Oct 26
Oracle offers half-price support for Red Hat Linux We all saw this one coming, and it really make 100% sense, and anyone in the enterprise database market knows why too. Why is this good news? It makes life simpler for the IT guys when trouble shooting problems that occur on their large backend systems.
The old scenario used to play out like this. Call the software vendor, get through to support then find out that the problem is related to the OS. Now call the OS company and suggest that there might be a problem. Righhtt… Call any OS company and receive support lately? That call is automatically punted back the software company, no questions asked.
Image having to make just 1 call, and receive OS, DB, and Application support in 1 call. This seems almost too good to be true. It could be. I do believe this is a win-win situation for everyone, even the end user.
Oct 25
First let me start by saying that I am supporter of Linux, and rely on it for work and home use. However, one of biggest drawbacks that I continually run across and bang my head against the wall is drivers. Yes I know that it is improving and getting better every day, but it is far from utopia yet. If you run Linux you know exactly what I am talking about, because I can guarantee that you have spent countless hours looking for a driver for “whatever hardware” for your particular Linux version and build. Then getting it installed correctly can be another task in itself.
To me this is the one of the biggest things that is preventing me from recommending switching to Linux to average computer users that I know. I preach the Linux gospel, but I would never recommend that a friend switch t for his or her home use. If you run a server for your home computer, then there is no doubt that I would recommend Linux. But none of my friends do. In fact, I fear the day that I ask my wife to log on to my Redhat or Suse machine to download the latest pictures from Kennywood out of our Cannon digital camera. However there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon, because I know that Google just ported Picasa to Linux. For those not familiar with Picasa, it is probably the best Free sofware for managing all of your digital photos. I recommend it to everyone that I know.
Oct 24
If anyone works with computers and your neighbors, friends, relatives realize this, you will be all too familiar with this scenario. Phone rings “Hi this John Doe, something strange is happening with my computer can you take a quick look at it“. You will become the geeksquad for problems that occur on their PC’s. I am not complaining I don’t mind helping, when someone is in need. But recently it is becoming more and more difficult to remove Windows spyware and viruses that get installed on the machines. It used to be as simple as running Adaware or Spybot Search and destroy and tweeking 1 or 2 entries in the registry. Takes a half hour or so, catch up on old times, have a beer, and the world makes sense again. Sometimes I recommend buying Spyware Doctor from http://www.pctools.com/ and all is good.
However, its just not that easy anymore, and fixing a virus infected computer can take 2 or 3 hours. This does not even ensure a clean running PC. My latest and current battle is with a virus called “antispywaresoldier”. None of the current tools were able to eradicate it from IE. My fallback solution was to install FireFox and recommend they don’t use IE. That’s not even a fix, but it was 11:00 PM and I wanted to get home and go to sleep. By the way, if anyone has recommendations on how to get rid of this one, please post a comment in the blog, because I would love to hear about it.
Anyway, the point of the matter is. Will there soon be a time when the best solution is to start from scratch and reinstall whole OS and Apps on 6 month old PC. If this is the case, then there has to be something better. I am still not convinced that Linux is best solution for average Home computer user. Maybe one day it will, but at this present time the only alternative is to fight the “good fight” with the viruses. But I can see that I am in a loosing battle, and it will be a war of attrition.
