You might want to check you’re laptop’s documentation, or check with the manufacturer to see how often you should do this. Sometimes they will say it’s not necessary, and sometimes they will say once a month, or once or twice a year. The response often depends on whom you speak to at the company and there isn’t a defined best practice. However, you can’t do any harm by performing a manual recalibration, so why not give it a go and see if it makes a difference?

Recalibration involves charging your battery to 100%, and then discharging it completely to 0%. Once that’s done you charge it back to 100% to complete the calibration.

The way to do this is easy. Begin by creating yourself a custom power plan in your windows power settings. You’ll find the power options in your control panel, and once you’re in the power options screen, click on “create a power plan”.

On the next screen you’ll want to choose “high performance” and give your new power plan a name. For the purposes of this exercise, let’s call it “calibration”. Click next, and you’ll get the opportunity to choose the settings for your new power plan. Make sure you change all the dropdown lists to “never”, so that your laptop doesn’t power anything down. Now make sure that your calibration power plan is selected and in use. You can find out by hovering your mouse over the battery icon in the taskbar of your computer.

Okay, now we’ve done this, the first step of the actual calibration is to charge your battery to full power. So plug your laptop into the mains and wait until the battery power meter reads 100%. If you hover your mouse over the power meter icon, it should read “fully charged”.

The second step is now to remove the power cord from your laptop and making sure your power plan is set to the calibration plan we created earlier, wait until the battery power reaches 0%. When your laptop reaches this, of course it will shutdown. Be sure that you aren’t running any software when you do this, otherwise you could potentially lose some work, although usually laptops will automatically save it’s current state before shutting itself off.

Finally, the last step is to completely recharge you laptop again back to 100%. So plug in your AC adapter, turn on your laptop and wait until the battery is fully charged again to 100%. Don’t turn off your computer while this is taking place to make sure you get a full charge. You should now have a recalibrated battery that will hopefully last a little longer.

Now I’m a teacher by my first trade, and a tech author second.  I’ve been spending the last few years teaching Literacy and Numeracy to the long-term unemployed who need better skills and qualifications in order to be able to get back into the workplace, or to those people who are already employed and need qualifications to progress their careers.  I’m very interested then in the use of technology as an educational aid and, if you’re interested, you can read an essay I wrote on the subject for my teaching qualification here where I talked about some of the issues and barriers for the use of technology in the classroom, including the legal, physical and mental barriers that some people need to overcome.

It’s always with great interest then that I read news stories about how the latest technology is being used in classrooms.  In the last year I’ve seen schools, mostly in the US, giving iPads to each student and writing custom apps for the platform to help improve learning in class; one particularly interesting app was using the tablet’s accelerometer with a special app that helped the students simulate earthquakes.  I’ve also seen the use of videoconferencing to enable schools to share teachers with specific expertise and to bring in experts from the worlds of business, science and society.

Why is it then, six years after the launch of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project that intended to create laptops for developing countries for only $99 that we don’t have schools rolling out laptops, netbooks or tablets to their students every year?  From the perspective of the technology companies this is an enormous market and opportunity; indeed Bloomberg are reporting today that Apple are bidding to sell 15 million iPads to schools in Turkey.

The single biggest barrier however is still price.  In order to make mobile devices that will appeal to the consumer and trample upon the competition, companies are still going for quality, brushed metals, high quality plastics and IPS panel screens.  What they’re not focusing on is the schools and colleges mass market where what’s required is ruggedness and affordability; after all these machines will be designed to only be used in educational establishments for their purposes.

Next week does see the launch of a new affordable Android tablet, the affectionately named (for anyone of a certain age in the UK anyway) AndyPad.  Starting at just £129 this is finally approaching the price levels that technology needs to be at to appeal to the huge volumes and limited budgets of schools worldwide, and of course some of the money can be saved elsewhere in providing cheaper eBooks instead of the traditional paper copies (while being more environmentally friendly into the bargain).

The fact remains though that back in 2005 when Nicholas Negroponte announced his plans to create a $99 educational laptop for the developing world the whole world got very excited.  Then companies like Microsoft decided that they wanted a piece of the action, muscled in and muddied the whole situation.  Now we don’t have any $99 laptops and there’s no immediate prospect that this will change.

It’s worth noting that some smaller companies have tried to release $99 tablets, certainly here in the UK, and all have so far been rubbish.  What must be needed then is the technological know-how and the manufacturing clout of a big name player.  Could Apple make a $99 iPad?  The company certainly makes enough money to subsidise such a device and it would sell in enormous volumes.  How economical that would be to a company with shareholders to pay though is up to Apple’s board to decide.

So I find it a pity that in what might turn out to be the ‘golden age’ of mobile computing that children are still being left out, especially the millions of them on low household incomes who still don’t have a computer at home.  It’s time I think for the technology companies to step up to this challenge and prove that $99 can still be achieved for the benefit of everyone.

In a blog post the company said, “As part of our effort to evolve the Google design and experience, we’ve improved the www.google.com search experience on tablets.  We’ve simplified the layout of search results pages and increased the size of page contents like text, buttons and other touch targets to make it faster and easier to browse and interact with search results in portrait or landscape view.

The search button located below the search box provides quick access to specific types of results like Images, Videos, Places, Shopping and more. Just tap to open the search menu and select an option to see results in one category.”

This is much more than just providing a larger search box and search button though.  Google have really thought this one through with more spacing between search results, large thumbnail images and better usability throughout.  For this the company should be applauded.

There will be problems with this however.  On initial inspection Windows 8 on tablets won’t get the new interface as the website will recognise the OS as a desktop operating system.  Windows 7 also won’t get it at all.  While it can be argued that it might be difficult to tell Windows 8 on a tablet and desktop apart for this system, it’s also a way for Google to maintain a lead over Microsoft and, perhaps, even the iPad if they refuse to support iOS.

These questions have yet to be answered and if Google go down this route they could face complaints from competitors for anti-competitive behaviour.

However this move is also an indicator of a much larger problem and one that won’t be going away for a good few years yet.  That being the unfriendliness of the general web when it comes to touch.  So far companies have been relying on specific apps to deliver their user experience, and it’s entirely possible that an app-centric way to access these services will be the way forward.  Major websites such as Amazon, eBay and Facebook are making no progress in making their websites finger-friendly, nor have they or any other websites yet publicly come out and said they will do so.

This is annoying and frustrating and ultimately will hurt the companies themselves.  Adding a different finger-friendly style sheet to a website is a small matter, hardly worthy of a multi-million dollar investment.  It would make the world of difference to people using these websites on both tablets and smartphones.

In short this is something that needs to be addressed right now for all the companies who are not yet considering it.  The problem isn’t going away and it could take a website a year to decide on what format they will adopt for their users and how they will implement it.  In that time the whole tablet market will have moved on considerably, there will be new operating systems available from Microsoft, Mozilla and MeeGo and the number of consumers and businesses using these devices will have grown exponentially.

In the mean time Google is the only company to have publicly come out and done something positive about the problem.  All that remains is to see if the company will make the finger-friendly improvements across all tablet operating systems or just Android.  Google leading the way here could change the websites we visit forever.

Here you can update and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents you have stored in the cloud and it’s the one feature I’ve been looking forward to the most.  I have for many years had spreadsheets that I want to use on the move and used this facility as far back at the late 90′s with handheld computers like the Psion Series 3.  Needless to say then I found that the omission of this feature from Windows Phone at launch, and the inability to be able to transfer and sync documents with PCs made the Office hub almost completely unusable for me, and a waste of time.

Now though I have full access to these spreadsheets.  I’ve stored them on SkyDrive ever since I first installed Office 2010 on my PCs.  The main reason for doing this was security, with the files not actually residing on my computers and hidden behind a password and encryption there, the theft of anything from my home wouldn’t reveal personal and critical financial data to others.  How could anyone resist the opportunity to make their financial data so secure!?  There was also the added benefit of having access to these spreadsheets on any device and from anywhere in the world.  This is something I have also found extremely useful when on trips and holidays.

What I really wanted though was to be able to carry these files around with me too, on my smartphone.  After all, this is what a smartphone is for isn’t it?

You would imagine then that now I have achieved spreadsheet nirvana I would be ecstatic and as happy as happy can be.  You might be surprised then to hear that I’m feeling quite the contrary.  In fact I’m now deeply concerned about the security of these files, and it all comes down the lack of adequate security features in the smartphone OS itself.

Now I won’t speak about iOS or Android here, though all smartphone and tablet operating systems have got some faults in this area.  I’ll concentrate here on Windows Phone.  With this operating system you have a simple choice between ease of use and secure and safe, but sadly it’s very difficult to have both together.

What upsets me so much is that true spreadsheet nirvana for me would be an incredibly simple thing to achieve, if only Microsoft would put in one or two tiny little features to the main lock screen on the OS and one more feature to their Office Live platform.

At the moment the way things stand is like this.  You have a choice of either a lock screen that you swipe up to unlock the phone, or a lock screen that swipes up to reveal a numeric keypad onto which you have to type a code.  The latter of these two options is fully secure but the former will just allow anybody access to all your files and data.

You would imagine then that I would have my phone behind a password, to be safe and secure.  I don’t do this though as I use my smartphone an lot, an awful lot in fact and for a great many different things.  The process of having to swipe the lock screen up and then type in a password is annoying, cumbersome and frankly too much to ask people to do.

This makes me think of Android phones I have used where unlocking the phone involves swiping your finger across the screen to make a pattern that you yourself can set.  This is what I would call secure and with this I would be very happy.  A very similar feature to this is being added to Windows 8, or so it appears, but so far (and we should remember that Mango is still in beta, though Microsoft have a history of only releasing ‘near final’ betas these days) there’s no similar feature in Mango at all.

What Mango does bring to the table is the option to only ask for the password after X minutes of inactivity.  The options only go up to 30 minutes however, which may seem fair enough.  It is at least a huge improvement over what we had before.  It’s not configurable enough for many people though and will need to be looked at.

Then there’s the problem that the phone will automatically show, on it’s Office hub main page, links to every file and document I store in Microsoft’s cloud services.  There’s no option to hide any or just show some.  It’s all or nothing with this OS!

The other problem resides with Microsoft’s Office Live service.  This service is still failing to support passwords on documents.  This would make the problem go away for me (though it still wouldn’t sort out everything else on my phone being easily accessible to a thief).  This means that anyone clicking a link to a file on my phone will find that the file just opens for them, straight away and without worry.

It amazes me then that security on Smartphones is still not being given the importance by many companies that it truly deserves.  We’re all doing more and more with our smartphones these days and many people are literally carrying their entire lives around in their pockets, unsecured and open to theft and abuse by anyone that finds or steals the handset.

This situation has simply got to change, and change quickly.  If Microsoft, Apple and Google are ever going to convince the world, especially business, that their smartphone platforms are ‘the way forward’ then they need to bring security front and centre.  Unless and until this happens we’re all in trouble.

Reports about Sony’s upcoming tablet(s) are quite literally all over the place. Some techies are reporting that as many as six different variants of the Sony S1 tablet have been passed through FCC channels in the final steps before launch, suggesting that, on the day they are finally released, buyers will have a host of configuration choices for the device. It has also been released that along with the FCC check came certification of the device to run on AT&Ts mobile network, although both parties are being extremely tight-lipped about anything like that.

Of course, the story does not stop with the S1. Paired to launch at the same time is Sony’s sister tabled the S2, which features a fairly radical design that is unlike any tablet on the market thus far. The S2 will feature a two 5.5 inch screen format, with both appearing on the same face of the tablet with a small break between them. This break is hinged, allowing the device to be closed against the screens for safe transport. The size of the tablet makes it small enough to slip in a coat pocket when closed, making it almost more like some mobile phones than tablets currently on the market. This design is in stark contrast to the S1, which features a traditional single, 9.4 inch screen with a body that bends back straight against the device in the back, propping it up slightly. Both devices will run on the Google Android system, and Amazon may be setting aside special room in their tablet store for them both.

These new reports on the upcoming launch of the Sony tablets come at the same time Verizon fumbles its way into leaking news about its own new tablet, which may in fact be the Motorola Xoom 4G. The leak was made through a new video advertisement for the company’s expanding 4G services, and while it was taken down shortly after the mistake was notice, it has reappeared on YouTube here. Verizon is not saying anything about the tablet in spite of the leak, but the Xoom 4G is rumored to be in the final testing phases to work out minor tweaks. Still, the company will offer no schedule for release, and it is unclear what role the original Xoom might play after it walks into the market.

While the full field of tablets that will eventually flood into the market this fall is yet to be known, the Sony tablets are certainly poised to be strong contenders. Time will tell exactly what role the mysterious Xoom 4G will play in the mix, but Verizon’s lasting support for Motorola will surely help the tablet out. Those planning to buy a new device ought best to wait a few months – the rank are about to fill out.

According to him, Acer Inc. predicts that about one third of its revenue will be generated by the profits from tablet and smart phone sales by 2015.
Acer Inc is still in the phase of reorganizing itself after a sudden turnaround in situation when the company’s CEO left in March after a dispute about how to counter the massively growing tablet PC industry and how to safeguard company’s own core business, notebook and net books.

Jim Wong, who has recently taken over the role of President told reporters that Acer Inc. would now focus much more on tablet PCs and touch phones than earlier. According to him the new age belongs to touch technology and he & his team will do whatever they can to put the latest technology in the palms of users hands. The company has an ambitious plan to make up 13% of its revenue by touch products in 2013 and then about 33% of the revenue by 2015. And in touch products, Acer Inc will target the smart phones and tablet PC market along with its regular notebook business.

Ultrabooks is basically a new technology launched by Intel Corp. It’s a new category of notebooks that are ultra-light weight and perform much faster. Top chipmaker Intel has introduced high performance processors into the motherboards of these Ultrabooks. Intel anticipates that about 40% of the people who will buy a new laptop will have Ultrabooks by next year. Mr. Wong seems quite hopeful that Ultrabooks will help revive the notebook industry since there’s no doubt that tablet PCs can provide power packed computing performance much like the Ultrabooks can.

On the other hand, Acer’s rival and Netbook pioneer Asustek launched its first ultrabook at the Computex computer show in Taiwan on Monday.

Acer has been a dominant stake holder in the notebook industry with their cheap notebooks. Although they still lead the segment of low cost notebooks they have not been able to compete with the quickly growing tablet PC industry of, especially after the runaway success of Apple’s iPad.

In April, Acer Inc decided to cut is shipment target by 10% as compared to Jan- Mar the same year. This shows the drop in sales and low profits that the company is experiencing. Despite this, Wong is still confident that Acer is a major player in the industry and looks forward to increasing the company’s investments in China by establishing an R&D facility in Chongqing and another city in addition to the one already established in Shanghai. It seems like Acer is determined to succeed. It will be interesting to watch over the coming months.

The move which is backed by €10M in funding, aims to create apps that would work on any device from Internet TVs to smartphones and tablets.

There are some big names behind the project too including Telecom Italia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung and the World Wide Web Consortium.  It is being led by the German Graunhofer Institute for Open Communications Systems (Fokus).

The move would be very welcome with consumers and reminds this commentator of the introduction of the C programming language, which also came with claims at the time of unifying code across platforms.  It was relatively successful in this regard, but now companies such as Apple have moved to different language and instruction sets and are forcing developers to use specific development tools for their own platforms in the name of security and stability.

“The problem is the extreme platform fragmentation,” said project lead Stephan Steglich.  “We have a lot of different platforms that apps run on – the iPhone, Android, Symbian – and that’s only on the mobile side. If you extend that to include the automotive part and consumer electronic area you have more platforms,” Dr Steglich told BBC News.  

“Companies can afford to have an app on two or at most three platforms – they’re extremely costly to develop and ensure the user experience.  “That’s what we want to address – to provide a system that runs on all these platforms and domains, where the developer comes up with one application for one platform and lets you run it on all these devices – mobiles, automotive, gaming, and so on.”

There is really little reason why modern operating systems cannot allow programs written for different platforms, and using different tools and languages, to run effectively.  This is doubly relevant as we are now beginning to see examples of virtualization demos on smartphones and as the mainstream processors become fast, powerful and cheap enough to accommodate this.

The move aims to develop web apps that will work across these platforms.  ”The greatest common denominator among all these devices is the web browser – that’s the only thing people can use to accept the same content,” Dr Steglich explained.  This will enable cross-platform compatibility and slash development costs.  Microsoft’s new Internet Explorer 9 beta software is demonstrating how web apps can look and be treated by an operating system as though they’re installed on the computing device itself.

The move isn’t without its critics and many believe it won’t get off the ground, but it will be welcomed by consumers and app developers alike and, sometimes, that’s just enough to create a critical momentum.

This means that the version of the operating system Microsoft have released today, is the same version that will appear on the first generation of new Windows phones this fall.

In a statement on their blog, Myerson said…

“Windows Phone 7 is the most thoroughly tested mobile platform Microsoft has ever released. We had nearly ten thousand devices running automated tests daily, over a half million hours of active self-hosting use, over three and a half million hours of stress test passes, and eight and a half million hours of fully automated test passes. We’ve had thousands of independent software vendors and early adopters testing our software and giving us great feedback.”

Microsoft has a lot riding on the success of this new mobile OS, but reports so far indicate that it will give Apple’s iOS and Google Android a serious run for its money.

The only possible problem will be the continued use of the Windows name which, while completely understandable, might put people off if they’ve used and hated Windows Mobile.  Once they see the new OS though they’ll almost certainly be wowed, but if that translates into hard sales figures remains to be seen at this stage.

Engadget are reportingthat smartphone maker HTC are building the device which will sport a 1280×720 multi-touch screen, 2Gb of RAM and a minimum of 32Gb hard disk storage.  It’s also possible that the tablet will also sport a webcam, GPS, 3G and Wireless G and N.

What’s not clear is if the device will be hardware crippled in any way that would prevent a user from installing another operating system, Windows 7, Ubuntu or Android for instance, as the main OS or in a dual-boot configuration.  Certainly a minimum of 32Gb of storage would allow for this.  It would also make the tablet much improved because the main problem with a cloud-based OS is that it’s only usable if you have an active and stable net connection.

This, presumably, is why Google have partnered with Verizon as a distributor.  It can only serve to put yet more strain on the mobile phone networks though, who have already been complaining that their infrastructure is creaking under the bandwidth-hungry data plans for other tablets such as the iPad.  A completely cloud-based OS can only make this situation worse.

The price?  It’s possible that the device could come completely free on a monthly data plan, though there is no confirmation of this at this time.  Certainly this is where HTC’s expertise would come in, in building the tablet down to a price.

The device is rumoured to launch on November 26th in the US.

The issue is caused by Wi-fi hotspots that make use of wireless access points or routers that do not support the power saving protocol of the 802.11 standard. What happens is the following. When the 821.11 wireless network adapter enters sleep state it indicates this to the wireless access point by setting this power save option in its packets that are send to the wireless AP. A wireless access point supporting the power saving protocol would notice the packets, and would begin to buffer packets that are destined for the network adapter of the mobile PC. Packets are send when the radio of the client network adapter turns on.

This behavior enables the wireless network adapter to use less power and to wake up periodically at the correct time to receive network traffic from the AP.

A wireless network adapter that does not support the power saving feature will not recognize the intention of saving power, and continue sending packets to the client adapter. Packets that reach the client adapter in turned off state are lost, and this causes the mobile connectivity issues.

Microsoft suggests three workarounds / fixes to repair the connectivity issues:

Method 1: Connect the mobile PC to a power source

When you plug the mobile PC into a power source, Windows Vista or Windows 7 switches the wireless network adapter power setting in the default power plan from the Medium Power Save setting to the Maximum Performance setting. This turns off the 802.11 power save mode.

Method 2: Modify the default power saving power plan

Modify the default on-battery power setting for the wireless network adapter. Configure the wireless network adapter to use the Maximum Performance setting when Windows Vista or Windows 7 is configured to use the Balanced power plan or the Power saver power plan. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, type Power Options in the Start Search box, and then click Power Options in the Programs list.
If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type your password or click Continue.
2. Click Change plan settings under the power plan that is selected. For example, if the Balanced option is selected, click Change plan settings under Balanced.
3. Click Change advanced power settings.
4. In the Power Options dialog box, expand Wireless Adapter Settings, and then expand Power Saving Mode.
5. In the list that appears next to On battery, click Maximum Performance, and then click OK.

Method 3: Use the “High performance” power plan

If the computer is running on a power plan other than the High performance power plan when you connect to a wireless network, manually change the power plan to High performance. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, type Power Options in the Start Search box, and then click Power Options in the Programs list.
If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type your password or click Continue.
Note You can also right-click the battery icon in the notification area to access the Power Options command.
2. Click High performance.

More information are available at the official Microsoft Knowledgebase article.

In this article I will show you how to install and use Calibre to manage your Kindle book reader. NOTE: I have written about Calibre before (but only covered managing books in the Sony ebook reader). See my article “Manage Sony Reader in Linux”  for more details.

Installation

Installation is simple as you will find Calibre in the standard repositories. So you will only need to issue a command like sudo apt-get install calibre. Or you can do the usual:

1. Open up your Add/Remove Software application.
2. Search for “calibre” (no quotes).
3. Mark Calibre for installation.
4. Click Apply to install.

You can fire up Calibre either from the command line (enter calibre) or from the Applications > Office menu. As you will know (from previous Ghacks Calibre articles), the interface is simple. I won’t go over that. But I will walk you through the new first run wizard for setting up Calibre to be used with a Kindle.

Figure 1

When you first fire up Calibre you will be asked to set up the application for your eReader. The first step you will see this in is shown in Figure 1. Make sure you select the correct version of the Kindle you own.

Figure 2

In the next step you will set up how Calibre can send books to your Kindle without the device having to be plugged in. You will need to know your Kindle email address in order to set this up. Figure 2 shows the information you will need in order to get this working. You can use Gmail mail servers if you do not have access to an smtp server. I highly recommend you test the email settings before you move on. Upon a successful email test, you can then click the Next button to complete the setup.

Sending books to your Kindle

Figure 3

Let’s say you have already added a bunch of books to your Kindle. You don’t have your Kindle attached to your computer but you want to send a few books anyway. If you open up your library and right click a book you want to send you can select the book to be sent to your Kindle email address (see Figure 3).

Yes, there are books on my Kindle written by me ;-).  As usual, the emailed book will only arrive to your Kindle if you have the Whispernet turned on.

Final thoughts

Managing your Kindle books is getting easier and easier. And thanks to applications like Calibre, the task only gets more seamless.

In this piece I will do my best to try to predict what is in store for Linux and open source. Of course, as with any prediction, nothing is for sure; but hopefully these predictions will give you an idea where FOSS software is heading.

Linux takes over mobile market

This prediction is one of the more certain to come true. With more and more powerful phone arriving on the market with the Android operating system and the netbook hardware gaining more power and more Linux-based options (Moblin and Chrome OS for example), the mobile space seems ripe for a Linux takeover in 2010. Of course there have been many who would argue that netbook sales have declined, it has been predicted that netbook sales will top 50 million by 2012. But to this I would suggest that (although I am not a huge fan) cloud computing is going to even further enhance the Linux netbook sales. Because the Linux operating system was made to be networked, it is a perfect candidate to serve as the operating system the cloud will reach out to. And finally, although Windows 7 is proving itself to be an outstanding release, it is not the best fit for the netbook space. The modularity and flexibility of Linux, on the other hand, is perfectly matched for the smaller, portable form factor.

More consumer-level support

I started seeing this growing in 2009. A lot of big vendors are now seeing the viability of Linux and open source. From mobile phones, netbooks, laptops, and desktops – the makers of hardware are finally catching on. 2009 saw the rise of companies like System76 who sell Linux (and only Linux) machines. This trend will continue and catch on with bigger and bigger vendors to the point where we should start seeing Linux machines sold in big box stores near the end of  2010.

Firefox and Chrome become the dominant browsers

It’s already happening. Firefox has slowly become one of the most popular of all the browsers. And with good reason. But Chrome has proven to be a different beast all together. With no other browser able to match its speed, Chrome will make serious headway into the browser-space. And Chrome should also benefit when the Chrome OS starts shipping on netbooks! So, between these two browsers, the landscape will be completely changed and Internet Explorer will finally plummet from the top of the browser war. Once that happens, the battle between Firefox and Chrome will seriously heat up.

GPL and LGPL will do battle

It has already begin. When Miguel de Icaza stripped all GPL code from the Monodevelop tool, the FOSS community lashed out. He did this with good reason – so that third-party add ons could be introduced to the tool without having to GPL the code of the add ons. But to the open source community, it’s all or nothing. This is going to start an ugly battle that will most likely end with a new variation of the current GPL v2 (no one wants to deal with GPL v3). I predict more and more larger open source projects will be releasing under the LGPL, causing the GPL to be seriously rethought. The Richard Stallmans of the FOSS community will most likely be dealing with high blood pressure this year.

GNOME 3 will ruffle feathers

Remember when KDE 4 was released? The Linux community was dramatically split into those that hated the new version and those who loved the new version. GNOME 3 is going to have the same effect – but with a different conclusion. When GNOME 3 is finally released (even in beta), it will be far less buggy than was KDE 4′s initial release. GNOME 3 will be a bit of a paradigm shift for the Linux desktop, but that paradigm will at least work well. The GNOME developers have always had the big picture and the users in mind when developing (except for that Spatial behavior in Nautilus). So, although the radically different GNOME 3 (for information on GNOME 3 check out the 3.0 website.) looks like it could be one of the most exciting releases to come from the GNOME developers, the user community is in an uproar. This uproar is due, in part, to the KDE 4.0 fiasco. Fear not, GNOME users, the GNOME developers have learned from what transpired with KDE 4.0 and will not release a GNOME 3 that is less than functional.

Open source video drivers equal proprietary drivers

We already saw this happening with the release of Ubuntu 9.10 and Intel on board graphics chips. The open source drivers necessary for Intel graphics now match the proprietary solutions feature for feature. The Linux 2.6.33 kernel will greatly boost support for ATI and NVidia graphics chipsets. With the holy-trinity of graphics card support in place, Linux video issues will be a thing of the past. The next step? Unsupported wireless drivers.

Final thoughts

I have been saying (and hearing) this for a long, long time; but I do believe that 2010 will finally be the year Linux and open source receives the support and acceptance it deserves. Not all of my predictions will come true, but many of them will. Do you have a prediction for Linux and open source software? If so, share it with your fellow Ghacks readers.

KDE 4.3 is out now and the KNetwork Manager has matured quite a bit. Now this KDE tool has reached a point where it not only works consistently, it’s also quite easy to use – almost surpassing the GNOME Network Manager in user-friendliness.

But for those who have grown to depend on other means of connecting to the net (in KDE 4.x) by other means, the KNetwork Manager might seem a bit unfamiliar. In this tutorial you will see just how easy it has become to connect to a network (specifically a wireless network) with the help of KNetwork Manager.

Installation

You will be glad to know that there is no installation necessary for KNetwork Manager. But you will want to make sure you have the latest KDE updates. But you will want to make sure you are using the most recent version of KDE (As of this writing, KDE 4.3.2). To find out what version you are using open up the Dolphin file manager, go to the Help menu, and click “About KDE”. If you are using a version prior to 4.3.2 you will want to go to your update manager and check to see if there are any updates for KDE.

Accessing KNetwork Manager

Figure 1

If you look in the notification area you will find the KNetwork Manager icon (see the icon in the black square in Figure 1). If you click this icon (either right or left click) a menu will pop up that:

• Shows you if you are connected to a network.
• Allows you to stop an active network connection.
• Connect to a new network.
• Enable/disable wireless.
• Open the connection manager.

Figure 2

To create a new wireless connection either select “Connect to Other Network” or open the Connection Manager. Let’s start from the Connection Manager. Select that entry to open up the Connection Manager (see Figure 2).  As you can see there are already two network connections available. Let’s create a third.

Figure 3

In order to create a new network click the Add button, which will open up the New Network tool (see Figure 3). In this tool you can either add all of the information manually or you can click the Scan button to find the network you want to add. The scan tool is one of my favorite aspects of the new KNetwork Manager.

The Access Point Scanner (see Figure 4) gives you a graphical representation of all available wireless networks and their relative signal strength.

Figure 4

Obviously the network that appears closest to the PC icon in the window will have the strongest strength. And since that is the network I want to connect to I will select it and click OK. Unfortunately, by selecting a particular access point, the only configuration this adds to your connection is the SSID. You will have to go through the rest of the configuration and set the connection up. Make sure you  click on the Wireless Security tab (see Figure 5), select the proper security type, and enter the correct password for the security.

Figure 5

Once you have configured the connection you can OK this window to apply the changes and dismiss the connection wizard. All you then need to do is click the KNetwork Manager icon and select your new network connection to connect.

Final thoughts

I am very pleased with how the KNetwork Manager tool has matured. Prior to 4.3.2, the network tool was nothing I would ever recommend. Now, however, I can safely recommend this network manager to anyone.

I do have an Android-based phone, but that wasn’t enough for me to know if this new OS is a viable alternative for the network laptop. In order to get a good enough experience, I thought I should get Android up and running in a VirtualBox virtual machine. I was surprised how easy this was. Equally I was surprised to see how well it ran. Although lacking a lot of functionality (and obviously still tightly knit into the fabric of the mobile phone technology, it was a quick and easy way to see how this operating system would function. So let’s get Android OS up and running in a virtual machine and take it for a spin.

Getting the ISO and putting it together

The first thing you have to do is download two pieces of the Android Live ISO image. Get the first part here and the second part here. Once you have these two pieces you need to splice them together. In the Linux operating system this is simple. Follow these steps:

1. Open up a terminal window.
2. Change to the directory now holding the two pieces of the ISO image.
3. Issue the command: cat liveandroidv0.3.iso.001 liveandroidv0.3.iso.002 > liveandroid.iso

The command in step three will piece together the two ISO parts into one, complete ISO image that can be used with VirtualBox.

Create the Virtual Machine

I will assume you have read the VirtualBox articles here on Ghacks. You might want to go over my article “Installing Windows XP as a virtual machine on VirtualBox“. The steps for creating the Android virtual machine are similar to this with only these differences:

• You will select Linux/Other Linux as the OS type.
• When you first fire up the virtual machine you will use an Image file instead of a Host Drive. All you have to do is add the new liveandroid.iso image file in the wizard.

That’s it. When you select your image file your virtual machine will start up and, eventually, you will have a running instance of Android OS.

The Android desktop

Figure 1

As you can see, in Figure 1, the Android desktop is fairly similar to that of the mobile phone version. What you see is the Google search bar at the top, a few application icons on the bottom, and the sliding tray to the right.

If you click the left-pointing arrow on the sliding tray you will see what is currently included in this early release of the Android Desktop OS. Figure 2 shows this tray in the exposed position, revealing a number of clickable icons – all of which do function.

Figure 2

I have tried to install apps onto the Android Desktop OS, but to no avail. The web browser does work as does a few of the other applications. You should not be surprised to hear the phone-based apps will not work on the desktop. I am surprised these have been included in this release of the OS.

The browser works well enough to demonstrate what Ghacks looks like. Take a look at Figure 3 too see everyone’s favorite how-to site as rendered in the Android Desktop OS’s browser. Not too shabby.

Figure 3

Final thoughts

The Android Desktop OS is not nearly close enough for public consumption. But its alpha-stage of development doesn’t prevent curious geeks, nerds, and the like from wanting to know what it looks like. And from what I have seen, if Android continues with development, they could have something really special for the netbook landscape. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Now IBM sees a developing market for more cost-effective solutions to the Microsoft Windows/Office combination. This solution (for which I hope they find a better name than “IBM Client for Smart Work”) will consist of:

• Lotus Symphony
• Lotus Live
• Lotus Notes

The difference between the Red Hat and Ubuntu versions is quite interesting. On the Ubuntu side the Lotus tools will be doled out via cloud. On the Red Hat side all tools will be on the desktop. To me this is smart marketing because it brings both Linux distributions together to work on a single project, but doesn’t pit each distribution against one another.

I believe that both of these solutions seems sound as well as outstanding alternatives to the current Windows environment. But what about the meat of the issue – the office suite? Does it work? Can it stand up to all the competition? This is where you decided. I will show you how this office suite is installed/used and you can kick those tires and see if it is a worthy opponent.

Installing

The first thing you need to do is go to the Symphony download page and download the version of the suite for your distribution. You will have to agree to a license as well as enter your name, email address, etc.

You can download for Windows, OS X, or Linux (Ubuntu, Red Hat, SuSE). The Ubuntu file will be a .deb file and both the Red Hat and SuSE files will be .rpm files.

Once you have downloaded the file you will open a terminal window, change into the directory containing the file, and issue one of these commands:

• sudo dpkg -i symphony*
• rpm install -ivh symphony*

The former command for Ubuntu and the latter command for either Red Hat or SuSE.

You will have to agree to a license during the install, but other than that the installation is a piece of cake.

Post installation

Once Symphony is installed, you can start the suite from the command line by issuing the command:

symphony

Or you will find a menu entry in the Office sub-menu of the Applications menu.

Symphony consists of three parts:

• Word processor
• Spreadsheet
• Presentations

Figure 1

You can not start the tools separately (reminiscent of the old Star Office suite) so when Symphony starts you will be presented with the Symphony desktop (see Figure 1).

From this desktop you can pretty much do anything you need. From creating a new file (click the icon associated with the type of file you want to work with) or open an existing file from the File menu.

I’m fairly confident that anyone reading this site can work their way around the basics of an office suite, so I won’t go into the details of how to use Symphony. In later articles I will discuss some of the “power features” of Lotus Symphony.

Final thoughts

If IBM plays their cards right they can take the Smart Work desktop and turn it into something that could seriously compete with Windows. This of course would be more in line with enterprise usage and not home/personal usage. I look forward to seeing how IBM continues their presence on the Linux desktop.

The most interesting of the lot are definitely the new iMacs and the multi-touch mouse. The new Quad-Core iMac was heard coming long before, when the first rumors started circulating last month. Now that it is finally here, the differences from the old models are obvious. It has a stunning 27” display, Intel Core i5 (upgradable to Core i7) and has a huge screen space at 2560×1440 pixels.

But the excitement is not restricted to the highest model. The main thing that I would like to bring your attention to is the fact that all models (except the quad core) have Intel Core 2 Duo chips at 3.09GHz and have 4GB memory as standard. Plus, there is the brilliant new wireless Magic Mouse and wireless new keyboard that come standard with every iMac.

The Magic mouse is a brilliant piece of equipment. It has no buttons, is made out of aluminum and is topped off with a capacitive multitouch layer that works just like the MacBook’s glass trackpad. You can touch anywhere and you can scroll the full 360º if the application allows it. The whole surface clicks like the glass trackpad and you can even get it to emulate the two-button mouse. I say this is the best non-gaming mouse till date. Plus the tracking is now optical, so the Magic Mouse can track without a mousepad and on almost all surfaces. Gestures are supported and so is accelerated scrolling. So comparisons to the iPhone’s multitouch features are fully justified.

The MacBook gets a polycarbonate unibody, with the same built-in battery as the MacBook Pro line. So it now has a 7-hour rated battery life. There have been subtle design changes – the most noticeable is the lack of the sharp edge that really bugged people on the previous models. The display is now LED backlit, making the MacBook more eco-friendly and energy efficient.

MacMinis have received speed and storage upgrades but everything else is pretty much the same. There is now a 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo, $999 server edition that packs in two 500GB HDDs, Mac OS X Server Snow Leopard and lacks a DVD burner.

So now that we know what Apple had up their sleeves, it is time to talk about how this will help them in their race against Windows 7 and the slew of new computers that will be released during and soon after the Windows 7 launch.

Apple’s new strategy with iMacs is clearly to give users as much computing power as possible. The new entry point of 3.06 GHz and 4GB RAM is going to be a hit with the crowd because these are above average features at this time. So buying an iMac now would be a great thing because you will not have to upgrade for quite a while.

The new 27” Core ‘5/i7 iMac is clearly an attempt to woo those professionals who want something more affordable than a Mac Pro but something more powerful that the previous generation iMacs. This new iMac is going to be a hit with visual designers and also with musicians. Both have a lot of use for large screen spaces. Designers can do side by side comparisons while musicians can now see more things on screen. I for one would use this with Logic Pro and place the mixer and the arrangement areas side by side during the final mix down.

The two Mac Minis And the MacBook [white] have been through smaller updates. They are not very different spec-wise but the MacBook has changed quite a bit physically. It doesn’t seem like they will make much of an impact on their own but the price cuts are sure to bring in some more sales. To me, it seems like 2010 Q10 will be the bigger quarter for Apple and they will one-up Windows 7 with their tablet device. So this it for now and I don’t think the new Macs and Windows 7 will suffer a lot from each other. That is because the high-end will still go for MacBook Pros and iMacs and the average consumer will be torn between the Mac Mini and myriad Windows 7 systems. However, the MacBook [white] is likely to make it to quite a few stockings this year.

There were many reasons behind it failing and they were there because the concept was way ahead of the available and affordable consumer technology at that time.

So now that we are on the brink of another tablet from the company, I would like to tone down all our expectations a little and give you a dose of practicality in this post.

• The OS Problem – The tablet will be a very unique device. It is exactly halfway between the iPhone and the MacBooks. So there are two choices for Apple – scale up the iPhone OS or scale down OS X. Logically, scaling down the full sized OS X would pose a lot of problems in terms of expectations and engineering. Scaling up the iPhone OS makes much more sense. But then, what do you tell the app devs? Here’s a new iPhone OS resolution and specs, make apps for it? The third choice is making a whole new OS. But that would mean forcing users to learn something new and making things more complicated (three OS’ to maintain). We are lazy people.

• The Portability Problem – Would you really like to carry around a 10.6inch glass tablet? I thought not. It will fracture all too easily. This structural problem can only be overcome by making A) a tough lid for it or B) a touchscreen built out of shatterproof, bulletproof, extra tough glass that can take a straight punch to the face and stay intact. The second option would make the device far too expensive and the first would make it the lid an almost redundant piece. Detachable or not, it would not be very helpful about the portability and usability.

• Weight And Battery Life – All that screen space and whatever the processing power is, requires power. And everyone knows that more battery power means more weight. So what would you rather have? A 3-cell battery that does not last long or a 9-cell battery that makes it impossible to carry the device for too long? And let’s not talk about the screen brightness. Forget working under direct sunlight; let’s see this device remain workable in a brightly lit room without dying in an hour.

• Processing Power and Performance – With battery life already an issue, one must  wonder – how much processing power would this tablet have? Something around 600MHz like the iPhone 3GS just won’t cut it for this large a device. You need to have something fairly muscle-bound, like an Intel ULV or Atom at the very least. Now think of a netbook and think of the frustratingly sluggish performance. Apple would probably need to artificially block multi-tasking on the tablet as well. Bummer.

• Usability – Will someone please tell me how the hell am I supposed to use this tablet? I am almost certain that I can’t hold in one hand because it will be too heavy. Besides, I would really like to use both hands on a 10.6inch touchscreen. Also, Apple would be loath to include a kickstand on the device, which would totally destroy the aesthetics of the curved and polished back that it apparently has. So the only remaining way is to keep it on a flat surface parallel to the ground and bend over to use it. As a blogger I already spend too much time sitting badly and getting backaches. I could live without more. So unless Apple makes this thing levitate in mid air, this does not look very useful to me.

Of course, knowing Apple and dear Stevie, each of these reasons has already caused a total reset. So hopefully, we will see another masterpiece from Apple early next year. And if it fails, you read about it at gHacks!

Powertop was created by Lesswatts.org with the sole purpose of helping users find those programs and/or systems that are using too much power. The end result? More battery life for you to enjoy. Power top is easy to install and use. Powertop is a curses-based application so it is run inside of a terminal very much like the Top application. Don’t expect a fancy GUI here, it’s text-based but still user-friendly. In this article you will find out how to install Powertop and use it to get the most out of your battery.

Installing Powertop

So long as you are using a modern release, you should find Powertop in your distributions’ repositories. And since Powertop is a terminal-based application, I will illustrate how to install via command line.

The steps are simple:

1. Open up a terminal window.
2. Issue the command sudo install powertop.
3. Click ‘y’ to okay the installation.

That’s it. Powertop is now ready for you to use.

Using Powertop

Figure 1

With your terminal still open issue the command sudo powertop to start the application. You can not run Powertop as the standard user because Powertop has to collect and modify information that the standard user has no access to. Fortunately sudo will do the trick.

What you see will differ, depending upon your distribution, installation, configuration, etc.

As you can see ,in Figure 1, Powertop has a few suggestions to aid my laptop. The biggest issue is wakeups and Powertop is giving me the top causes for wakeups.

As you can also see, Powertop offers suggestions to solve the various problems. Not only does Powertop make suggestions, it will offer to take care of the suggestion for you. In the instance above you can see Powertop is suggesting I disable the hal system from polling my CD drive. You can do this with the command:

hal-disable-polling –device /dev/cdrom

or you can just hit the ‘K’ key and Powertop will take care of this for you.

Once you take care of this suggestion (whether you let Powertop take care of it or you do it manually) Powertop will then suggest another way for you get more power from your laptop and will offer to take care of the issue for you. You can continue on like this until Powertop has resolved every issue it can find.

Final thoughts

Powertop is an effective means of helping your laptop gain more battery life without having to recompile a kernel, manually edit a configuration file, or issue any commands (outside of starting the application). After following the suggestions of Powertop you should experience a noticeable difference in your battery life.

Mozilla Weave is currently an experimental add-on that is only working with versions of Firefox 3.5 which limits the reach of the add-on quite a bit. The data transfer is encrypted which ensures data integrity and safety during the transfer and on the storage server.

Several new features have been added to Mozilla Weave 0.4 including the ability to synchronize preferences, identity support that includes automatic logins and the use of OpenID logins, better support for add-ons using Weave, performance improvements during startup and opening new windows and support for the Fennec which is also known as the mobile Firefox browser.

You can check out our first review of Mozilla Weave dating back to 2008 if you would like to receive additional information. The announcement page contains additional information and the download link to Mozilla Weave 0.4.

Cheese is not one of those applications that is going to make or break your desktop experience. But it certainly will enhance it. You can take standard pictures and even add effects to those pictures And Cheese doesn’t just do pics, it can do videos as well.

Getting and installing

Even though Cheese is a part of the GNOME desktop, it isn’t always installed by default. To install Cheese open up your Add/Remove Software utility, search for “cheese” (no quotes), select the results, and click Apply. To start Cheese look in the Graphics submenu of the Applications menu.

Figure 1

When you fire Cheese up it will instantly start seeing you. Figure 1 shows me stalking a penguin through the eyes of Cheese. You will also see two photos I have already taken of myself.

To snap a photo of yourself place yourself in the position (or goofy face) you want and press the Take A Photo button.

When the photo is snapped it will appear in the lower pane of the application.

Now those photos you have taken have not been saved. You must actually save them before you can use them. To save a photo right click the photo and select “Save As”. By default photos are saved in the ~/Pictures/Webcam directory and can only be saved in .jpg format.

From that same right menu you can choose to send a picture to a removeable device, import the photo into F-Spot, open the photo, or send the photo to the trash. There is one other option “Set as Account Photo”, which is supposed to set a photo to your About me and your login photo. I have yet to get this to work.

Effects

You can even add effects to a photo. You actually add the effects before the photo is taken, and you can add more than one effect  if you like. To add effects click the Effects button to list all of the possible effects.

Figure 2

As you click on an effect it will be highlighted. Click on as many effects as you like, but know that the more effects you add the slower Cheese will get (especially when adding effects like Vertigo and Warp.)

After you select the effects you want click the Effects button again and you will be returned to the normal screen, only now your photo will be “enhanced” by the effects you have chosen.

You can see the right photo of me was with the Vertigo and the Warp effects running.

Countdown

You will notice, in the Cheese main menu, a Countdown entry. If this entry is checked there will be a delay in the photo taking (so you can make yourself as photogenic as possible.) If you would prefer instant results uncheck that entry and photos will be snapped as soon as you hit the Take a Photo button.

Final thoughts

Cheese is not going to make you a more productive worker. In fact, it’s just fun enough that it might make you a less productive worker. But when you need that interface to your trusty webcam, just say “Cheese” and you’ll be ready every time.