A couple years ago, I tried installing Ubuntu on an old Apple iBook G3 I have with only moderate results, as shown in this YouTube video:
While I know that Adobe Flash and AIR won’t ever be supported on the PowerPC chips that run in a lot of the older Macs, the size of this iBook puts it real close to the “netbook” category. Since I don’t see myself spending $400-$500 on a new computer anytime soon, why not try and repurpose one I already have?
My expectations for this PowerPC G3 with 576mb of RAM and 10gb of disk aren’t high. I just want something with a reasonable keyboard that has WiFi and runs a web browser. It’s got all that and the current versions of Ubuntu (8.10 as I write this) will support the wireless (which it didn’t back in 6.06, which was when I took this video), at least in theory. Why not give it a try? Details after the jump.
Why are they doing this? It was a publicity stunt. The folks at Codeweavers challenged George Bush to do something to improve our lot in his last months of his presidency. Whether he was ultimately responsible for gas prices plummeting a buck over the past month or not is irrelevant, but the folks at Codeweavers saw that one of their goals was meant and they are keeping to their word.
The Codeweavers Crossover product is a commercial version of Wine, which is an open-source project that allows Windows executables to run on non-Windows systems. It’s not perfect, since it is a cleanroom implementation of the Windows API and they haven’t got bug-for-bug compatibility yet. However, it does run some specific applications like Microsoft Office reasonably well. It also runs Internet Explorer, which is useful in and of itself.
The main thing you get with Crossover is a much nicer installation process for Windows applications. It knows about the most common applications and is able to configure itself for an optimal installation. It makes the application installation process a bit easier.
The other amazing part about about this is that you also get a year of support with this freebie. This entitles you to technical support as well as a year of updates on the product. Quite righteous!
I have a couple of Macs–and a lot of PCs. While I don’t listen to music that often, I have collected quite a bit of it–mostly on these plastic disks called CDs. Some of you might have heard of them
Anyway, when I got my hands on a Mac a few years ago for work purposes, I started playing around with iTunes. I ended up feeding it a bunch of my CDs and was fairly happy with the results. When I bought a MacBook two years ago, I decided that I wanted to re-rip my CDs in higher quality. So I went through the process–again.
Between that and a few tracks I’ve digitally acquired, I have about 2500 of them in iTunes. Generally, I can find what I need, I’ve found a reasonably sensible Smart Playlist that gives me a decent mix of music. It’s not perfect and I have to skip tracks, but it works for me.
While I do have an iPod Nano, I don’t use it. Instead, when I do prefer to listen to music on a portable device, I download music to a Nokia N95 thanks to Nokia Multimedia Transfer.
Now when it comes to video, other than for the occasional freebie from the iTunes store, I pretty much use Miro to manage video. I do this for a couple of reasons:
Support for Flash video and more types of video. I can stuff an RSS feed from YouTube into Miro and it will play the video it downloads from there.
Bittorrent Support. Need I say more?
Better at keeping your disk from filling up. Miro gives you the ability to only download episodes when less than X episodes are unwatched on a per-channel basis, a global “don’t download when less than X space,” and a per-channel auto-expiration for watched content.
Now I know some people don’t like iTunes for music. I guess I don’t see the issues, but I will admit I don’t listen to music daily. iTunes is sufficient for my meager needs. What am I missing here?
The latest from the Team Fusion blog is that VMware Fusion has rolled out version 1.1.2. This new version supports the upcoming XP SP3 on Boot Camp Partitions–something I’d be interested in. They are also squashing a couple of MacBook Air-related bugs, adding support for Apple’s Time Machine, and a few bugs.
Personally, I haven’t touched Parallels in a long time. For what I use it for–running XP and the occasional Linux thing–VMware has been rock solid. I see no compelling reason to go back to Parallels at this point.
Monday, I got an email–out of the blue–from Leanne Tremblay, a.k.a. VoIPGirl. Apparently, she’s been busy with her other business to be blogging about VoIP. However, she did pass along an interesting proposal she’d received: voip.com needs a new blogger. Several email exchanges later, and voila, I’ve got a new gig blogging about VoIP for voip.com.
voip.com has had a blog since May of 2006, though it has been dormant for the last year or so. My job will be to work my blogging magic several times a week. Obviously, since it’s a “corporate” blog, I’ll have to mention the occasional thing that voip.com is doing or offering. Otherwise, I plan on conducting business-as-usual, just on a different blog. (FYI: there’s no link for an RSS feed on the blog for some reason, but you can get an RSS or Atom feed of the blog)
Of course, with the amount of blogging-related work I do, something has to give. I am currently re-negotiating my contracts with Creative Weblogging. Assuming I have it sorted by then, I’ll let you all know in my weekly Week That Was post.
One thing that constantly throws me off with my Synergy setup is when I cut and paste between my Mac and my Windows box. On the Mac, copy is Command-X, paste is Command-V. On the PC, it’s Ctrl-X for copy, Ctrl-V for paste. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve flubbed a copy and paste operation due to this difference.
What does this have to do with VMware Fusion? Glad you asked. VMware Fusion for the Mac dynamically maps the Mac equivalent keyboard commands for dealing with the clipboard into their Windows-equivalent commands. Prior to the 1.1.1 release, this only happened in Unity mode, now it happens in all modes!
VMware Fusion 1.1.1 also fixes more than a dozen other bugs, so it’s a worthwhile upgrade if you’re already on the VMware Fusion train. I’ve pretty much stopped using Parallels in favor of VMware as of late. The ability to generate VMs that I can use on VMware Player on a PC has proven to be an insanely useful tool!
You know, the more I actually try and use my MacBook, the more I realize that my IBM/Lenovo laptops have been a heck of a lot more reliable hardware-wise.
I’ve had this first generation MacBook for 18 months now. In that time I’ve had to:
Get the battery replaced
Send it in to get a “flickering screen” problem resolved at least 3 times
Now it looks like I’ve got another battery-type issue. When I run the battery down to 60%, the power simply shuts off without warning.
Of the four or five different IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad’s I’ve had over the years, the only service issues I’ve had was a bad motherboard on a 2+ year old IBM T41. Batteries and the like have all worked well for their respective ages.
Makes me real glad I spend the $200+ for AppleCare, but really. How many times do I have to send in this MacBook–or parts thereof–to get it fixed? It’s not like that I’m that hard on the thing or anything. It’s making me consider buying a different laptop next time around–one without an Apple logo on it. What do you think?
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One thing that constantly throws me off with my 
You know, the more I actually try and use my MacBook, the more I realize that my IBM/Lenovo laptops have been a heck of a lot more reliable hardware-wise.