Future Designer laptop - ROLLTOP

New Yahoo! Mail Beta looks promising

We already mentioned that improved Yahoo! Mail was on its way, and now we have the chance to experience the new Yahoo! Mail Beta at its best, so let’s see what it has to offer.

Yahoo! Mail Beta comes with a completely new design, but besides visual changes, Yahoo! Mail Beta allows you to view pictures and videos right in your inbox, without the need to click on any links. That’s right, you can enjoy in automatic slideshows in your inbox with content from Flickr, Picasa, and YouTube.

Besides that, new Yahoo! Mail Beta offers integration with social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, so you can see your friends and their feeds right from your inbox. In fact, you can even post status updates from there as well. Enhanced IM and SMS capabilities are there, but besides those changers, you can now search through your mail with ease thanks to the improved search and with improved spam protection, you’ll never get unwanted email messages in your inbox.

Yahoo! Mail Beta looks great and it offers lots of new features to its users, but will you switch from your current webmail to Yahoo! Mail Beta?


WiFi Syncing iPad

Jailbreak Only: WiFi syncing is available now for the iPad.  This app was originally submitted to Apple, but then it was rejected due to what they called "security issues". I really don't believe it was due to security issues...more to Apple's lack of developing. This is why it's only available for jail broken iPads. At first this app was only available for iPhone and iPod Touches, but it has recently been updated to support the iPad. This app costs $10 and allows you to wirelessly sync your iPad to your iTunes. To install this app, please open Cydia and search for "Wi-Fi sync" exactly how I spell it.

Asus U33Jc-A1 - Review

Not only does the Asus U33Jc-A1 laptop have a stylish bamboo-clad exterior, it also comes packed with the latest technology. This 13.3-inch laptop is a great all-around laptop for those who do a little of everything, according to reviews. It comes with a 2.4 GHz Intel Core i3-M370 processor, 4 GB of memory, a 500 GB hard drive and Nvidia GeForce 310M graphics. The Nvidia graphics include Optimus technology, which automatically switches between integrated and discrete graphics to boost power or save battery life. The Asus U33Jc-A1 also includes Intel's Wireless Display (WiDi) technology, which allows you to wirelessly stream content to a TV through an optional Netgear Push2TV adapter (*Est. $100). Reviewers say the bamboo design is unique and stylish, and performance will impress most users. Battery life is good, averaging four to five hours during intensive use. The laptop doesn't include an integrated optical drive, and one tester says that the case can get uncomfortably hot. The Asus U33Jc-A1 can accommodate light gaming, but if you want a laptop that can comfortably handle more intensive games, reviews point to the Alienware M11x (*Est. $950 and up).

Top Ten Linux Distro

Ubuntu — Available in desktop, netbook, server, and “cloud” versions, Ubuntu’s core is built from Debian Linux packages along with the GNOME desktop environment. Numerous community-supported Ubuntu variants are also available, including ones having KDE (Kubuntu) and Xfce (Xubuntu) desktop environments. Ubuntu features a professional-looking, user-friendly installer, well-oiled package management infrastructure, and optional commercial support from Canonical, which is Ubuntu’s creator and sponsor. Here at LinuxTrends, Ubuntu has become the desktop OS of choice.

Fedora — The Fedora Project is sponsored by Red Hat, which says it invests in the project’s infrastructure and resources to “encourage collaboration and incubate innovative new technologies,” some of which it later integrates into Red Hat products. Being released under free and open source licenses, the project’s software is also available for incorporation into other distributions. Consequently, Fedora has much in common with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), although, as DistroWatch suggests, it “lacks a clear desktop-oriented strategy that would make the product easier to use for those beyond the ‘Linux hobbyist’ target.” Fedora (like Red Hat) offers a choice of either KDE or GNOME desktop environments, and also provides a choice of two package managers: the graphical YUM and command-line RPM utilities.

openSUSE — OpenSUSE is a stable, easy-to-use, complete, multi-purpose Linux distribution that’s popular for both desktop and server use. Additionally, the distribution serves as the base for Novell‘s popular SUSE Linux Enterprise Distribution (SLED) products. One interesting aspect of SUSE Linux is Novell’s partnership with Microsoft, through which Redmond officially recommends SLED to Windows shops known to have Linux requirements, and collaborates with Novell on several interoperability fronts. OpenSUSE (like SLED) features a choice between highly-polished KDE and GNOME desktop environments, plus the powerful and user-friendly YaST package management tool. Like Fedora, openSUSE uses the popular RPM package management architecture.

Debian — Unlike the distributions higher up in this list, all three of which are backed by commercial entities, “Debian GNU/Linux” is a fully community-based project. It’s highly popular for desktop, server, and embedded uses, and is supported by over 25,000 precompiled packages. Plus, it features powerful, easy-to-use package management utilities in both graphical and command-line versions. Although the distribution’s default desktop environment is GNOME, other alternatives including KDE, Xfce, and others. LinuxTrends has been a staunch fan of Debian on servers and desktops for many years, but eventually moved to Ubuntu based on the latter’s enhanced selection of bundled applications and drivers. Still, there’s just about nothing you can’t do with Debian, in our opinion!

Mandriva — Like most popular Linux distributions, Mandriva offers a choice of installing either the KDE or GNOME desktops. It initially was derived from Red Hat Linux and, as such, continues to use the RPM package management architecture. As DistroWatch notes, Mandriva’s “best loved features are cutting edge software, superb system administration suite (DrakConf), excellent implementation of its 64-bit edition, and extensive internationalization support.” LinuxTrends was an early fan of Mandrake (the original name for Mandriva), based on its ease of installation and use and extensive hardware support, but later on migrated to Red Hat, SUSE, Debian, and eventually Ubuntu.
Linux Mint — Featuring a choice of GNOME, KDE, Xfce, Fluxbox, and LXDE desktop environments, Linux Mint is derived from — and compatible with — the latest versions of Ubuntu, but sweetened with a generous helping of multimedia codecs, drivers, and applications. Hence, the distribution benefits from the extremely large base of Ubuntu and Debian software applications, while providing enhanced multimedia capabilities. As with many less-than-mainstream Linux projects, Linux Mint tends to push the envelope of incorporating new driver, kernel, and application software versions into its mainstream releases. This, of course, can be both a blessing and a curse, depending on your system requirements; but for media-center PCs, it’s a good one to try.

PCLinuxOS — Another community-supported Linux project, PCLinuxOS is based on a mixture of packages derived from Fedora, OpenSUSE, and Mandriva, plus others of its own creation. Additionally, the project utilizes a number of packages derived from the Ubuntu, Debian, PLD, and Charka repositories. Interestingly, although PCLinuxOS’s package management architecture uses the RPM format (as do Fedora, OpenSUSE and Mandriva), its default package manager is a version of Debian’s APT (advanced package management) utility, modified to work with RPMs. From the desktop environment perspective, PCLinuxOS is available preconfigured with one of the broadest sets of alternatives: KDE, GNOME, GNOME ZenMini, Xfce, OpenBox, and Enlightenment.
Slackware — Said to be the “oldest surviving Linux distribution,” Slackware features a choice of KDE and Xfce desktop environments and remains one of the most popular flavors of Linux among highly-technical users and system administrators. This distribution’s loyal following reportedly stems from its inclusion of very few custom utilities, along with the use of a “simple, text-based system installer and comparatively primitive package management system that does not resolve software dependencies,” suggests DistroWatch. System configuration is accomplished the old fashioned way — by editing text files. Why use Slackware? DistroWatch points out that “there is a saying in the Linux community that if you learn Red Hat, you’ll know Red Hat, but if you learn Slackware, you’ll know Linux.”

Gentoo — Unlike the other distributions in this list, Gentoo’s packaging system primarily installs software from source code packages, compiled directly on the target system, although support for binary packages is also provided. As with Slackware, configuring Gentoo is done via text files. The community-supported project touts Portage, its package management tool, as “probably Gentoo’s most notable innovation in software management.” The project claims that “with its high flexibility and enormous amount of features, [Portage] is frequently seen as the best software management tool available for Linux.” The distribution supports the GNOME, KDE, Xfce, and LXDE desktop environments, among others.

CentOS — This distribution is interesting — and highly popular — mainly because it’s essentially a clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), but with Red Hat’s proprietary bits (e.g. Red Hat’s name, logo, and images) removed. Of course, it also come without Red Hat’s updates and technical support. But if you want RHEL and don’t want to pay for it, CentOS may be a good choice. By tracking RHEL, CentOS provides a more conservative, stable release than what’s found in Fedora’s cutting-edge packages, which accounts for CentOS’s popularity among sysadmins of infrastructure systems (e.g. servers) at penny-pinching enterprises and organizations. Like RHEL, CentOS offers a choice of mature, polished GNOME and KDE desktop environments and uses RPM package management utilities. Additionally, since it’s an RHEL clone, CentOS can be expected to be binary-compatible with its alter ego.