Tag: OPERATINGSYSTEMS

It's been a slow and painful death for Windows XP, and it's not over yet. (If the operating system were a beloved pet, you'd have put it to sleep ages ago.) Microsoft plans to officially start barring manufacturers from selling computers preloaded with the aging OS on October 22nd, and Dell plans to get a head start on the phase-out by eliminating XP as an option from its direct sales site this ...

Dell has long made the vast majority of its money selling Windows-based PCs. In mid 2007, the company did start selling some computers pre-loaded with Ubuntu, but they were not heavily promoted, and the selection left something to be desired. It appears, though, that the company is prepared to push a little harder on behalf of the open-source OS. A new post on the Dell Ubuntu page extols the ...

By the end of January 2011, almost all new hard drives sold will have switched to a new format that will increase their size and efficiency, but will leave those clinging to Windows XP frustrated. Traditionally, data on hard disks has been broken up into 512 byte chunks. Each broken-up sector requires additional space on a physical disk to mark the beginning and the end of each piece. Extra ...

OS When shopping for a PC, your first, and most important, decision lies in picking the operating system (OS) you intend to use. This determines the software and hardware available to you, and how much effort you'll have to put into securing and maintaining your PC. Windows 7 Windows is the dominant player in the computer world, and with good reason. It has the largest catalog of available ...

Linux has long been lauded for its low hardware requirements and fast operation. It's even been crammed into cell phones, like those powered by Google's Android. Yet Linux creator Linus Torvalds seems to think the little operating system that could is getting a little soft around the middle. According to the Register, Torvalds told a roundtable during this week's LinuxCon that Linux was getting ...

If you count yourself among the throngs of Windows Vista users who have been perpetually perturbed by Vista's constant prompt windows (known as User Account Controls, or UAC), you may soon be breathing easy. According to IT World, Microsoft developers are claiming that Windows 7 will feature 29-percent fewer UAC prompts than its oft-hated-on predecessor. "We've reduced 16 different points of ...

The old adage proves to be true -- you just don't know what you have until it's gone. Eight years after its release, Windows XP simply refuses to slip quietly into the night. Despite the litany of complaints against the aging operating system, users and PC manufacturers are loathe to embrace its successor Vista. We've lost track of the number of times that Microsoft has extended the life of XP ...

Linux, the free, open-source UNIX-based operating system used in trendy affordable computers such as the eeePC and the Zonbu, has been gaining huge ground over the past decade in terms of general usability, especially when compared to the competing (and decidedly not-free) products from Windows or Apple. Despite that, Linux is still lambasted as being unintuitive, overly complicated, and simply ...