I DO a lot of stuff with my Android phone, but e-mailing isn't one of them. This is strange, considering that e-mail is one of my most important activities on my desktop and notebook computers. Why should it be otherwise on my handheld device? The short answer is that the e-mail clients ...
Read More →
IN 2006, I shifted from Microsoft Windows to Ubuntu Linux on my main home computer and kissed goodbye to worries about software licensing fees, viruses, spyware and frequent crashes. I have since been an advocate of using free and open source software wherever possible and wherever practical. Certainly, our government and public ...
Read More →
MICROSOFT announced last week that it had found pirated copies of its Windows operating system running in newly bought branded PCs, an admission that put computer buyers in Southeast Asia on notice. We’ve long grown accustomed to seeing pirated Windows running on generic white boxes, but we normally expect a legitimate, ...
Read More →
WHILE waiting for a serious Ubuntu phone to get to market, I’ve been playing with a Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini (GT-I8190), a decent dual-core, mid-range smart phone that runs on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. Having had access to my fair share of review units over the years, I’ve learned a thing ...
Read More →
IF you run multiple copies of Adobe Photoshop for your image processing needs, you can save hundreds of dollars in licensing fees by doing one simple switch -- use the free and open source Gimp instead. Like many open source projects, Gimp can be run on multiple platforms, including Windows, ...
Read More →
THE latest version of LibreOffice, the free and open source alternative to MS Office, was released last week, giving users another reason to switch from Microsoft’s commercial productivity suite. LibreOffice 4 boasts of a cleaner and more efficient code base, improved features, and better interoperability with MS Office, which is still ...
Read More →
MUCH to my surprise, I'm beginning to like the Unity interface on Ubuntu, the popular Linux-based operating system that's running on my desktop computer. Unity, which hardwires its launcher of frequently used programs to the left edge of the screen, drew a lot of flak when it replaced Gnome as the ...
Read More →
IN a huge pond dominated by consumer electronics giants, one tiny startup caused a few ripples at the 2013 CES earlier this month. Appropriately, the company was Pebble, a maker of smart watches that communicate with iPhones or Android phones, enabling you to read text incoming messages on a sharp, E-Paper ...
Read More →