You may have seen the news circling around the tech world that Firefox 4 Beta 1 is now available for download. While I certainly understand and appreciate the need for a beta process, it got me thinking… do a lot of people use beta releases of browsers as their primary browser? As a general rule of thumb I always opt for the stable release of any product...

Lotus Symphony is an office suite by IBM. It’s free. Free? Yes, free. From IBM. And yes, I know, "IBM" and "free" never appear in the same sentence, but this time it does. And wouldn’t you know it, it’s available for Windows, Ubuntu, Red Hat Linux, SUSE Linux and Mac OS X. Why it is free? Because it’s based on...

The 10.04 LTS release of Ubuntu happens tomorrow (and yes I’ll be sure to download a copy), however some Linux users prefer a lighter GUI so overall operation is faster. The first obvious choice for those that prefer a light GUI is Xubuntu, which uses XFCE. But then there those not too hot on XFCE either. The lightest of the light as far as I’m aware...

Microsoft’s Silverlight is one of those platforms that most people have heard about but never found a good use for as a user. The platform itself was originally supposed to be Microsoft’s answer to Adobe’s Flash. But then Adobe released AIR. What does Silverlight compete against now? I have no idea. You be the judge. For most people, the only...

AIM is the primary instant messenger I use. Out of all the IM services I’ve used over the years, it is the most reliable. In addition, it runs flawlessly on any operating system. Whether you’re on Windows, Mac or Linux, you can run AIM. The latest client offering on the Windows platform is AIM 7 Beta 2. Short review: It’s awesome. If you use...

Opera is one of those browsers that has a very dedicated community, but pales in usage compared to Firefox and Internet Explorer. The perks of Opera have pretty much always been the same.Best native tab management Lightning fast operation in just about every way Low memory usage A user interface that just makes sense More options that are actually usable...

Using a beta edition web browser is something most people don’t want to do, especially when it comes to Firefox. Why? Because there’s a risk it may break one or more of the add-ons you have installed in the browser. And it’s a pain to do all that install/uninstall crap because it’s not just for the browser but all your add-ons as well....

Beta, to the best of my understanding, is a level of completion concerning software development. There’s the alpha stage, which loosely translates to "this is the very early stage; it’s very rough around the edges". Then comes the beta stage which usually means "almost everything works but its still somewhat buggy". After that...

Since upgrading to Windows 7 I was finally about to try out Windows Live Movie Maker Beta. Summary: I hate it. This software is awful. I have tried hard to find anything good about this app, but the XP version was just so, so much better than this. The only saving grace of this app is that it’s in beta, so I am praying when out of beta this software...

Firefox, while a great browser, is a bit behind the times at the moment because it’s the only major player that doesn’t have a private-browsing mode. I personally think this is an important feature to have because of the enhanced security. Some jokingly call this feature "porn mode", but where I would use it most is for online banking. So,...

Being that I hadn’t used Apple’s Safari browser for some time I decided to check it out again. It’s now at version 4 beta. This is the exact version I have:The install completed easily, however on attempt to load www.google.com (yes, that Google), this happened:Not good. Everything with my internet connection was fine as my other browsers...

For those of you out there that compute in a Red Hat way, both Cent and Fedora have been quite busy as of late. The deal with the new CentOS is that the contribs repository is back with v5.3. In plain English this means more empowerment to the user (you) to submit and manage packages. There’s obviously more to 5.3, so read up on that if you like. CentOS...

According to a recent news story, the official release of IE 8 will not be in 2008 as once planned. Basically put, Microsoft feels it needs more shakedown and testing before becoming official – and to be honest I am in 100% agreement with this. I’ve used the beta version of 8 (which obviously isn’t finished since it’s beta), and while the...

The last time I used IE 8 I had to stop using it because it was reported that it broke Windows Update. But being that I just reinstalled XP on my older Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop I decided to give IE 8 a go to see what had been improved since it’s in Beta 2. My particular laptop was a good test bed for this because it’s an older machine with a 1.5GHz...

Since the release of Mozilla Firefox 3 there have been issues with the Adobe Flash player (currently at release 9), particularly with Flash video. What happens is that you’ll attempt to watch a video (say on YouTube) and the first 2 seconds will play and then stop. And you’re left with no choice but to restart the browser and sometimes that...

The Xbox rules the school largely in part because of how easy it is to connect to the internet and hook up to Xbox Live. The Live service is about to get more interesting because of a service called “Community Games.” It’s in beta right now and only the Cool Kids Club XNA Creators Club Online can participate in it for now. People who...