A little over a year ago, I bought a netbook. I know it was just over a year ago, because when it turned into a flat plastic doorstop a few days back, I had missed the one-year warranty by a day. “Whoah, sorry, man,” said the nerd at the computer store, who then offered to charge me more than it was worth to see if he could fix it.
Luckily, I am a super-genius computer-fixer guy, so I decided I would solve the issue myself. First, the symptoms: the Windows XP screen would come on, but then the screen would flash a blue-screen-DOS-looking message for a millisecond before going dark. The computer was running, it just wouldn’t boot. Attempts to boot it in safe mode would end with that sys.mup hangup, something Windows-oriented that I have never quite understood, despite my super-brain power.
It soon became clear that this was a Windows issue, not a hardware issue. “Just reinstall Windows from the CD,” I was told. Problem: netbooks don’t have CD drives. This one didn’t come with any disks, and I wasn’t about to shell out any more dough on this thing.
So I was resigned to the loss of my netbook, which wasn’t that big a deal; I got my two hundred bucks’ worth out of it over the year I had it. Of course, there were two episodes of Starbase 66 on it, which are now lost forever, lucky you.
But then one night I happened across a website and description of something called Jolicloud, a netbook-oriented Linux-based operating system. I have very little experience with Linux, but I figured what the hell? Nothing to lose, right?
So I went to the jolicloud.com website and downloaded two simple tools, an ISO file and a USB creator, to a USB key using our Vista PC. Then I plugged that into the netbook, used its BIOS to change the boot order, and within minutes my netbook was purring along with its new OS.
Jolicloud is an app-based OS that looks a lot like the iOS. It’s quick and net-focused, with all the software I like – Skype, Audacity, Chromium, VLC – in its “app store” and plenty more. Wine lets me run Windows software, and a nice little music player called Banshee fills in for iTunes quite well.
This thing makes my slow, cheap netbook run like my iMac. I’m more than impressed.
Jolicloud, like other Linux operating systems, is ideal for revitalizing old machines … or new, crappy ones. It can be installed alongside Windows if that’s what you’d like to do, or, as in my case, installed over top of everything.
I just wrote this on my netbook using the WordPress app, and remembered how much I hate this keyboard.
Johnny Storm died today. The youngest member of The Fantastic Four was killed defending his teammate Ben Grimm (The Thing) and some really smart kids from parallel dimension invaders. As he lay dying, he murmured “… flame … on,” but didn’t.
Until those Pirates movies, there was something odd about Johnny Depp’s career: he tended to star in films named after his character. Think about it: Edward Scissorhands, Donnie Brasco, Gilbert Grape, Benny and Joon (I don’t know which one he was in that one, because it looked really cakey and I never saw it.), Cry-Baby, Don Juan Demarco, Ed Wood … except for Nick of Time, where his name was not actually Nick (ripoff!. This even goes back to his TV days. I liked it when Jump Street used his karate on the drug dealers.
This is a kid named Jeremy, who played the smart twin on a stupid show and at some point was told he needed this sweater and that haircut in order to conquer the super-like-important-Tiger Beat market. Sandy Duncan often gave him advice. He had two brothers, one of whom was a Bluth and the other of whom was a Ponce. His dad was Chris Kositchek, and later, his dad was Roman Brady, while still being the same guy, which made no sense, and if you tell anyone that I know that, I will punch you in the ear.
