It’s the same old story every year: Linux will finally dominate Windows, Windows will finally kill off that pesky open-source Linux. My dad’s better than your dad; my mashed potatoes can beat-up your mashed potatoes. The truth simply is it’s not going to pan out like that. Linux will still dominate the server world and Windows will still dominate the desktop world (and if you think vista’s failing is a sign of Microsoft’s slipping, I kindly ask you to remember Windows ME followed by the popularity of XP). So what’s new to the battle front? Well, honestly, it’s not really ‘new’ it’s just what people are talking about these days. ‘Netbooks’. And I highly doubt it will be some epic battle of Good Vs. Evil, either. Continue reading
Category Archives: Thrifty Computing
Free CD burner for windows
Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think I’m alone in the thinking that the cd burning software included with windows is one of the worst, if not plainly the worst cd composition software available to users today. It is severely lacking in features such as those that would allow you to copy a cd, design an audio cd with any normalization or track control, or even simply create an .iso image file. About the only thing it does do is allow you to burn some piece of data on to the physical media that we call cd’s or dvd’s. That’s why I’m happy to have found CDBurner XP.
Cloning drives for free, no matter the operating system.
Pretend you’ve got 5 identical windows 2003 servers (or any server for that matter – cent os, windows 2003, 2008, and mac os even!) to setup in one work shift. Why break your back trying to install them one at a time on top of doing all the updates? You can just do one base install and ‘ghost’ the drive. “That’s expensive”, you might proclaim! Not so – in fact, I’ll let you in on a little secret – Gparted. Why spend $700 on cloning software when you can just do the same job for free? Yeah, free! Free as the air you’re breathing right now (unless you’re in space, reading from the ocean, or maybe reading from Mt. Everest).
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