Check out how well the X-fi USB works for surround on my netbook in combination with VAAPI accelerated HD video. CPU load figures inside.

Brad Linder’s liliputing.com reported last week that netbook sales were slowing, partly due to the rising tide of tablets and also because the lines are blurring between netbooks and more powerful but equally small thin and light laptops.

One of the companies that we have been collaborating with on some of the features for the Phoronix Test Suite has been CloudHarmony, which is a company that seeks to provide an assortment of information on different cloud computing platforms and offerings from the various firms.

The Evolution mail client has been the default such application in Ubuntu since I got to know of Linux. Sure it is the default GNOME mail/calendar application, but I really am of the view that Ubuntu needs to drop it in favor of say Mozilla's very brilliant Thunderbird.

When Android first debuted on the HTC Dream (also known as the G1) back in October of 2008, it was deemed an "iPhone Killer." While it didn't quite slay Apple's handset, it was the first step in a revolution against the tyrannous iPhone. The initial Android platform bested the iPhone OS on several levels, but lacked some key functionalities that the iPhone could provide.

With each and every release, Ubuntu Linux seems to get that little bit easier and friendlier to use. To put it through its paces, we downloaded the CD image of the latest iteration, Ubuntu 10.04, burned it to a disc and booted directly from it.

Linux is full of some amazing tweaks that go far and beyond other operating systems. Last week I wrote about using scripts to simplify shell commands, and today I'm going to take that a step further, but it takes a little bit more leg work