Keep that old computer running...

Most of use in the western world have come to treat the personal computer as something that we keep around for a few years before it becomes obsolete, then we HAVE to get a new one. I ran a seminar yesterday at work to educate some of the retired members of our organization get up to speed with an email system our company is implementing. Yes, the retired members get email, in fact its mandatory, but before you reach for an application to sign up for the free email when you retire, I feel it fair to warn you, they're priests. Not that I wouldn't still encourage people to enter the seminary, but I believe in transparency in hiring.

Anywho, back to the original purpose...or rather the anecdote that leads to the moral of the story. I sat with a stereotypical "little old man" for some time going over the purest basics of use on the brand new laptop he had bought. Why is it that a man who is only ever going to open his mail needs to spend what was likely over a grand for a laptop because the bloated operating system requires such an inane amount of hardware horsepower? Having been a MS Windows user for years we just kind of took it as a fact of life that windows will get slower each week until you have to reinstall it or buy a new machine because the newest version wont run on the PC you have. And why is it that MS charges 150-300 just to get the software that most businesses require as a part of operation (MS Office)?

Are they the only game in town? No, as many Mac users will tell you. Unfortunately as nice as Mac computers are, everything seems to be twice as expensive. Apparently stability and ease of use come at a premium. Why? There are legions of geeks (speaking as one) on this planet, can't anyone come up with an alternative?

Some of you probably already are guessing where I am going...Linux. Linux is a community developed operating system that can be installed on just about any computer. (so long as you have the right installer). The idea hold immense appeal to me, community developed and supported...c'mon how crunchy is that!? I have made several attempts to implement it over the years to varying degrees of success, but I think I finally hit the mark this time. My wife brought home an old computer from her school that they were going to get rid of. A 1.1ghz celeron with "only" 256m of ram. The tag on the side said designed for windows 98 if thats any hint about the age of this. I downloaded a disk image from the Ubuntu site, popped it in the drive and in about an hour with minimal intervention on my part, this old machine is up and running WITHOUT a single issue or spending a single cent. It comes with everything most people need (web browser, email client, word processor, spreadsheet, graphics editor) and they all can use Microsoft file formats interchangeably. I installed flash so youtube will run (have to be able to watch "Homegrown Revolution") And Dansguardian to make sure the kids don't wander where they shouldn't online.

I will admit I have more than twenty years behind a keyboard, but little to any of that experience was needed to get this up and running, in fact if you put two people in front of a windows and a Ubuntu machine, I would wager the Ubuntu user would find the learning curve much shorter. The menus are clear and easy to understand.

I rarely get this excited about technology anymore, the iphone was a big meh as far as I am concerned, but I think this is definitely something people should test drive, and thanks to the fact that the cd image you download can be booted and allow you to demo the system without installing anything, there really is no harm in trying it.

Its secure, community focused, stable and free. Isn't that the goal?

So in the end we prevented another computer from going in the landfill, and got a computer out of it that will be more than adequate for our daughter to write her stories on and play webkinz.

And by the way, I am posting this message from that computer.