Activity for November 10

Review - Opera for Windows
10.01 Build 1844 Final (Oct 28, 2009)

Beta versions use different folders than stable versions. You haven't lost anything, merely changed installation paths.

Regards,
Ruemere
Review - Ubuntu
9.10 (Karmic Koala) Release Candidate (Oct 23, 2009)

High quality release. Even better than 9.04. Stellar support.
Very recommended.

Regards,
Ruemere
Review - Opera for Windows (Beta)
10.00 Build 1723 Beta (Aug 21, 2009)

Works fine across all platforms. Offers enhanced usability. Requires some learning due to number of options available. Polished interface (on the par with Google Chrome, better than Firefox 3.5.2, light years ahead of IE 8) - please note, that "polished interface" means - easy to navigate, responsive, able to handle large amount of pages.

Regards,
Ruemere

PS. Please ignore the troll, Phat Esther, below. Saving multiple links works fine (Click + symbol, add Links panel, select all links with Ctrl or s***, choose Save to Download Folder, enjoy).
Review - Opera for Windows (Beta)
10.0 Build 1651 Beta (Jul 22, 2009)

"Sorry Gezley. Your method is not what I want. When I click on that big "O" on my Launch Bar, I don't want to see "Start-up dialog", all I want to see are three tabs with three separate web pages. I don't want to see the "Speed Dial" and then have to click again to go to the web page I want to start at. I don't want to see one of the three pages and then have to go to "Speed Dial" to open the others. I want all three tabs available immediately, and I want each tabbed page to be the most recent variation of the page. I do not want to have to refresh a page from "History".

Opera is good, but it won't do what I want it to do, when virtually all the other browsers will. Opera needs to add this option."

There are several ways to achieve this. The simplest way:
1. Open desired pages in tabs, close all other pages.
2. From menu bar: File / Sessions / Save this session, make sure the option "Show these tabs..." is checked.
3. From menu bar: Tools / Preferences / Start-up, Choose "Continue saved sessions".

Regarding caching the pages and mass refresh:
1. Click "Windows" button on left-hand panel (press "+" and add "Windows" if you cannot find it).
2. Select open Windows / Tabs (with Ctrl, s*** or just click any and press Ctrl+A).
3. Press F5 or press Ctrl+R.

Disclaimer: I am using customized shortcut set, so your shortcuts may vary. Just right-click and choose appropriate action if the shortcuts fail to work for you.

Regards,
Ruemere
Review - Microsoft Internet Explorer for Windows Vista/2008
8.0 (Mar 21, 2009)

Vista Business 64bit here. Internet Explorer 8 works fine... provided it is the only seriously used application in the system. Do not install it if you run another resource intensive application/service (like database, VMware/Virtualbox) - you'll find out soon enough that your 8 GB and quad processor may be not sufficient. It's not like anything breaks, it's just when I attempt to do several things at the same time, it keeps on eating system resources.

And if you think about using it with many pages at the same time (say, 20 or so, as I usually do under Opera), well, just be prepared for decreased system becoming somewhat unresponsive.

Disclaimer: It may be just me. I am also seriously biased against Vista (prettified interfaces, muddled wizards and seriously complicated forms are not to my taste, as the occasional troubleshooting is also much more irritating) - my Windows Xp at home on a much weaker machine and with the same set of applications installed is much better at handling stuff.

Regards,
Ruemere
Comment - Microsoft's Top 3 advances in Exchange Server 2010
8.0 (Nov 10, 2009 - 7:34 AM)

Exchange is a server application. Evolution, at least according to its project page, is a client.
They are not comparable, though, in my experience at least, Evolution until very recent versions suffered from numerous stability issues.

Regards,
Ruemere
Comment - Google Wave expands, in search of a clear use-case scenario
8.0 (Oct 1, 2009 - 5:25 AM)

In short, GoogleWave could become ultimate groupware application.

At length: Small teams working closely together (closely as in "know one other well" and "share the same office space") are very effective. Groupware applications are usually supposed to bring about such synergies, though most of them suffer from severe limitations.

An example of such situation would be comparing two teams playing Counterstrike. One team is using audio conference to synchronize their actions and pool information, the other team relies on typing messages. It's pretty unlikely for the first team to lose to the second.
Google Wave, by seamlessly integrating several different modes of communication (including possibly audio), is quite likely to deliver such solution.

Of course, the results remain to be seen. Exchange+Sharepoint+, Lotus Domino and other solutions of similar kind were also intended to fit this niche, so it's not like Google is the first to try something like that.

Regards,
Ruemere
Comment - Windows 7: Don't upgrade, says FSF, your civil rights are in jeopardy
8.0 (Aug 28, 2009 - 3:16 AM)

Free software, paid support.
Free software + open source --> no vendor lock-in --> support by anyone of customer choosing
Support company is free to strike an agreement with vendor (it's usually done like this for major corporate applications, anyway) to get training and ability to escalate issues to developer level.

Regards,
Ruemere
Comment - Windows 7 is coming: Don't upgrade
8.0 (Aug 21, 2009 - 4:24 AM)

I have run Windows 7 x64 for several days/weeks now. It's better than Vista but not by much (unless you're a novice user). Here are several observations:

- menu system is very developed. It may be intuitive but in order to get seriously anywhere, you have to click, click and click until your fingers get tired.

- there are no options to customize interface to support use of multiple common dialogs/applications apart from flat "recently used" list. This is an issue if the number of applications used goes beyond single digits.

- the separation of x86 and x64 architecture applications still sucks like in x64 Vista. Permission issues, obfuscation and redirection - one wonders why they could not simply issue a warning about switch from one environment to another instead.

- interoperability with standard protocols and services (standard for corporate networks) is improved.

- Windows Xp mode is flawed, but it's not as bad as I was at afraid it would be. For experienced users, VirtualBox/VMare ae recommended.

- licensing and activations are as painful as before, i.e. they are fine as long as you work with single copies. Doing things en masse in corporate environment without licensing server can be extremely frustrating (unless your company is not investing in serious security).

- I haven't touched gaming - it's not my cup of tea.

- default diagnostic tools available to users are as bad as under Vista (i.e. overly complex and missing documentation).

- UAC works better but still is not as user-friendly as one available under Ubuntu. One wonders how much usability experts at Microsoft are being paid. For the record - I fully support and recognize UAC concept, but the way it is implemented makes me turn it off the moment I log the first time.

- Corporate features like roaming profiles, file caching, permission setting, directory structure, user environment separation, remote host management, remote client desktop are still as bad as under Windows Xp (well, a bit worse, since you have to click a lot more than before in some cases). There is no real progress there since Windows 2000 (some optimizations were made, it's just that in terms of actual usability remote shell, automated management and remote networking there is simply no comparison to things doable under Unix/Linux).

Hmm. That's just a few observations. I could go much longer but I have just realized that most of the issues pretty critical to me, are something outside of the scope of the experience of a regular user.
Suffice to say then, for corporate enviroment, Windows 7 does not improve over Vista. And due certain issues, it falls behind Windows Xp (simplicity and much better documentation of Windows Xp makes it much more suitable for wide scale deployment scenarios).

Regards,
Ruemere
Comment - Virtual worlds firm files IP suit on Christmas Eve
8.0 (Dec 30, 2008 - 6:26 AM)

Two words: prior art.
Examples: MUDs, Crossfire.

Regards,
Ruemere