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For years we the consumer have demanded bigger and faster computers and for years we’ve gotten just that. Every month a new model is released that incrementally bumps up the specs a bit and satisfies that demand. Yesterday 17″ CRT monitors were an upgrade, today a 22″ widescreen LCD is common. Of course, software doesn’t just sit still either. Each new version of software finds some way of using your new hardware to the point where the net affect is virtually zero.

Recently however consumers decided they no longer wanted faster, they no longer wanted bigger. Suddenly they wanted small, portable and cheap. Enter the netbook.

The netbook, which was recently “defined” by Microsoft if you’re willing to accept it, is a small laptop like device with a 10.2″ or smaller screen and single core processor running at 2Ghz or less. Indeed, most netbooks today are powered by a 1.6Ghz Intel Atom processor and few have more than 1GB of ram. Early models usually came with a small SSD, maybe 16GB in size. One thing they all have in common is their size. They’re small. Smaller than a laptop but larger than a smart phone.

Size, ultimately, is why the netbook is destined to fail. The problem with the netbook is precisely because it is smaller than a laptop and yet bigger than a smart phone. It wants you to believe it can provide all of the capabilities of a laptop while being as portable as a smart phone. In reality it provides neither.

In order to be smaller and cheaper than a laptop a number of compromises have to be made. The keyboard is smaller and more difficult to use than a standard size keyboard. The touchpad and associated buttons are of lesser quality. Most netbooks I’ve come into contact with have glaring quality issues like buttons that feel unforgivably cheap or difficult to push. Couple the cramped keyboard with a netbook’s general lack of power and you’ve basically got a really large smart phone without the portability.

So if the netbook is so bad why does it exist at all? The netbook was born out of a desire for a small and inexpensive device that could be used to do basic internet tasks while on the go. At the time smart phones couldn’t provide the internet experience users were really looking for so boom, an even smaller laptop! The problem for the netbook is that the iPhone changed what a smart phone was expected to be capable of. The iPhone raised the bar for what a smart phone could do as internet device. Since then numerous others have made an effort to compete with the iPhone with varying degrees of success.

So what’s the point? The point is that with the improvements in smart phones the netbook now looks like the odd man out. It isn’t truly as portable as a smart phone. The moment you want to do something the latest (good) smart phones can’t do you’ll want to be on a full sized laptop or computer.

Oddly enough, improvements in the smart phone aren’t the only reason the netbook is destined to die. In the end, the consumer will be the reason the netbook slowly goes away. The netbook will follow the same track of any car ever made. Consumers will want the next version to be bigger and better the last until it is no longer what it started out as. Eventually the netbook will simply be like any other cheap laptop and the smart phone will replace it, if it hasn’t already.

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It was in 1997 that I bought my first computer. It was a Gateway 2000 with a Pentium 166 MMX with 32MB of ram, a 3.2 GB hard drive and 17″ monitor. It seemed like a great machine at the time but like so many other things, progress got the best of it. Eventually I upgraded to Windows 98 and later added another 32MB of ram. It served me well for many years.

While in college I took some computer programming courses programming C++ and later C. All of the programming was done on a Tru64 UNIX system and after getting past the shock of using a command line centric operating system I really grew to appreciate what could be done. Through these same classes I heard about an operating system called Linux that would allow me to install a similar development environment right on the computer I had. I knew I had to give it a shot and amazingly you could walk right into a local music and computer software retailer buy a boxed Linux distribution. The place has since gone out of business but that boxed set of Red Hat Linux 5.1 is still sitting on a shelf in my office.

Installing Red Hat was a daunting task at first. Unlike today, the only installer option was ncurses (text) based and it didn’t provide any options for resizing partitions. You had to do that yourself prior to setup. The install documentation talked about something called a root file system, swap and other partitions. My first installs did not go smoothly at all and I think at one point I even lost my entire Windows installation. In end however, I got a working “development workstation” and I was able to do many assignments right on my own computer.

As I continued with my classes in college more and more of the work I did was on Linux systems. Linux became an operating system I used everyday and not just something I did my homework on. Eventually I even used it exclusively on my personal systems for all the usual desktop activities, though it really didn’t last long. Eventually I grew tired of dealing with the work it required to keep operating correctly for desktop use. Graphics drivers, wireless issues, lack of proper video editing tools and general dislike with the direction some projects were going (I’m looking at you GNOME2) and my Linux systems became nothing more than server systems stuff in a closet.

By this time service pack 2 had been released for Windows XP and I can say without a doubt that it was at that point that Windows became my primary operating system of choice. I’d use it for chat, web browsing, email and video editing. Later I’d use it for storing and organization photos but I also always had putty installed so I could easily access my Linux systems in order to work on web sites.

So anyway, I now find myself again making the transition away from Windows and I proudly proclaim this house is now a Windows free zone. Over the last couple of weeks my Windows laptop has been giving me more and more problems. First it seemed like the wireless card was on its way out and then later I found that the hard drive was on its way out as well. The battery has been shot for months giving no more than about five minutes of life before the laptop enters standby. The Windows replacement this time around is Mac OS X.

I’ve been playing with OS X for a little over a year now on my Mac mini and I’ve really grown to like it. I now use it daily at work and the combination of a fantastic GUI with all the command line power I’m used to from Linux has really won me over. So today, I’ve backed up and signed off of my Windows system for the last time and this house is now 100% *nix.

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I decided to download the Windows 7 Beta and I’ve gotten it installed on my laptop. I don’t have a lot of time into it but so far some of the things I’ve seen are big improvements to the disaster that is Vista. Along the way I’ve also unearthed some very obvious Apple envy, most of which is poorly implemented or thought out at this point.

One of my biggest gripes about Vista was the way you interacted with the networking hardware, specifically joining a wireless network. It seems like such a small thing but on a laptop it is something a person deals with on a nearly daily basis. Under Vista the process was overly complicated, convoluted even. The process required far more clicks than should be necessary to join a wireless network. Windows 7 actually copies OS X and provides a simple button near the click that when clicked, reveals a list of available wireless networks.

Windows 7 also sports a controversial new task bar. The new task bar strongly mimics the Dock from OS X in that it houses both running and non-running applications at the same time. Windows deviates from the OS X formula by intermixing application shortcuts with folder and document short cuts. I really haven’t spent enough time with the new task bar to really decide if I like it or not. I can say however that I like being able to hover over an icon and see all open windows complete with screen shot. This is actually a pretty nice feature.

So really, that about sums up what I really like so far. There are however a few things that don’t seem fully thought out.

One new feature is the ability to see through any open windows so you can see what is on the desktop. This is fine and all but typically a person doesn’t just want to see what is on the desktop, but probably wants to use something from the desktop as well. They also force you to place the shortcut in the lower right, or where ever you have your task bar positioned.

Another odd choice in Windows 7 is the decision to not include some very basic functionality by today’s standards. Windows 7 doesn’t provide, out of the box, any email or instant messaging clients. Even more bizarre is that Windows 7 doesn’t include Windows Movie Maker, but it does include Windows DVD Maker. Email, IM and Windows Movie Maker (among others) are available as part of an “essentials” package. If they’re so essential why not include them. As some might point out, Microsoft has gotten into some anti-trust trouble in the past for including these functions. Despite that, not including such basic functionality in today’s world seems inexcusable. Obviously OEM’s will most likely provide these functions for end users.

Despite my critical take on Windows 7 thus far, I actually like it much better than Vista. As I spend more time with it I’ll get a feel for some of the others things I didn’t like in Vista like Windows Explorer and UAC.

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It is bound to happen at some point. You’ve installed the latest kernel or you’re attempting an upgrade and now your system just won’t boot. The screen shows nothing more than GRUB. If your system isn’t able to get past the GRUB prompt and it isn’t because of a hard drive failure then chances are very good that you can rescue your system. This routine will work best if you created a non LVM boot partition or if your rescue cd includes the LVM tools.

This post assumes you are running a RedHat or Fedora based system but the concepts apply to all systems that use grub to boot. It also assumes you have a relatively recent install cd.

To get started, insert your install cd. In my rescue scenario I used a CentOS install cd. When the install has loaded to the initial screen enter ‘linux rescue’ and press enter. The cd will boot like normal and ask about your preferred language and keyboard layout. Continue until you are asked if the rescue routine should find any installed systems. If your root directory exists in LVM you should say no, unless you the rescue cd you using includes LVM tools. It isn’t important to mount root anyway, just your boot partition.

When you are at a prompt, create a boot directory at / and mount your boot partition there. In a typical RedHat/Fedora setup it will be on /dev/[h|s]da1. Next, rename the current device.map files to some other name. We’re now ready to reinstall grub.

Type grub and press enter. You’ll now be in the grub interface. Type ‘root (hd0,0)’ and press enter. Next, type ‘setup (hd0)’ and press enter. Some text will flash by with, hopefully a success message. If you see success you should now be able to reboot into your Linux system.

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I want to take a small detour from the usual content and talk about the auto bailout that has been in the news. I have really mixed feelings about this bailout. On one hand I understand that there are indeed some jobs at stake but on the other hand, I really hate that nobody is talking about how these companies should have seen it coming.

Lets take GM as an example. A couple years ago they released all new SUV’s and trucks as well as the Acadia crossover (one of the heaviest ever produced) at a time when gas prices were clearly on the rise. Of course, in a classic case of brand engineering all of the GM divisions released their own versions of each. Since then we’ve seen little to nothing in the way of affordable, efficient cars that can compete with what other companies are producing. GM for too long has concentrated on the once lucrative SUV business and their smaller cars are suffering. Meanwhile companies like Toyota, Honda and even Kia (owned by Hyundai) are surviving just fine in the the current economic situation.

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Lately I’ve been talking a lot of talk about how great the Mac platform is. At work I go back and forth with a coworker on the merits of Linux and OS X. Of course he claims that Linux is all you need and I’m confident that the Mac is where it’s at. The reality is that OS X suffers its own set of issues which I have talked about in the past. No OS is perfect, just a matter of which one best fits your needs.

Anyway, through no fault of my own I managed to royally screw up my iTunes library to the point where some of the files were pointing to random objects in my backup drive. I have no idea how. At the same time my iPod Touch would simply not cooperate. Many files that I normally sync were listed as missing including over half of my largest play list which is still just a small subset of my entire collection.

So anyway, what’s my point right? My point is that I was able to save myself a ton of work simply because I turned on Time Machine.

Everybody says, “make sure you make a backup” but lets be serious, who actually does? This is one of the many reasons I claim OS X to be one of the best operating systems available for “normal” people. No other system that I am aware of provides such a simple, easy to use and surprisingly robust backup AND restore system. It is so easy you might actually forget it is there.

Restoring my iTunes library to normality was as easy as entering the Time Machine interface, going to the previous point in time, clicking the iTunes library files in my Music folder and clicking the restore button. Done deal. I plugged my iPod in and all of my files were copied back to it as if nothing had happened.

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I’m watching the election results on msnbc.com and they’re actually putting the full 16:9 aspect ratio to proper use. Most of the time they shoot things in widescreen but virtually all shots are framed to fit the older 4:3 format. Along with election results msnbc is showing poll closing data on either side of the screen. While the data isn’t extremely useful it is nice to see the space is getting put to use.