sit around clicking Next a
bunch of times.

Even
better, Ninite automatically chooses the proper version of each program--32- or
64-bit--and eliminates any toolbars that might try to sneak in during
installation.

I
love this thing. I've used it several times on new PCs, and it saves time like
you wouldn't believe. Bookmark it!

5 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE NEW BLACKBERRY: Z10

BlackBerry has completely reinvented
itself with a brand-new operating system and two killer-looking new phones.
Here's what you need to know about them.

The Blackberry Z10 Smartphone is mostly referred
to as Zee Ten or Zed Ten in the English-speaking countries around the world.

1.
BlackBerry is now called BlackBerry. The company used to be called Research in
Motion, or RIM, which most people did not know and was confusing. Now it's just
BlackBerry. 

2. There are two new phones, running one new operating system.
The operating system is called BlackBerry 10, and it's completely new--has
basically nothing in common with any old BlackBerry system besides a few
features (BBM is still around). The first phone, probably the flagship, is the
Z10, an all-touchscreen device with a 4.2-inch, very high-resolution screen (at
356 pixels-per-inch, it should have the clarity of the iPhone or any high-end
Android phone), a dual-core processor, and all the sensors you'd expect. It'll
have 16GB of storage built-in, though you can expand that with a microSD card. Interestingly,
it has only one button, a power/hold trigger on the top of the phone--you
navigate with taps and gestures rather than buttons. 

The
other phone is the Q10, which looks more like a typical BlackBerry--meaning, it
has a hardware keyboard. We don't know much about it, really; we know it also
has a dual-core processor, that the screen is a 3.1-inch AMOLED (which should
give it nice vivid colors), that the keyboard is the widest BlackBerry keyboard
ever, that the battery is the biggest BlackBerry battery ever, and that it has
4G. That's about it!

3. BlackBerry 10 is completely new, making BlackBerry the
latest in a long line of historically strong companies to completely toss out
their smartphone platform in order to compete with iOS and Android. And it
looks pretty nice! It has a few key ideas that inform the way you use the
phones. The first is gestures. There's no home button at all: you swipe up from
the bottom to access your "home screen," such as it is. That'll give
you access to your eight most recently used apps, your favorite apps, and a
list of all apps. 

BlackBerry
10 also groups all of your messages together. And that means all of your
messages. Like, email, sure, but all of your email accounts, plus text
messages, plus BlackBerry Messages, plus Twitter and Facebook and Foursquare
and lord knows what else. It's an interesting idea, having a completely unified
inbox--I imagine whether that's a better system will depend on the particular
user. It's called BlackBerry Hub.

4. TimeShift is this new camera thing BlackBerry is very
excited about. It's basically a burst mode: instead of taking one picture, the
camera will take a whole bunch of pictures, and then you can pick which frame
is the best/most flattering shot. Samsung has about 16 different apps that do
variations of this, but the interface (a little ring that you scroll around)
seems nice.

5. It has lots of apps! BlackBerry says it'll have 70,000 at
launch, but the dirty secret about big numbers like that is that 99.9% of all
apps are garbage that nobody uses. That said, BlackBerry does have some key
ones lined up: Facebook, Twitter, Angry Birds, Rdio, Foursquare, LinkedIn,
Evernote, that kind of thing. But it doesn't have Instagram or Snapchat or
Vine, and its game selection will probably be limited.

Should you buy the
BlackBerry Z10? This is a question you alone can answer. If you want the best
BlackBerry out right now, it is the Z10. Go ahead and get yourself one. If you
want a bit of fresh air, or want to explore the world of BlackBerry for the
first time, come on board and get yourself the Z10. If you are on Android or
iOS, the Z10 may not blow your mind completely as there are still some apps
that haven’t made it there yet. If managing, editing, sharing of documents is
your thing and you are always doing emails on the fly, the Z10 will come in
handy.

All in all you have reasons to be optimistic about
BlackBerry 10, because any competition is good competition, and first reactions
from the Z10 users seem very positive. You can be hopeful to get a full review soon
as I wish to dive into the hardware and software and see how it feels when it
is used on a daily basis.

Meanwhile, I
expect BlackBerry to evolve the BlackBerry 10 quickly based on
the feedback that the early adopters are supplying and hopefully they
will be back in the game.