Why I love environmentally friendly cars

Alas, you may be thinking that I have turned into a tree hugging Greenpeace activist, but the truth is a lot more selfish I'm afraid, let me explain.

While I was walking to work this morning down the lovely tree lined road called Hammersmith Grove - which you might note is very environmentally friendly , I noticed just how many fuel efficient vehicles there where running around. They came in all shapes and sizes, like the Gwiz, Toyota Prius, Swatch Smart car and loads of little scooters. They all run on electricity and steam apparently , so not consuming loads of petrol, and this is the marvelous part of this process. I'm sure it is good for the flowers and trees that surround this area, but it also leaves significantly more petrol for my 4.2 Ltr V8 supercharged Jaguar. Now , I can't claim at any level that she is environmentally friendly in the fuel using stakes, but she certainly brings a smile to my face on nice Sunday afternoons whizzing down the beautiful country roads of France.

Anyone who knows me , will have concluded long ago that I'm a bit of a petrol head, and have owned a range of vehicles, which include everything from a Yamaha FS1E moped at age sixteen to a 6ltr V12 XJS Jaguar, and pretty much everything in between.

So, as I see it , this is a very equitable arrangement, in that people who worry about these things can run around looking particularly smug in their Duracell powered mobile shopping market trolleys , while leaving all that lovely petrol for me to use in my Jag. If you have ever owned a car like this, then you will know just how much they love that black gold. In fact when I take her for a spin on the weekend, she drinks petrol like a Jaguar who has not seen a watering hole for the last fortnight. Which is good for the French exchequer if not my bank balance.

I'm absolutely positive this is not a Politically Correct thing to do or think, but since when did that bother me ;-).

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

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.