Service Pack 2 has recently been released and it's no secret that Microsoft has had it's share of security problems. This is the main issue that they are attempting to conquer. It is basically XP 2nd Edition, but this time around they didn't try to sell it as a new build. I have installed it on my own machine and I don't have much good to say about it. It takes forever to download and even more time to install. When XP first came out it was equipped with an internal firewall. This was the first thing you wanted to turn off because of problems with connectivity within intranet's and the internet. Now it's bigger and badder. I mean, they REALLY want this turned on... now! Another quirky feature is the virus scanner recognition. I think it's great that they want the end user to have virus protection, but it doesn't see Norton Anti-Virus or Mcafee as being turned on. It's as if MS sells virus protection and they want you to use theirs, but they don't. So you have to tell the interface that you do in fact have virus protection and that it has in fact scanned your system. It is bad enough that WORD requests a virus scan before opening a document, but now Outlook asks the user for permission when using WORD as an email editor (it sees it as trying to mine the address book...like a worm...well, duh). The wireless Connection Manager has also been reworked. This is a mostly positive rebuild in XPSP2. It's a bit more intuitive than the previous tool and a bit stronger when holding on to a connection. But with all of these "enhancements" it does disable a few features that many company employees need. The messenger service (not MSN Messenger) get's disabled making it temporarily impossible to send inter-domain messages. I haven't worked through the entire patch yet, but I can tell you that it has slowed down my machine and I want to uninstall...but I'm scared. More scared than when I downloaded it. I have had catastrophic experiences in the recent past. Read as much as you can about your machine before you make this leap. Seriously.

The newest flavor of Windows (codename: Longhorn) is due out it 2006. I looked at a beta copy about 2 months ago and saw a major replumbing under way. I wonder if Daryl McBride of the SCO has his fingers in this.

Panther has replaced Jaguar and Tiger "Tigger" is on it's way some time next year. Jaguar was leaps and bounds better than OS 9 which of course was better than 8. OS X has been so popular that Apple hasn't even bothered to name them 11 and 12, respectively. Why all the kitty names? Jaguar was an operating system back in the late 1980's that was a miserable failure and never made it to market. I guess they are living vicariously.

Apple has made some great strides in the last 5 years. Their operating systems are cleaner and their machines are pure sex. But, one thing that still haunts them is memory management. They're like starving puppies. Panther helps this issue mostly, but with a G4 and 1280MB of RAM, you would think applications and CD burning wouldn't hang for minutes at a time.

The entire file system has been reworked in Finder, which it is far more intuitive and powerful. Before you had to mentally keep track of what went where. This time your music goes directly into your music folder instead of say, the desktop. Finding and installing into your Photoshop plug-in folder is easier than a Windows box (for the most part).

One feature I really like is Expose. F9 resizes all of your open applications onto your desktop. It's bit like having two displays. Big cool points for this one.

For those folks that have PC's and want to try something a bit more MACish, try Linux. You don't need $1500 to try something new. You'll find that the filing systems are almost identical (Thanks to OS X).

I'm certainly not an expert with Linux yet, but I love it for the most part. Wireless cards are still a big problem and most manufacturers aren't diggin' the work for free model. Here is a short history of Linux:

During the 1980's a young Finnish computer programmer named Linus Torvalds (Thor's Realm - loosely) sat in his room and built a kernel to run on his makeshift computer. This operating system that he built from modified UNIX code concentrated on networking and memory efficiency because his box was so underpowered. Once he built the first kernel he released it into UseNet groups for opinions (kind of what I ask of my readers). Soon, people began to add features to it. He adopted the General Public License (or Copyleft) model, so he didn't get paid for his work (like my pay structure at the Free Press). Eventually various companies built commercial models and an organization was created. Linus was adopted as the Chairman and he received a small stipend from donations. He also received company shares from various companies. He became a millionaire when Redhat went public. Let's say that he is living very comfortable down the street from Larry Ellison (Oracle) and Joseph Siebel (Siebel Systems) in Woodside, CA. Jobs has a house there too, but wants to knock it down. I don't blame him, it's an eyesore and I don't care who built it. I digress.

*Asked once what he would say to Bill Gates if they ever met, Linus' response was, "...totally uninterested. I couldn't give him advice in business and he couldn't give me advice in technology". Asked by Steve Jobs to join forces with Apple, "Why should I care? Why should I be interested in the Apple story? I didn't think that there was anything interesting in Apple. And my goal in life was not to take over the desktop market. (Sure, it's going to happen, but it was never my goal.)". Yikes! It looks like Linus needs to download some couth and enable cookies. But his criticisms of Apple's memory protection and Microsoft's security issues are right on the money.

There are many versions of Linux out there. Redhat is probably the most popular. Suse "Susie" is up there and the cheapest. Mandrake started off as a rebuild of Redhat and get's good scores. Gentoo seems to be for the purists. I tried Suse 9.1 Personal and found it toyish. I promptly erased the partition and installed Mandrake 10 Discovery.

The GPL dictates that all source code be available. It also says that a basic version be available free of charge. I can also give my copy to anyone I want to with no penalties. But with Suse Personal costing $30 and other versions hovering around $80, it might make sense to buy it for the commercial drivers and tech support that are not included in basic editions. Not everything can be found at sites like linuxquestions.org

Nearly everything that can be done in Windows or OS X can be done in Linux. Some programs are cross-platfrom compatible. OpenOffice comes included. The interface is totally customizable right down to the icon size. Shoot! You can run a functioning website and email service from the basic versions. Just think what the professional editions can do.

Did I mention the speed and security? You're going to love it. Let me know if you want a copy.

* Just for Fun by Linus Torvalds and David Diamond. Harper-Collins Publishers 2001, Pages 23, 151