Open Source Software Comes of Age

I've been using Open Source software for many years but have not felt it was always suitable for business use - until now.

There are now many Open Source software products that can easily replace the equivalent Microsoft or proprietary offering and save substantial amounts of money which is no bad thing in the current climate.

Open Source software can include Linux and associated applications but there are also many Open Source programmes for Windows such as Open Office which is a fully-featured Office suite to replace MS Office.

One of my favourite applications is Joomla which is an Open Source Content Management System (CMS) suitable for use on your website or intranet. Compared to a product such as MS Sharepoint this could save massive amounts of money. I am aware of a company spending many thousands just on Sharepoint user licences before looking at the server licencing and implementation costs. With Joomla the only costs are the implementation consultancy - potentially cutting the costs of a project dramatically.

Netbooks - The future of laptops?

I recently bought an Acer Aspire One known as a netbook. This ulta-portable laptop is much smaller and lighter than a traditional laptop but still sports a 120Gb hard disc, 1Gb RAM and fast processor along with built-in wireless networking.

It is so portable it can be carried virtually anywhere and with the expandability offered by the 3 USB ports and external video output it is an extremely versatile device. For many uses it could replace a traditional laptop as it is brings all the virtues that a laptop was meant to offer but in a more portable design. Standard laptops have now become very bloated and it is easy to see why netbooks are becoming so popular.

My netbook allows me to check my email on the move, backup images to the hard drive from memory cards and even carry out basic web editing and photo loading without needing to use the main desktop or laptop. As it is so light it can be carried in another bag without even noticing the weight.

My verdict - the netbook is an extremely versatile device that I now found invaluable and I think it shows the future of mobile computing.

Another Reason to Not Use Internet Explorer

If you have read my photography blog I've recently upgraded my PC to a new Quad core machine with 8Gb RAM running Windows Vista 64. Unfortunately there are still a number of programmes that are not compatible with 64 bit operating systems like Vista. In particular the version of Internet Explorer 7 supplied with Vista is 64 bit which means many plugins such as Adobe Flash will not work with it.

Firefox 3 works perfectly so that is the route I will be taking for my web browser in conjunction with Google Chrome.

Looks like another reason not to use IE7 as more and more people move to 64bit Operating Systems to get the benefits of larger amounts of RAM.