Designing the Ideal Laptop
Decrying stasis in the laptop industry, InfoWorld's Tom Yager and crew have designed their ideal laptop for 2009 given the components are available currently. The project was subjected to the same limitations manufacturers face when whiteboarding a new notebook and introduced only those components that would increase end-user productivity manyfold. The resulting AMD Puma-based WorldBook Ether and WorldBook Meteor [specs, tour, pricing] include an 'Embedded Smartphone' system-in-system ARM microcontroller, flash-memory overlay for fast boot, and ATI/AMD Hybrid Graphics for power-saving switched mode.
One Live DVD, One Ton of Linux Games
LinuX-Gamers Live is a live DVD from Germany based on Arch Linux that includes nothing but games. Version 0.9.3 was released in June and provides an excellent means of sampling Linux games or setting up a home arcade.
A Slightly Advanced Introduction to Vim
I find a large number of people around me who have used vim a few times while writing programs. Very few of them have grown into becoming effective vim users. The majority drop out because of its initially daunting interface. A good number of the interested users switch to emacs, because they think the 'power' just isn't there with vim. I am not saying emacs is bad, but I just cannot stand decisions made on lack of information.
Microsoft Sets Pricing, Fee Sharing For Services
The company plans to charge corporate customers a monthly subscription of $15 per user for a suite of "hosted" software, which includes e-mail, Web meeting, collaboration and messaging applications running on Microsoft's computers.
Time Warner Cable: Caps 'Make Your Internet Experience Better'
So should you pay up to $35 for their lowest 5GB plan, you just might be able to actually watch two HD films. Of course you can go over your limit if you're willing to pay $1 per additional gigabyte, a markup over cost of only 1,000 to 1,500% by Time Warner Cable. That's a bad deal however you slice it -- unless you work in marketing.