kvrlogs

They : Is this Apple? Me : No. This is Ubuntu ! They : Huh?  Me : Yep!  The above conversation happened yesterday when I had gone to give a demo to an Association Committee.  Half an hour we were discussing on Ubuntu and then I realized I have come here to sell my product and not Ubuntu - and went on with the demo!  That's the screenshot of my desktop - on Ubuntu 10.04. Very minimal, OS Xish, smooth, fast, snappy, extremely responsive - and a conversation piece at every demo. In May 2009 - a year back I installed Ubuntu 9.04 with dual boot with Vista (  http://venkat2.blogspot.com/2009/05/finally-switched-from-vista-to-ubuntu-9.html ). Now after a year - in may 2010 - I clean formatted the laptop and have gifted the entire hard drive, boot sector et all to Ubuntu 10.04. I am confident / convinced that Windows is not needed any more. In fact I am very grateful to Microsoft for having produced a crappy OS. If Vista was a little better I would h...

I read an article on infoworld where Steve Balmer cited an article by Gartner research how Windows 7 will save money. Now as you all know Gartner is a very trusted and honest research firm. They have earlier published how Linux is actually a wolf in sheep's clothing - Linux claims it is open source and free and all that - but you need expensive system engineers, expensive training, expensive hardware etc. So many ignorant CTOs were saved from making a wrong decision and continued to recommend Windows - because of Gartner..may God be with them ( and Microsoft's funding ). Anyway, here is what Gartner missed in the report and I am filling in the gap to prove why Windows 7 will save lot of money for a company : 1. Save on Coffee, Milk, Sugar & Snacks The Vista folks when they come to work and start their day, they switch on their laptop like every one else. But as you all know that it takes some where between 20-30 minutes before the machine is actually responsive, these fol...

Last weekend I went to Staples Print Center in Marathahalli - Printo has closed shop and moved out. And when I got home I plugged the USB drive into Vista and AVG Anti Virus did not complain - but I saw a program called Khatra.exe asking for Admin privileges to run. Then I rebooted into Ubuntu and was horrified to see the files that were there. There were folders and lots of exes. Now I am upset with 2 entities here. 1. Staples Print Center Printo always scans the flash drives ( even if it used to take time ) and not once they loaded viruses on to my USB drive. Wish Staples learns from their competitor and educates their employees to follow proper process ( I am sure Staples will have it in their employee handbook ). 2. Vista I did not give administrative privileges to Khatra.exe, still it managed to copy itself in the registry in some 10 places, got itself added to startup , and had the guts to ask again for administrative privileges when I rebooted. I am shocked that inspite of all ...

In my blog post a year back (  http://kvrlogs.blogspot.com/2008/04/rendezvous-with-vista.html  ) I had given a favourable review of Vista. Now i take everything back that I said. Earlier I thought my Dell 620 ( had a Vista performance rating of 3.0 ) was not man enough to run Vista - so I was forgiving. But now I have a Dell Studio 17 which has a performance rating of 5.0 - and it is still troubling me.  Here are the reasons : 1. I have an apple USB keyboard with the mouse attached to it. Every time the machine comes out of sleep I have to wait 1 minute before it gets activated. And yes the year is 2009 and it takes such a long time for Vista to detect a USB device/hub. Good job. 2. BSODs - I see it 2 to 3 times a week. I still have not found a pattern and I do not have any freebies off the net.  3. I am in Bangalore and power goes off frequently. And along with it my internet connection goes off. Mostly I will be connected to Apartment Adda through putty and it will stop responding. T...