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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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But along comes System 76 to make good on all of the promises these companies have failed to deliver on. And make good did they do. When the boxes arrived from System 76 I was naturally skeptical. The last Linux-based laptop I reviewed showed some promise until very quickly the weakness of the hardware reared its ugly head. Fortunately, with the Pangolin Performance, I was happily surprised.

The machine shipped was not a base-line product. Instead System 76 shipped me a bit beefier machine (you can upgrade in the purchase process). The specs are as such:

• Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) 64 Bit Linux
• 15.4″ WXGA Super Clear Glossy LCD (1280 x 800)
• 512 MB DDR2 nVidia GeForce G105M
• Core 2 Duo P8600 2.40 GHz 1066 MHz FSB 3 MB L2 (25 Watt)
• 2 GB – DDR2 800 MHZ x 1 DIMM
• 250 GB 5400 RPM SATA II
• CD-RW / DVD-RW
• Intel Wi-Fi Link 5100 – 802.11A/B/G/N Up to 300 Mbps

As you can see, the specs were pretty sweet. Add to that Ubuntu 9.04 and you have the makings of a fairly powerful laptop. Cost? $914.00. But does it stand up to its specs? And more importantly, does the hardware truly support Linux?

That last question is the one that really matters. Any time I see a company that touts their support for the Linux operating system my instincts tell me that they are going to ship with a version of Linux that is rolled up just for that hardware. That is not the case with the System 76 machine. The version of Ubuntu shipped is, for the most part, vanilla. There are two additional menu entries:

• One that displays the System 76 information for support purposes
• One for the fingerprint reader

Outside of that, it’s your basic Ubuntu 9.04. It’s fast and stable. But this isn’t a review of Ubuntu.

The speed of the laptop can not be dismissed. My own personal laptop matches up almost identically in spec to the Pangolin.  The only difference between the two is my laptop has an Intel graphics chipset. But the difference in performance is very noticeable. The Pangolin blows my Vaio away. In both performance and feel. I have reviewed Ubuntu 9.04 prior to this review and made note of the much-improved start up times for both os boot and application start. This speed up is even more noticeable on the Pangolin. And did I mention Compiz? The pangolin ships with Compiz enabled and it works flawlessly. It only takes a few steps to get full-blown Compiz running (which includes the Cube – you can read how to do this in my recent article “Enabling the Cube in Compiz“.)

The Pangolin has one of the best keyboards I have used on a laptop. The keys feel more like an Apple laptop with a bit more beef. The keys are well spaced and well laid out. As well the screen on the Pangolin is crystal clear with little glare.

The nit to pick

There is only one issue with the Pangolin, one of which can not be blamed on System 76. Because biometrics is new to the Linux desktop, GNOME has trouble with it. Even with the help of the tech, I have yet to successfully implement this feature into the desktop. Not that this is a big issue, but the laptop does have the fingerprint reader and I would hope that at some point it will work as the user would expect. Hopefully fprint reader will evolve to the point where the standard Linux desktop can take advantage of this type of hardware so companies like System 76 can offer these features out of the box.

And that is ultimately the best selling point of System 76 – their hardware works out of the box. The use can feel confident that what they purchase will work for them and work well. The elegant combination of Ubuntu 9.04 and the graceful look and feel of the Pangolin Performance laptop make a combination you can not go wrong with. Of all the Linux-based hardware companies I have ever dealt with, System 76 gets the highest recommendation I could offer.

Who would do well with a Pangolin?

If you are a new-to-Linux user and you just want something that works, this laptop is for you. If you do a lot of typing and you need a keyboard with well spaced and laid-out keys, this laptop is for you. If you need something with some power, but not something that will blow out your budget or burn down your house, this laptop is for you. If you are new to linux, a Linux guru, or anything in between, this laptop is for you. This particular laptop is perfectly in line for home use or business use. Either way you will get your money’s worth with this machine.

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But I am getting too far ahead of myself. Let’s get back to the basics shall we? First I am going to assume that your wireless card was detected by your distribution and has the proper drivers loaded. With that accomplished you will need to have the following tools:

• ifconfig: Enable your wireless device.
• iwlist: List the available wireless access points.
• iwconfig: Configure your wireless connection.
• dhclient: Get your IP address via dhcp.

The first command you need to use is ifconfig. With this command you are going to enable your wireless device. Most likely your device will be called wlan0. So in order to enable this you would enter the command (as root):

ifconfig wlan0 up

You won’t see any feedback unless there is a problem.

The next step is to scan for your wireless network to make sure it is available. Do this with the following command:

iwlist wlan0 scan

With this command you will see output like the following:

Cell 01 - Address: 00:21:43:4E:9B:F0
ESSID:"HAIR STROBEL"
Mode:Master
Channel:5
Frequency:2.432 GHz (Channel 5)
Quality=100/100? Signal level:-45 dBm? Noise level=-95 dBm
Encryption key:on
IE: WPA Version 1
Group Cipher : TKIP
Pairwise Ciphers (1) : TKIP
Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
IE: IEEE 802.11i/WPA2 Version 1
Group Cipher : TKIP
Pairwise Ciphers (1) : CCMP
Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 22 Mb/s
6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s
36 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
Extra:tsf=000002f1d9be01b7

So you know this network is available. From the above output you can also see this network is employing WPA2, so you will need a passkey. If you don’t know that passkey, you are out of luck (which would be the case no matter if you were using a front end in Linux, Windows, or Mac.)

Now it’s time to configure your connection. To do this issue the command:

iwconfig wlan0 essid NETWORK_ID key WIRELESS_KEY

Where NETWORK_ID is the ESSID of the network with which you want to connect and WIRELESS_KEY is the security key needed to connect to the wireless access point.

Note: iwconfig defaults to using a HEX key. If you want to use an ascii key you will have to add the “s:” prefix to your key like so:

iwconfig wlan0 essid NETWORK_ID key s:WIRELESS_KEY

Now that you have your configuration set, it’s time to get an IP address with the help of dhclient. Issue the command:

dhclient wlan0

If no output is reported there are no errors. You should now be up and running.

Make it a script

Of course who wants to type out all of those commands. Instead of doing this you could create a script for this like so:

#! /bin/bash
ifconfig wlan0
iwconfig wlan0 essid NETWORK_ID key WIRELESS_KEY
dhclient wlan0

Where NETWORK_ID is the actually essid of the network and WIRELESS_KEY is the security key for that network. Save this script with the filename wireless_up.sh and then make this script executable with the command:

chmod u+x wireless_up.sh

You can make this a global command by placing this script in /usr/local/bin. You can now issue the command wireless_up.sh from anywhere in your directory structure and it will run, connecting you to the configured wireless access point.

If you frequent many wireless access points you can create a script for each one giving them each unique names. By doing this, when you need to connect to a specific access point, just run the script associated with that access point and you’re good to go.

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But for some the stumbling block comes when you’re trying to sync such a device with one or various operating systems. This can be a problem for anyone who uses anything but Windows. Fortunately where there is a demand, there is a supply. For those who have a Sony Reader you’re in luck. Thanks to one Kovid Goyal there is a wonderful interface to allow you to manage a book collection (including news feeds) for your Sony Reader. This interface is called Calibre. This tool can sync ebooks to the main memory of your device or to a memory card with ease. Calibre works in Linux, Mac, and Windows.

Calibre is supported in the following distributions:

• Ubuntu
• Exherbo
• Debian
• Foresight

I did get Calibre installed on Elive+Compiz without any problems. The only thing you need to make sure you have is xdg-utils installed before you issue the binary installation command. Once you have xdg-utils installed issue the following command:
sudo python -c "import urllib2; exec urllib2.urlopen('http://calibre.kovidgoyal.net/download_linux_binary_installer').read(); main()"
This installation take a bit because it has to download the source. The good news is you do not have to intervene during the installation.

Main Window

Once the installation is complete you can run the software with the command calibre.

As you can see (in the image to the left) the user interface is very intuative. From this window you can manage books, edit meta information, manage news feeds, sync to your device, save to disk, and more.

But how do you add a book? Simple. Say you want to download and install Dracula by Bram Stoker. You can get this book for free from free-eBooks.net. Once you have the title downloaded you will want to click the Add Books button, navigate to where you have the book downloaded, select the book, and click Open.

Once the book has been added you will see it listed in the main window. You might have to adjust the details of the book. This will depend upon who did the original conversion of the book and if they entered the meta data correctly. Editing this data is simple: Highlight the book and click the Edit Meta Information button.

Adding News Feeds

Adding Newsfeed

Of course you will want to have your gHacks RSS feeds with you as you travel. To add a feed click on the drop-down arrow to the right of the Fetch News button and select Add A Custom News Source. The image to the right shows all of the information needed for adding a news feed. You can even set it up to auto-update feeds. Pretty slick.

Once you are satisfied with your library you can send your books and news to your device. To do this plug in your device and, once it is recognized, click the Send To Device button.

If you press the drop down to the right of the Send To Device button you can select to send your books to your device and then delete them from your local library, send the books to the devices main memory, send the books to the devices memory card, or send only specific formats to the device.

Final Thoughts

It’s about time someone wrote a reliable interface for ebook readers that is reliable, simple to use, and (best of all) cross platform. Now those of you using the Linux operating system do not have to wait around to purchase that Sony Reader!

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Naturally Linux was the choice. I wanted to give either Elive or gOS Cloud a try but the former required an external usb CD drive and cloud computing just doesn’t suit a fourteen year old girl. Instead I turned to Eeebuntu NBR (Net Book Remix) and I’m thrilled I did.

Why Eeebuntu?

The primary reason I went with Eeebuntu is simple: It’s based on Ubuntu which is one of the most user-friendly distributions of Linux available. Add to that the fact that Eeebuntu would take an Eee PC and make it more like an actual computer (instead of a toy good for not much more than browsing the web) and you have the ingredients for a no-brainer solution. And, of course, we are a Linux family so Windows XP was not an option.

Eeebuntu really does feel like a full-blown Linux distribution. Why? Because it is. Upon installation you have Firefox, Evolution, OpenOffice, Skype, a terminal, and so much more – everything you need! And Eeebuntu uses an array kernel which was designed specifically for Eee PCs. This kernel has very specific modules that help to make everything on the Eee work – and work well. From wireless to webcams, when you install Eeebuntu everything will work out of the box.

Eeebuntu is also much more efficient and responsive than the original Xandros. This is definitely a plus for a fourteen year old who has the attention span of, well, a fourteen year old. But it also allows much better use of the multi-tasking nature of Linux. You can have both Evolution (mail client) open and Firefox and not see a drop in speed.

How To Install

I would love to have to draw up all of these complicated steps for the installation of Eeebuntu (just to pat my own nerdy back). Unfortunately the installation of Eeebuntu is quite easy. Here are the steps:

1. Download the Eeebuntu image.
2. Download Unetbootin.
3. Plug in a >= 1 Gig Usb flash drive to your computer.
4. Open up Unetbootin.
5. Select Disk Image and then search for the Eeebuntu image you downloaded.
6. Click OK and Unetbootin will install Eeebuntu onto the flash drive.
7. Close Unetbootin when complete.
8. Remove the USB drive.
9. Plug the USB drive into your Eee PC.
10. Turn on your Eee PC and hit the Esc key a couple of times.
11. Select to boot from your flash drive.
12. Install Eeebuntu as you would install Ubuntu.

Done. Now you can enjoy your Eee PC as if it were a real laptop.

Final Thoughts

If you own an Eee PC and you’re either struggling with the pre-install OS or you just want more from your hardware, install Eeebuntu and free your Eee.

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The wifi-wiz interface is easy to use and can save your networks so that reconnecting is simple. This is a boon for anyone who has had issues getting wifi working on a Debian-based laptop.

Getting and Installing

Installing wifi-wiz is simple. Download the compressed .deb file from the creators’ site. Once the file is on your machine open up a terminal window, change into the directory where the file was saved, issue the command:

tar xvf wifi-wiz.tar

and then issue the command (as root):

dpkg -i wifi-wiz.deb

which will install the package.

Running wifi-wiz

Once Wifi-wiz is installed you wan start the application with the command wifi-wiz. NOTE: You will have to have root privileges in order run the software.

Wifi-wiz Main Window

When wifi-wiz starts you will see a very simple, easy to navigate window where all of the action takes place.

The first thing you should do is click on the Scan button which will scan the area for wireless networks. When the scan is finished all you have to do is select the network you want to connect to, configure that network (with which protocol you will connect, what wireless security type, the security key for the network, and if you want to set the DNS servers. Once you have the settings for your network done all you have to do is click Connect and your laptop will quickly connect to the configured access point.

Saved Networks

Once you have a network saved in Wifi-wiz you can click on the manage tab to change any configurations necessary. From this tab you can also delete a network and disconnect from a network.

Settings

From the settings tab there is an important setting you can take care of. If you want to run the wifi-wiz daemon at boot you can set this option here. You can also set the interval between connection checks for the daemon. Once you make any changes to your connection properties make sure you click the Save Network button.

Final Thoughts

I have used many wireless device managers on Linux. I have also tried a number of wireless device managers on this particular laptop. The one manager for debian systems that works with the most consistency is Wifi-wiz. It’s simple to use, reliable, and (in some cases – such as Elive) is the only option that works.

If you are looking for a good wireless manager for Debian download Wifi-wiz and give it a go. And, if you’re up to the task, create an rpm from the deb so this application can be used on more distributions.

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First of all, size. I mean the iPhone looks great (why they left 3G out of the first one is a mystery), it performs great, but personally, I have about as much use for it as my old Nokia 3310. Whatever people say, I can’t browse the web properly on a monitor the size of my palm. Sure, some apps are great, like Remember the Milk and whatnot, but I have no chance of working from an iPhone, the only thing it can be used for efficiently is some light browsing and movie playing on the go. For me the iPhone is an extremely cool phone, but just a phone.

Laptops have been getting smaller and smaller as well, with the new mini Notebooks. However, these aren’t really powerful, and the monitor is again, very small. I can’t help but look upon these notebooks as travel accessories, better they steal my $350 EEE PC, than my $1,500 Thinkpad. Don’t get me wrong, these notebooks are great as well, but they don’t serve such a general purpose as their bigger brothers.

So where is the industry going to go? People like me who work on their laptops and need at least 12″ – 14″ will be left wanting for a while. Short of wiring the thing into my brain (I’d love to type with my thoughts) I think the “easiest” way things will become smaller is they will be foldable. They’ve already made some advances, sheet thin monitors you can roll up and so on. I mean 50% or my laptop is the monitor, the other 30% is the keyboard. I’ve already seen projected keyboards, coupled with a foldable monitor you could put the thing in your coat pocket.

My other question is, how fast can the internet get? There is only such a speed at which speed actually matters. After internet bandwidth (and laptop speed) surpass human perception speeds the bandwidth won’t matter for the average user. However where will they take this next? Will we be using the internet to transport objects Start Trek style? Will we have holo-projectors instead of webcams? In the end you wouldn’t need a laptop, you can project the image of one (as small or as big as you want) and coupled with motion sensors, use it without it actually being there.

Also, where will Google be in 20 years? Will Sergey Brin and Larry Page be sitting on Mars in a throne dedicated to their wisdom? I doubt it, but how far can they expand? It seems like whatever they touch turns to gold, 90% of all their products are awesome, surpass any other commercial producer, and they give us all these things for free. Will they keep their position as the rulers of the search engine market, will someone come up with something better? With microtagging and web semantics building up, I think they just might face some opposition, although I think they’re working on their stuff all the time, and they don’t seem to be afraid of change, so they’ll be tough to crack.

What do you think about all this? In 20 years will I be typing on the head of a needle and looking at a monitor the size of my left kidney cell? Will I be teleporting out of an internet connection near you? And finally, will I be paying my bills to the all-ruling Google?

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One of the popular reasons to connect to the Internet is to catch up on the latest news. This can be done by browsing to websites and reading the news there or by installing an RSS News Feed reader and use its interface to read the news. The advantage of the latter method is the concentration of news in one application, the notifications of new messages and reduced bandwidth costs.

The iRSS mobile phone RSS News Feeds reader is just one application that can be used to read rss news feeds on a mobile device. One advantage of it is the compatibility with lots of different devices like smartphones, mobile phones and PDAs.

The news reader can store up to five feed groups and one hundred RSS News Feeds which should be sufficient for mobile usage. It supports rss, xml, atom and rdf feeds and is compatible with RSS 0.91, 1.0 and 2.0 feeds. It also comes packed with a few popular feeds like Yahoo Technology News or Youtube Recently Added Video News.

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That’s usually not a problem unless the applications used demand lots of cpu power. That’s not the case when surfing the Internet, creating spreadsheets or writing a Word document. Both Intel and AMD provide techniques that reduce the cpu frequency of the laptop.

SpeedswitchXP is a small applet sitting in the system tray that makes use of those techniques. It provides access to four settings: Max. performance, Battery optimized, Max. battery and dynamic switching.

Max. performance is the default setting for the laptop. The cpu is running at full speed with it. Battery optimized reduces CPU speed while max. battery reduces the cpu speed even further for maximum battery capacity. Dynamic switching is the last option which dynamically changes the cpu frequency depending on demand.

SpeedswitchXP is an old software program. It was updated in 2006 the last time but it should work fine with several relatively new cpus like Intel’s core duo series.

Users who have used Intel’s Speedstep application for Windows 9x, ME and 2000 in the past will see many similarities between the two applicatons. SpeedswitchXP is providing additional options on the other hand and support for Windows XP.

Is it working for the cpu build into your laptop? I honestly cannot answer that question. The best bet is to try it out and see if it works.

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The GPU may fail due to temperature fluctuations and users may experience symptoms like random characters or lines on the screen. The problem is that if customers experience those symptoms the Bios update will not help them anymore and they have to contact Dell support to fix the issue.

Everyone else should check the website to see if their Dell notebook is in the list and update the Bios of its GPU accordingly. The affected notebooks according to Dell are:

• Inspiron 1420
• Latitude D630
• Latitude D630c
• Dell Precision M2300
• Vostro Notebook 1310
• Vostro Notebook 1400
• Vostro Notebook 1510
• Vostro Notebook 1710
• XPS M1330
• XPS M1530

The Bios update will turn on the GPU fan more frequently at half or quarter speed to reduce temperature fluctuations. Dell confirmed once again that this will have no noticeable effect on battery life. New notebooks will be shipped with the updated Bios.

The real question however is which GPUs are affected but there does not seem to be a direct answer for this. There is however the list of Nividia GPUs that have been used in the affected Dell notebooks, here it is:

• 128MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8400M GS
• 128MB NVIDIA® GeForce™ 8400M GS (64 bit)
• 256MB NVIDIA® GeForce™ 8400M GS
• 256MB NVIDIA® GeForce™ 8600M GS (128 bit)
• 256MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8600M GT
• 128MB NVIDIA® Quadro NVS 135M
• NVIDIA Quadro FX 360M 256MB TurboCache (128MB dedicated)

My suggestion would be to check your notebook, even if it is not from Dell, to find out if a video card from the list has been used to build it. If that is the case contact the hardware manufacturer to find out how he handles the problem.

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Those information would then be compiled, encrypted and the OpenDHT distributed storage service is used to store location update of the notebook. Those location updates can then be retrieved from another computer revealing information about IP addresses (internal and external), the time, access points and nearby routers.

This information can be filtered to display only data of a specific date range. This should be tested at least once to make sure everything has been setup correctly.

The Adeona software is available for Windows, Linux and Macintosh. The Mac version has an interesting additional feature. It can create screenshots with a camera and add those to the tracking information.

The main application according to the developers is to recover a stolen notebook. The main problem with this kind of software based tracking is that it might help against a normal thief who keeps the notebook as his own and does not completely wipe the hard disks before using it. A clever thief would problem do that and install another operating system to start over.

I guess some users will find different uses for this kind of software, like tracking their children, wifes, girlfriends, husbands to see what they are doing.

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Since it is a mobile device I would like to be able to check my emails, manage my web server using SSH, connect to the Internet and write articles for my websites. The device has to support WLAN and make use of a QWERTY keyboard. I could live with an add-on keyboard that has to be purchased separately.

The device should be lightweight. I’m not sure if all those sub-notebooks like the Asus EeePC or MSI Wind fit the bill, prefer something for the pocket instead. It does not have to be state of the art as long as it does the job. The performance has to be sufficient for the tasks and there should not be huge delays because of a lack of CPU power or system memory.

I do no need Bluetooth, Infrared, games, multimedia features, GPS, a Touchscreen, Radio, TV, a Digital Camera.

I have one alternative. I could replace my Nokie N73 phone with a new one that is providing the features that I need plus offering phone capabilities. The advantage for me would be that I would only need one device that I could carry around and not two.

My guess is that it will be a device with the Windows Mobile 6.1 operating systems but I’m open for other suggestions. What would you recommend me to get ?

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It displays a radar like image with different colors dots. Green dots mark free wireless connections while red and yellow ones mark inaccessible ones. Once a green spot has been discovered by the software it automatically tries to connect to that Wireless access point to access the Internet.

It’s opening the default browser and loading a test website. A message stating the success will be shown if the connection was successful. It is really amazing how easy it is to find open wireless access points in towns. Should be harder if you are living in a rural area though.

I would not advise to check the mail from such a spot though unless encryption is being used. It’s not likely but possible that someone is using the open access point to snoop on the data of everyone who is connecting to it. Easy WiFi radar is available for Windows and Pocket PCs.

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As some of the more regular readers may know, I’m all into the whole ‘portable’ thing, and am constantly looking for ways to use stealthy software, sync my data or access it wherever I go. So it’s not surprising I stumbled across the SyncKolab Thunderbird extension some time ago looking for a possibility to sync my contacts across different computers as easy as my bookmarks using Foxmarks. Didn’t turn out that time, I just couldn’t get it to work.

But now, you may have guessed it already where this is heading, version 1.0 is out and, what can I say, it works like a charm, and not only for my contacts, but for my lightning-powered to-do’s and calendar items as well!

The whole thing uses the Kolab ‘protocol’ (in lack for a better word), which uses iCals and E-Mails containing xml-files to, among other things, store the items in your IMAP-Folder.

There’s a pretty good tutorial how to set it up as well, but it’s principle is rather simple. Choose an IMAP-Account, the items you want to have synced (contacts, calendar and to-do; the latter two require lightning to be installed) and where to store the data in the IMAP folder structure. I used a new folder named Synckolab containing subfolders for each of the groups, though I don’t know if it’s necessary to split them up.

Conflicts are resolved by using a pre-defined setting (always use server-side or client-side), or by asking the user, which is always my personal weapon of choice.

The whole thing also works with a specialized server component as well as different clients such as KDE’s Kontact for instance. Check out the wikipedia-entry if you’re interested.

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Locate PC only works if the thief is stupid enough to boot your computer while being connected to an internet connection. I cannot really say how many thiefs would do that but it can happen and that’s probably reason enough to use Locate PC. A slim chance is better than no chance at all, don’t you think ?

Locate PC (via Cybernet News) will send emails periodically whenever the PC is connected to the Internet, by default one email is send per day and another one for every IP change. The application is running in the background with an obscured filename and no system tray icon making it harder to identify. I would say that you do not need to worry about that though, if the thief really boots the PC while it is connected to the Internet then you should not fear that he will discover the little tracking application.

One thing that actually might work pretty well is to create a bogus account that does not require a password. I mean, a thief that gets a password prompt will probably not be able to load the operating system which would make the whole configuration void.

The emails that are send contain several interesting information, not only the IP that it is being send from. It displays the computer’s host name and logged in user. This will be probably your information though. More interesting are the network connections that are listed. A dialup connection would reveal the phone number and the user name which can lead directly to the thief.

A traceroute command is issued as well and identifying information are pulled from Windows. The important information that can lead to the thief are the IP address, the network connections and the traceroute command. Everything else will be your information unless the thief decides to chance the name and address of the owner to his own.

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