Sometimes Linux drains battery life for no good reason, which shouldn't be confused with "The Linux way."
Posts tagged as “laptop”
It’s been maybe two years ago, maybe three; that I was involved in a community discussion of charitable works. It stemmed from a topic I covered on my Blog of Helios and while we discussed the various means that we could be of service to others not so fortunate, one individual sought to find a way out of the discussion. “Well, I don’t know any poor people.”
Huh. He doesn’t know any poor people he says. Well “what a coincidence”, I told him. “Neither did I until I started looking for them.” That was the last I saw or heard from said person, and it’s all for the better. We didn’t seem to have much in common.
Ken Starks is the founder of the Helios Project and Reglue, which for 20 years provided refurbished older computers running Linux to disadvantaged school kids, as well as providing digital help for senior citizens, in the Austin, Texas area. He was a columnist for FOSS Force from 2013-2016, and remains part of our family. Follow him on Twitter: @Reglue
ThinkPad aficionados, are you ready?
While both bending the language and changing definitions of hardware on the fly, Lenovo announced on Tuesday the Lenovo ThinkPad P50 and P70, the new ThinkPad hardware to be available in Q4.
But first, let’s set things straight: The ThinkPad is no longer a laptop, according to the Lenovo press release. The first paragraph of the press release says the company “unveiled the beginning of a new family of mobile workstation innovations.” So I guess that’s what we’re calling them now – mobile workstations.
Anyway, the new ThinkPad P70 comes with the most memory and storage ever found in a laptop…sorry, a mobile workstation. Namely, maxing out at 64GB of DDR4 ECC memory and with the ability to handle up to four storage devices and up to a terabyte of SSD storage. It also utilizes the latest PCIe technology for speeds up to five times faster than current SATA technology. But wait, there’s more: The ThinkPad P70 “comes with two Intel ThunderboltTM 3 ports for ultra-fast connectivity and a 4K UHD display or optional FHD touch,” according to the release.
Larry Cafiero, a.k.a. Larry the Free Software Guy, is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate. He is involved in several FOSS projects and serves as the publicity chair for the Southern California Linux Expo. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero
About six months ago, I placed tongue firmly in cheek and wrote satirically in FOSS Force about how we are entering the “pre-post-PC era” in technology. Depending on whom I’m talking to about this topic, sometimes I bring it up just to watch their eyes glaze over.
But for all intents and purposes, I unequivocally believe that all the talk about desktops and laptops being obsolete is hilariously misguided nonsense.
Larry Cafiero, a.k.a. Larry the Free Software Guy, is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate. He is involved in several FOSS projects and serves as the publicity chair for the Southern California Linux Expo. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero
The bull doesn’t seem to be part of PCLinuxOS anymore, as it was in 2010 when I first started using it. The distro changes its…
Android on tablets and smartphones may have primed the public to be willing to try a flavor other than Windows on their PCs and laptops, but this means next to nothing in the current computing environment. Consumers are going to buy what’s on the shelves at Best Buy, or what jumps off the screen at them on Amazon.com or Dell’s site. None of these venues are going to feature Linux boxes, at least not where you can find them unless you’re specifically looking for them. Why? There’s nothing in it for the retailers or manufacturers; it’s a zero-sum gain situation.
If an OEM started actively marketing Linux, for the most part they’d just be pushing people who are already buyers from one OS to another, nothing more. Except for those of us who’re already part of the Linux installed base, and our numbers are relatively few, they wouldn’t be selling any more machines or making any more money. They would only be creating more logistical problems for themselves.
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
Nobody seems to want to talk about the desktop anymore. It seems that the trend followers have jumped to the next biggest thing. The glamor now isn’t in desktops and laptops, machines that do all the necessary grunt work, but in gee-whiz tablets and smart phones. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but desktops and laptops aren’t going to go away soon – not as long as there’s work to be done.
I mention this because it seems that many of the folks who write about Linux have all but given up efforts to increase the penguin’s share of the installed base. I find this curious, because I think we’ve never been better positioned to get folks to make the leap to Linux.
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
Storm Bear Williams comes into the the FOSS Force office and plops onto one of two big, overstuffed chairs in our conversation pit. After a howdy, he says “I couldn’t find any microcassettes, so I got this.” He hands me a new, still in the box, Sony hand held digital audio recorder with a built-in microphone, good for 500 minutes.
He’s come for an interview. When I’d set up the appointment, I told him I was running low on microcassettes and asked if he could pick up a couple, just in case I needed them. When he discovered microcassettes are now obsolete and pretty much unavailable, he went ahead and sprang for something to get the job done.
A cynic might think this was only to curry favor, but I’ve known Storm for over twenty years, so I know better. For one thing, he doesn’t like to disappoint. For another, he’s pragmatic and always the businessman. He didn’t want the interview to go south just because it couldn’t be recorded.
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
In the smartphone market, Android is now number one, according to a press release issued Friday by comScore, a company that measures online activity.
According to their figures, Android has passed RIM to take the top spot, with a 34.7% market share, up from 28.7% on December 10. During the same period, RIM’s share dropped 4.5 points, from 31.6% to 27.1%. Apple’s share remained relatively flat, increasing slightly from 25.0% to 25.5%. Microsoft and Palm dropped 0.9%, and now claim 7.5% and 2.8% respectively.
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
Last month I posted an article on why I think Windows Phone 7 will fail to get traction in the already crowded smartphone field. It now appears that others have similar viewpoints. Yesterday, Brook Crothers wrote a blog on cnet , “Microsoft faces Android juggernaut,” in which he expresses a sentiment not too different from mine:
“A killer Microsoft smartphone may always be out of reach. And Microsoft should understand this better than anyone.”
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
Until a few years ago, hardly a day went by without an article being featured on Linux Today about how “the year of Linux” had arrived. Every Linux user with a blog was willing to bet, year after year, that this was finally going to be “the year of Linux.” This was going to be the year when the public got wise, quit paying the Microsoft tax and moved over to the obviously superior Linux.
And year after year, it didn’t happen.
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux