BitLizard’s Blog

I’ve checked the statistics and it doesn’t look like I’ve lead anyone astray, thank goodness. Over the last month I’ve slowly come to the conclusion that it was wrong to recommend the Sylvania G-Meso Netbook. This unit has some serious problems in some key features. You can find better value elsewhere. Here are the problems:

1. DEAL KILLER: wifi radio is implemented very, very badly. If you are going to ship Ubuntu Linux on a consumer netbook you would think you would go the extra mile to insure that the WIFI chipset you were using was well supported. But not at Sylvania, it appears. The driver for the radio is extremely flawed. It cannot connect to a network featuring modern (i.e. this century) encryption. Plus, for some reason, the driver causes the range of the radio is diminished to 10 feet or so. I hear that the Windows XP driver works just fine. But that is a dead-end OS and we don’t know how Windows 7 will run on this sort of computer. Deal killer, fer sure. With a lot of hyper-technical huffing and puffing I managed to get the netbook connecting about 50% of the time. But I wouldn’t expect Joe consumer to be able to get that done — even with step by step instructions.

2. The keyboard is too small. I guess I should have paid more attention to the comments before I bought this. My expectation was that it would have a keyboard on a par with the Acer Aspire One netbook (on which I can type with my usual 6 fingered style). Not so, the G-Meso. This keyboard is truly tiny. I find myself using my cell phone technique for it.

So I’m removing the G-Meso from the list of Bazaar products. Lesson learned… I’ll make sure that I check these things out more thoroughly.

I’m currently in negotiations with my daughter Olivia to trade her my G Meso for her Aspire One. The negotiations are not going well….

Bazaar products Acer Aspire, Netbook, Olivia, ubuntu

It amazes me that given the high quality of free software applications these days, that cash-pinched businesses still slavishly and unthinkingly expend large amounts of money on the next version of Windows,  or Microsoft Office, VMWare, etc. Well let me open your eyes, folks. In a lot of cases there are free versions of that functionality which is often better than the packaged software equivalent. And don’t give me that total-cost-of-ownership hoodoo! These applications are well designed, easy to learn and easy to use. Here in no particular order is my list of favorites:

1. Are you frustrated with how long feature-bloated Microsoft Word takes to even start executing? You are waiting and waiting for a host of features to load, most of which you will never in your lifetime ever use. The better choice is the free, leaner and meaner OpenOffice software. The newest version is fully compatible with all the Microsoft Office file formats — Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. — and has all the bells and whistles you could want. Even though MS Office was provisioned on my computer at work I use OpenOffice exclusively for my everyday office document needs.

2. The best operating system for the casual home user is not Windows. My recent experience with Ubuntu Linux and Linpus on the Acer Aspire One netbook computer has convinced me that most non-technical users would be far better served by these great Linux bundles. Both distros include OpenOffice and the Evolution email client (similar in functionality to Outlook). The operating system loads quickly, maintains itself with automatic updates and is rock solid. And I don’t get many “Hey Dad!” requests for technical support, unlike the never ending cries from the Windows users.

3. With my day job all about writing Windows software, when I wanted to try out Linux to see what all the excitement was about I decided to go “virtual”. Virtual Machine technology is really quite old – we used it in the 70’s on IBM’s big iron – but has now become popular on the personal computer. Basically VM software allows you to create a virtual computer that runs in a window on your physical computer. So though my laptop runs Windows Vista, I created a virtual machine that boots Ubuntu. VM software can be a little expensive but I decided that I would try out the free VirtualBox software which is a project originated by Sun Microsystems. While it took me several hours of googling and fiddling, I managed to get a decent little virtual machine running Ubuntu on my laptop. Now, I wouldn’t say that a non-technical person could succeed in doing the same thing, but the fact that this can all be accomplished with free software is mind boggling. This is fabulous technology! Today I use my Ubuntu virtual machine to run a few network services that are consumed by the Windows side of my computer. It all works flawlessly.

4. I don’t really know whyI run WinAmp instead of Windows Media Player. But the telling fact is that whenever I receive a new computer, within 3 months I have downloaded and am running WinAmp. I think my usual motivation is to view some media in a format that WinAmp supports and WMP does not. But even if that was not the case, WinAmp is just a better user experience and I much prefer the design.

5. For web browsing and email, I like the offerings from Mozilla. Thunderbird (with the Sunbird add-on) let me retire Microsoft Outlook at last, while Firefox is a great alternative to Internet Explorer. Having said that, I find myself using Google’s Chrome browser most of the time now; reverting to Firefox only when Chrome cannot render a site properly. All of these wonderful programs are free. But Thunderbird remains a cornerstone application on my laptop.

6. And I would certainly be remiss if I didn’t mention the free software with which Iam creating this missive. The WordPress authoring software is a tremendous collection of free technologies for creating and publishing web sites. Even with my minimal php skills I was able to get this blog site up and running in just a few hours. And the depth of the support by the community of programmers for this platform is very impressive. This web site incorporates nearly a dozen pieces of contributed technologies in the form of plug-ins and widgets; all obtained free. It is a great credit to all those involved and I am sure its best days are yet to come.

7. Lastly, I love the functionality of desktop side bars. While Windows Vista and Google both have their good points, my favorite package for this technology is Yahoo! Widgets. It looks good and the functionality is a cut above, in my opinion.

Free software has really come of age. These packages are as good and often better than their non-free counterparts and deserve your consideration. Merry Christmas!!

Programming and IT Linpus, open source, OpenOffice, ubuntu, virtualbox, WordPress

If you need to connect to your VPN at work and your home computer or laptop is a 64-bit Vista or XP computer, Cisco says you can go pound sand. They suggest that you use the AnyConnect client instead. Just one problem with that… the AnyConnect client does not support the widely deployed Cisco PIX network appliance. Unbelievable… how does a company get so big that they can shaft this large a group and get away with it? I guess Cisco is really that big.

Well, since I run Ubuntu Linux in a VirtualBox on my laptop, my first thought was to run the Linux vpnc client. And I got this working – nearly. I got it to connect but then, within 5 minutes or so, it would suddenly stop communicating. The client thought it still had  a connection but nobody was home on the other side.  <heavy sigh> Rather than beat my brains out trying to find a solution to that, I went back to Windows land to search for a third-party solution.

I found my solution in the NCP Secure Entry Client, a $144 software package. Since I didn’t have much of an idea of how the Cisco PIX at the other end was configured, it took me an hour of hit and miss before I finally got my first connection. But I can report that the software is golden and the connection is rock-solid — which it should be since this is the sort of software that you typically get for free, or a least at a hidden cost. There are a multitude of supported options in this software and you definately need to be a techno-geek (or conscript one) to get it configured. But with Windows Vista x64 its really the only option.

Oh, and I will not ever again willingly buy another product from Cisco or Linksys (now a Cisco company) if a customer-friendly competitor’s product is available for the same task. I’ve learned my lesson.

Programming and IT cisco, linksys, rant, ubuntu, virtualbox, vpn