Windows on a stick (or ANY OS for that matter)

Windows To Go is a brand-new feature in Windows 8. It allows Windows 8 to be installed on a USB drive and run on any computer – just plug the USB drive into any computer, restart the computer, and you’ll be using your Windows 8 environment. Unfortunately, this feature is only available in Windows 8 Enterprise – even Professional edition users don’t get to use this. But... there is an alternative!

You can easily install Windows, Ubuntu or any other Linux distribution using UNetbootin. Installing an operating system to a USB thumb drive is simple using Unetbootin. Essentially it's a four step process, much faster, and saves you from burning the ISO image on a new DVD.

Before you begin, you need the following:
-USB Flash Drive (4GB minimum)
-Windows 7 ISO Image file
-UNetbootin

1. First download the Windows 8 ISO image here. (Sorry folks..this is only the Consumer Review version..not the full version)

2. Now insert the USB drive, run UNetbootin, and select Disk Image as ISO. Browse your local drive for Windows 8 ISO that you downloaded and click Open. Now Select Type as USB and choose the drive. Once done, it will look like a bit similar to the screenshot shown below.

3. Click OK and it will begin extracting all installation files to the USB drive. The whole process will take some time(10-15 minutes), so have patience.

4. Once the installation is complete, reboot your computer.
Now while your system is starting up press the key to bring up the BIOS screen depending on your manufacture (usually DEL,  F3, or ESC).
Change the startup order to boot USB by default, usually you will have to press F6 to move the selected USB device on top. Once done, save changes and restart the system.

10 Best free and open source

These days, you can quite easily buy a brand-spanking-new computer and install all the software you need for free, using applications offered under the GNU/Open Software License. 
You can get a free operating system, image editor, a free sound editor, office suite, media player, file archiver, PDF creator… the list goes on and on and on. The vast majority of them are cross-platform. 
Listed below are 20 invaluable and indispensable open source applications that you really should be using, if you’re not already.

Mail Client: Thunderbird
With its speedy searches, strong security and superb add-ons, Thunderbird has to be the best, free email application available. If you’re prepared to spend some time tailoring your email environment with add-ons, you’ll absolutely love it. Outlook users will feel right at home. Addons available from customization, themes, and importing VCF's (contact cards)

Photo editor: GIMP
As for most Photoshop users understand, image editing software is expensive for most people, but GIMP provides a free alternative. It performs every major function you could desire, including working with layers, image retouching and editing, transform, resizing, cropping. File formats include GIF, JPEG, TIFF, PNG, PSD, BMP...etc

Office Suite: Open Office
With the ability to create text documents, spreadsheets, presentations and databases, OpenOffice is an accomplished rival to Microsoft Office, which clearly influenced OpenOffice’s design. Microsoft Office users will feel completely at home and find that OpenOffice performs just as well, if not better.

Operating system: Ubuntu or Linux Mint
Ubuntu is a free operating system that’s quick and easy to use. Recent figures suggest that around 50% of Linux users have Ubuntu installed and was, until recently the number 1 choice for Linux ditros. Linux Mint has taken the top lead. Mint is actually based on Ubuntu but it adds a custom desktop and menus, and avoids the new Unity desktop which Ubuntu utilizes.

Accounting/Small Business: GnuCash
GnuCash provides a great, free alternative to paid-for accounting software. Designed for personal and small business use, it offers bank account, stock, income and expense tracking, in addition to double-entry accounting.

Music/sound editor: Audacity
Users can record and edit live audio; cut, copy, splice and mix sounds; and convert ageing tapes and records into digital format. Formats supported: MP3, WAV, MID, AIFF,
and Ogg

Zip Compression: ZipCentral
ZipCentral is a free and easy to use ZIP file manager with all the utilities you need to manage your zip files. It can also create Self-Extracting archives and archives spanned across multiple files. ZipCentral supports Drag & Drop to and from Windows Explorer Context menu.

FTP: FileZilla
FileZilla is a hugely successful, cross-platform FTP client. It’s also available as a server, for Windows only. Created in January 2001 by Tim Klosse as a class project, FileZilla has gone on to become the 5th most popular download of all time from SourceForge.net.

PDF: PDFCreator
Windows users can consider PDFCreator a credible rival to Adobe Acrobat. Creating PDFs is as easy as printing, literally, as once installed, you can select PDFCreator as your printer, letting you create PDFs from practically any application.

Blogging/Website: Wordpress
WordPress is the world’s most popular blogging platform, used by a staggering 202 million websites. As simple or as complex as you want it to be, WordPress is supported by a wide array of plugins which can be used to transform a standard blog into anything you could possibly desire.

Why Android rocks

I like the robot.                                    
He's user friendly, open source and based on the Linux kernel.

Back in 2005 when the search giant was only 7 years old, Google did a very smart thing. It bought out and acquired a small but little known company called Android Inc.
Larry Paige and company understood the potential for this Linux kernel OS on a phone and went forward creating the Open Handset Alliance, Android Open Source Project, and built from there.

Today we have the newest Android version "Jelly Bean" which contains several graphics updates to make the animations more "fluidlike and buttery".

More of the features of "Jelly Bean" include:
User-installable keyboard maps
Expandable notifications
Ability to turn off notifications on an app specific basis
Bluetooth data transfer for Android Beam
Offline voice dictation
Improved voice search
Improved camera app among other improvements.

Besides the customization, the availability of apps on the market is enormous. Applications are a major driving force when a customer chooses a phone. Apple still has the lead over at the App Store but Google is fast catching up and is expected to overtake iOS apps numbers in 2012.

One of the best things about the openness of the Android platform is that if you're unhappy with the stock OS, you can install one of many modified versions of Android (called ROMs) on your device. Installing a ROM can be tricky as the device must first be "rooted", then the ROM needs to be installed correctly. It's alot like installing a newer version of Windows with the bells and whistles. If you want more info about  ROMS head over to the pros at XDADevelopers forums.

Google encourages open source and developing of apps.This gives developers the ability to
create & develop apps and post them on the Market (Google Play).
Both the Windows Mobile and the IOS from Apple are closed source. Until recently Microsoft had shunned the open source world but now realizes the importance of collaboration.

Linux - an explanation

Linux is an open source operating system which is free. It's considered the third top operating system trailing behind Windows and Mac.
Whats great about Linux is that it's open source. This means the code can used, copied, studied, changed, and improved upon its design.

You may not realize it but many cell phones, DVR's (TIVOS) and routers use the Linux kernel. (The core component of the operating system). Linux systems are used in every domain, from embedded systems to supercomputers, and have secured a place in server market. Your cell phone likely runs on Android, an offshoot of Linux.

Many programmers and corporations have created their own distributions or "distros" for public use. The majority of them are simple, easy to use with a Graphical User Interface (GUI) similar to Windows. In fact, the desktops of most Linux ditros are comparable to Windows with a Menu, control panel, and desktop panel (Start bar).


Whats the advantages of Linux vs Windows?
*Linux is Open Source, which means the code can be viewed/changed.
*Linux is free
*The Linux kernel is a fast "monolithic OS" as compared to a "microkernel OS" (Windows). This speeds up commands between the OS and the hardware.
*Linux OS ditros are highly configurable
*Linux system requirements are lower than Windows. Damm Small Linux can run on run on a 486 processor with little as 128MB of memory. Ubuntu, one of the leading ditros can run on 400mb of memory and 700mhz processor. Well below the minimum requirements for Windows Vista of 1GHz processor and 1(GB) of memory. So if you have an old desktop laying around without Windows, you prob have a perfect Linux machine waiting to be used.

Many distros are downloadable from the respected web pages, and usually come as an ISO image. Which means you download the ISO and burn the image on a CD. Most ditros come with a "live" CD version which means you can pop the CD in the computer and run the OS directly from the CD therby trying it out for a test drive first before installing it on the hard drive.


Check out these well know Linux Ditros. Oh yeah... did I mention it's free?
Linux Mint - since December Mint has passed Ubuntu as the leading distro.

Ubuntu - a huge corporation, Canonical, designed the second most popular linux distro. It has since lost first place becuase of the new Unity interface, but is still has a strong following.

Fedora, Debian and OpenSuse are other fantastic ditros to try out.
Who knows.... you may like Linux so much you may make the switch permanently, or make a dual boot machine with Windows and Linux side by side.