Shanktified!

The personal thoughts, opinions and typos of Ron Shank

Software Reviews

Windows 7: What happens if I just keep the trial?

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For those of us with a full cup of Windows Vista hate, the answer is to run to Windows 7.  The release candidate (RC) is out and I too plan to overwrite Vista with this as soon as I can get my head above water.   But this article from Lifehacker made me laugh this morning.  What will happen when you get the Windows 7 RC and fail to upgrade to the paid version?  At first (in March 2010) you’ll get a nag/pop up.  I’d expect that.  Then in June, you’d expect to be locked out, right.  But no, even funnier.  You can use it for 30 minutes. Then it auto-reboots – without warning.  🙂  Maybe it’s just me, but that’s funny and worse than a total lockout.  Like what you see?  Too ba(reboot).

It’s all fine.  They don’t have to give you a nag-free year to begin with. If you don’t want to pay for your operating system, then get Ubuntu (or some other flavor of Linux).

Amarok2: The Weekend at Bernie’s 2 of Software

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Amarok 1.4 WAS by far the best music player I had ever seen.  So many options, a great functional layout with nearly everything you wanted no more than a single click away… I did say was. My recent upgrade to Ubuntu 9.04 automagically left me with Amarok 2.  Not only was it not playing out of the box, I seem to have lost all ability to customize it or control it.  They say it’s the future of media players.  Of course they do because, it’s sure not the present.  I haven’t seen a sequel this bad since Weekend at Bernie’s 2.  [Read more…] about Amarok2: The Weekend at Bernie’s 2 of Software

Only 2 minor hickups after upgrading to Ubuntu 9.04

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I’m up and running with the latest Ubuntu release.  It’s an upgrade from 8.10 which was an upgrade from 8.04.. you get the idea.

Only two hick-ups so far.  The first, compiz boogered up on my leaving my Panels (or menu bars as some call them) not displaying properly.  I finally had to reset them back to square one.  Which is really easy to do, thanks to this post: How to Reset Ubuntu/Gnome Settings to Defaults without Re-installing.

My next minor problem was even easier to fix: Hide the drive and partition icons from my desktop.  Ubuntu question #2625: “removing icons from the desktop”.

I also had to reconfigure my compiz settings manually. Everytime I restored from the back up profile, it boogered up something again making me reset my gnome defaults.

If you are a Ubuntu newbie and don’t understand half of what I just said, please feel free to post a comment or check in the Ubuntu Forums.  We were all new once.

Don’t have Ubuntu or even know what it is?

Check out their website: www.ubuntu.com or nag me to put up a screencast of my own desktop.