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Apple Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6 Upgrade
by wilsonolly2020 I have been using the Mac OSx snow leopard for nearly a year now and I am still learning new applications everyday. The first thing you'll notice about snow leopard is how fast the operating system loads on your computer. I run snow leopard on an Intel-based 27 inch iMac and from pressing the on button, the computer is fully loaded ... in about 30 to 40 seconds. In comparison with a Windows based machine this is very quick. snow leopard can be purchased for about 25 pounds which again is very cheap compared to Windows seven or XP. This Mac operating system is no different than previous versions in respect to looks, and ease-of-use, this operating system runs very well, doesn't use a lot of systems resources, and also looks great. For the more advanced users it is possible to delve deeper into the operating system and open up config screens and make changes to the way software runs on the machine. In conclusion MacOS X snow leopard is a great operating system not only for people who are computer literate but also for the user who likes to know that everything is being taken care off in the backend of the machine and wants a system that looks good and is very easy to use. I would recommend this operating system to anyone with an Intel-based Mac as it looks good is easy to use, it's cheap, efficient on system resources and shiny. The operating system shuts down and boots very quickly and has ran all of my programs efficiently without any errors or necessary reboots. I cannot say this for any of my PCs I have had throughout my lifetime. Installation is quick and easy and the operating system takes you through the process with minimal and put from the user. Read the complete review |
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Innotek VirtualBox
by davidbuttery (Before I start on the review proper, a quick note about the name: VirtualBox is no longer distributed under the Innotek banner, but is instead now owned by Oracle, having spent the intervening period under Sun's control. It's the same program, however, albeit somewhat updated.) Every so often you come across a program that is ... so good that you wonder why you didn't find it earlier - an example might be the tremendous freeware image editing program for Windows, Irfanview. Just occasionally, though, what you have found is so staggeringly useful that it actually changes the way you work with your computer, to the extent that you miss it hugely when you're working somewhere it's not installed. Firefox is a commonly quoted example of this, but Oracle's VirtualBox is also such a program, and if anything it is even better. I'd certainly miss Firefox were it not there, but Internet Explorer is a better program these days than it used to be, and I could cope. If I were deprived of VirtualBox, it would cause considerable annoyance almost every day. VirtualBox is a "virtualisation" application. That may not sound very exciting, but in fact it's a big thing: in essence this means that you can use it, provided you have a sufficiently powerful computer, to run other operating systems. That's not the clever bit. The clever bit is that you can do so *while still running your native OS*, and switch between them at the drop of a hat. You can even transfer files between your main system (referred to as the "host" OS) and the one you are using VirtualBox to run (the "guest" OS). Well, I say "the one", but actually if your computer has the oomph, you can run multiple guests simultaneously, and thus make your PC into a far more powerful and versatile system than you might have imagined it could be. As a practical example, I'll describe what I sometimes do on my own PC. My usual OS is Ubuntu Linux 10.04, which I like, but sometimes I want to run a Windows XP program. What do I do? I could set up a dual-boot system and reboot into Windows, but that's a pain and I can't (easily) get at my Linux files while I'm in Windows. VirtualBox allows me to install XP to a "virtual hard disk" in my Linux partition, and run it from there - all the while keeping Ubuntu going. I also have Puppy Linux, a small and very fast distribution, running at the same time, also from VirtualBox. Three OSes at once, with no hardware alterations whatsoever and no particularly technical stuff to keep them going; they just run until you tell them to stop. If you can install the average application yourself, then you can install and run this; its installation procedure is straightforward, and certainly far easier than that of another popular virtualisation product, VMWare. Now, you may be starting to think that I have a supercharged, cutting-edge system. Not a bit of it: it's a three-year-old Core 2 Duo with 2 GB of RAM. And here's the thing: it can handle the above *easily*; in fact I could probably add another OS or two, if they weren't too demanding and if I reduced the RAM available to the others. Via the fairly simple setup menu within VirtualBox, I allocate 512 MB of my memory to XP and 256 MB to Puppy (which doesn't need much space), leaving a little over a GB for Ubuntu - ample for most uses. VirtualBox will warn me if it thinks I'm not leaving my host OS enough room to operate reasonably, and will actually stop me from reducing its resources so much that it won't work at all. I can also select how much video memory I want to allocate, whether or not 3D is enabled, whether to use multiple cores (if the host machine has them) and so on. At this point I should point out that there are two versions of VirtualBox. (Actually three, if you count the paid-for boxed version that comes with support, but I have no experience of that one.) The better-featured one is distributed under what Sun calls a "Personal Use and Evaluation Licence" (PUEL), which explained simply means that you can use it freely as an individual - or in an academic environment - but you can't redistribute it. There is also an open-source version (distributed under the popular GPL licence - version 3 for those to whom this matters) which of course *can* be redistributed, but this is somewhat cut down. It still works very well, but some features are omitted, the most important of which to most people will be support for USB peripherals. There are, unsurprisingly, certain legal aspects you need to be aware of when running outside OSes under a host OS using VirtualBox. If, like me, you run Windows XP, then (unless you have an unusual licence) it has to be installed directly on to a virtual hard disk from an original Windows CD - yes, you can do this under VirtualBox too - and you cannot have that copy of XP installed anywhere else. If you meet those criteria, then there's no problem, and I can vouch for the fact that Windows under VirtualBox happily passes the "Windows Genuine Advantage" validation process. Mac OS X is another matter, unfortunately: Apple, being even greater control freaks than Microsoft, only allow OS X to be installed on Apple hardware, so you can't (legally) use VirtualBox to run it on a PC. A shame. Since VirtualBox is free to download (in either version), there is little to lose by having a go. The easiest way to try it out is by using a version of Linux as a guest OS, since those are mostly free and with no legal barriers to using them in this way. You have two main choices: you can install from CD (yes, exactly the same CD you'd use for installing the thing on your physical hard disk), but this is rather slow. A better way is to search for "VirtualBox images". This will lead you to sites that provide files ready set up for use with VirtualBox, which can simply be "slotted into place" using VirtualBox's own settings menus, and can then be called directly to boot you into a ready-made Linux desktop. The feeling of power and excitement when you do it for the first time is quite something! At this point in a review I'd normally stop and run through some of the product's drawbacks, but in truth VirtualBox doesn't really have many, once you've become comfortable with how it works - except for an annoying tendency to interfere with wireless connectivity under Vista hosts. It's startlingly fast - guest OSes run at very nearly full speed. It's nice to look at. It behaves itself in terms of loading and shutting down without fuss. It's extremely stable - you happily can leave a guest OS running for days, flicking back and forth between it and the host numerous times. It allows you to create a "sterile area" to try things out, since any nasties that might get on to you guest OS system can be zapped either by shutting down VirtualBox, rolling it back to a previously saved "snapshot" point or in the worst case deleting the virtual hard disk file. And, of course, it costs nothing. VirtualBox is available from its official website (see below for the address) for Windows (32- or 64-bit), OS X, various distros of Linux, Solaris and OpenSolaris host systems. It's not a huge download - for example, the Windows executable is about 75 MB - and so shouldn't take too long to grab on a half-decent broadband connection. I really cannot see a reason why anybody with the slightest interest in running more than one OS would want to be without this program, unless perhaps they are lucky enough to be able to afford one of the professional-grade virtualisation programs from other companies. This is about the easiest five-star rating I've ever awarded to any piece of software. Website: www.virtualbox.org Read the complete review |
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MS Windows XP Home
by shuttlex One of my preferred operating systems is Windows XP. While Windows 7 may be popular especially since Windows Vista turned out to be a flop, Windows 7 still requires a fast CPU, plenty of ram and a decent graphics card. On the other hand Windows XP home still runs without problems on a netbook or a notebook computer with 512mb to 1gb of ... ram. Windows XP is a very user friendly operating system. It's easy to install software and there are plenty of drivers available for a wide range of different hardware. One of the main problems with Windows 98 was the need to do a complete format and reinstall every 6 months due to installing drivers and software that would eventually cause the system to crash. This was also initially a problem with Sevice pack 1 however this has become less of a problem as Microsoft has released system updates. One of my main criticisms with Windows XP would be the amount of virus around. Unless you have anti virus protection, it can be all too easy to visit a webpage and end up with the system being hijacked and turned into a spybot machine. I've been using XP for over 6 years and it does everything I need. Windows 7 still requires at least 4GB of ram for smooth performance, for this reason I would recommend Windows XP. Read the complete review |
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