So after 5 days of use of BT Vision, I can summerise my initial experience as a pretty good one. I’ve been able to watch, record, replay and view “on-demand” TV successfully experiencing few issues. The graphical user interface is pleasing to the eye, stable, fast and intuitive. Overall, the initial user experience has been higher than I had previously expected and I’m looking forward to BT providing more on-demand content to satisfy the £14 subscription per month.
I’ll also put some pictures and videos up to let you see it in work very soon…
So it was about 2 months ago my 6 year old Fujitsu-Siemens S6120 came to a stand still. After 2 power module failures (about 2 years ago) and this time a hard drive death, I decided it was enough. I am going to do away with Windows. Luckily, I saved all my important data onto an external hard drive and was in position to start off fresh with a new hard drive! Well… it wasn’t brand new. I stole it out of my old Dell Inspiron 5000 which had a measly 20Gb of space. But this was a temporary measure (I’m saving the pennys to get a 24″ iMac at the end of month!) and thought that it would keep me ticking overfor a few months and all my improtant data is kept seperately anyway. I took the jump with no previous Linux experience and successfully installed Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn). I was lucky that all my hardware was compatible and no extra drivers were required. I was able to connect to my wireless network instantly which was the amazing thing!
Nowadays, I don’t really many dedicated applications on my laptop anymore. The majority of “stuff” I do now is on the internet. All I need now is a decent Internet Browser and Messaging Client. Both of these exist for Linux… Firefox and GAIM (now known as Pidgin) I’ve been able to do the majority of my home activities (Facebook, Blogging, Drupal and Portal). There are obviously the usual wish lists that could make the whole user experience much better:
A good free image editor (I don’t like GIMP, need something like Paint.net)
Better support for Printers
Better support for executable file locations/shortcuts and being able to uninstall programs easily
Apart from that, my experience with Ubuntu has been excellent and it’s a worthy contender against Windows. My girlfriend (who uses a MacBook) and my housemate who doesn’t really use a computer both found it very easy to use and almost couldn’t find any difference when they were surfing the interent! If you don’t have much money and building a PC from scratch then this is the best way forward. The minimum spec requirements to install Ubuntu are very low and my 20Gb hardrive is not even a quarter full yet! There is so much community support out there (see the Ubuntu Forums) to help you if you encounter any stumbling block. I think the motto for Linux is “Where there is a will…”
Now I’m waiting for updated release, Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) and very excited. One key feature that will be included will be Compiz Fusion which is an eye candy module for Ubuntu making the user experience much more fulfilling (similar to a Mac experience). e.g. animated images, real time play back of material when objects are resized and moved.
Click on the “countdown” image above to get the latest version of Ubuntu now!
