Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on March 23, 2007 by CyberNet.

All sites that mention Apple’s next big operating system release, called Leopard, say that the release will be late April or early May. DigiTimes is going against what the rest of the Internet is speculating by saying that the release date will be in October of 2007. Why such a delay? Vista…

The sources pointed out that the launch delay is not due to software design problems with Leopard but instead is attributed to Apple’s plan to have its new OS support Windows Vista through an integrated version of Boot Camp. Boot Camp is an Apple software application that currently assists in the installation of Windows XP on computers using Apple’s latest OS. The company hopes with support for Vista, Mac computers using the new OS can grab more market share, according to the sources.

To try and squeeze out some more info Mary Jo Foley contacted Apple hoping for an informative response. All she got was this:

We don’t comment on rumors and we’ve made no announcements about Leopard availability more specific than Spring 2007.

Ahh, but wait! Does this mean it is definitely coming in the next few months? Nah, as Mary Jo pointed out that could just mean that only a select few people may know about the delay right now.

I think that getting Vista to work with Boot Camp is important, but probably not initially. Why not just release the new operating system and provide the updates further down the road? I don’t think that Vista compatibility is a reason to hold an entire Mac operating system back from being released…unless Apple is just going to use that as their scapegoat?

Oh yeah, and people are already installing Vista on Mac’s, but a little bit of troubleshooting may be needed. Just hop on over to this instructions page if you need more information on setting up Vista on a Mac using Boot Camp.

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on July 02, 2008 by CyberNet.

A few months ago we were racking our brains trying to figure out what a reasonable price would be for a subscription-based version of Microsoft Office Home & Student 2007. In the end I estimated that Microsoft would charge at least $5 per month, but probably not more than $10 per month. The software suite itself retails for about $150, but with a little shopping around you can find it for about $110.

Good news. Today Microsoft announced that in the middle of July 2008 over 700 Circuit City stores around the United States will be selling their subscription-based product dubbed Microsoft Equipt. With it you get full access to Microsoft Office Home & Student 2007 in addition to the Windows Live OneCare antivirus software. The price? It will be $69 per year, which works out to just $5.75 per month. Not too bad considering you’ll always get the latest version of Office and OneCare as part of the subscription.

Here are some screenshots of what the service will look like:

(Click to Enlarge)

Naturally I began crunching some numbers to see whether this was as good of a deal as you might think it is. As I mentioned earlier you can go buy Microsoft Office Home & Student 2007 for $110, and OneCare is already a subscription based program that will cost about $30 per year (MSRP is $50 a year). So the real value depends on how long you’ll have Office 2007 for. Here’s a breakdown for you:

If you have Microsoft Office Home & Student 2007 for [insert number of years] before upgrading it will cost…

• [1 year] = $30 + $110 = $140 per year
• [2 years] = $30 + $110/2 = $85 per year
• [3 years] = $30 + $110/3 = $67 per year
• [4 years] = $30 + $110/4 = $58 per year

What does this all mean? If Microsoft releases a new version of Office at least every three years (and you always upgrade right away) the subscription package is actually a reasonable deal.

Don’t forget the fact that both Office Home & Student and OneCare come with licenses that are good for up to three computers, and the same goes for your Microsoft Equipt subscription. If you have three computers that you would use the software the price-per-PC actually isn’t all that bad.

The interesting thing is that Microsoft hasn’t said anything about this being offered in other countries besides the United States, and for that matter it appears that only Circuit City will be selling it. I’m not quite sure why Microsoft wouldn’t offer something like this for download online?

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on August 26, 2008 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

One of the things that’s always nice to know is what you can remove from your hard drive to quickly regain hard drive space. Maybe there are some enormous games on your computer that you don’t play anymore, or files you’ve downloaded that have never gotten deleted? By using hard drive visualization tools you’ll be able to pinpoint exactly what is eating up your hard drive storage.

There are a lot of different programs that can be used for this purpose, and we thought it would be better to put together a more comprehensive list instead of just covering one or two of our favorites. We’ve broken them up according to operating system below, and for each one we provide a brief description accompanied by a screenshot. That way you’ll be able to figure out which free app is right for you.

Note: You can click on a screenshot for a full-size version.

–Windows Hard Drive Visualization–

• JDiskReport [Homepage]
  This is a Java-based tool that gives you a few different options for visualizing your hard drive. The screenshot below shows the typical pie graph, but you can also switch to a distribution graph. As you drill into folders it will update the graph accordingly.
  
• WinDirStat [Homepage] [Full Review]
  This free program is pretty cool because of how it breaks up your hard drive into chunks so that you can see at a glance where the large space-hogging chunks are. The various types of files are also color-coded for easy identification.
  
• SpaceMonger [Homepage]
  This definitely isn’t the most glamorous application we’ve seen, but the way it breaks up the view of your hard drive is very intuitive. Just like with WinDirStat the boxes are proportionally sized to the percent of the hard drive they consume, but what’s nice about this is that some of the files and folders are clearly labeled on the diagram.
  
• TreeSize Free [Homepage]
  TreeSize is a more Windows Explorer-like interface for finding those large folders on your computer. As you can see in the screenshot below it puts the largest folders at the top of the list, and you can continue to expand them to see the largest files and folders inside each of those.
  
• OverDisk [Homepage]
  What really makes OverDisk unique is that it’s visualization method looks more like a pie chart that has exploded. You can use the navigator along the left side of the window to traverse through the directories on your PC, and the chart will adjust accordingly.
  

–Mac Hard Drive Visualization–

• Disk Inventory X [Homepage]
  Look at this the same way as the WinDirStat application for Windows above. It has the same visualization technique, and color-codes the files based upon their type.
  
• GrandPerspective [Homepage]
  Yet another block visualization tool. It’s very similar to Disk Inventory X, and both have nearly the same features and interface.
  
• JDiskReport [Homepage]
  That’s right, you saw this program in the Windows section above as well. Since it’s made using Java it’s available on multiple platforms which is a nice benefit. It uses standard pie graphs and distribution charts to plot the data on your hard drive.

–Linux Hard Drive Visualization–

• KDirStat [Homepage]
  This is the original application that used the block-like view many of the different programs mentioned above now incorporate. It also comes with some cleanup utilities to help reclaim the disk space.
  
• Baobab [Homepage]
  Baobab has a clean and intuitive interface for navigating through the folders on your computer. For each line it has a color-coded bar that indicates how much space it is taking up, or you can always switch over to one of the more graphical views. The best part is that this is already included with the GNOME desktop, and is referred to as the Disk Usage Analyzer.
  

–Overview–

So those are the best hard drive visualization tools that we’ve come across throughout the years. Let us know in the comments what you use to find the pesky files and folders taking up all of your precious hard drive space.

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on September 03, 2010 by CyberNet.

I use screenshot tools all the time no matter what computer I’m on. One interesting Windows screenshot tool that I came across recently is called Greenshot. It’s not the most feature-packed utility that you can find, but I’d say it ranks pretty highly seeing that it does come with its own image editor.

Once I started using Greenshot there were some things that immediately popped out to me. The first is something that you can clearly see in the screenshot to the right, and it’s that it highlights the region that will be captured along with providing the dimensions. You don’t have to capture a region though… there are also options to grab a window or the entire screen.

The screenshot editor is simple, but useful. With it you’re able to add some common shapes and text so that the image can be more easily understood by the recipient. You can also highlight or obfuscate parts of the capture. I was a bit surprised when I used the obfuscate feature because it doesn’t blur it out the same way that many other apps do. Instead of being a smoothly blurred area it will be heavily pixelized, which in some ways I actually l like better.

If you dive into the settings you can customize options like the default action you want done after you’ve taken a screenshot. It can open it in the image editor, copy it to the clipboard, send it to a printer, display a dialog to save the file, save it to a pre-defined destination, or email it. One of those options are bound to be what you’re looking for.

Overall I’d say that Greenshot is pretty nice, but will obviously lack features that paid applications like SnagIt offer. It only uses around 16MB when sitting idle though, which is a comfortable amount for a utility like this.

Greenshot Homepage (Windows only; Freeware)

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on June 06, 2008 by CyberNet.

VLC is an incredibly popular cross-platform media player, and it’s well known for supporting a wide variety of media types. iPhone and iPod Touch users can rejoice because a public version of VLC4iPhone is right around the corner! Work has already begun on porting the popular VLC media player over to Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch, and the progress looks great.

Note: VLC4iPhone is currently in semi-private Beta testing. You can join in the Beta if you donate to the cause.

The screenshot to the right is compliments of iPhoneFreakz, and as you can tell the player fits in well with the standard iPhone interface. The best part is that it already supports a wide range of media formats including MPEG/MPG, MPEG2, MPEG4, AVI, MP3, XviD, h264, FLAC, 3GP, and more! Think of all the headaches this can save since you won’t have to convert your videos in order to watch them on your phone.

It’s quite awesome that a developer has undertaken a project like this, and I wonder what kind of media players are going to emerge once the official App Store has launched. In the mean time you’ll need to have a jailbroken iPhone or iPod Touch if you want to dabble with VLC4iPhone, plus you’ll have to donate to the project as we mentioned earlier.

VLC4iPhone [via Gizmodo]

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com