oh yay. now you can record FM radio.

my question is why would you want to? all FM has become since Reagan gave us "media consolidation" is CRAP ON THE RADIO. you don't hear creative music anymore. you don't hear independent voices anymore. all you here is the same old crap playlist from right coast to left coast.

FM radio was awesome when I was a kid. there was a lot of variety, creative bands, ... now all you hear is what the labels buy airtime for ...and it sucks.

cute device though...

Linspire might not be a total waste of $$$ for everybody. I have an old IBM ThinkPad T40 (14" display, 1440x1050 resolution) that wouldn't run WinXP anymore. It would run Ubuntu 7.04 (and reasonably well too) and with VirtualBox I managed to make Photoshop work OK too.

what finally caused me to switch to a Mac was the fact that the free fonts that come with Ubuntu (and presumably most of the Linux distros) were problematic for this 50 year old's vision. many blogs I read got rendered in such tiny font sizes it was just too hard on my eyes.

the main difference between Linux distros and either Mac OS X or Windows are the fonts they have licensed and distribute with their OS. secondarily, Mac OS X and Windows have invested in software technology to help make fonts "look better" on the screen (...for some vendor-established value of "look better"...).

linux does not ship with $1000 worth of fonts like a Mac does ($1000 = price for you to buy those fonts from the foundry). if linspire were to include both a great set of fonts and some better LCD display font rendering software it very well could be worth the $50 to people like me whose eyes can no longer read fonts rendered at very small point sizes.

@Steve Macfarlane:

no, i don't think GooglePhone would benefit from being more hardware agnostic. if Google is serious about making a phone that handles access to all of their apps, does net access, does phone calls, does WiFi, does 3G wireless internet, and whatever else has been speculated that it will do you would have to be crazy to target the entire universe of cell phones. the developers would go bonkers trying to keep up with all of the various combinations of hardware. users would be frustrated with the possible bad experiences using partially-supported hardware.

no, i think if they are doing their own hardware that is a Good Thing. they can create a controlled environement and then deliver to users an optimal device for their service.

if the goophone also includes a usb host port, that would be cool. i could take a small hard drive that i could use to off-load my camera on vacation without dragging a laptop!!

the Mac teaches that having a stable hardware base underneath you makes for a better environment. Google (if the rumors are true) has internalized that lesson...

funny thing... Ubuntu + VirtualBox + {Win2K or XP install CDs} will give the best of both worlds. that is *exactly* what i recently did to revive my treasured IBM T40 laptop after it would no longer deal with USB after being repaired. (WinXP would freak out everytime a USB 2.0 device got plugged in)

i installed Ubuntu and magically the USB 2.0 issues went away. funny thing -- NOBODY could explain how to figure out if all the low-level software was actually correct for the new motherboard in that machine. and another thing -- the system runs faster than XP ever did.

to be able to run Photoshop i got a copy of VirtualBox (virtualbox.org) which allowed me to install Win2K. Win2K runs pretty snappily for the 1.5GHz Pentium M it sits on...

i will tell that i like how it runs on my laptop so much that i am going to wipe my desktop machine (an HP) and do the same thing to it.

if you have a "real" Windows install CD (not a manufacturer recovery CD) and want something other than Windows for your everyday use, i would suggest Ubuntu over all the other distros. it installs easily, recognizes most hardware, runs fast, is stable and with the right bits of virtualization, you can also run Windows to get at those bits of s/w you can't afford to leave behind.

Ubuntu comes close to passing the "grandma test"; can my computer-using, 70+ year old mother use Ubuntu to get done those things she does?

Ubuntu rocks and Chairman Bill should be afraid.

well, iTunes isn't the greatest bit of code on planet earth but vista will be no thrill-a-minute for its users either...

any OS that puts in its EULA that it can summarily delete code you've installed because its manufacturer doesn't like it isn't something that should be trusted by its users, period. if i buy and pay for it, I SHOULD BE THE SOLE DETERMINANT of what code runs there.

i'm with apple. don't install vista, EVER. that is MY PC, not Billy Gate's and it is not his company's right to determine the code i or anyone else install and use on their PC. he and the Big Media a$$wipes they are trying to please can kiss my fat, white Royal American a$$.

XP is the last mickeysoft OS to see the inside of a PC i own, period. i may not run right out to buy a mac but there is an alternative (Linux) and it is pretty damn close to being a complete replacement for Gate's crappy attempt at an OS...

OK.

yup, its a cool ad. M$ upped their style points.

but the zune isn't cool what with its DRM silliness and inability to talk to vista (how dumb is that?) and M$ is so far in the hole style-point-wise that it will need a million of these ads to dig out...

Ariel is onto the only remaining obstacle to me dumping gate's abomination into the trash... the lack of shockwave and flash plug-ins. no flash, no myspace. no shockwave, no online games. for everything else i have and use on my computers (yes, several) there are reasonable analogs to software that you shell out bucks for (audio/video editing, office stuff, email, database, ...). once we have stable shockwave and flash plugins, poof, no more windows on my boxes...

more like "Urban Fool"... $150 for a freakin' t-shirt? no way. the only reason i actually own a scott evest is i got one on clearance for like $40...

...and considering that TVUnetworks appears to be headquartered in Shanghai, China, having the TV network motorheads screaming "copyright violations" at the top of their lungs won't have much effect on this software and its availability...

...in fact, i doubt that there is much anyone can do about the TV feeds either if they are located offshore...

why am i not surprised by any of this garbage? when WGA rolled out we knew which direction microsoft was going to go and we pretty much knew that it would NOT be good for any of us. the PC manufacturers, the OS manufacturers, the "content" providers are all pretty much in agreement that your PC should be theirs to dictate terms of your use on. PEOPLE WAKE UP -- they want you to be their personal cash cow (1-2-3, say Moo everybody!).

what features of Vista can we computer users just simply NOT live without? what will Vista enable that you can't already do with XP?

Vista will break most applications and if you think that you are gonna get any free replacements, well, you're living in a dream world.

nope. no Vista at my house. i don't need it. in fact, now that there is a Flash player beta for Linux, ubuntu linux is looking really, really strong as a contender. ubuntu linux loaded on an older Dell laptop i have easier and faster than any version of windows ever did and i didn't have to wade through a 100 reboots doing windows update either...

nope... windows xp is the last version of windows i will buy and my preference for a vendor of my next piece of hardware will be that vendor who offers me hardware without a bundled OS. $399 for Vista supersized? you gotta be kidding me...