Connections to Health

THE ISHTA HOLISTIC HEALTH CENTRE

CONNECTIONS to HEALTH

Ubuntu

This week Microsoft is launching its new operating system called Windows 7.
If any of you have been unfortunate enough to have a system with Windows Vista on it then you might be delighted at the prospect. I was not enamoured with Vista. In fact it came on a new computer we bought and it was terrible. I thought it was cruel to treat a computer like that so I stripped it out and installed Xp instead. I know a lot of people who did the same.
I believe that currently there are 548 million copies of Xp being used world wide, all of whom resisted the might of Microsoft to upgrade to Vista, despite them stopping Xp being made available on new computers and application manufacturers stopping support for Xp.
On one review I saw of the top ten tips for improving Vista its number 1 tip was to uninstall it!
Vista was really a beta release, as there were so many faults with it. So is Windows 7 simply a Vista that will work? Who knows? Only time will tell.
Upgrades

What is certain is that it will spark another round of upgrades for your computers and hardware.
With the cost of the operating system coming in at about £200 for the package with all the features it seems quite expensive especially as you will probably need to upgrade your office package to be assured it will work properly, probably other software and maybe hardware too, if the past is anything to go by.
Dear Bill

About 2 ½ years ago when Vista was released I wrote an open letter to Bill Gates in this column. You can read it here.
In it I advocated the free supply of windows 98 and office 97 to everyone in the world as a gesture of good will. I think all the arguments I made then are still valid now. Of course it didn't happen but something very similar did.
I told you all about Ubuntu.

Ubuntu

Imagine getting an operating system and full application software set for free. In addition any upgrades were also free. If that weren't enough it saved you having to upgrade your computer because even older machines would run it effectively.

Read my original article here.

Well Ubuntu has continued to improve in that time but still not many people have taken to using it. Mainly because it takes a bit of getting used to and if you installed it you lost your familiar windows environment.

Well those clever chaps at Ubuntu have come up with a neat solution. The new edition of Ubuntu can now be installed inside Windows. That means you can practice using the new operating system and the new applications at your own pace while still being able to use all your existing stuff until you get used to the new.

This means you can gradually make the shift and get off the constant push to upgrade and spend money.

With all the problems that disposing of old unwanted computers produce this could even be good for the environment too.

You can download Ubuntu for free or, if you prefer, they will send you a CD with it on for free. You can run it from the CD if you have a bootable CD drive. If you run it while Windows is running you have the option to install it inside Windows or you can choose to install it and get rid of Windows.

Find out more about Ubuntu here.