People who know me are often treated to the occasional rant about how difficult I find it to believe that people still use any form of MS Windows. After all it costs a small fortune, doesn't come with any bundled software; needs constant vigilence to avoid malware and, in my opinion at least, a high level of technical competence to run efficiently. Compared to many of the Linux distributions (distros) XP is and was something of a lumbering beast.

Still with the release of Windows 7 I have had to eat my words a little and concede that the latest offering from the Redmond boys and girls is certainly a well constructed little beastie and any system admin will tell you that after more than a decade in the wild XP is rock solid if only because after ten years all the bugs have been reported. But its still a hard experience for the pocket, especially if you plan on having multiple computers.

As an aside I almost find myself siding with Microsoft when it comes to dodgy copies of their OS. In recent months 15% of my customers have had illegal copies of Windows and while I do not condone (nor supply) illegal copies of their software, I can understand what happens in the real world when you have the number 1 product and want to sell it for £70 a go. For many a reason to find copies of the OS on bittorrent sites and for me another reason to leave Microsoft and make the short trip to the land of open source/GNU software.

What prompted today's Victor Meldrew style rant was this: I have XP and Ubuntu on my PC with the Windows partition there mainly for use in diagnosing problems from clients, its not used a great deal but today I booted up thinking that it would need some updating and boy was I right about that!

AVG was first past the post with an update but since I had not used it in a while it also attempted to do a full scan at the same time. Ouch!

Windows update fired up a few seconds later and began to download various files and a java platform decided that it needed updating and immediately started.

Meanwhile XP was threatening to restart because something - by now I was not sure what - had finished updating. It took repeated clicks to stop it shutting down in the middle of an update of the java platform.

Once all this had been completed AVG wanted to do a full scan and Windows having downloaded files wanted to install them. Despite having a dual core processor and a gig of RAM on my rig the amount of processor cycles being used meant I could do nothing else! XP has always wanted a lot of cycles to run and while Vista may have got the "skunk eye" when it came to being a resources hog, on anything less than a couple of gigs, XP moves with all the speed of a pensioner on a bus as well maybe not on the first install but install a 10 or 15 applications and watch that speed plummet.

At this point I can hear some pro-Windows people shouting "Yeah, well Linux is too complicated and it can't do games, see!" On the latter point with the exception of some games written for Linux and Cedega Linux they are right. But having been in the PC repairs for some years now I know that the average user out is not running a water cooled gaming behemoth and worried about frame rates on Call of Duty. Fact of the matter is, if you want decent gaming forget the PC and opt for a PS3 or Xbox360. On being complicated, while that may have been true of the distros three or four years back, the latest versions of LinuxMint, Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, Fedora etc are all simple to operate and can be picked up by the average user in a few minutes. Click the Firefox icon and you are off. After all, realistically, how much time does the casual user spend outside the browser enviroment. While we are not yet a cloud computing/web 2.0 community, the browser is king. But if a user needs more; DVD playing, office suites and a ferocious amount of free software are there for taking. You never need to defrag or no need for Anti-virus. I have run various distros for years and while occasionally there are hardware issues there is usually an OS that will suit most systems, from a 386 (but don't expect too much) to the latest quad core super machines. Install is usually painless but if you are worried myself and lots of people like me will usually do the work for you and usually it will not cost an arm or a leg to do it.

In the meantime, XP has been consigned to the cupboard of its partition and Ubuntu is up and running at speed and happily. If you fancy checking one out, Google for Linux and burn your own or if you are in the Hastings and St Leonards, drop me an email and I'll sort out a disc for you. Just pop it in, have a look, it won't install until you want it to, but will load into memory and give you a feel for what Linux is all about. Give it a try I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Digital Economy Bill Are Your Prepared?

Just a little dire warning to PC users, the Digital Economy Bill proposes to place a burden of responsibility on the person owning the Internet connection – you have to prove it wasn't you who pirated that film, otherwise you risk being disconnected. On that basis, you might want to have a good look at your AV, the status of any wireless connection and the exact state of your PC. Don't assume your are safe because you have AVG/Norton or similar on the system, especially if you are updating once a week or less. Get the system fully checked out. A pro can check out ports open on your machine and look around for anything odd which could mean a possible pirate is using your connection. Your might want to make sure your wireless connection is WPA2 compliance and you are not broadcasting your SSID. A good hacker will find your connection regardless, but you can at least make it tough enough so that they go and find another sucker instead.

Anyone with multiple PCs and children might want to see what is on the machine as well. While many people refer to having their PCs "hacked" the reality is the majority of problems happen when someone decides to download a file from www.put_virus_on_my-PC.ru or similar dodgy site.

Given that this could become the cash cow for some legal firm next year (Letters demanding recompense in the £500 have been received and £700 have been suggested) a few quid hiring the services of someone to give your PC a clean bill of health could be a real saver. If you are on a tight budget try my guide (details below) or spend some time on the net understanding how your PC works.

Email me on ron.cook@gmail.com for my "Help Yourself" PDF price £1 (Paypal, cheque or postal order) I also do PC protection in the Hastings area.)

The Internet is Middle-aged - explains a lot.

From the first email to the first YouTube video: a definitive internet history. What links a broken laser pointer, a coffee pot and the elephant enclosure at San Diego Zoo? In late 1971 Ray Tomlinson, an engineer working on a time-sharing system called Tenex, combined two programs named Cpynet and SNDMSG in order to send the first ever network email. It had been possible to send email from one user to another on a single computer for nearly 10 years but Tomlinson was the first to use the primitive Arpanet to send text from one computer to another.

While the same principles are used to send emails across the world today, the very first email (the contents of which Tomlinson says he has long forgotten) was sent between two computers sitting right next to each other. At the same time, Tomlinson also devised the format of modern emails, with the @ symbol dividing the user name from the name of the host computer (although he did not invent the symbol itsel). And why did he do it? "Mostly because it seemed like a neat idea."

Full article at http://ping.fm/tVRil

The 51st State

http://ping.fm/XEtHJ

It is the biggest shakeup in the Ordnance Survey's 260-year history: from tomorrow you can download maps as detailed as 1:10,000 scale, or collect a list of locations appearing on maps at the 1:50,000 scale, or a conversion system for postcodes to grid references – free for personal or commercial use. Charles Arthur, The Guardian. Full article at http://ping.fm/PAV6G

April Fools Day is Thursday. Its is a popular day for pranksters and web sites to publish bogus news but its also the time when less fun motivated people like to try their hand at launching trojans (malware which waits for a certain condition) to launch. These attacks usually target Windows users While the chances of anything happening are remote, just to be on the safe side make sure of the following:

* Make sure all Windows Updates have been installed.
* Update your virus definitions and run a full system scan.
* Ensure you have a firewall protecting your system/network.
* Keep an eye out for any suspicious activity over the next few days.

Chances are all will be well, but keep your eyes open for anything suspicious, think before you click!

The Pirate Party Manifesto http://ping.fm/4ZTHg