(Credit: Shuttle)LAS VEGAS--Asus' Eee PC and Everex's CloudBook aren't the only ones pushing down the price of affordable, open-source PCs.
Shuttle introduced its $199 KPC Linux PC here on Tuesday. The company didn't have it on display on the actual floor of the convention halls here at the Consumer Electronics Show (too late did I find out you had to zip over to a private suite at the Bellagio for a look-see), but booth representatives were happy to talk details. "It's meant for simple tasks," said sales rep James Wonpu.
It'll have an Intel Celeron processor, a 945GC chipset, 512MB of memory and either a 60GB or 80GB hard drive. What it won't have: an optical drive or a PCI Express slot. Despite that, it's a pretty good-looking box, and comes in red, blue, white, and black, each with a different icon stamped on the front.
(Credit: Shuttle)Shuttle also says there will be a $99 barebones version of the KPC. That version will have the option of upgrading to a Core2Duo processor and 1GB of memory. Both will be available for purchase near the end of the first quarter.
Many applications come and go everyday from our computers and, in the end, only the best remains. Therefore, we thought it was a good idea to pick ten of the best open source applications of the year that passed. The following classification is not a “who’s the best or worst app” kind of list, it was made based on the most used and useful applications that helped us (the users) during the entire year. Without any further introduction, here are the finalists:
The GIMP - also known as the GNU Image Manipulation Program, it is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. The Gimp works on many operating systems, in many languages and we think it is a vital application when you deal with images everyday! Download
MPlayer - Still undefeated, MPlayer is, was and we strongly believe that it will be the best video player Linux has ever had. However, let’s not forget that it runs on Mac OS X and Windows, as well. Many of today’s video players software are based on MPlayer and that make it the best choice in video playback! Download
Amarok - Being able to compete with iTunes and other popular music player applications, Amarok is the music player for Linux and Unix systems. It has an intuitive interface and makes playing the music you love easier than ever before - and looks good doing it! Download
Pidgin - You listen to music, watch videos and manipulate photos, but you’ve got to have a chat application, and who’s the multiplatform, multiprotocol one? Pidgin! The Instant Messaging client that allows you to use all of your IM accounts at once. AIM, IRC, Yahoo, Google Talk, MSN, QQ, ICQ, SILC, Jabber… Pidgin can do them all! Download
OpenOffice.org - the powerful and unshakable open source office suite that proved to be the best in its category. It is a multilanguage office suite that will run on all major platforms. It best known to be compatible with all other major office suites. Download
Wine - the open source implementation of the Windows API on top of X, OpenGL, and Unix, proved to be the most strong, powerful and easy to use software emulator of 2007. With Wine, you can run a lot of Windows programs on Unix-based operating systems. It’s number one and we sure hope it will remain the same from now on! Download
K3b - proved to be the best CD and DVD burning application for Linux-based operating systems. K3b provides an easy to use, but powerful and comfortable user interface to perform most CD/DVD burning tasks. It can deal with any CD/DVD format that exists today. It can create Audio CDs, Video CDs, eMovix CDs, rip DVDs and encode DivX/XviD video files. Download
Firefox - has its flaws, like many other browsers out there, but in the end it proved to be the best open source web browser software. The award-winning web browser is faster, secure, and fully customizable. With Firefox, your online experience will be better than ever! Download
Thunderbird - a full-featured email, RSS and newsgroup client that makes emailing safer, faster and easier than ever before. It offers some advantages over other mail clients, including junk mail classification. It sure is one of the best E-mail/RSS open source and multiplatform applications. Download
Filezilla - a fast and reliable cross-platform FTP, FTPS and SFTP client with lots of useful features and an intuitive interface. It is very easy to use, supports transfer of files over 4GB and has filename filters. In our opinion, Filezilla is by far the king of FTP clients! Download
