The coming changes in operating systems and computers

I saw this ad today on drudgereport. Awesome, it makes you want to strap up and go take down some bad guys--and make 65K! I love living in a country where there are so many good options for work. Looking at the guy in this ad, he looks like an athlete. This ad also reminds me of a Beevis and Butthead episode in which the military recruiter plays a video with a voice over that sounds like it came from a monster truck rally and the scenes show soldiers driving tanks and blowing stuff up. The guy asks Beevis and Butthead if they are in....as if he had to ask.

On another topic, I'm pretty amazed at what is unfolding in the software market related to operating systems. You wouldn't think that anything could take down Microsoft, but they seem to have fumbled away their cash cows, or are in the midst of doing so. Think about it, what stinks about computers? Key issues include the following: they take more than 5 seconds to boot (unacceptable), they progressively download patches and over time become so slow they are unusable (unacceptable), and they store data locally and your hard drive--which is the most likely component on any computer to fail when something does eventually fail. Despite these obvious areas for improvement, the big guns out there have overlooked these issues for years.

Now I see two interesting things happening. I see Google making an operating system that boots in seconds. Doesn't that make sense? I mean, my computer is practically just a television set anyway. I basically type up Word documents and browse on the internet for text-data and sometimes watch something streaming like Netflix or Youtube. Why shouldn't a device that handles those tasks 99% of the time boot fast? Second, I'm surprised at how good the Chrome browser is becoming. I tested out some game on it called Ultima, and it performed better than many of the best PC games over the last 10 years, suggesting that browser-based programming could be ready to do a lot of what we expect out of our PC-based applications. I also played a free version of angry birds, suggesting that this browser could be used instead of Apple app store products in the near future. The latest version of Google Docs has a word processor that now looks and feels like Word. Awesome. Here is my last thought. The other day I was at someone's house and their kids were relaxing on the couch, watching a netflix movie on their ipad. The next day I thought: what if that were a chrome-pad? Can you imagine that, a 5 second boot device that handles all of your computing tasks and saves your info on the web, and which is very handy to carry around? Wow. With the likelihood of chrome apps becoming like the Apple app store, man, the future is exciting. Meanwhile, my Windows-based computers boot about a half-second slower and run a little slower every day I use them.

Trying out Ubuntu Linux to Replace Windows

I have a love/hate relationship with computers. I love all of the entertainment and productivity benefits they bring to me. I love the creative outlet they are in terms of what I can do with programming languages. I hate them, however, for all the ways they can be lame: slow boot times, degrading performance over time, susceptibility to viruses, endless updates, etc. Despite the fact that I have passed many computer-related certifications, have spent the majority of my career running computers in data centers and at home, I still find that there are nearly unsolvable and annoying problems that crop up constantly.

One thing that really drove me nuts recently was licensing issues with Microsoft Windows. My sister in law had a computer that had a virus problem and so I wiped her computer and re-installed windows. Because she had moved she had lost her original Windows system disks. No worries, I have stacks of those things for every operating system they've ever had. I also have stacks of license keys for computers that all had died previously. In one case I had a laptop I bought off ebay that I purchased a new operating system for, and the laptop died after using it once. Not that it should matter, this computer that I was re-installing had its own license key taped to it, like most computers do. Well, to make a long story short, I tried installing every unused Windows XP license I had with this computer, including the one on the computer itself, and none of them worked. I tried calling the number it said to call and it wouldn't go through. So basically I was high and dry.

A couple months later it occurred to me I could try Linux. I'd always used and managed computers for work the were Linux, but never tried it on a home desktop. For whatever reason I opted to try Ubuntu because I heard that it was good for home use. I don't like the name much, it sounds like it would be the African name for a banana or something. Regardless of that minor qualm, I downloaded the install file, created an install DVD, and then booted the computer with the disk in and everything went smoothly from there on out. I let my kids use it to browse the internet for a couple of months.

Then my wife needed a replacement computer one day as her Windows computer was just dog slow. I decided to try and see if the Ubuntu Linux computer I set up for the kids would do the trick. I plugged in my HP Laserjet printer, and up popped a message asking if I'd like to install the driver for it. Flawless. I used a usb stick to copy over some Word files I had been using. They opened up flawlessly in OpenOffice Word that came with Ubuntu, and they printed out just fine. Then I checked and saw that dropbox was available for Ubuntu linux, so installed that too without a hitch and now all the same files that are on my Windows computers are also on this one, and all the updates are backed up and distributed to all computers automatically. Of course, my wife still complained "where is my chrome browser?" I said, can't you just use Firefox? Well, I lost that battle like every other but no worries, there was a quick and easy install available for Chrome.

One thing I like about this current set up is that everything runs fast, even though this computer is older than father time. I love that. The office applications all open up much faster than they do on Windows.

Well, gotta run, just got asked to help my wife again, this time in the kitchen.