I’m in the market for a new computer. Maybe. It depends on whether my laptop can be repaired economically. I’ve spent the last few days shopping around, and it’s been an education. My requirements are relatively modest, a midrange laptop, big enough to handle my everyday workload, small enough to lug around on the road. …
Tag Archive: open source
Jan 23
Check Sums
As part of my job, I read too many government reports. Most of them are available online and can be downloaded without charge. Downloads are generally in PDF format, though occasionally a press release or speech is available only as a Microsoft DOC (I haven’t encountered the newer DOCX format yet). Checking document properties, it’s …
Dec 17
Lost in Cyberspace
Microsoft just isn’t having a good year. The dubious Mojave experiment. A strange series of advertisements with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates. The botched Yahoo! takeover. Net books promoting Linux to the masses. The refusal of XP to die. And now, yet another emergency patch to fix a critical flaw in Explorer. The patch itself …
Nov 12
Word Count
It’s been a while since I’ve written about free and open source software, so I thought I should mention the programme I’ve been using recently. According to it’s website, Celtx, (I keep wanting to pronounce it keltix) is ‘the world’s first all-in-one media pre-production software’. I can’t say for sure if that’s the case, but …
Oct 31
New Toys
Intrepid Ibex. It sounds like a cartoon character from CBBC, but it’s the codename for the latest Ubuntu distribution, released today. This afternoon, I installed it on two computers, although I must admit that the news that it came packed with the older version of OpenOffice did give me pause for thought. Despite that, I …
Oct 24
Chutzpah
The definition of chutzpah used to be the murderer who killed his parents, then appealed to the court for mercy during his trial because he was an orphan. That definition may have to be updated in light of the lawsuit brought against Microsoft in China Dong Zhengwei, a Beijing lawyer, is taking a case against …
Oct 13
Office Politics
OpenOffice.org 3.0 was officially launched today. Demand for the new release overwhelmed the website for some time. My attempt to contact the website just timed out. The new release has however been available for a few days on mirror sites, so I’ve been working with it over the weekend. There’s not much I have to …
Oct 09
It Just Works
As I’ve mentioned more than once in this blog when it turns to technology themes, I don’t use Microsoft Office products any more. This article, like all others since 200 Words began, is written using the Openoffice.org (OOo) Writer. Since I began using OOo , I’ve used it to compose hundreds of articles and two …
Sep 09
Window Cleaning
Today is Patch Tuesday, the day when Microsoft issues security patches and bug fixes for its software. This month’s update contains eight critically rated updates, which repair problems with Windows, Office, Media Player, Internet Explorer 6, and SQL Server, among others. One of the patches is designed to fix problems with Graphics Device Interface (GDI+), …
Jul 07
Access All Areas
I use a sturdy pre-camera mobile phone, but it has limits. For example, if you send me a photo, I get a text message to the website where I can view it. Doing just that today, I ended up checking out the latest mobile broadband offer from O2. And something else too. I checked the …