Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Most Windows 7 PCs max out memory

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Posted 18 Feb 2010 — by Arun
Category News

Most Windows 7 PCs max out their memory, resulting in performance bottlenecks, a researcher said. On average, 86% of Windows 7 machines in the XPnet pool are regularly consuming 90%-95% of their available RAM, resulting in slow-downs as the systems were forced to increasingly turn to disk-based virtual memory to handle tasks.

The 86% mark for Windows 7 is more than twice the average number of Windows XP machines that run at the memory “saturation” point. The most recent snapshot of XPnet’s 23,000-plus PCs — taken yesterday — pegs only 40% of XP systems as running low on memory.

The low-memory condition of most Windows 7 PCs is even more notable considering the amount of RAM in Windows 7 systems: According to XPnet’s polling, Windows 7 PCs sport an average of 3.3GB of memory, compared to 1.7GB in the average Windows XP computer.

Source: Computer World.
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Ubuntu launches single sign on service

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Posted 18 Feb 2010 — by Arun
Category News, Ubuntu

Canonical has announced the launch of Ubuntu single sign on service last Tuesday. According to Canonical, The goal of this service is to provide a single, central login service for all Ubuntu-related sites, thus making it more convenient for Ubuntu users and community members to access information, communicate, and contribute.  This service will replace the existing Launchpad login service that is currently in use for many Ubuntu-related sites, although existing Launchpad accounts will continue to work in the new service.

Canonical is in the process of moving services that use launchpad, starting with the sites Canonical directly owns and will later work with the community managed sites. For more information, check Canonical’s announcement.

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Facebook to introduce full featured webmail product

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Posted 05 Feb 2010 — by Arun
Category News

Facebook is planning to introduce a full featured webmail code named Titan. According to Tech Crunch, there will be full POP/IMAP support, meaning users can access the account other than Facebook through Facebook itself. Your email account name will be your vanity url – vanityurl@facebook.com. Though Facebook has several million users, I’m not sure how many of them would like to use another webmail. Let’s wait and see how it shapes up.

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Apple unveils iPad

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Posted 27 Jan 2010 — by Arun
Category Announcement, News

Apple has finally released iPad, the Apple tablet. Read the story at CrunchGear.

Here is the spec:

  • 1GHz Apple A4 processor (custom)
  • 0.5″ thick
  • 1.5 pounds
  • 9.7″ Capacitive touchscreen (1024×768)
  • 16-64GB of SSD storage
  • 3G available but not in all iPads
  • $14.99 for 250MB, $29.99 for unlimited data on AT&T (no contract)
  • 3G iPads are unlocked, have GSM micro SIMs
  • Accelerometer, Compass
  • 802.11n and Bluetooth 2.1
  • Runs iPhone apps in window or pixel doubling
  • Hardware-accelerated OpenGL graphics
  • SDK out today
  • $499 for 16GB base model, $830 for all maxed out
  • Dock with hard keyboard available

Here are the shortcomings:

  • No camera so no video chat
  • Limited space — 64GB may be a lot for an iPod, but when you’ve got movies and such, it’ll disappear real fast
  • Multitasking?
  • No SD or multi-card reader means that’s all the storage you get
  • It’s obviously no more customizable than the iPhone
  • iPod dock connection only means no easy connection of USB devices

Prices start at $499 for 16GB, $599 for 32GB, $699 for 64GB. Adding 3G costs $130.


Credit: CrunchGear.
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NZ school ditches Microsoft and goes with Ubuntu and Open Source

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Posted 25 Jan 2010 — by Arun
Category Linux, News, Ubuntu

A New Zealand high school running entirely on open source software has slashed its server requirements by a factor of almost 50, despite a government deal mandating the use of Microsoft software in all schools.New Zealand government is a sucker to Microsoft. Microsoft has a long-standing contract with the national government and most planning documents for education presume an Microsoft infrastructure.

“The education space is Microsoft-focused and heavily subsidised by government,” said Patrick Brennan, lead engineer from Open Systems Specialists, which led the IT project at the school, during a presentation at Linux.conf.au in Wellington. “Every reference plan is based on Microsoft technology.”

The school’s open source implementation uses Ubuntu on the desktop and Mandriva for four key servers (one firewall, one storage and two KVM hypervisors). Mandriva was selected because of the ease of using Mandriva Directory Server to manage the school’s LDAP directory, but Brennan said either desktop or server OS could easily be replaced.

NFSv4 is used to connect users into the system, allowing them to remotely mount into their home directory on the server via Kerberos.  Applications used within the school include OpenOffice, Google Docs, Moodle for managing education content, and Mahara for student portfolios. The Koha software used by the school library was also customised to integrate more closely with the LDAP security system and to allow book recommendations. While Koha was paid to make those changes, the resulting code will be freely available to all New Zealand schools.

The school doesn’t get any credit for the reduced spending. “The brilliance of Microsoft’s business model is they get the same amount of money regardless of who uses it,” Osborne said. However, the school has saved significantly in other areas, such as not needing specialised routers to handle connections to the Watchdog system used to filter school internet connections.

It’s a wonderful move by Albany Senior High School. I hope the government will take a notice of that and the cost savings and won’t renew the contract with Microsoft when it expires. Great job Albany Senior High School.

Source: CIO.
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Intel debuts 48 core processor

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Posted 03 Dec 2009 — by Arun
Category News

Intel on Wednesday demonstrated a fully programmable 48 core processor. Intel says the 48 core chip is 10 to 20 times more powerful than current the top end offering in its multi-core Core line of processors. Intel also noted that the experimental chip uses the same amount of energy as two household light bulbs.

Two years back Intel showed an experimental 80 core chip with teraflop performance capability, but it was not fully functional. It was more research oriented. The new chip is more compatible with standard software that runs in Intel’s Pentium and Core models.

Intel reported that the 48-core chip is designed with a high-speed, on-chip network for sharing information, along with newly invented power management techniques that allow it to operate at as little as 25 watts, or at 125 watts when running at maximum performance.

Source: ComputerWorld.
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Microsoft patents sudo

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Posted 12 Nov 2009 — by Arun
Category News

This sucks. Read the news here.

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Free Wi-Fi in airports this holiday season, courtesy Google

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Posted 10 Nov 2009 — by Arun
Category News

Google announced today that it is working with airports across the country as well as Boingo Wireless, Advanced Wireless Group, Airport Marketing Income and others to provide free Wi-Fi as a holiday gift now through January 15, 2010. The gift currently includes 47 airports, including Las Vegas, San Jose, Boston, Baltimore, Burbank, Houston, Indianapolis, Seattle, Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando, St. Louis and Charlotte. Additionally, as a result of this project, Burbank and Seattle airports will begin offering airport-wide free Wi-Fi indefinitely.

According to Google, The upcoming Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s holiday is one of the heaviest travel seasons of the year, and according to FAA estimates, over 100 million people will pass through the participating airports between now and January 15, 2010. Due to bad weather and other extenuating circumstances, travelers often have extra time on their hands in the airport after they pass through security – 70 minutes, on average. Not surprisingly, having an Internet connection during this time can make a difference. A recent study conducted by the Wi-Fi Alliance reported that 50% of business travelers take red-eye flights in order to be “reachable” during business hours, and an overwhelming 82% said that being connected through Wi-Fi would help solve that problem.

As another way to pass on the spirit of the season, once they log on to networks in any of the participating airports, travelers will have the option make a donation to Engineers Without Borders, the One Economy Corporation or the Climate Savers Computing Initiative. Google will match the donations made across all the networks up to $250,000, and the airport network that generates the highest amount per passenger by January 1, 2010 will receive $15,000 to donate to the local nonprofit of their choice.

In total, the gift will include 47 airports that together handle over 500 million passengers each year, or about 35% of the total number of annual passengers in the U.S. For full list of airports, click here.

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Windows 7 vulnerable to 8 out of 10 viruses

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Posted 05 Nov 2009 — by Arun
Category News

Sophos reports that Windows 7 is vulnerable to 8 out of 10 viruses, despite Microsoft’s claim about Windows 7 being more secure. With User Account Control (UAC) turned on, it blocked only one out of the 10 proving that UAC in it’s default configuration is not effective at protecting a PC from malware.

Microsoft also claimed that Windows Vista infection was 61.9% less than Windows XP. What they didn’t say was the market share of Windows XP was 70.5% and Windows Vista is 19%.

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Linux in netbooks surge globally

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Posted 05 Nov 2009 — by Arun
Category Linux, News

LinuxWorld reports:

Nearly one-third of the 35 million netbooks on track to ship this year will come with some variant of the free, open-source operating system, ABI Research said. The exact split is 32% Linux versus 68% Windows, said Jeff Orr, an analyst at ABI, which works out to about 11 million Linux netbooks this year.

“Just because you live in the United States, don’t assume that everything is on Windows,” Orr said. Orr said Ubuntu is a popular choice on netbooks, though he declined to confirm that with any hard statistics.

As netbooks running the ARM processor become a major factor, Orr predicted Linux will overtake Windows on netbooks by 2013. That will be driven by consumers in less-developed countries buying Linux netbooks as their primary PCs, rather than North American consumers buying netbooks as secondary machines as predominates today.

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