Apparently, Dell have stopped selling AMD-powered machines online. It took some time for Dell to start selling AMD, but I know that for many only an AMD CPU would do - certainly if you wanted cheaper 64-bit computing the low-end Opteron machines were a good deal.
Dell abandoning AMD was later denied (see Reports of AMD's demise on dell.com prove premature.
<!-- -->I've been writing articles for the IBM developerWorks Grid zone for many years, but IBM have decided to retire the Grid zone, citing the fact that so much software and many solutions now use many of the techniques originally pioneered in grid computing technology.
<!-- -->I'm in the process of slowly changing over all my bulbs to the more efficient variety. The new house is littered with halogen bulbs just about everywhere. They provide wonderful bright light, but because they are spotlights you end up needing quite a few lights to cover an entire room. Case in point, the hall has 9 of these bulbs, and the kitchen 12.
<!-- -->I've been on the road again for the better part of the last month. Unfortunately, that means I've been at the mercy of the various wired and wireless internet offerings in different places.
The worst service? At the hotel in Orlando. I don't know what the Internet connection was, but it felt like a dial-up connection shared among the thousands of bedrooms. The conference facilities were better, but still limited considering what could have been available.
<!-- -->FIlemaker have announced that their Bento database is now public after a short beta period.
I was a beta tester for the Filemaker product before it was even announced, and I've been a firm supported and user ever since. The DB has grown over the years with better sharing, web interfaces and connectivity to other solutions over ODBC. Although it can be used simply it's also fair to say that it's a very grown-up database solution and that scares some people from using it.
Is it wrong to want to run a different operating system on another platform?
We kind of take for granted that PCs are multi-talented and therefore capable of running different OS, but how about other hardware and systems. Is it right that I run Gentoo on my Sun SPARC box?
The reality is that it's nice to have the choice. Being able to run OpenBSD on the T1 CPU and make use of those multiple cores has a lot of appeal to those users who prefer the OpenBSD environment over the Solaris one.
At the end of last year I made some more changes to the home networking setup. There's lots behind the changes, but one of the key ones was the removal of the Mac Mini from under the TV as our media/TV recording/DVD watching solution.
I've been using two different types of dedicated Skype phones for the last six months. The DUALphone 3088 has been my main business phone, while a multi-handset Netgear SPH-200D (with three additional SPH150D handsets) has been the main home phone.
On the whole I'm very satisfied. What's good with the DUALphone 3088:
We had a clear out of the store room over the weekend and it's amazing what you find. It was like some kind of surreal trip through the history of computing.
What did I find? Some interesting stuff, old Sun equipment (an Ultra 60, a HyperSPARC based SparcServer, and IPC, and even an i386), some old Macs (a IIfx, SE/30 a IIci and a IIcx - even an original Mac Portable), and some newer ones (original green iMac, clamshell iBook), a few more laptops and desktops and so many different components and cables that I couldn't even start to list them.
I've talked before about the importance of getting children into computers early, not just using them, but programming them too Most kids today can use computers pretty instantly. Even those of us in the IT trade can be outclassed by some kids who seem to grasp the fundamentals of computing (and perhaps more importantly the importance of playing and stretching computing in ways us adults don't normally think about), but even with this supposed advantage, most kids have little interest in programming them to do what they want.