Archive for September, 2011

Ubuntu vs. Windows

Operating System (OS) plays a very important role in a desktop or laptop or your mobile phone. It is system software that prepares the ground for playing different applications by effectively translating user commands to be processed on the hardware. It unleashes the hardware's capability to perform multiple tasks enthusing users all the time. The system will be live as long as the OS is live. The proprietary software from Microsoft, Windows has made its way in the lives of millions of people across the globe. Windows is able to lead the OS market even though there is competition from Mac OS and UNIX based open source software, Ubuntu. We shall find the pros and cons of Ubuntu 11.04 vis-a-vis Windows 7.
  • Even though Ubuntu is evolving over a period of years as an open source OS, it was not much successful in desktop line with some exception in deployment in servers and embedded systems. As Ubuntu is free software, you are free to use and distribute. You can customize the OS to the maximum possible extent. The only cost involved in procuring Ubuntu OS is your download time from the site....
SP-SSD-1SP-SSD-3 Today we are reviewing a 60GB SATA II Velox V20 Solid State Disk(SSD) from Silicon Power, a relatively unknown but upcoming brand in North America, but quite popular in Asia. Not that this matters a lot, but the Taiwan based company claims to be one of the world's leading manufacturers of flash memory cards, USB flash drives, card readers, DRAM modules, solid state disks, and portable hard drives and available in more than 100 countries across the world. Before we proceed with the review, let us know more about the SSDs.

Why SSD?

Solid State Drives are relatively new to the computer market and hence considered to be pricey as compared to the traditional HDDs. Though the prices of SSDs have dropped down considerably in the past few months, they aren't affordable for many (as yet). But SSDs are typically less susceptible to physical shock, are silent, have lower access time and latency and typically support a limited number of writes over the life of the device as compared to HDDs....

facebook-downhill

Before I rant out my frustration on the topic, I would like to point out that I am one of the early adopters of Facebook, almost at the same time it was launched in India. What really drew me away from Orkut & MySpace was the simplicity Facebook had. It was neat, no stupid posts and certainly no mindless app updates. What I see now is so noisy, that it has become too difficult to make any sense out of it.The whole idea behind Facebook was to bring the real world social networking on the web but what it has become is way beyond comprehension. This was before these new features like 'Lists' and 'Subscribe' were launched. In past four days, I have been trying hard to understand how to make the best out of these new features, and I came to a conclusion. This is certainly not working for me. There are some reasons to this delirious idea of mine, which I would like to share here.

Subscribe is just another noise:

Mind you, When I say subscribe, I don't mean the subscribe options for each individual you have in friend list. I mean the ability to...
ET_18092011_Raju The Sunday Economic Times recently carried out a feature on web entrepreneurs in India with the headline "Google made me Rich". Economic Times quotes me like this,
"There has to be a key differentiator to your blog, site or service you offer that will drive people onto your site," says Raju PP, a tech blogger who runs the site techpp.com (started in 2008). It started as a personal blog in 2005 and took on a life of its own as a consumer and personal tech blog in 2008.
Read the full article [PDF1 &
angry-birds-rio Second Angry Birds post for the day and it's a complete co-incidence! This is a quick update to let you guys know that you can now download Angry Birds Rio game for Windows at absolutely no cost, courtesy, the Intel AppUp center.
Register with Intel AppUpSM Center by September 29, get a FREE copy of the Angry Birds Rio app—then help the birds help their friends from the film Rio. New registrants only.
Angry Birds has been hugely popular and that too on multiple platforms. It is still the best selling game on Apple's iOS and one of the most downloaded games on Google's Android as well. Few months back, Rovio, the developer of Angry Birds announced that the game will be made available for Windows PC through Intel's AppUp center, a marketplace for Windows apps. But it was not available for free though. If you are a fan of Angry Birds and like to play the full version of Angry Birds Rio on your notebook or netbook, here is the best chance to grab it for free. All you need to do is, download and install Intel AppUp center from...
Gaming is rapidly gaining popularity these days as the number of people gaming is at an all time high. Surprisingly, the percentage of adults gaming has seen an exponential rise in the past few years. With the arrival of high-end technology in electronics, people prefer gaming even on their coveted Smartphone and high-end mobile phones, tablets other than on popular gaming consoles and their own PC’s. And what would stop these people away from Gaming when they have popular games like Angry Birds? Yes, Nothing. Angry Birds has taken everyone by storm as a great comic game puzzler leaving children and adults outrageously addicted to it. It is all about a host of cute flightless birds intending to destroy all the egg-stealing pigs with a slingshot. The aim is to recover all the nest-stolen eggs by the evil herd of pigs who take shelter in certain structures made of glass, wood, stone, and some other materials. Using a catapult, you have to launch the birds to blow away these hide-outs and pigs, keeping in mind to have some of the birds available along the end of the game. With every level, you...
install-windows-8 Microsoft released a developer preview of Windows 8 last night and surprisingly made it available for general public too. Though this brand new OS is half-baked and is meant to be used by developers to build apps for Windows 8, it's way too tempting for a non-developer to let go the opportunity to get the first taste of a hot & sexy OS. Not to worry, we have a detailed yet simple guide to help you install and test-drive Windows 8 on your existing PC using a free to use virtualization software called VirtualBox. Though there are other VM (virtual machine) software like VMware Workstation and Virtual PC, I would advice you to go with VirtualBox as I have been getting reports of failed installations on VMware and Virtual PC, possible because Windows 8 requires IO APIC enabled to run on VMs, which is available only on VirtualBox.

Pre-requisites

  • It is very important for you to confirm that your PC supports Hardware Virtualization. If you are not sure, use this guide to check.
  • If it supports hardware virtualization, make sure you enable it via BIOS.

How to Install Windows 8 on VirtualBox

Note: This guide...

download-windows-8

Microsoft just gave a full fledged preview of Windows 8, which has left many geeks and non-geeks dying to experience the brand new OS. Right from Metro style UI to Touch Gestures to Full screen apps, Microsoft has managed to shake up the way we have been using the Windows OS. Those who saw the keynote today were left astounded by the super-fast boot times of Windows 8, be it on the desktops or laptops or the tablets.

Download Windows 8 Developer Preview

Starting 8PM (PT) this evening, anyone with a Windows Live ID will be able to download the developer preview of Windows 8 on their 32-bit or 64-bit machines. And guess what, there is no activation required whatsoever. Unlike the previous times, where having MSDN/Technet subscription was mandatory to download the dev builds, Microsoft has made it easier for general users to have a taste of Windows 8, by opening it up for anyone with a Windows Live ID. Download Windows 8 Developer Preview We are more than certain that the Redmond giant's servers will be hammered tonight, so be patient and ready to wait. There are enough indications that Microsoft might actually open up...
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