Is upgrading to the Intel i5 laptop processor worth the effort

In a word, yes . As you may have read on this blog a few weeks ago , I tried an experiment with using an SSD harddisk for the operating system in conjunction with an external 500GB hybrid disk for all the more volatile parts of the OS, like /var and /tmp.

This was a resounding successful with a marked ramp in performance across the whole operating system and applications, to the point now , that all other machines seem like sloth's in comparison.

I had a need to upgrade my work laptop recently, specifically for more CPU cores and access to that lastest hardware virtualization extensions. I use the laptop extensively for virtualization, so I picked the Dell Latitude E6410. This is a really good work horse, but more importantly it comes with the Intel i5 processor.

This has had a very positive affect on the whole systems performance when running virtual guests with VirtualBox - my current virtualization platform of choice - to the extent that I can now over commit on memory and cpu's , plus the density I can achieve on this box has literally doubled.

I always keep a system monitor going to see how hard the system us working, and while on the old E6400, with two virtual machines running , the system would be noticeable slower, now with four virtual guests running, there is still plenty of head room for the other applications I need to run.

If are about to upgrade, and you need the ability to run multiple virtual guests, then I would definitely recommend the extra spend on this processor. The more memory the better, but I'm happily working with 4GB currently, but I can take this up to 8GB if the need should arise.

Well done Dell this is a grand machine for running Linux.

Migrating my Dell laptop to Ubuntu 9.10 64bit

I have used 64bit Fedora before on a works workstation, but I haven't until now decide to move any of my personal workstations to a 64 bit operating system. Well , as always with these decisions, there have been a couple of events that make this move now easier, though I fully suspect I will hit the odd road bump on the way.

The three main announcements that have changed my mind are - Adobe have a 64bit version of the flash player available , and both Firefox and Chromium/Chrome are available in 64bit versions. I know there are some applications like Adobe Air that are stubbornly remaining 32bit for now, but you can work around this with 32bit libraries. This is not ideal, but I can live with it for now.

I have this morning burnt the beta to a USB pen drive to test the Dell XPS 1330, and all went well, with the wireless connecting instantly and I was browsing the web within seconds of the OS booting. I downloaded the 64bit version of the flash player and it worked with both Chromium and Firefox. The one thing I noticed was how rapid the system worked, considering it was working in Live mode from a USB pen drive. This could be a combination of the new version of Ubuntu and the native 64bit applications, but time will tell on that one.

I now have to back up all the "stuff" I have managed to collect in /home over the last couple of years , and then I will blow away the currently install OS and give Ubuntu 64bit the harddisk, and unless I hit any really major problems, I 'm going to stick with this as it really does seem silly to be running a 32bit OS on the latest 64bit hardware.

I will post again shortly after the upgrade and on any issues I hit on the road.

Linux Chromium browser additional features added

Chromium new options screenshot

I downloaded the latest version of chromium for Linux on my Ubuntu Dell XPS 1330 this evening to have a look at converting the .deb files to rpms for another machine running Redhat using the Debian Alien utility, and I noticed the version had been bumped again to 3.0.191. So I gave it a quick once over and noticed that the options menu item "Personal Stuff" has become populated with considerably more choices. Here is a screen grab of the new options, which offer amongst other new features the ability to save your site specific passwords and manage them.

Ubuntu 9.04 on my Dell XPS 1330 - A fine combination

I have been installing this version of Ubuntu from the early Alpha releases to help with testing on all the various machines that I use on a daily basis, including several virtual servers. I think some of the biggest changes in this release are on the server version, but I'm talking about the desktop release in this post.

My Asus Eeepc 1000 really likes this version, and I have been running that from an SD card for over a week now without any issues, so I thought it about time to upgrade my other laptop.

I decided to upgrade my Dell on the way into work the other morning, and the install was completely painless and without a single hitch. That in itself was interesting, I selected the "update-manager -d" approach , and once all the files were download onto the laptop, I just closed the lid and put it in my rucksack and headed to work. When I arrived in the office, I just opened the lid, and clicked on the question waiting for me. It then finished in a couple of minutes, very impressive and flexible.


As with many other versions of Ubuntu, it is evolution rather than revolution, and all the changes are welcome, and just work well together.

A new version of Open Office, that is faster to load and run, a new file system, Ext4, if you want to be really cutting edge with your performance. The new notification system is slick and looks impressive.and the Gnome team have added several nice new features to this version, look here for detailed release notes on that Gnome 2.26 release notes

The new kernel offers many improvements, especially with WiFi and inclusion of a testing version of btrfs file system, for those really adventurous. This new file system is the open source's response to Sun's ZFS, so it is worth keeping an eye on developments, and it is under heavy development.

The start up and shut down speed of the latest release is impressive on this laptop, and the suspend works perfectly. These are key features for a laptop operating system, so they are gratefully received.

I'm currently testing Firefox beta 3.1 r3 on this install, and that also runs without any hitch or issue, and I have just installed the latest version of VMware workstation 6.52, that supports Ubuntu 9.04 as a guest.

I was expecting the some issues, but I can report that putting this latest release, even in this beta form is so simple and straight forward, I would recommend the upgrade.

This is a fine release, and it works perfectly on this laptop, so I would get ready with either your CD burning software or your favourite upgrade tool for the 26th April, as you will want to get this installed as soon as it is released.

Microsoft's malaise

Unless you have just returned from Mars you will have heard about the massive drop in revenue for the once omnipotent software manufacturer, with the inevitable sacking of 5,000 staff and 15% of it's temporary/contract staff, my heart goes out to those guys.

I have be discussing this with friends for a long while, and this is not remotely surprising to me, just the length of time it has taken for the adjustment. I will caveat everything else I discuss here with the facts that in the last quarter, Microsoft still made 3 billion, so it is not even vaguely likely to be going bust any time soon, but the rate of descent is going to accelerate.

However, it has become apparent for several years that they have stopped innovating and are constantly late to the party with every product. Vista, was five years late, and what a mess, it couldn't have been more out of tune with the hardware paradigm shift that was taking place in 2008.People wanted greener, smaller, compact machines, that did just enough web stuff to make them useful, with excellent battery life. What were the people at Redmond doing to have missed an entire market that last year should millions of units, not very much obviously.

Cloud computing has been around for a while, and to be fair MS had a simply offering in the early days, namely Hotmail, but they just didn't develop it or move it forward at all in any meaningful way, so along comes Google and steals all their clothes. Again they are now trying to play catchup again. Where are all the bolt on apps and services that you now get with Google?

Internet Explorer, through it's monopoly installation on every machine sold, held a 95% market share once, that is now down to under 70% and falling rapidly as Mozilla,Opera,Safari and Google Chrome all take large chunks out of the pie. IE7 was a bad copy of Firefox, and people have just been moving away in their millions. According to spread firefox, today will see 800,000,000 downloads of the Firefox software.

They have released Office 2007 , without really talking to the customers and again there has been a lot of negative feedback about thee new ribbon look. Customers who use 10% of the functionality of this product have started asking why do I need a new version, what is it offering me for all the time and effort required to change. Many have moved to open office, and are now very happy knowing they will never be forced to upgrade.

Recently we have seen yet another round of nasty worms and viruses hit the base operating system, causing businesses lots of expenses on upgrades, checking their defenses etc etc. No operating system is free of problems, but if you use Microsoft products, the problems are relentless and continuous.

When you role all of these issues up, they do start to show the picture of a very large company who is starting to do things by committee, and all of these symptoms reflect that. As IBM before them, I now fully expect them to still be around but slowly move into the technology background. As many people have invested heavily in their technology, you are not about to throw that out, but they have become less and less relevant as a technology innovator.

The future is with the open source, and as more and more companies shift away from the Microsoft proprietary lock in, and the costs savings that spring from that. The cost savings with open source virtualisation being offered by companies like Amazon and Google show us clearly where and how the shift is happening in the cloud. With Netbooks costing £150 , why would you possibly want to spend £350 on Microsoft office? The desktops will go the same way, with massive energy savings and cost savings on applications. With the current economic problems, businesses will take no FUD while their competitors are making use of those massive cost savings.

The IT landscape is definitely changing and the role that Microsoft are going to play in that will change. The role for open source is increasing on a daily basis in every area, and that snowball is only gaining momentum.

Why do I use Ubuntu?

I just read this meme from Jono Bacon, and he asks all users of this operating system to say why they use it. I thought that was a decent challenge and one worth taking up.

I have been using Linux for over a decade now, thanks to someone called Paul Branston, who I worked with at Freeserve in Leeds. Paul had been using Unix/Linux since birth I think, and a person whose gravitas when he spoke about Operating Systems was definitely important to take notice of. I was working at Freeserve mainly on Firewalls and networking but also did work on the Microsoft clusters they used, really buggy and unreliable things, but thats another tale.

I used Windows as a desktop system, simple because like most other techies it came on the PC I was given. I experienced many problems with it, and it kept crashing , but I hadn't been inclined to look for anything to replace it. Paul recommend I give Linux a go on my laptop and see how it got on. Well it was a Toshiba laptop with Red Hat 5.0, and getting it installed was like wrestling with a snake. Laptop hardware then was not the same as todays.

I have used Sun OS for years, and had learned the command line in University, so I roled up my sleeves and kept at it. I eventually got it all working, even the built in modem, and just stuck with Red Hat , and after Redhat changed, just moved onto Fedora Linux. They offer a great Linux distro, but Fedora does have some drawbacks for new users, mostly media support. So when I had an issue upgrading from Fedora 8 to Fedora 9 I thought I would give Ubuntu a try.

Well I have to say I'm glad I did, as moving to Ubuntu is worth the effort just for the package manager. It is a well rounded Linux distro that currently does everything you need to get up and running quickly and efficiently. I have installed it onto every machine I own, and every friends and family machine that I look after and it has been extremely reliable. I do use an Ubuntu derivative ,Linux Mint , where I feel the user doesn't want to do any work after installing.I have bought several machines from Dell with Ubuntu pre-installed and they have been extremely reliable and useful.

Today I work on an Ubuntu distro, Eeebuntu, release for the Asus Eeepc netbooks, so I've now installed it there as well. It works extremely well on these small footprint machines.

As I sit and type this post today, I think that for an all round desktop Operating System , this sets the bench mark. I still keep an eye on what the others are doing, and Fedora 10 has received good reviews, but I don't feel the need to move back at the moment. I have installed it in a virtual image, and that is were it will stay for now.

So yes I'm glad I moved and I would recommend it to anyone wanting to give Linux a try.

Ubuntu

The Cat has turned off my wireless!

Well, I'm sure if you are one of the many husbands/fathers/friends who help out with others computer mishaps, you will have come across many daft or plan stupid actions people can get up to with a computer. On this occasion though the culprit was the family moggy.

I had the usual phone call from my wife telling me that she was now unable to connect to the wireless access point. I did all the usual checks, and even got here to check that the wireless access point had power. All seemed well.

She uses a Dell 6400N laptop, so I got her to check if the little wireless light was flashing green, so we could at least check if the adapter was up to something. It wasn't, but she then said, the cat has been lying on the computer all day, might that have something to do with it.

Voila, on these Dell laptops , if you press the function key and the wireless button, it acts as a switch and turns the wireless adapter on and off.

So you have been warned, keep those feline devils away from your keyboards or you could end up with the same fate.

It could be down to fact he didn't like the photo from my previous post about Ubuntu Kung Fu, and thought he is more photogenic ;-)

When is a netbook not a netbook?

Well the rumoured new Dell 12" netbook appears to be on it's way to the UK with a nice new shiny 12" screen and an extremely attractive price. It has everything that the Asus 1000 does, but the CPU speed does look a little odd, but that could well be how the price is being kept down. It's hard to see if this model won't have the function keys like it's smaller brother, but counting the rows of keys on the photo, it would appear not to. The size is obviously increased to house the new screen , and this then raises my question, what are the properties that really define this new genre.

What if Apple launched a 17" version, with the same general internals, a minor tweak here and there, it would appear that it is not the screen size, but the components inside that are defining the standard. Low power usage, battery efficient, enough horsepower to write your blog, this is being done on my 1000, and surf the web, but not enough to play very heavy games , compile new programs or act as a music studio.

It is clearly not the size of the unit that is defining what and where these great little machines will be put to use, but the solid state disk drives and the Intel Atom processors. This is great news for people who have been sitting on the fence waiting to see where this market moves, as I fully suspect we have not seen anywhere near the end of the morphing that can and will occur.

Another positive affect of all these new releases is that the original units prices are only heading in one direction, which makes them more affordable for everyone, and gives Linux even greater exposure. It also raises a nasty spectre for microsoft, as who is going to want pay them £300 for office, when the entire machine only costs £100, their pricing model just doesn't work in this sector.

It also gives Linux one of the best platforms it has ever had, as every netbook sold worldwide now supports Linux guaranteed, no worrying about drivers, they will all just work. This has worked really well for MAC's, and will work just as well for Linux.

The Link to the Tesco Site

Disappointing launch of new Dell netbook

Like many others with an interest in the mini laptop market, I have followed the rumours and gossip around the new Dell inspiron mini 9 with a watchful eye. So last week is was announced and I nipped over to the Dell web site to order one with Ubuntu pre-installed. I know I have an Eeepc 1000 which I love and am using now to enter this blog. However, I wanted to have a look at this new Dell, and if the rumours were true, then it would only cost me 200 UK pounds.

Well what a disappointment was waiting for me at the Dell site. The only units that were for sale had windows XP home, which is next to useless, even if you love windows. The price was also a real shocker in to the bargain, they wanted 299 UK pounds for this unit, which is only 60 pounds cheaper than my Eeepc. That is a lot of money for a machine that offers nothing over the Asus unit, has a smaller screen, no function keys, a much smaller internal solid state harddisk (16GB as compared to 40GB), and no decent productivity software pre-installed.

I suppose they would argue that they are selling these in competition to the Asus 901, which has a similar specification , but then I found that the argument for the 901 didn't stack up against the 1000 unit either.

I like Dell machines, and bought one of the XPS1330n with Ubuntu as soon as they were released. However I have always believed you should tell it like it is, and I think they have really dropped an opportunity here, and could pay for it. Time as always will be the judge of that one.

If you are looking to get yourself one of these little netbooks definitely do yourself a favour and check out the Asus 1000 if you want the best size screen in the class or the Acer Aspire one if you decide on a 9" screen version. The former offers you a much larger machine for you money and the later offers you much better value for money with the same specifications.

Googles new browser shows potential - but is it just the start of something bigger?

I suppose a lot of people were caught off guard with the launch on Monday of Googles' new Chrome internet browser. There have been rumours coming out of California for a while about projects they were working on, a Linux OS being the loudest , outside of the published labs site, but this caught me by surprise.

Unfortunately for someone who only uses Linux on all of his machines, I had to dust off my VMware virtual machine with windows XP , to install this beta. Google have told me that they are working hard on the MAC and the Linux versions and they will be delivered soon, but we shall see. If you go to the download site with a Linux browser you can register your email address to be updated when it is ready. Register for Linux version

The install was very painless, and because every person in the office had downloaded the beta, the install executable was already in the networks proxy cache, so it was almost instantaneously retrieved. Installing it was a matter of closing the browser you originally used to download it, so chrome could grab the bookmarks etc, and that was it. As an aside I would recommend reading the comic book introduction to chrome as it does contain some very interesting information on how the browser fits together. I especially like the sandbox security segregation of each tab, and the fact the whole project is open source, and based on the great work of the KDE developers in the form of Webkit.

The first thing that really hits you is the speed of the browser, especially as I was running this in a virtual machine. As this is an early beta it can only improve over time, and must be a real concern for IE8 which is already getting a reputation as being bloated and slow. The interface is uncluttered, which I liked, and the trusty old combo of Ctrl-T gives you a new tab. These tabs are easily moved around , and can be dragged into new windows if you want. The ability to look at the resources that each tab is using is very handy, just by pressing Shift-Escape. You can then click on the nerd button to have a look in more detail. The chrome configuration options offers the usual settings, including the proxy you use, SSL certificates etc.

There is an incognito tab selection, which means that once you kill that tab, all browsing history gets destroyed, and Google says that you might use this for buying flowers for your loved one, I'm sure there are other uses no doubt.The new single URL bar does indeed work well, with anything you type bringing up previously loaded web pages or Google searches. It also remembers searches you did while on Amazon for instance, so they also will appear when you start typing in the bar.

At the time of righting there didn't appear any easy way to install extensions, RSS feeds or manage bookmarks, like Firefox allows, but I'm sure this is coming. Adobe Flash installed easily enough so I can't imagine the guys at Google have left this out of their plans. You can also set-up web application launchers from the options menu, so you can have one-click access to Gmail for instance. This is very similar to Mozilla prism, so not that ground breaking

This is just a first look, and once it is available on Linux, and there are a decent amount of extensions I will take another look and see how it compares with Firefox 3, which to be fair is still a fantastic browser, and the browser I will continue to use for the foreseeable future.

I do think though this raises some very interesting technical and strategic issues. This browser has to be one of the most powerful and technically advanced yet delivered by anyone, and it would not take that much effort to put a small virtual layer underneath it to offer a full solution for SaaS or webapps. This would then create an environment that does not need a monster Intel PC to run on, and could use an Eeepc 1000 or a Dell 910 Inspiron for instance. Could this be one of the pieces with Google Gears that needed to fall into place for Google to offer an extremely lightweight Operating System with embedded Browser? I for one will be watching this part of the potential development space very closely.

The Eeepc 1000 - what a great machine

Well , when the whole idea surfaced of mini-laptops , netbooks, UMPC's or whatever your favourite description is for these little PC's is, I thought they could have a great future. Like most people who have worked in IT for many years however, I have heard enough hot air and vapourware announcements to power a hot air ballon around our Galaxy for several millennium. Caution was definitely the order of the day.

It was then with delight that the initial Eeepc 701 that I bought proved to be so useful, and became an immediate favourite. It did have a few limitations, which while not show stoppers, could definitely be improved upon. It was not therefore much of a surprise when Intel and VIA announce new CPU's designed specifically for these new type of machines, they would offer increased battery life for the unit, one of my initial limitations. The other two important things I thought would make these machines a real winner for a much wider audience , were a larger screen and a bigger keyboard.

So about the turn of the year the announcements started, with everyone in Asia it appeared about to launch such an improved device. I looked at all of them with a keen eye, to see if they could offer me the improvements I was looking for. If you looked around, with the likes of HP, MSI, Dell, Acer etc etc, there was a large array of Linux machines going to be made available. I have to say that the Acer Aspire One and the Eeepc 901 both came close, the price being one very important consideration. However, if I was going to replace the original 701, then the new unit had to offer everything I wanted.

Well, Asus then announced their new 1000 series units, with 40GB SSD disk space, 10" screen, Intel Atom processor that seemed to run on fresh air compared to the previous Celeron. A larger keyboard was also something that I would appreciate, and when the price was announced, they were not that much more expensive that their smaller brother the 901.

I have to say the extra expenditure was well worth it, and this new unit has offered the extra facilities that I wanted. Time will tell if there are any little issues that will come out of the woodwork to annoy me, but in the first three weeks, everything I have found out about the unit has been very positive. The increase in battery life is truly exceptional, and delivers 5.5 hrs without fail. The suspend and resume just works with the wifi just reconnecting and the ability to just identify a T-mobile 3G USB key and connect was very impressive. The unit is a little heavier than the 701, but the extra facilities more than compensate for that. Browsing the web and writing documents on the move is a breeze, reading my many digital books is also a real pleasure with the extra screen size. There must be several large laptop manufacturers ripping these little units to pieces in their labs to find out how the heck they do it for this price point. One of the nice new features of this unit is the small row of extra function keys just under the screen. They allow you to change the power usage of the machine, turn off the screens backlight , zoom the screen and start Skype, with just a push of a single button. The two on the right are user definable and can be changed with a built in utility. The addition of bluetooth functionality will be useful to some, but I have to say I have yet to find a use for it.


The software has changed a lot with this release, and Open office has been replaced by Sun's Star Office, which is basically Open Office with some template and filter additions. This move does puzzle me as Star Office is not normally a free item. It could have more to do with the good publicity these units are receiving, so millions of users will get to see Sun's offering. Only Xandros and Sun would know for sure.There have been more games added and I particularly like Mahjong, one of my favourites. Asus have done a deal with Yostore for on-line file storage, which it appears is only available to 901/1000 users. This is again though a service I have never up to now found that useful, but time will tell. It would have been nice to see the version of KDE be bumped up to 3.5, as I use the advanced desktop, when not running Ubuntu from a USB key. It would be really useful if everything worked with Ubuntu, but as I write this it doesn't, and that is one of this units strong points, so I will wait until it does. I have added a few Xandros repositories, which allows me to install some new applications, so all is not lost in the mean time.

I also feel that in the weeks to come with the new Dell 910 Inspiron machine about to be launched that the competition for Linux netbooks that just work is going to intensify. This is excellent news for people who want to start using machines with a low price point of entry and an even better price point for the software they want to run on them. There is no doubt that this choice can only be good for the consumer, as there is now a genuine third way to use an Intel PC. I have felt for a long time that Michael Dell has been totally fed up bowing to the demands of Microsoft, and would have loved the opportunity to use Apples OSX on a line of Dell machines. Being the logical and sensible person he is, it was obvious for selfish reasons, Apple were never going to allow this to happen. Their premium priced hardware is part of their strategy, and it is not something they will give up lightly. He has however discovered a new and better way to achieve this, and Linus Torvalds gave him the answer in the form of Linux. He now has a new and very powerful bargaining chip , and it will be interesting to see how this gets used. The other netbook manufacturers are not going to just give their market share to Dell, but competition can only be good for the products that get produced.

Microsoft's current software strategy is bad for the environment

Microsoft software development for as long as I can remember has seemed to work on the basic principal that computer hardware speed and performance will grow infinitely to accommodate their sloppy and wasteful programming techniques.

I have read article after article about the latest software offerings from Microsoft, which have all increased in installation footprint, but have only offered performance increases if you use the latest hardware. Vista is a particularly apropos example of a machine resources hog, with a requirement for at least a multi core processor and at least 2 GB of RAM and 10 GB of harddisk space, just to run the operating system.That is a computer that uses a lot of energy, your money, just to run the basic system that would allow you to do anything. The days of ignoring this are gone, just look at your fuel bills and you will see why. So these machines to run Vista are more expensive to buy , to run and cost the environment more in manufacture.

This seemed to be the way things have always been , and would continue to be, until Intel and Asus combined to create a whole new breed of PC, the netbook or mini laptop. This post is coming from an Asus Eeepc , and with the plethora of other manufacturers jumping on this hot bandwagon, you will be able to get one of these diminutive devices in laptop or desktop format. The intel Atom units have very good battery life, and consume little power compared to a 15" Vista Behemoth laptop.

This however is the crux of this post: The Intel Atom processor and it's VIA counterpart use a fraction of the power of the older generation processors, work perfectly with Linux, require far less internal memory to have the operating system to function properly, and work with solid state hard disks. They are basically green computers, and the more people who use them, the less the environment suffers. Microsoft has got it very wrong for the energy requirements of a modern IT departments demands, and is beginning to look like the General Motors of the software world, building products for a previous age. If I were a CEO of any large company, and my CTO was not investigating the use of low power workstations running Linux, I think I would be looking for a new CTO.

Apple saw this coming, thus the Apple Air and their new mini laptop, so why has Microsoft got this so wrong? I think it tells you a lot about the company, that they always seem to be on the backfoot, technologically, and it is only the lack of action by corporate buyers that keeps there money machine turning.

Microsoft has no software in this arena apart from it's five year old XP, so yet again they have been caught cold when a market changes quickly, and I doubt Windows 7 has currently been designed for this market segment either. I fully suspect that will change, or they may modify their mobile operating system upwards, but they will be playing catch up yet again.

You can also wonder why you might waste money on a super powerful machine, that you then need to spend a small fortune on software for, after your initial purchase, just for it to be vaguely useful. While you can get one of these new machines with everything already installed and ready to go for £250-£300. Yes there are games players and power users who will always need the extra power of a true workstation, but I suspect that 90%, if not more of net users just do not need that type of machine anymore. The prospect of cloud computing with all your applications being supplied on-line, will also drive this market.

So save the environment , do yourself a financial favour and buy a small energy efficient ,useful mini PC with Linux installed.

Eeepc addons will spark even better Linux supported hardware

While going through my daily technology feeds, I noticed a news item on the new TV adapter that Asus has launched, it's called the ASUS My Cinema-U3100Mini. Now if you look at the operating systems it supports, it includes Debian Linux, which you might know is the basis for a lot of the modern Linux distributions we all use today. These include Xandros, the operating system that comes standard with the Epc , the ever popular K/X/Ubuntu range of operating systems, Mint Linux, and Mepis. All of these are in the top twenty of Distrowatch, which gives a reasonable idea of what people are using.

Now it becomes obvious, even by Asus's conservative projection of expected shipments of Epc's this year, we are looking at a global market of several million customers for these new addon devices with Epc's alone. If you add in all the additonal customers who already use Debian based distro's, which include now the Dell customer base, there is a real market for hard nosed business people to make some serious money, as Asus is displaying on a daily basis.

It also doesn't take a lot to realise that the open nature of Linux development will enable most if not all of these add-on devices to be ported fairly easily to the non-Debian Linux Distributions like Red Hat, Fedora, Suse, PClinuxos etc.

I think that this technical development has several benefits for two groups of people. The business people looking to supply new markets and make sure their products are in at the forefront of a booming new IT sector. You only have to look at the success of the new Ultra mobile laptops from Asus to see what can be achieved. The second group of people who will directly benefit from this are the users of Linux who will now have access to a wider range of add-ons than were previously available.

As I have both an Epc and a Dell XPS m1330 with Ubuntu, I can't wait to get one of these new little devices to watch TV on the move. Those commute train journeys can be so drab on cold winter mornings, so a little light mindless TV can help make them slightly less boring.

Ubuntu Dell laptops selling like hotcakes

Laptops I have decided are very strange beasts. No sooner do you buy one, than someone else walks into the office with something just that little bit better. This happened the other day when one of my friends breezed into the office with a new IBM thinkpad X61s, an extemely nice, but expensive laptop. He installed Ubuntu Linux onto the laptop, to rid himself of the annoyance that is Vista.

I recently bought a new Asus eeepc, the diminutive laptop that weighs less than two pounds, comes with Xandros Linux pre-installed, and has all the functionality you could want from a device on the move at airports. train stations etc. The one minor problem that I have found using it over the last month, is that when I'm sitting in my lounge checking the football/rugby scores, is that the size of the screen can become a little annoying. Thus my visit to the Dell website to buy one of the much acclaimed new Ubuntu XPS1330n laptops. This has a bigger screen, is a little heavier but will be a very good comprimise between the eeepc and a larger 15" screen laptop.

I know Asus are bringing out a new unit with a larger screen in the autumn, but that doesn't help me today. So I thought I would look at the new Dell XPS1330n which comes with Ubuntu Linux pre-installed on their UK website. The unit was nowhere to be seen on the site.

I picked up the phone to check that the unit was still for sale and I could order one. The answer was quiet surprising. "Yes you can order one today via the phone sir , as we have a batch that is available to the phone sales team, the reason it is not on the website at the moment is due to the extreme demand for the Linux build of the laptop. Dell will often take a machine off the site when demand can't be met"

Well, I have just had notification that the unit is on its way and will be delivered tomorrow, so we will see if these little laptops are as hot as the sales teams tell me they are. You could argue that this was all a sales pitch to get me to buy one, but what advantage is this to Dell, as I was going to buy one anyway from the website, so I'm inclined to think it was genuine. I was also able to get it with a higher specification, and £100 off a similar unit with windows installed, I checked. So a good transaction so far.

I have already bought one of the older model Dell laptops with Ubuntu on it for my daughter, and that has been a resounding success. No midnight support calls, or wasting my life patching anti-virus software. The unit does what it says on the can, it offers everything a University student needs, without all the rubbish that can drag a machine to a standstill. I can heartily recommend them.

To have a look for yourself visit the Dell website and search on Ubuntu.