Desktop

Some open-source backers, including myself, have noted in the past Apple's ironic "free pass" when it comes to sharing code.

Despite using copious amounts of open source, Apple remains the most proprietary company on the planet. You can hardly say the name "Apple" without signing an NDA.

And yet many in the open-source world love Apple. I am one of them. Some suggest that open-source development is better on the Mac, and I've offered reasons for this. However, TechCrunch is right to question the love affair with all-things-Apple:

Zebra Technologies just announced their new "G-series" line of thermal printers. These little guys fall under the four-inch desktop printer category and, while not specifically for the consumer market, will still appeal to industries that deal with printing labels, receipts, price marking tags, shipping and return labels, boarding passes, ID wristbands and tags, and admission tickets.

The new offerings from Zebra include the GX420t,GX420d, GX430t, GK420t, and the GK420d. Across the board, these printers feature a wide range of convenient, easy to operate printing solutions in the work or home office. Notable specifications include:

There's a debate raging over on Slashdot about whether an open-source, Linux desktop should be "pure" or whether it should allow proprietary drivers, applications, etc. I know I've helped to foment discussions like this before, but to me the answer to this question is blindingly simple:

No. No, the Linux desktop need not be 100 percent free source.

It's a laudable aspiration, but it's also not something that is practical. It's not a question of whether or not one could conceivably come up with a perfectly free (as in freedom) Linux desktop, but no one has done so yet, so why bother?

Besides, as one Slashdotter rightly notes,

Because of the way Linux is architected, a user can make that choice. That's the way it should be, but let's not get bogged down in figuring out how many open-source applications will fit on the head of a pin.… Read more

There are true multitaskters--the guys who can keep their minds on 10 tasks at once--and then there are the flitters, those whose brain jumps from one item on the to-do list to another and for whom the phrase "out of sight, out of mind" is more apology than warning. If that's you, you're going to enjoy getting to know DESKonTOP, a small, simple virtual desktop manager that lets you view desktop files and icons regardless of which window is currently open.

DESKonTOP inhabits the system tray; right-click to pull up a complete list of desktop files … Read more

In general, I'm not much of a fan of desktop-enhancement software. I like programs such as TweakUI that let me change the aspects of Windows that are extremely annoying to me, but I generally ignore desktop components such as wallpaper, themes, sounds, and all that jazz.

Despite my reservations about "needless" desktop enhancements, however, a new public beta for the software 360desktop intrigued me with its promises of "unlimited desktop space" and the ability to save any part of the Web directly to my desktop. After creating a System Restore point in case my Windows … Read more

As desktop PCs fall further out of favor in the U.S., peripheral manufacturers are having no problem picking up the slack elsewhere.

China is poised to pass the United States in just three years to become the second-largest market for flat-panel monitors, according to a report released Tuesday by DisplaySearch. DisplaySearch is a market research company that tracks the display business.

The EMEA region (which refers to Europe, the Middle East, and Africa) will continue to provide LCD monitor makers the most lucrative market, with just over 30 percent of all shipments heading there by 2011. Greater China will … Read more

Mark Shuttleworth addresses a range of interesting things in a recent interview, but there are two, in particular, that strike me. First, Mark acknowledges the obvious: The Mac is a superior usability experience. Second, however, while placating his upstream developer communities, he also notes that improving on their work is going to be critical to beating the Mac:

Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, has historically been very, very deferential to what we call our upstream communities - GNOME, KDE, and so on - in the definition of the desktop experience. Our view, very strongly, is that they hold the real … Read more

Microsoft detailed on Tuesday its road map and pricing for Web-based software suites built for big companies and growing businesses.

Enabling telecommuting, which many employers and workers increasingly favor, is likely to be a selling point for the productivity and "deskless worker" tools within the Microsoft Online Services lineup.

The move is part of Redmond's push to integrate online and desktop software, shifting much of the heavy lifting to the "cloud."

"Microsoft Online Services is a key component of the software plus services initiative, and we're seeing customers, partners and even competitors embrace … Read more

Lenovo's never had a consumer desktop for the U.S. before, and you can tell by the spelling choice of the product name--IdeaCentre--that the U.S. isn't the primary market for this PC. (The company has made consumer desktops for its home market in China for several years, however.)

Nevertheless, the Chinese company is finally making good on its promise back in early January of delivering the consumer desktop PC. It was initially announced along with its much more compelling notebook cousin, the IdeaPad line, at the Consumer Electronics Show, but the company was light on details.

So … Read more