Category Archives: Computer

Update: Results of The Free Software Experiment

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Back in October of 2006, I wrote about my attempt to use only free software on my newly acquired notebook computer. At the time, I gave out these grades:

OpenOffice: B- [Works well but not completely compatible with MS Word, I have pretty much stopped using it]

Firefox: A [Seemed to work very reliably ]

Thunderbird: A [Works great ]

Since then, I have become very disillusioned with Firefox. First, my bookmarks disappeared without warning. OK, this might be caused by my harddrive. Then the download manager (which I thought worked really sweetly) started acting up such that it didn’t tell me when the download was complete. Then there was the funky blank menu bar across the top…probably due to some option I had set or a software plug-in. But I tried for days to get it to go away and it never did. I even did a fresh install of Firefox to get things back to normal…didn’t work. The final straw was when I kept running into web pages that didn’t display properly on Firefox. OK, you are going to say that this is the webmaster’s problem in that they didn’t check compatiblity with all major web browsers.

Well, I give up. I switched back to (ack) Internet Explorer and everything works much better. My life just got simpler, which is the ultimate test. (I am starting to sound like a Mac user 🙂

I am still using Thunderbird as it gets the job done. OK, its spam filter could be better but I doubt that Outlook Express is any better.

My conclusion: the standard Microsoft stuff works, and, well, it is the standard on the PC, whether we like it or not.

73, Bob K0NR

Results of The Free Software Experiment

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Over one year ago, I decided to buy a new notebook computer for use with ham radio and other personal projects. In the past, I’ve been a typical user of Microsoft products, including Windows, MS Office, Internet Explorer, etc. The Open Source movement has been interesting to me and I often wondered about using some of these free software programs.

I bought an HP/Compaq Presario 2200 computer and proceeded to load it with “free” software. I was on a quest to determine how far I could go without paying a cent for software. My basic rules were:

  • Don’t pay anything for software
  • Avoid free braindead software that forces you to upgrade to the premium ver$ion
  • Don’t cheat the system by using hacked software

The first decision I encountered was whether to use Linux or Windows XP. The computer came loaded with Windows XP, so I considered that “free”. I have used technical computers with the Unix operating system at work, so I am still tempted to bring up a Linux system here at home. For now, I decided to stick with Windows since there is quite a bit of freeware available on that OS and it was already installed.

For the main software applications, I quickly zero’d in on OpenOffice, Firefox and Thunderbird. These apps seem to be the real leaders in their respective areas.

OpenOffice

From the OpenOffice.org web page:
OpenOffice.org is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute.

I had high hopes for OpenOffice and it is a reasonably good piece of software. I had used MS Word for many years (currently using Word 2003) and was pretty much a power user of that software. The word processor portion of OpenOffice (OpenOffice Writer) has enough features to compete with Word and even has a few advantages such as outputting in pdf format. I lived without Word on my new PC for about 7 months and only used OpenOffice. Ultimately, I had to give in and install Word. There were just too many places where OpenOffice was not quite compatible with the industry standard. Graphics inserted into documents would mysteriously get mangled or would print incorrectly when transferred to Word. Word is the defacto standard so OpenOffice is, by definition, incompatible. Frankly, my life got much simpler after installing Word. For users that don’t care about Word compatibility, I can highly recommend OpenOffice.

While the compatibility issues of the OpenOffice word processor are kind of a problem, the OpenOffice spreadsheet is a real mess. The feature set and user interface is quite different from Excel and is a distant second in terms of overall functionality. Fortunately, my spreadsheet usage is very basic, so I have been able to just live with OpenOffice.

Overall, I give OpenOffice a “B-” grade.

Firefox
My experience with Firefox, the web browser, has been excellent. I am very happy with version 1.5 and look forward to 2.0. The tabbed interface and the extensions that are available are a real plus. Also, there have been fewer security problems with Firefox compared to Internet Explorer.

Overall, I give Firefox an “A” grade.

Thunderbird
I am on version 1.5 of Thunderbird and continue to be very impressed. This email client is quite flexible in handling multiple pop accounts and supports extensions and themes. See Why You Should Use the Mozilla Thunderbird E-Mail Program. My only complaint on Thunderbird is that its spam filtering could be better. I don’t know that this is a ding on Thunderbird in that spam is a continuing challenge for everyone. Still, I’d say having a stronger spam filter is the best thing they could do to improve the email client.

Overall, I give Thunderbird an “A” grade.

Other Software
What other free software do I have on my PC? There are quite a few ham radio software packages out there, many of them free: EchoLink (ham radio voice-over-IP), Morse Runner (CW contest simulator), MorseGen (generate Morse code on your PC), WinMorse (converts text to Morse code audio file), SatScape (satellite tracking software) and UI-View (APRS software).

What are your favorite free software packages?

73, Bob K0NR

USB on Ham Radio Gear?

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One of the really well-done and useful technologies available today is the Universal Serial Bus (USB). If you don’t know what this is, you have been living under a rock or simply refuse to own a computer. The first revision of the USB spec (USB 1.0) was released in January of 1996. The standard has been revised and improved over time and USB ports are now standard on virtually all computers today.

USB has become the preferred and standard method for connecting electronic devices to a computer. Yes, there are some applications that might require a different connection such as IEEE-1334 (AKA Firewire), but for the most part the world has embraced USB.

In my collection of electronic stuff, I have quite a few devices that use USB. Let’s see. The computer mice that I use with notebook computers all use USB. My Garmin GPS, my digital camera, my Apple iPod, my external hard disk and my keychain Flash memory drive all have USB. The really cool thing is that I can just plug these devices in and they pretty much work. Sometimes the first time you use a device, you may have to load the right driver. On subsequent connections, it just works.

Then there is my ham radio equipment: all stuck in the archaic world of RS-232. You remember RS-232….it’s that 9-pin D connector that might still be on your computer. My newer computers don’t even have it anymore but some of my other ones do…which is the problem. If a manufacturer wants to be backward compatible with older computers (like the ones that many of us hams still have lurking in the basement), you need to support the “old” serial port.

If you have a newer computer without an RS-232 port, you can’t connect it to brand new ham equipment. Now, the good news is that there are adapters that convert the new USB port to connect to older RS-232 equipment. See an example of one here. My experience is that these converters really do work but they require some setup to get it right. Instead of the device self-identifying (like a USB device would), you have to specify the right COM port, the right serial speed, the right parity bits and so forth. Why did we ever have to set parity? Why couldn’t it just always default to a common setting?

USB is also very fast, with USB 2.0 running at 480 Mbit/s, compared to maybe 115kbit/s for RS-232. USB also supports hubs and addressing of multiple devices connected to one USB port. RS-232 was pretty much a “hook up one thing at a time” bus.

The point here is that it is time to move on. Come on, ham radio manufacturers, forget the old RS-232 ports and give us USB. Bring ham gear into the 21st century.

73, Bob K0NR