Unfortunately, Windows Update doesn’t like this, specifically when it comes to installing service packs. I actually want service pack 2 for my laptop as it brings in better support for my BlueRay drive. What I need is to find a way to make my Linux and Windows installations more cosy with one another.

The way to do this is to give the Windows  partition the boot flag, booting its manager and selecting either Windows or Linux from there. Otherwise when the Vista update scans the boot manager it finds grub and gets, quite rightly I suppose, a little confused.

To setup your multiboot computer to get around this, read my tutorial.

According to ITProportal.com:

Just like the traditional board form of the game, the online version of Monopoly will let players purchase properties, as well as build football stadiums and other attractive sites along with houses and hotels.

Furthermore, the Chance cards will enable users to build prisons and waste-yards on their rivals’ streets. The Monopoly game is reportedly hitting the floor on 9 September.

Players will start the free version of the game with three million Monopoly dollars, and can snap up Downing Street for $231,000, as well as Washington’s Pennsylvania Avenue, where White House stands, for $2 million.

I like the fact that the initial release of this game will be free to play with a possible Premium version coming afterwards. Fun for everyone for free, as most google apps are. According to the game’s official website, “The goal is simple. Play to beat your friends and the world to become the richest property magnate in existence. Own any street in the world. Build humble houses, crazy castles and stupendous skyscrapers to collect rent”.

I think it’s a great idea and I hope it’s successful, I know I will be playing.

Everyone has their comfort zones and no one looks upon the internet (and computers in general) in the same way. Most people don’t want to know how their software works, or the computer that powers it for that matter and this has lead to the idea that your OS should “just work”. In theory I applaud this, daily tasks such as checking your email, writing a document watching a video online shouldn’t be difficult and I agree. I strongly believe that, were a person who’d never used a pc before (maybe not never, explaining the keyboard, the mouse and their relation to the dancing images on the big box could take a little while but you get the general idea) to be presented with – for the sake of argument – a computer running Ubuntu they would, very quickly, be able to accomplish nearly any task asked of them. As Walter writes, “some users prefer spoon feeding” and he cites this as the most oft windows user complaint. I would have to agree. Users do what they’re used to doing. Having spent (probably) years using the same operating system, remembering how it is you get to the printer setup dialogue, stashed away in a folder somewhere, you begin to believe that is the “correct” and therefore the only way in which that task can be accomplished. If the program/OS in front of them does not respond in kind it is instantly branded as complicated or confusing and “wrong”. When actually, looked at objectively, it may be a more sensible layout: or in the very least not “wrong” – just different.

Having a preference as to how your computer and its programs interact and function is a good thing, not liking how Windows operated was one of the things that first gave me the incentive to see what was out there. However, shouting and swearing at people on public forums or comments on blog posts; declaiming that Linux is awful, without actually giving it a thought-out honest trial yourself is just childish. You share nothing more with the rest of the world than the fact you are lost, arrogant and nowhere near as tech-savvy as you claim to be. Just stop it. I think I speak for the entire Linux community when I say sod off.

“Thankfully there is an entire generation of people who have learned that the environment is constantly shifting, the fundamentals always in flux, and these users have little problem jumping on to Ubuntu, or any popular Linux flavor, and getting it to work for them, regardless of the platform, the location or the application.”

I couldn’t have put it better Walter. If you work, or even just follow, the tech-world as a hobby you can no longer afford to brush aside Linux and the Open Source revolution. Linux is here to stay and it’s going to keep getting better and better.

An Intel Atom Z530 processor running at 1.6 GHz motors through your tasks and the included 1 GB of RAM holds those tasks in place. Graphics are catered for by the Intel GMA500 graphics chipset with hardware acceleration and a DVI interface. A 160 GB SATA drive is more than capable of storing your files; Remember, a typical installation of Ubuntu takes up only 3-4gb (5-6 at the very most, 10 maybe for those of us compiling programs as well as getting a little apt-happy) of that space. A quick check of my Vista (I say quick… it took around a minute to calculate the file contents…) install shows me that currently it takes up 24gb. That’s a lot of hard drive real-estate I’d rather have for my files, not the systems’.

To round off the specs it also sports Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11g wifi (a small antenna is fitted to the back of the case), 6 USB 2.0 ports; two of which are on the front and are befriended by an SD card slot and an infra-red port. Personally, I think bluetooth wouldn’t have gone amiss as it offers a far greater scope of functions than IR.. but a remote control is seldom something to scoff at.

This is also a very green pc, running only on a laptop style power-brick rated 12 volts at 1.5 amps. Can anyone say car pc! A bracket is also included allowing you to attach the machine to the back of your monitor in a slightly poor-mans imac style, I like the idea though I think I’d rather show off the unit’s tiny size than hide it.

Mini-ITX and similar technologies have been around for years and used by Linux heavily. Many products which we take for granted such as network routers often are actually embedded Linux systems. But embedded desktop systems first saw a surge of popularity with Damn Small Linux. They booted from solid-state pen drives so were blazingly fast, and ran silently on fanless Via EDEN processors. You can still buy them now and support DSL in doing so.

However, what this computer brings to the market is not a ‘live’ Linux system, with limited storage space and a need to set up alternative data-storage, but a full Desktop with all the features you could need. With the price of $359 for the Linux variant, this could be a very popular purchase indeed. Hopefully it will be and customers can start testing what can actually be done with it, like the ITX projects of old.

If you’d like to find out more you can read Rob Reilly’s Review at linux.com.