In Depth: Linux desktop innovations to look forward to
These are testing times: if you want to experience the latest advances on the Linux desktop, you have to be prepared to test things and accept that stability is a secondary feature.
The continued development of KDE 4 is the perfect example. Many of its users have felt like guinea pigs over the last couple of years, while its developers have filled in the missing blanks on the path to a fully operational desktop.
But for many of us, this is how we like it. Messing around with applications, tools and utilities from the cutting edge is the reason why many of us got into Linux in the first place. It's almost expected, and it's always something of a surprise to discover that Linux has come so far that most people use precisely for its sobriety and stability.
But for the tinkerers and testers, 2010 is shaping up to be a perfect year. Almost every desktop and application we can think of is going to have a major release, and while release dates and roadmaps always have to be taken with a pinch of salt, many of these projects have built technology and enhancements you can play with now.
The taste of tomorrow
We've selected the few we think are worth keeping an eye on and that can be installed easily from your distribution's package manager, but Linux is littered with applications that are evolving all the time, so we've also tried to guess what the next big things might be. Take a trip with us on a voyage of discovery to find out exactly what's happening and how the Linux desktop experience is likely to evolve over the next 12 months.
KDE's Gnome Do equivalent is trying hard to catch up
KRunner has been part of KDE for long time. It's the tool you see when you press Alt+F2, and is commonly used to run applications quickly by typing their names rather than resorting to the launch menu.
In the face of stiff competition from the likes of Gnome Do though, KRunner has had to up its game recently, and there are several neat enhancements for the KDE 4.4 release.
The most obvious change is that the KRunner dialog itself is now at the top of the screen rather than in the middle. This makes more sense, because it's now less likely to tread over some important application information or Slashdot story. You can also close the window again by pressing Alt+F2.
Now that KDE 4.4 has a working search engine, the first new thing you can do with KRunner is search your desktop. Results are listed in the panel below. Everything else more or less looks the same until you click on the small spanner icon.
KRun to the hills
The window that appears has always hidden the extra features hidden behind KRunner's austere GUI. It lists the type of items that are going to be probed and returned as results in the main window.
This version for KDE 4.4 has four new additions. You can now terminate applications by typing kill followed by the name of the application. After you've typed kill, the applications that match the following text will be listed in the results panel.
You can change the keyword by reconfiguring the Terminate Applications plugin. You can also list all removable devices on your system by typing solid, and you should be able to manage virtual desktops by typing window. We couldn't get this to work, despite the plugin being listed in the configuration window.
There's still tons over other functionality you can get out of KRunner by using the older plugins, but what we'd really like to see is cross-compatibility with Gnome Do's plugins.
To build the future we must first understand the past
How do you come up with a revolutionary new desktop while your users are wedded to the old familiar input ideas, tried and tested in the two decades since we all started using a keyboard and mouse?
If Linux were run by Apple, the developers would work in secret for years before announcing the availability of their new desktop metaphor. But the open source community doesn't work in the same way. Innovation has to be hammered out on online forums, in developer channels and through software releases. It's trial by committee, and many things can and do go wrong with the process.
Compositing effects are a good example. Almost as soon as David Reveman had finished his initial work on Compiz, patches could be integrated into almost any Linux desktop with no major changes. Users could install Compiz and start rotating their desktops within minutes.
But the task of turning these patches into a homogeneous part of the desktop experience has taken considerably longer, and it's an ongoing process four years after the initial release. This is because the path to acceptance for Compiz has been slowed down by the community, with disagreement, forks, apathy and duplication all hindering its progress. And it's the same for many other projects.
If you want to change the way people use their desktops, you have to change the underlying technology behind that desktop. Most developers interpret this to mean that they need a new release, with an all-new API and plenty of new technology for application developers to take advantage of. This is the theory behind KDE 4's glut of new libraries and frameworks, for example, but it also means that it takes time for developers to catch up, if they even feel so inclined.
Gnome development is more pragmatic. Version 2 was released at about the same time as KDE 3 in 2002, and broadly, it's still a version of this release that's the current version of Gnome. There have been no dramatic redesigns, API changes, feature overhauls or debugging marathons.
Instead, there's been the steady march of progress, and while Gnome may be missing some of the more experimental aspects of KDE, the latest release, 2.28, is still very different to the 2.0 release.
Topaz
This is partly because Gnome is more of a platform for applications than KDE. The user doesn't need to know that the F-Spot photo manager is written in Mono and uses C#, for example; the only important thing is that each Gnome application presents a standardised front-end by following Gnome's user interface guidelines.
It's for this reason that Gnome has been going from strength to strength, even on other platforms and operating systems, and this kind of idea doesn't need to be updated when a new version is released.
Gnome 3.0 is scheduled for release in September of this year, but like all version 2.x releases up to this point, it's unlikely to be a KDE 4-like revolution. Initially, there were plans for dramatic changes to be made, all falling under an umbrella term for Gnome 3.0 – ToPaZ (Three Point Zero).
If you look at some of the plans touted for Topaz, especially the results from some of the original brainstorming sessions, you'll see that most of the ideas remain in the current plan.
With the KDE 4 release, most of the development cycle for the revolutionary features that were supposed to make KDE 4 more attractive than version 3 actually occurred after the initial release. If KDE 4 were to be released now it would be hailed as a great success, rather than the stream of bugfixes and updates we've endured since 4.0 hit the mirrors in January 2008.
But at the same time, developers have to balance expectation. Would many people still be using the KDE desktop if they had to stick to KDE 3-era applications?
Fortunately, with the release of KDE 4.4, most of those criticisms and usability problems have been ironed out, and we finally have a KDE desktop that can replace KDE 3.5.
For the first time in a long time, Linux might actually get easier to use
Both Gnome and KDE are putting a great deal of emphasis on something they call 'activities'. These are really an extension of the virtual desktop idea, but rather than each desktop being a disconnected extension to your screen's real estate, activities become associated with a certain task.
You might want to create a documentation activity, for example, and for that you'd need a desktop that provided quick access to a text or HTML editor, online resources and perhaps a dictionary or thesaurus. Like most other tasks, setting up this kind of environment would normally require the user to mess around with a launch menu as well as understand a certain amount about your computer's filesystem.
Most developers recognise that this process isn't ideal and that desktops of the future shouldn't require filesystem knowledge, or even an idea of how applications are organised and stored. The process of working with your data should be as intuitive as possible, and both major Linux desktops are trying their best to tackle this issue in their own special ways.
With Gnome, for example, one of the key aims of the upgrade to version 3.0 has been to streamline the user experience. And the central user-facing technology that's going to help this happen is called Gnome Shell. This is an application that has seen rapid development over the last 18 months after Gnome's Vincent Untz posted some observations from discussions at a recent hackfest in late 2008.
These observations mentioned that tasks such as finding a window was more difficult than it should be, that workspaces were powerful but not intuitive enough and that launching applications was too hard. Gnome Shell has been developed to address these problems, as well as take advantage of some of the latest Linux technology.
Like Moblin, Gnome Shell uses Clutter, a graphical library that can build smooth transitions and eye candy out of even the most humble graphics hardware.
KDE
The KDE team have been working on similar concepts throughout the entire KDE 4 development process. But it's fair to say that many of ideas touted before the first release were judged too ambitious and too difficult to implement within the first few revisions.
KDE 4.4 is designed to redress some of these issues by re-awakening the Nepomuk semantic desktop and by making desktop activities usable.
The Nepomuk semantic desktop, as we've written before, is designed to bridge the gap between online content and content in your hardware. Many components of the web can already be found in KDE applications like Dolphin, where you can add comments, tags and ratings to your own files, but until now there hasn't been a good reason to go to all this effort.
With the release of KDE 4.4, you can finally use these fields of rich information to search your content, just as you would search the internet through Google. Another important aspect to user experience on the KDE desktop is the use of activities.
Like Gnome Shell, this the ability to meta-manage the arrangement of virtual desktops and applications according to what you want to work on. It's a feature that has been part of the KDE 4 desktop for a while, but with version 4.4, activities also become first-class citizens on the KDE desktop, perhaps in an attempt to steal some of Gnome's thunder from the wonderful Gnome Shell.
But it's not quite as simple or as straightforward to use. Rather than attempting to replace the launch menu and file management duties of the desktop, KDE's activities are better at managing complex environments. It doesn't replace the panel or the launch menu, for example, it just lets you fire up a working environment in the same way that you click on a browser's bookmark. That's not a bad thing, it's just different.
The best thing about Gnome Shell is that you can play with it today. And we'd suggest you give it a go, because it might just change the way you think about Gnome.
Gnome Shell should be straightforward to install through your distribution's package manager. To run it though, you will probably need to open the command line and type gnomeshell --replace. If you've ever manually started Compiz, this command will feel familiar, as the replace argument is used to replace the currently used window manage with both projects.
When Gnome Shell is running (depending on the version you've installed), you'll won't see any new windows on your desktop; the only indication that something has changed is the different style of window decoration, and if it's a recent version of Gnome Shell, a quick-launch dock attached to the top-left of your main window.
To see Gnome Shell in action, just move your mouse to the top-right of your screen. You should then see the current view zoom away into the middle distance, and the freed-up screen space used to display other virtual desktops to the right and a minimal launch menu on the right.
This launch menu contains applications and files, and you can either click on one to load the corresponding application into the current desktop or drag the icon on to the desktop on which you wish the application to appear. But it's also much cleverer than first glance might suggest.
If you drag a text file on to a new desktop, for example, Gnome Shell will automatically load that file into the default application for that file type. Each window on the virtual desktop will update to reflect any changing contents, and you can enlarge any window in the frame by using the mouse wheel while the pointer hovers over the window you want to enlarge.
Here's what we've got look forward to in the following 12 months
Xfce
There's no doubt that both Gnome and KDE are stealing the limelight when it comes to feature upgrades for 2010. The other more common Linux desktops don't have any such big upgrades planned, and this is their strength, as they often like to capitalise on their ability to remain stable and relatively lightweight.
Xfce is the best example of this: changes from one version to the next are generally small and lack the paradigm shifting-hype of other desktop environments. Xfce 4.8 only entered the planning stage in August last year, and as a result, the feature list is best described as nebulous.
It's hoped that the new version will include an enhanced menu system, icon routines and keyboard handling, but there aren't any ambitious plans to add masses of new features. The new menu system is hopefully going to make it much easier for users to edit the launch menu, a task that currently generates plenty of complaints, according to Xfce developers.
Xfce should also been able to jump on to the on-screen notification bandwagon, with Xfce developer Jérôme Guelfucci showing off patches that bring Gnome's notification system to the Xfce desktop. It looks really good too.
The new file manager, Thunar, is also likely to become more powerful, although one of its great strengths is that it's super quick and not hampered by the cruft that plagues other file managers. The final version of 4.8 is due to be released on 12 April 2010.
OpenOffice.org
The most comprehensive open source office suite is likely to go through something of a transformation this year, now that its principal sponsor, Sun Microsystems, is being taken over by Oracle. At the time of writing, the first release candidate of version 3.2 has just made it on to the mirrors.
It promises faster startup times, almost halving the boot time for Writer from just over 11 seconds in version 3 to under six seconds in version 3.2, and should bring much better file compatibility with both the new ODF 1.2 specification as well as proprietary formats and the ability to save password-protected Microsoft Office documents.
Version 3.3, which should be available by the end of the year, will be the first release to include the fruit from project Renaissance. This is a noble attempt by OpenOffice.org to overhaul the user interface of the various applications in the suite, hopefully pulling its appearance into the 21st century.
This update is promised only for Impress, with the other applications getting the same treatment in later updates, but until we see a screenshot of the new design, we have yet to be convinced.
Firefox
There's little doubt that the next 12 months are going to be particularly challenging for the Firefox web browser. Once the darling of the open source desktop, Firefox has suffered in the face of competition from Google's Chromium browser and its perceived lack of speed in the face of the growing dominance of WebKit-based browsing.
As a result, future development is likely to focus on speed improvements and consolidating the initial reasons for Firefox's success, rather than adding feature after feature on to a browser than many users feel is already bloated.
But so far, the current roadmap for Firefox couldn't exactly be described as exciting. There are several significant updates planned for Firefox this year, starting with version 3.6, which should be out as you read this. Beta versions of version 3.6 have shown decent JavaScript speed improvements as well as support for 'Personas', which is a theming engine similar to the one used in Google's Chrome.
Version 3.7, available in the middle of the year should make further performance and include the latest version of the Gecko rendering engine.
Jetpack is also worth a mention. It's a way for web developers to build Firefox add-ons using the same skills they use for website construction, including HTML, CSS and JavaScript. But the best thing about Jetpack is that add-ons can be installed without requiring a tedious restart of Firefox.
Finally, there's a small chance that Firefox version 4.0 could be seen on the mirrors before the end of the year. There doesn't seem to be much to get excited about – it's likely to feature the predictable makeover, faster JavaScript and a newer Gecko engine – but it might surprise us.
Gimp
After years languishing in the pool of applications known as 'loved and lost', Gimp looks like it may finely rise from the ashes of apathy and re-invent itself as the future of pixel editing on the free desktop.
Version 2.6, released in October 2009, was a step in the right direction, but it's going to be version 2.8 that hopefully heralds the dawn of a new era. This is mainly because a brand-new, revised and re-imagined GUI is planned, finally consigning its multiple tiny dialogs and windows to the rubbish bin.
Gimp 2.8 will include a single-window mode, just like its commercial competitor, and this should go a long way towards making it easier to use for most people. In the words of one of the main developers on the project, Martin Nordholts, Gimp's UI feels rather cluttered. This is mainly because it uses so many windows, and the single window should solve most of these problems.
But it's a big job. There are nine separate tasks required to make the modification work, with this feature alone taking up about 10% of the projected development time for the next release. Most people agree that it's going to be worth it.
The remainder of the development time is going to be spent adding lots of other cool features. You'll be able to type text directly into the image canvas, for example, rather than using a text entry window first. You will also be able to group layers, making larger and more complex images vastly more manageable.
But development on Gimp has always been dependent on its relatively small and dedicated team. In the past, this has meant there was a long gap between releases, and it's likely to be the same with 2.8. Martin Nordholts initially estimated that if they included all the features they wanted, 2.8 might not see the light of day until early 2012.
He suggested a compromise, pulling ideas like vector layers and unified and free transform tools from the feature plan, and pulling the release forward to before the end of 2010.
Development
There's been a slight shift in recent years from open source project being built purely by the community that uses them, to applications that are developed and sponsored by a commercial endeavour. Google's Chrome browser falls into this category, and so does Nokia's development environment, Qt Creator.
The result is that we've never had a better selection of web browsers, and if you enjoy programming, there are now more Linux-compatible development environments that ever to choose from.
If you're a Qt/C++ developer, Qt Creator is going from strength to strength, and is likely to be the best choice if you're thinking of joining the throngs of developers writing applications for Nokia's various mobile phones.
In a related field, KDevelop 4 is finally due to be released some time in the first half of 2010. This is one of the final KDE 3-era applications to have made the transition to KDE 4, and we hope it will be good enough to last a few years before the developers decide to start from scratch again.
KDevelop 4 uses CMake for project management, and lets you have more than one project open at a time. There's also some sophisticated refactoring, argument matching and support for distributed version control systems such as Git. But KDevelop will no longer enjoy the wide language support of its predecessor, as it become increasingly adept at the C++/Qt combination – a space now defiantly occupied by Qt Creator.
For Gnome developers there are likely to be a couple of releases of the Anjuta IDE, the first of which will be version 2.29.2. MonoDevelop, the multilingual IDE that specialises in C#, is also going from strength to strength, with version 2.2 being released right at the end of the year.
There are currently no plans for version 2.4, but at the current rate of released, we'd expect another version before the end of the year.
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Review: Viewsonic ViewBook 130
ViewSonic is best known for producing LCD screens and projectors, but has been increasing its laptop range of late with a variety of high-quality portables. The latest is the ViewBook 130, a stylish CULV machine that offers a stunning screen and great usability.
While ViewSonic's ViewBook Pro seemingly lifted its design from Toshiba, this model has a unique look of its own. The combination of matt-silver and glossy-black plastics looks great, adding a degree of high-end style without increasing the cost.
Excellent keyboard
The keyboard continues this level of quality. The large matt-finish keys are raised slightly above the chassis, but are fitted close enough together to make it comfortable and easy to type at speed. All keys also move quietly and smoothly.
Designed for regular mobile use, the laptop weighs just 1.6kg and is slim enough to carry in hand luggage. The 207-minute battery life isn't the best we've seen, but ably suffices for semi-frequent travel use.
This mobility is enabled by the use of a CULV Intel processor, running at just 10w. While this dual-core chip minimises power usage, it provides limited performance, so this machine is only suitable for basic office tasks and multimedia consumption rather than creation.
Built around a 13.3-inch widescreen panel, image quality is outstanding. The bright LED screen is impressively sharp and delivers vivid colour reproduction, although the glossy Super-TFT coating is one of the more reflective we've seen.
Graphics are provided by an integrated Intel GPU, so only basic performance is on offer. This is to be expected from a slim CULV machine, however, and there is still more than enough power for watching videos, editing photos and even running basic or older 3D games.
Since this laptop is designed to be used on the move, high-speed wireless network connectivity is provided by an 802.11n Wi-Fi adapter. Fixed connectivity is equally capable, with Gigabit Ethernet providing the fastest connections when back at home or in the office.
Adding to the overall value of this laptop is the inclusion of Windows 7 Professional software, with features such as a Windows XP Mode – which allows you to run the older operating system as a virtual PC.
ViewSonic also includes a two-year warranty as standard. Continuing its successful run of recent releases, ViewSonic's ViewBook 130 is a highly stylish and usable machine.
While the battery life is bettered by rival CULV machines, such as the Asus UL20A, this is still a well-made laptop and one that's very easy to like.
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Review: Acer Aspire 5942G-524G64Bn
Acer is one of the world's largest laptop manufacturers and offers a truly comprehensive range of consumer machines. The Aspire 5942G-524G64Bn is its latest high-end media centre and combines a feature-packed specification with stunning performance.
Powered by one of Intel's cutting-edge Core i5 processors, this is one of the most powerful laptops you can buy at this price. Designed for fast and effective multi-tasking, it made light work of our benchmark tests and effortlessly runs even the most demanding software tasks.
Graphics performance is just as impressive. The dedicated ATi graphics card is designed for smooth processing of high-definition video and is fully DirectX 11-compatible, meaning gaming and media editing tasks are handled with ease.
Unfortunately, the 15.6-inch screen doesn't quite match this level of quality. Encased beneath a sheet of glossy plastic that runs edge to edge, images are sharp and vibrant enough for most use. It is not a particularly bright panel, however, and lacked the impact we expected.
An integrated Blu-ray disc drive adds to the multimedia potential, however, allowing you to watch the latest high-definition (HD) movies. While you cannot write data to Blu-ray discs, the drive does function as as standard dual-layer DVD and CD rewriter for creating your own discs.
Surprising mobility
Often the level of power on offer here comes at the cost of poor mobility, so it's a pleasant surprise to find the Acer ran for 210 minutes on battery power. At 3.1kg, it isn't a machine for regular mobile use, but it's impressive that Acer has so effectively maximised battery life.
Usability is another strong suit. The backlit keyboard has its keys raised high above the chassis and well separated, making it easy to type at speed. A touch-sensitive control panel is also fitted on the right-hand side of the keyboard for easy control of your music and movies.
A stunning 640GB of hard drive storage is on offer, and a fingerprint reader is in place for adding a layer of biometric security to your most valuable files.
Backing up files to external drives is also made easy by the inclusion of eSATA compatibility on one of the chassis' four USB ports, allowing stable, high-speed data transfers. An integrated webcam rounds out the features.
By packing impressive power and features into a comparatively portable chassis, the Aspire 5942G-524G64Bn is a fantastic home media centre. While it is not the most affordable Blu-ray machine on the market, it is certainly one of the most powerful and very difficult to fault.
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In Depth: Top 10 best iPhone apps to download today
The App store is jam packed with iPhone apps - we've previously covered our Top 10 best free iPhone apps, our pick of the 10 best free iPhone games on the planet and many more.
Our complete guide to the best iPhone apps links to all the best apps you can get your hands on.
But what if you just want to know the 10 apps that every iPhone user absolutely must own?
Then read on...
01. Tweetie £1.79 Our favourite Twitter client
We know that you might not be interested in a client for the microblogging service Twitter, but Tweetie is such an excellent example of how apps make the iPhone great that it takes our top spot nonetheless; Twitter was born for the iPhone.
Tweetie lacks only push notifications (though you could add that with an app such as Boxcar) to make it the ultimate Twitter app; it can geotag your tweets, let you view conversations, supports Lists, the new retweet feature and more.
02. Documents To Go £8.99 Word, Excel and PowerPoint editing
Documents to Go has the best word processor we've seen on iPhone, letting you create and edit Word docs while retaining formatting. It can work with Excel and PowerPoint documents, too, and the Premium edition lets you grab attachments from Gmail or Exchange servers.
03. The Guardian £2.39 Get your news on the go!
We're often asked why you'd spend money on an app that lets you do something that's free through Safari. This app is a good answer. Not only can you tailor the news that is delivered, but it's simple to use and you can cache stories to read offline when you're on the Tube.
04. TomTom UK & Ireland £59.99 Turn-by-turn directions
There are cheaper apps that add turn-by-turn navigation to the iPhone 3GS (the £26.99 CoPilot Live app will happily get you from A to B) but it should come as no surprise that the app from TomTom is by far the most polished. It lacks live traffic info, but we hope that's coming soon.
05. Facebook £FREE Social networking client
The great thing about this app is that it lets you keep in touch with friends and upload photos from the iPhone's camera straight to Facebook. It also offers push notifications too. Now as soon as a friend comments on your status, you'll know.
06. Reeder £1.79 The best RSS reader
This little app syncs with Google Reader, a service for reading RSS feeds from your favourite sites. Though the interface looks a little sparse, it's actually stuffed with features, and since there are lots of Google Reader clients for the Mac too, you can keep your feeds in sync.
07. Mobile Allowance £0.59 A super billing assistant
Whether your iPhone came from O2 or Orange, this is a fantastic app for keeping track of how much of your monthly allocation of minutes and texts you have used, plus any extra charges. We installed the free O2 one, but went back to Mobile Allowance as it's much cleaner.
08. Instapaper Pro £2.99 Offline reading
You know how you often come across articles on the web that you want to read, just not now? Ping them to the free Instapaper service, then use this app that caches for offline reading for you to read later. There's a free version too, though it lacks the tilt-to-scroll feature.
09. RedLaser £1.19 The ultimate price checker
This app uses the iPhone's camera to take pictures of barcodes, then looks for the product online to check prices. Amazon results are first, but it also supports Google Product Search to query a huge number of other online stores. Just don't let the staff in HMV catch you!
10. National Rail Enquiries £4.99 Rail journey planner
Sure, you can use Safari to muddle through the National Rail's website to find times, but, while it's expensive, this app is an essential investment for regular train-users. It helps plan journeys, optionally remembering your favourite stations and even favourite journeys, and shows the live progress of your train.
Our favourite feature: tap a button marked 'Next train home' and the iPhone will work out where you are, where your closest station is, and when the next train leaving for your home station departs.
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Review: Sony Vaio VPC-EB1SOE/W1
The Sony Vaio VPC-EB1SOE/WI is a new laptop targeted at the average consumer. Boasting an all new chassis design, the laptop impressed us with the level of performance, portability and usability available at such a decent price point.
The 15.5-inch, 1366 x 768-pixel resolution display is typically bright and sharp, making viewing photos and videos a pleasure. Colour reproduction is also good, although colours are not as deep as we've seen on other Sony models.
The new chassis design is very attractive, and the mock metal and white plastic finish look great, although the subtle glittery effect on the palmrest might put some off.
Excellent keyboard
The laptop's keyboard is very firm with only a slight hint of flex and the isolated style keyboard that Sony often uses is in evidence, providing a very comfortable and accurate typing experience. There's also a dedicated numeric keypad.
Intel's latest processing power comes courtesy of a Core i3 processor, alongside 4096MB of DDR3 memory to produce extremely fast performance. You'll have no problems running everyday office applications or more resource-intensive programs such as editing suites.
An ATi graphics card from its latest Mobility Radeon HD 5000 series gives the laptop some 3D punch, and its 512MB of video RAM means you'll have no issue rendering images in editing suites and playing less-resource intensive games.
The 500GB hard drive is more than capable of holding thousands of files, folders and videos, and also provides a good deal of future-proofing.
Portability is decent enough and the 2.6kg the machine weighs won't be a hassle to carry around. The 179-minute battery life is just about acceptable.
The laptop comes with a wealth of features unique to Sony, including a new Assist button that helps you maintain your laptop and diagnose any issues you're experiencing, a web button that allows you quick access to the internet without booting up the Windows 7 operating system and, finally, a VAIO button, which gives you quick access to your music, movies and photos.
802.11n Wi-Fi is onboard, as is an HDMI port for sending high-definition (HD) content to an external monitor and an eSATA interface for backing up your files to an external device at high speed.
The Sony VAIO VPCEB1SOE/WI is a very impressive machine that provides great performance, power and usability. It's a great all-rounder with versatile performance and would make the perfect machine for the whole family.
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Review: Asus G51J
Although the technology world's obsession with 3D has waxed and waned over the past few decades, it's now firmly back in fashion. Asus is one of the first to capitalise on this and the G51J (£1,699 inc. VAT) is a gaming laptop that provides hard evidence of 3D's uses.
The machine utilises Nvidia's 3D Vision technology to bring your games, movies and photos to life in the glorious third dimension. Overall, we found the effect worked well and you'll be impressed how images jump out the screen at you.
The glasses feel a little strange to use at first, but we soon got used to them and didn't suffer the nausea we experienced when using other 3D-capable laptops, such as the Acer Aspire 5738DZG-434G50Mn.
When using the glasses we did find content appeared a little dim, however, and colour quality also suffered – with even the Nvidia 3D Vision-capable games such as Resident Evil 5 appearing quite washed out. We also found the equipment a little fiddly to set up, and synching the glasses with the infrared remote proved to be especially problematic.
When not using the machine's 3D capabilities we found the laptop pleasant to use. The screen is exceptionally bright and provides good detail, although it's a shame it doesn't support Full HD resolutions.
The machine's build quality also impresses and while a garish design is in place, we actually quite liked it. The keyboard is large and comfortable to use, although quite spongy, and the dedicated numeric keypad is a nice touch for those who regularly input data.
Intel Core i7
An Intel Core i7 processor powers the laptop and, along with 4096MB of DDR3 memory, provides enough performance for running even the most resource-heavy applications.
The Nvidia GTX 260M graphics chip used here is also powerful, with the latest games running seamlessly.
One terabyte of hard drive space offers exceptional storage and the Blu-ray drive lets you watch HD movies on the go.
Portability is limited, as you would expect, but the networking components provide the latest technology, so you will have no problems connecting to networks for online gaming sessions.
Despite being an old concept, it's still early days for the latest 3D technology, and the Asus G51J proves this. NvIdia's 3D Vision technology does work, but we think it will be a while before the content that completely immerses you arrives.
The price tag also seems a little high. If you are keen to try 3D and aren't necessarily bothered about gaming, the Acer Aspire 5738DZG-434G50Mn might be a better, and cheaper, option.
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In Depth: The Mac user's guide to Time Machine
Your Mac is in all probability one of your more prized possessions. Perhaps you even have more than one – a desktop and a portable, and an iPod touch or an iPhone to complete the line-up.
What's easy to forget though is that the kit itself is only part of the story. It's actually your data that's really valuable. If your Mac breaks down, it can be repaired. But if a hard drive croaks or something is accidentally deleted and it hasn't been backed up, there's no way to ever recover it.
For most people, their Mac stores all their data, from bank account information to photo libraries, home movies and email correspondence. It's fair to say that for many users, their entire life is on their Mac. And yet backing up is sometimes thought of as an inconvenience and something that people only start to do after they've already lost some important files.
Since OS X 10.5 Leopard, Apple has offered Time Machine, a straightforward and hassle-free backup utility integrated into the system. It's so easy to use that there's no excuse not to be using it regularly.
We'll show you how it works, how to get the most out of it and how to restore deleted files, folders and even entire systems – plus, of course, the various online backup and other archiving tools on offer. With our guide to backing up, you need never lose anything again…
Introducing Time Machine
Mac OS X 10.6 is the most stable and powerful operating system that Apple has ever created, but that doesn't mean that nothing will ever go wrong with your files. An accident, a theft, or mistakenly deleting or overwriting a file or folder can all result in the loss of important data.
And that's not even counting the possibility of a hard drive failure or the unexpected disconnection of an external hard drive, either of which can in some cases be terminal.
With all the focus on using your Mac as the hub of your digital life, it's easy to forget that storing everything on a single machine is a great idea – unless something goes wrong with that machine.
With OS X 10.5, Apple introduced Time Machine, an outwardly simple and straightforward backup tool tightly integrated into the system. It was a typically Apple-like approach to nudging users towards a certain way of working – in this case, backing up. There are no complicated options, no fiddling and best of all, it works automatically.
You'll find Time Machine in your Mac's System Preferences if you're running OS X 10.5 or 10.6, with a large, friendly on/off button to activate or deactivate it. It works by initially making a byte-forbyte copy of your system to a secondary or external hard drive, including not just all your data and applications but also the system itself.
Every subsequent backup that you perform or that is done automatically is incremental, meaning Time Machine only backs up files that have been added or modified since the last backup. It's able to determine this information thanks to some complex low-level technology using something called 'fsevents', though all most users need to know about this is that it works invisibly in the background.
The great advantage of incremental backups is that they use far less space than just copying everything every time. It also means you can rest assured that every new or modified file is being backed up, without you having to know what or where those files are. r
Recovery operation
Time Machine would be merely a good solution if this was the whole story, but the reason it's special is that it lets you recover data in a really intuitive way. By entering Time Machine's 'history' view, your Mac can display snapshots of every file and folder at every point it has been backed up.
So, for example, if you have deleted or changed an item, you can go back to the last backup and locate it from the point before you changed it; or, from the point before that, for as many backups as you have. From there you can restore the file or delete it from the backup, if you wish.
You can use Spotlight to preview an item to see if it's the one you want, and navigate back and forth through a folder's history.
Big fast backups
It makes sense to back up to an external FireWire or USB2 hard drive, as these are both surprisingly inexpensive and huge in size, though network drives and partitioned internal drives are also supported in some configurations. For as long as the specified drive is connected and Time Machine is switched on, it will keep hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month and weekly backups for previous months.
If you prefer, you can alter this schedule with a free app called Time Machine Scheduler. You might want to do this if you worry that an automatic backup starting up could interfere with your work or slow your Mac down. You can increase the backup interval and also force it to skip backups between specified times of day, but still leave it activated so you don't have to keep turning it on and off.
There's not much point in getting a backup drive that's the same size as your hard drive, as it will probably fill up quite quickly, especially if you regularly add or modify lots of large files. The good news is that very large drives are now commonplace and so a 500GB, 750GB or even 1 terabyte external hard drive shouldn't break the bank.
Western Digital's 1TB My Book Essential can be picked up for around £75, and LaCie's 2TB Neil Poulton Design drive is around £150. If your needs are more modest, LaCie makes a 500GB 2.5 inch drive for around £70.
Apple of course makes the Time Capsule, a combined 802.11n wireless base station and 1 or 2 terabyte hard drive specially designed to work with Time Machine and offering wireless backups, so you don't have to manually connect a drive to one or more Macs to back them up.
Although it's more expensive than a basic drive, it does offer various other advantages such as dual band Wi-Fi, guest networking, wireless drive sharing and wireless printer sharing.
With regular backups comes the probability that a drive will eventually fill up, but there are things you can do to prolong the amount of time before this happens. Namely, excluding some items from backups.
Obviously you want your important data to be backed up regularly, and leaving Time Machine switched on and the drive connected is the most sensible way to achieve this. But there are situations where backing up certain files is unnecessary and will just eat up space.
For example, if you are temporarily storing large files on a drive before moving them somewhere else, you may not want them included in your hourly backups. Similarly, if you have a Final Cut scratch folder for storing temporary video files, backing this up could be undesirable.
The solution is to exclude them from Time Machine's schedule by clicking Options in Time Machine and adding the relevant folders to the list of excluded items. If you decide you do want them to be included, you can remove them from this list, even if it's only temporarily so they get backed up once a month, for example.
Recovering files from Time Machine is easier than you think…
Backing up lots of files is relatively easy, and finding individual files that you want to restore is almost as simple. Time Machine's great strength lies not only in the fact that it's easy to use and works incrementally, only backing up files that have been added or changed since the last backup, but in the way that it provides access to those backups.
With more basic software, you usually have to pick your way through an arcane set of options to look for the items you're after. With Time Machine however, you can navigate in a much more intuitive way.
There are many possible situations in which you might want to get hold of an earlier version of a file or folder. The most obvious would be when you have accidentally or deliberately deleted something but then later find that you need it back; or, where you have changed a file but then realise you want to get that original version back again.
With Time Machine you're able to access a file or folder at every point at which it's been backed up. And since the backups are incremental, it will only have been backed up when it has been modified in the period between two backups. So provided that you let Time Machine run regularly, you should be able to access items as far back as their creation or first backup.
By choosing to enter Time Machine from the menu bar icon, which you can choose to show in Time Machine's preferences, you will invoke the Time Machine interface. This causes the Desktop to slide away and be replaced with a screen depicting the various stages of the currently selected folder going back through time.
Along the right-hand side of the screen you will see a timeline stretching from the present back to the first backup, complete with dates, and two arrows to navigate back and forth in time. If you run the mouse over this timeline you will see that it behaves a little like the Dock, magnifying itself to reveal more details about the time period you have selected and displaying specific dates for any backups that you mouse over.
Click on one of these to jump straight to it. A bar along the bottom of the screen shows you the exact date and time of whatever backup of a folder you are looking at.
To use Spotlight within Time Machine, you can type a search term into the search field in a Finder window and hit the back arrow to make Time Machine search through its backups for that term. If you don't know exactly when you last deleted or changed a file, you can use the back arrow to automatically travel through time to see when that folder was last modified.
Once you have located an item, you can use Quick Look by selecting it and hitting [Spacebar] to get a preview of its contents. You can't open items directly in Time Machine view, but you can preview them by using this method. In the case of music and movies, Quick Look will actually let you play them back.
Once you've identified an item you want, you can restore it by selecting it and pressing the Restore button at the bottom right. The file will then be copied to the Desktop or the current instance of the same folder it's located in, if it still exists. If two items in the same folder are going to have the same name, you're prompted to keep only one or both.
In OS X 10.6 you can right click on an item in Time Machine view and choose Restore to… which will let you choose a destination. For users of OS X 10.5, make sure the 'action' or 'gear' icon is present in your Finder window's toolbar. You can enable this by choosing View > Customize Toolbar.
This contains an option called Restore to which has the same effect. The item will remain as part of the backup, but now will also exist in the present, and so will be included in the next backup.
It's possible to restore several items or several folders within a folder by simply multiple-selecting them, holding the Shift or Command keys while clicking to choose them.
The right-click menu for one or more items in Time Machine also has some other functions. There's Open, which activates Quick Look, Get Info to reveal item information, and some deletion options.
Delete Backup will remove that instance of that item from the currently selected backup, and Delete all backups of the file will identify any instances of that file that exist in any of the backups on that drive. This is useful for saving space when big items are using it up and are no longer required.
Restore within Apple apps
Time Machine also works within some Apple apps Being able to recover files and folders is great, but many applications store their information in different ways than simply files with names in the Finder.
Applications like Address Book, Mail and iPhoto, for example, use databases of information and it's not so straightforward to pull a single email, contact or photo out of a backup like you could with a folder or a Word document, because they're contained within a larger database.
Luckily though, Apple, having designed all of the software in question, has addressed this and made it possible to access certain restore features of Time Machine from within these applications. Although you could navigate to the database files using the regular Time Machine view, this method isn't actually all that helpful because it wouldn't show you the information in any kind of usable form.
And by restoring that information to the desktop you would still have to open it in the relevant application to view it, which can cause problems with overwriting current data.
The solution is really quite simple and involves booting the relevant application and then, with it still in the foreground, invoking Time Machine either from the Dock or the menu bar.
What happens then is that Time Machine's interface appears, only instead of showing the Finder and its windows as normal, it shows the application's window. You can then move back and forth through time and for each backup you will see the relevant data that existed in that application, at that point.
So in Address Book, for example, even if you have deleted some contacts, you will be able to go back in time while staying within Address Book's interface and restore one or more contacts back to the present. In Mail, you can do the same and restore mailboxes or individual email messages that you had since deleted.
Time Machine will avoid duplicating mails by creating a separate mailbox within Mail for the recovered emails. In iPhoto '08 or later, you can do the same and restore photos from previous backups. Even GarageBand from version '08 onwards now supports Time Machine, so if you open a GarageBand project and invoke Time Machine you will be able to revert to an earlier version of a project, as long as it was backed up.
There are a couple of caveats to this, even though on the whole it's very useful. The first is that you cannot restore these things to an alternative location like you can with files and folders; they have to be restored to the current database folder of the application in question. As such, in some cases they may overwrite current data, unless you keep your eyes open.
The solution to this in GarageBand is to duplicate the current project file prior to restoring an older one, so that you have a copy of both.
As we have noted, Mail creates a separate mailbox to avoid confusion. iPhoto will prompt you to overwrite any images that are identical to the ones you're restoring and so gives you the choice whether to do so or not. Address Book will ask if you want to add the selected cards to the database and will warn you if the card is a duplicate of an existing one, giving you the option to review the conflicting information and amend it if necessary.
So as long as you understand what you're restoring, there should be no problems with overwriting existing data.
Another minor quirk of this way of working with Time Machine as opposed to the regular files and folders approach is that sometimes, if you enter Time Machine with an item selected that wasn't present or was excluded when some of the backups were done, those backups will be greyed out in the timeline on the right and you won't be able to select them.
If for example you have recently created a mailbox in Mail and then enter Time Machine with that mailbox selected in Mail, only backups made since that mailbox was created will appear in white as normal; the earlier ones will be greyed out.
You should, however, be able to return to Mail and select another, older mailbox and then back in Time Machine view, the previous backups associated with that mailbox will be available to select.
Other applications do not at present integrate with Time Machine in this way, so if you enter Time Machine with another application in the foreground, it will simply slide from view and the regular Finder view will take its place.
Time Machine integration with these key Apple applications might seem like nothing too exciting on the face of it, but in fact it's incredibly useful. You have always been able to back up a load of information in one go – your Mail database or photo library, for example – and then dig through them in the Finder later to try to locate and extract individual mails, pictures, contacts and so on.
But that can be a long and slow process, especially compared to the convenience of simply jumping into Time Machine within an application and being able to search all its backed up data in the same view you normally see when using the application. All the formatting remains intact and of course you can use Spotlight from within Time Machine to search.
In fact, Address Book, Mail and iPhoto all have their own search fields that still work in Time Machine view, so you can quickly search any backups directly from inside the app, making it easy to find data from even the biggest library of mail, pictures or contacts.
At present, these are the apps that integrate with Time Machine, but hopefully Apple will in future add this level of backup support to other apps.
Time Machine isn't the only solution for backing up your Mac…
Time Machine is certainly easy to use and for many users running OS X 10.5 and 10.6, it's a great solution. There are others, however, for whom alternatives might be better, or at least for whom other backup tools could be used in conjunction with Time Machine for added security and flexibility.
At its most basic, of course, backing up a Home directory (for example) is as simple as dragging and dropping the folder onto an external hard drive; or, burning data to rewritable or one-shot DVDs. Although this is OK, its reliant on you to remember to do it and doesn't provide any file recovery features that are more advanced than what the Finder has to offer. It certainly can't provide a bootable backup, since OS X uses so many invisible system files with special permissions.
So a more dedicated solution is preferable. One drawback of Time Machine is that it doesn't make bootable backups, and so in an emergency all you can do is restore it to a hard drive.
Some other applications, though, do enable you to make bootable backups, which you can then boot from an external drive on other Macs for the purposes of troubleshooting or testing systems. One such application is SuperDuper! ($27.95).
This deceptively simple program is actually very powerful and works on PPC and Intel Macs on OS X 10.4 and 10.5 right up to the latest version of 10.6, which is of course Intel-only. As well as scheduling, it also supports 'smart updating', which is essentially similar to the incremental features of Time Machine.
Crucially, backups made with SuperDuper! are bootable, so you can store a fully bootable backup as well as a Time Machine backup and boot from it in the event of a problem.
Carbon Copy Cloner, free donationware, also supports scheduling, incremental backups, backing up over a network and of course bootable backups. It's also simple to use and will provide you with a fully working clone of your system that can be booted from an external drive, should you run into difficulties.
Users with older Macs as well as MobileMe subscribers might want to look at Apple's own venerable Backup application, although since it was superseded by Time Machine, OS X 10.6 doesn't appear to be officially supported. That said, it seemed to work fine on our 10.6 MacBook.
Other low cost or free backup applications include iBackup (free) which supports multiple sets of backups, scheduling, networked backups and smart folders; and also Synkbackup, which comes in various paid-for versions.
The reason it's so important to have a bootable backup of your OS X system is that in the event of a major problem, troubleshooting and first aid is far easier if you can boot a Mac from a working system.
Booting from an OS X install DVD is fine for certain tasks but won't give you much access to the system. Booted from the DVD, you can run hardware checks on the Mac's internal hard drive, erase and reinstall the system and restore a Time Machine backup, amongst a few other things. But these latter two are quite drastic moves, for when all else has failed.
They will invariably involve losing some data unless your latest Time Machine backup is very recent. Unless you have two Macs, a bootable system on an external drive can really save your bacon.
Sometimes, for example, a bit of software will install a startup item or a library file that doesn't play nicely with your system; or a driver will cause a kernel panic. It's rare but not unheard of. Armed only with a system disc, you couldn't get at the hard drive to view or delete the offending files and would be forced to restore or reinstall.
With a working bootable system, however, you can get the Mac back up and running by holding the Option key during startup with the drive connected over USB2 or FireWire, and then select it as the boot system. Then you can locate and delete the offending items, run an uninstaller or temporarily move or rename folders to see if you can fix the problem.
For environments where backing up is a more commercially sensitive area such as businesses, products like Retrospect 8 might be worth considering. Far more advanced than Time Machine, this is designed to operate in a multi-platform, networked business environment and so while it's more than a home user would need, it could be perfect for a business.
Retrospect 8 for Mac comes in several versions, priced from $85 to $1,250 depending on the number of client licenses included. It has features such as: support for backing up and restoring Windows, Linux and Mac clients; backup to optical disk, tape, NAS and SAN storage devices; support for bootable backups; compression during backup; server admin and AES-256 encryption.
Clearly these are things that a business user would have much more use for than a home user, but they would also need a good technical knowledge. Ideally, a conscientious user should run Time Machine regularly and something like SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner periodically – and certainly prior to performing major system updates – so that you have both instant access to your backed up files and folders, and a bootable system.
Either a disk image or a full Time Machine backup can be restored to a hard drive in the event of a really serious problem.
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Google responds to user feedback and quietens down Buzz inbox noise
When you join in with a conversation in Google Buzz, that post appears in your Gmail inbox, but Gmail users have responded by saying that it makes the inbox 'noisy'.
So today Google has launched two new Buzz features which it hopes will help calm the noise.
The first is a setting which controls what appears in your inbox. From the Buzz tab of Gmail Settings, you'll be able to choose whether the following buzz items get sent to your inbox: comments on your posts; comments on posts after you comment on them; comments on posts after you are @replied on them.
The second is change is that Buzz now offers explanations for why posts get sent to your inbox. Buzz users will now see a message at the top of each post in the inbox that explains why it's there - either someone commented on your post, or you were @replied, for example.
Google has also added a 'mute' link that will stop subsequent comments from bringing the Buzz conversation back to your inbox.
"These are just the first in series of features designed to help control the noise level in Google Buzz, so stay tuned for more," says Google. You can suggest further changes and vote for others on the Google Buzz product ideas page.
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SXSWi 2010: Digg design director talks up crowdsourcing
Jeffrey Kalmikoff, director of design and user experience at Digg, was on a panel today at South by South West where he and Scott Belsky from crowdsourced design organisation Behance talked about how businesses could understand and utilise crowdsourcing.
Before Digg, Kalmikoff worked at one of the most high-profile crowdsourced businesses - threadless.com - where user-submitted designs are turned into T-shirts.
"The majority of my career has been based on crowdsourcing," says Kalmikoff. "My interest is that I love ideas and I love sharing ideas – I love the notion that you can have an idea and work with a group of like-minded people to make the idea better."
Crowdsourcing – a term coined in June 2006, is really an umbrella term, describing multiple ways that you can source ideas, explains Kalmikoff, and despite a common misconception that crowdsourcing simply means free labour, this isn't necessarily the case.
Wisdom and labour
Belsky and Kalmikoff went on to explain how there are to avenues a business can use for crowdsourcing – wisdom and labour. The wisdom avenue – used by Wikipedia, for example - takes the view that what any single person thinks isn't as important as the collective, consensual view of a group of people.
Labour includes services such as Mechanical Turk, which Kalmikoff describes as "a spectacular use of crowdsourced labour". In talking about labour, "we are really defining it as an open call to complete or fulfil a specific task or need," he adds.
"When it comes to crowdsourcing, what excites me the most are businesses that harness both sides of crowdsourcing – wisdom and labour," says Kalmikoff, citing Digg and Threadless as examples.
On Digg, explains Kalmikoff, "the labour side would be 'I want to get a story promoted to the home page of Digg, so I'm going to scour the internet for something that is cool, hope that it hasn't been submitted before and I'm going to make the effort to submit it'. From that point on, crowdsourced wisdom decides whether or not it should be promoted [to the front page]."
Crowdsourcing on Digg doesn't stop there, though. "Going further into Digg it's not just those particular things," says Kalmikoff. "We use crowdsourcing in different ways all over the site – you can digg up and digg down comments… It really is fully involving the community, and leveraging the crowdsourcing in a way that keeps the community active."
One of the most exciting things about crowdsourcing is the idea of the level playing field, says Kalmikoff. It doesn't matter who you are or where you come from – what matters is whether you produce the best work.
Kalmikoff goes on to give an example of "an incredibly famous graphic designer" who submitted a design to Threadless. "And his design, not only did it not get printed, but it was declined for poor design."
The crowdsourced nature of the way Threadless designs are chosen showed that this designer "didn't have his finger on the pulse of what people were looking for," says Kalmikoff.
"And that's the beauty of it, that's the beauty of Digg… it's a level playing field and everyone has an equal chance of hitting the front page."
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