Nikhil Dev

I was soo excited the whole of this week about the performance improvement in Windows 7 that I decided to finally take the risk. I downloaded the RC from the MS website, burnt it to a DVD and finally started the installation today. The installation went really fast and smooth. But what annoyed me the most is the installation of the drivers. The problem is not with Windows but with the Dell website. It does not have a complete list of software for the laptop. But I managed to get almost all of them working.

This time I decided to partition my drive. One solely for the OS and the Apps and the other only for all my data. Right now I am in the middle of formatting the data partition so that I can copy all my stuff back. Everything seems to be so zippy on 7. The boot is incredibly fast, no unnecessary notifications, beautiful visuals and I simplete LOVE the new taskbar. It just like the Apple doc.

Will keep you posted more about my finding as I start installing more and more softwares on it.

I tried Digsby after reading about it on a website. This is one Instant Messenger that exceeds expectations for me. I dont have a Mac so have not tried Adium that people talk about so much, but I compared Digsby to the features that Adium had to offer and there are hardly that these people have missed out on. Beautiful skinning, ability to reply from the pop up and not have to deal with the main window. Support for almost all the popular protocols, Video chat and many more. What else would you want.

When I tried it, it was open for download for a restricted group. But it is open for download for all here.

It is totally worth at least one try.

P.S: Its available for dowload for all platforms. Windows, Mac and Linux.

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Update(Thanks Mark for letting me know that)

The Mac version of Digsby is not yet available. They have a mailing system setup where you can be intimidated when it is available. I think iChat and Adium are good enough till then

Just a while ago, Nash sent me this amazing graphics and I burst out laughing in the office.

I am sure anyone who sees this will.

Was going through this article and found something that really interested me. This is a short list of some of the things that you can do on a Linux machine but not on a PC or Mac.

1. Upgrade to the newest version legally and without paying money
2. Have the latest version of the operating system run faster than the previous version on the same hardware
3. Easily install and run different graphical interfaces if I don’t like the default setup
4. Install twenty programs with one command
5. Have the system automatically update all my installed programs for me.
6. Install the same copy of my OS (Ubuntu) on multiple computers without worrying about license restrictions or activation keys
7. Give away copies of the operating system and other programs that run on it without breaking any laws, governmental or ethical or moral, because it was all intended to be used this way
8. Have full control over my computer hardware and know that there are no secret back doors in my software, put there by malicious software companies or governments
9. Run without using a virus scanner, adware/spyware protection, and not reboot my computer for months, even when I do keep up with all of the latest security updates
10. Run my computer without needing to defragment my hard drive, ever
11. Try out software, decide I don’t like it, uninstall it, and know that it didn’t leave little bits of stuff in a registry that can build up and slow down my machine
12. Make a major mistake that requires a complete reinstallation and be able to do it in less than an hour, because I put all of my data on a separate partition from the operating system and program files
13. Boot into a desktop with flash and effects as cool as Windows Vista on a three year old computer…in less than 40 seconds, including the time it takes me to type my username and password to login
14. Customize anything I want, legally, including my favorite programs. I can even track down the software developers to ask them questions, contribute ideas, and get involved in the actual design/software writing process if I want to
15. Have 4+ word processor windows open working on papers, listen to music, play with flashy desktop effects, have contact with a largely happy community and have firefox, instant messaging, and email clients all open at the same time, without ever having had to beg someone for a code to make my os work, and without the system running so slow it is useless
16. Use the command “dpkg –get-selections > pkg.list” to make a full, detailed list of all software I have installed, backup my /etc and /home directories on a separate partition, and you are able to recover your system any time, easily
17. Run multiple desktops simultaneously, or even allow multiple users to log in and use the computer simultaneously
18. Resize a hard disk partition without having to delete it and without losing the data on it
19. Use the same hardware for more than 5 years before it really needs to be replaced…I have some hardware that is nearly 10 years old, running Linux, and still useful
20. Browse the web while the OS is being installed!
21. Use almost any hardware and have a driver for it included with the operating system…eliminating the need to scour the internet to find the hardware manufacturer’s website to locate one
22. Get the source code for almost anything, including the OS kernel and most of my applications

Now this is something that I have been looking forward for. as states in “http://www.electronista.com/articles/07/11/13/mac.up.win.down.in.japan/” Mac has beaten Microsoft Windows sales in Japan. It says that the Mac sales have increased from 15.5 % to 60% and that the Windows market has plummetted from 78.3 to 28.7 %. Now this is what I call a perfect and a wise switch. I know a lot of people who use a Mac here and they say that it is the last thing that you want.

Just today I was reading this article on Digg.com where it said that the quicksilver which was only for the mac had become open source and that that source code was available on the Google Code project. I tried to look for a keystroke launcher which was the closest to quicksilver. I have been a Launchy user since a long time, but there were some things that Lunchy could not perform that well. So I did my research and found this wonderful app which comes the closest to quicksilver. This one is called Colibri.

Now the speciality about Colibri is that it allows you to do several tasks like increase your volume or control your system preferences also. Colibri also allows you to change your hotkey assignment to launch it.  Now I use Ctrl+Space to launch Colibri. This way I can still use the Title bar menu of the active app.

This little thing can be downloaded from http://colibri.leetspeak.org/

Control Volume of your computer :-

Change the hotkey control :-

A whole lotta preferences that can be customized :-

Download it and give it a try and let me know what you think about it.

Well, if you are one of those who got a new Mac Book and just wondering what are the additional software that you can install on it to enable to multi features, this website features almost all that you need. http://bestmacsoftware.org/ gives a detailed list of softwares for a mac with all kinds of functionlaity categorization. I must visit for a new mac user.