This is my first Google Gadget. It was extremely simple to create since I was able to look at the code of other gadgets, especially Today’s Woot by Brady Lamprecht. Google also provides some excellent examples and a built in editor so you can create your own right in your browser.

I recently purchases a Acer Aspire 5100 laptop with Windows Vista Home Premium on it. I wasn’t too thrilled to get Vista because of all of the bad news I have heard about its development. I had actually sworn off of Windows entirely, having uninstalled Windows 2000 and installed Debian Linux on my desktop PC.

I haven’t been too impressed with many of the versions Microsoft had put out over the years. Here is my quick list of what I thought about previous Windows versions:

Safari, the web browser from Apple, is now available for download here for Windows. The interfaces is slick and it seems to load webpages quickly. It appears to use the KHTML engine for rendering webpages, which apparently has great web standards support. Nice, but unnecessary seeing as how I think it is not as good as Firefox. So the big question is “Why did Apple do it?”

I recently purchased an Acer Aspire 5100-5840 that had Windows Vista Premium preinstalled. I was planning on buying a Linux laptop, but I found a deal on this Acer so I decided I may as well keep Windows Vista for any Windows only capabilities I may need in the future. I decided that although I use Debian on my desktop PC, I would try installing the 64bit version of Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn along side of Windows Vista.

I was looking at buying a laptop from Dell now that they come preinstalled with Ubuntu Linux. I am very glad that Dell decided to start selling Linux and I wanted to buy a laptop from them to support their efforts. I almost bought one, but let me tell you why I didn’t.

I am writing this text using a program called Dasher. Dasher is a text entry program that uses predictive technology to determine what you want next. Dasher is one of the most innovative technologies that I have seen in a long time. Letters fly in from the side of the screen and you simply steer the mouse to the letters you want. While it is somewhat slower than typing, it is very intuitive.

My system was working perfectly and I upgraded my system with apt. The next time I started up my computer, X complained that it failed to load the module nvidia. I switched my xorg.conf file to load the open source nv drivers so I could browse the Internet for help. I found Debian Bug #420354, which says the package nvidia-glx version 1.0.8776-4 does not provide the file nvidia_drv.so.

Regnum Online is a free to play MMORPG that is developed in Argentina for Windows and also has an official Linux client. It is somewhat similar to Guild Wars. Check it out, as it is one of the best free MMORPGs I have played.

I think Google Maps was one of the first killer web apps. It was probably the first AJAX application I ran into. I spent countless hours just looking at the world from a new perspective. Google then released Google Earth, which gave me more ways to view and interact with the satellite imagery. Google has also released an API for Google Maps, which allowed others to use their imaginations to create new and useful derivatives. Here are just a few of the cool ones…

Is it possible for Linux to win in the fight for desktop users against Microsoft Windows? Is it possible for Microsoft to stay competitive against another operating system that is available for free when it has spent over $6 billion dollars to make Vista?