I have been looking for a good distro to use on the AMD APU netbooks because a lot of versions are buggy. I decided to try out Xubuntu because it is so lightweight, and finally, I have not run into any problems with it running on battery. The only issue is that the boot order has to be changed in the bios. The network boot, followed by USB, then HDD should be the correct order to boot on it. 

Happy Penguining!

Sorry for my long absence, I have had a lot of work to do at school. Anywho, today I’m going to be writing a review of the Kindle Fire for y’all.

The Kindle Fire is Amazon’s foot in the door to enter the tablet scene. Although late to the game, Amazon created a tablet perfect for consumers who are new to the market. Instead of going for the latest tech, Amazon went for the affordable but reliable approach to the Fire.

For starters, I don’t care what anybody says, the 7-inch tablet is the perfect size. The Fire feels great in the hand and best of all can be easily held with one hand. That being said, it is deceptively heavy and can be a bit awkward on the wrist every now and again. Moving to the outside, the Fire has only one physical button along with a headphone jack and a micro-USB slot. For being only 199$, this is just what I expected and didn’t feel like they should have included anything extra. The argument could be made that a micro HDMI slot could have been included, but for the price point I don’t think that it is practical. The back of the Fire is a soft touch rubberized plastic that feels smooth in the hand and offers a great grip to the tablet. Another advantage of this is that it isn’t a finger print magnet like most tablets. Finally, the Kindle Fire lacks both front facing and rear facing cameras. For many devout users this is a dealbreaker, but for many people, like myself, who have a laptop/desktop, it is much easier to just use video conferencing on one of those. 

Now for the software, the Fire runs a HEAVILY modified version of Android 2.3 and is hardly noticeable. The interface is easy and intuitive to use, allowing the user to cycle through a carousel of items. The bottom has a bookshelf design and is home to favorited applications. Once again, the look is smooth and is really polished, without reading about the UI I was able to navigate it with ease. The book store is great and with the addition of Amazon Prime free for a month, users are able to take advantage of the borrowing feature. This is excellent and I used mine to read the Hunger Games. Web browsing is a breeze; however, I did notice some problems when the browser was set to “optimized” allowing the browser to choose whether the desktop or mobile version was shown. Occasionally, pages that had both mobile and desktop views would overlap when in landscape and required me to close the tab and visit the site again. This is a minor glitch that I’m sure will be fixed in an upcoming patch. The Amazon Appstore, although small, has a great selection of applications as well as the free app of the day. For me, the free app of the day is great because I really only spend my money on the books in the store. Also, the comic app is great and I have had a joy thumbing through the Walking Dead comics (a great read I must add.) 

Overall, I would give the Kindle Fire a recommendation in a heartbeat. Although lacking front and back facing cameras, as well as a microphone, the Fire does its best to be a multimedia table that offers a personal experience for each individual. If you are a fan of Amazon and order off of their site, it is very beneficial to pickup Amazon Prime for 79$ to get free 2-day shipping, video streaming, and book rentals. 

Tomorrow Ubuntu 11.10 comes out in a stable release client. It boasts an improved Unity interface, as well as more dedication towards cloud computing with their Ubuntu One cloud software. They are allowing users 5gb of free storage, which is greater than most places found on the internet. In addition, it is using the new 3.0 Kernel which adds support for many new processors. The only problem is that some of the legacy hardware might be left behind. Send me any questions about Ubuntu if you have any and I will be happy to help out. @J_Master_Phunk

I think I speak for us all when i say that the Apple iPhone event today was a big letdown. Many of us were expecting to hear news of the rumored iPhone 5. We were all proved wrong as the only phone that was announced today was the iPhone 4S. This 4S is a minor upgrade to the iPhone 4, improving the OS to iOS 5 and giving it a few hardware tweaks. This puts the smartphone on par with the new Samsung Galaxy SII and Droid Bionic. I think that this was a bad move because many people have been holding out for months expecting a much improved iPhone, but instead only received a small upgrade.

I am Disappoint!

Over at Engadget and Techcrunch, information of the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet have been leaked. They feature an image that shoes a rough guess on what it will look like (see below.) The tablet is said to boast a dual-core processor as well as a focus on cloud computing. Personally I think that I might purchase one of these. They look to be of good build quality and they are cheap enough that they are affordable for the average consumer to purchase. According to sources, the tablet was built on the same base model as the Blackberry Playbook and will look roughly similar. Also, the tablet comes with a skinned version of what seems to be Android 2.1. Don’t let that scare you off though, according to testers the tablet is VERY snappy and has no issues with lag.

Rough drawing of the Amazon Kindle Fire

Holy social network batman!

So today like a zillion things happened in the world of social networking. Today, Spotify became available for free for the next 6-months, granted you register through Facebook. Spotify allows users to create playlists, listen to radio stations, and listen to any specific song. They have a free version that allows only online use on computers, as well as advertisements.

Also, yesterday Google+ became available to the public. Google+ is a social network that is very similar to Facebook; however, it as the innovative feature called Circles. These Circles allow for users to place people that they know into divided groups, allowing updates to be filtered via group. This is great so that your boss can’t see that you might have been drinking heavily the night before you have to go to work.

Finally, Facebook held their F8 developers conference today and revealed a bunch of new features. The most popular of the new developments is that of the Timeline feature. It turns the current profile into an image based magazine looking page.

Like I said yesterday, I’m going to be giving a guide on what to look for when purchasing hardware for your computer. I thought the most familiar place to start with would be the processor. For desktop computers, the processor is probably the most important piece to build your computer. This is because 90% of the time it is going to be the most expensive part, unless you purchase a huge solid state hard drive.

When looking to purchase a processor, there are two brands that you will be looking at; AMD and Intel. Intel is the more well known of the two because it is the more popular of the two, but also the more expensive. Intel has had the upper hand since they started making processors; however, AMD is starting to catch up in market shares. AMD is the other company that you will be seeing when looking to replace your processor. AMD is the smaller of the two companies and generally is the cheaper of the two. Intel usually performs at a higher level of performance, but it is up to you to decide whether the small performance improvement is worth the price tag. Personally, as a poor college student, I am in favor of the AMD platform only because I do not have the funds to purchase an Intel processor.

Finally, when looking at a processor, there are the different kinds. Right now, the lower tier are the dual-core processors. These run at the advertised clock speeds on two different threads. If you don’t understand my tech lingo then there is one thing that you should know, bigger numbers means that it is faster. The middle of the road (for desktops) are the quad-core processors. For AMD you can check out the Athlon II X4 or Phenom II X4 lines for the processor that you prefer. Intel offers the i5 and i7 processors at the quad-core level; however, you are going to want to read the fine print to make sure that it is a quad-core processor. Finally, the six-core processor is every computer nerds dream. It is very quick and can handle just about anything. AMD offers the Phenom II X6 line for the six-core processor, while Intel offers the i7 X-treme.

Hope this helps you make a decision on which processor to purchase!!

So I am finished replacing my ram in my netbook. It took me all of 5 minutes to do and I am noticing a significant speed upgrade. For those of you just joining me, I upgraded my ram in my netbook from 1gig of DDR3 memory to 4gigs of DDR3. The techies out there will understand how huge that upgrade is, however those who don’t just understand that larger numbers mean that the system runs faster. This was done significantly cheaper than purchasing a new computer and was fairly non intrusive to do. The only thing I MUST WARN is that replacing any stock part on your computer will VOID YOUR WARRANTY. So don’t go out there messing with your computer unless you feel comfortable voiding your warranty. In the next few weeks i will be uploading a guide on how to purchase computer parts and what to look for when buying them.

It’s a TRAP