As far as we can tell, on Dell's cumbersome UK website the price of the cheapest Inspiron 1525 with Vista home premium is £359. The same specification machine with Ubuntu is £379.

The European Commission gave a guarded welcome to Microsoft's pledge on Thursday for "greater transparency" in its development and business practices.

In what may be a perceived threat to the objectivity of the Office Open XML standards process, Standards Australia will include a Microsoft developer and consultant as part of its delegation for this month's Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM) in Geneva.

In a major turnaround for Microsoft, the company Thursday promised "greater transparency" in its development and business practices, outlining a new strategy to provide more access to APIs and previously proprietary protocols for some of its major software products, including Windows and Office.

One almost unavoidable problem with using an operating system that is not used by the majority of people is compatibility, specifically hardware compatibility. While Linux supports an amazing number of devices out of the box and chances are if you put Linux on any random computer it will, for the most part, work, there are still many cases where having information about hardware compatibility can be useful.

With Hardy now past feature-freeze it’s time to start to plan features that are being lined up for inclusion after Ubuntu 8.04 LTS is released in April. And so I’d like to introduce you to the Intrepid Ibex, the release which is planned for October 2008, and which is likely to have the version number 8.10.

While it may not let you go where no man has gone before, Celestia is an amazing desktop application that lets you go anywhere in the known Universe.You can view any object in the Solar System, travel to distant stars, and even leave the Galaxy, traveling faster than the speed of light, viewing high-res images of objects millions of miles away.

One of the great things about using open source software is the frequency with which bugs are fixed, security holes are patched, and new features are added. Ubuntu includes a very convenient update manager but constantly upgrading your system can be a burden. This guide will explain howto customize the manager to run less often, or automatically install updates.