Pure Insanity!

I have spent most of the week in Microsoft hell. I managed to attract some nasty little virus whose mission in life seemed to be to disable most of my control panel. For the longest time I have been mumbling that if I had to reload this computer one more time I would stick bloody Linux on it.

Well, thursday I was reading some press releases, and came across one from a company called Linspire. These guys hit the news two years ago when the released Lindows, a linux based knockoff of Windows. There were a lot of harsh words traded between Redmond and San Diego.

Anyway Lindows has become Linspire, and in it's own way is also creating some waves. It is a commecial offering ($49.99), and what is annoying Linux purists is the fact that they have liscensed some technology from Microsoft. Linspire can play Windows Media files.

Fifty bucks sounded like a bargain, if it lived up to its claims, but it was approximately $49.99 more than I was willing to spend! So putting on my best reviewer hat I fired off an email to Linspire. Within minutes (10) I had press credentials and access to their download site, I was pretty damn impressed.

I downloaded the ISO yesterday morning, and burned an install CD.

Now this is where it gets really interesting. Including a hard drive format the total elapsed time for the install was under 15 minutes! I was amazed. Oh and that included Open Office, and a full compliment of internet tools. During the install it asked me one question, and that was what my name was! Outstanding is what I call this. Microsoft could learn a thing or five from this small company. If you want the whole story you can read it here.

The other excitement yesterday was an interview I did with an AMD exec. Charlie Boswell is an energetic guy, I missed his exact job title, but its something like Vice President of being enthusiastic! 45 minutes on the phone with Charlie and I was ready for a nap!

What I did find curious about the whole thing was that while Charlie may be AMD's chief Evangelist, he is not allowed out without a handler! And the handler was there to make sure Charlie did not stray into areas not approved of. Very entertaining stuff.

I also noticed that the interview took less than a couple of hours to land on one of the AMD sponsored web sites, so I guess the big cheeses liked it. You can read it here.