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10372 discussions

serial ports in wine
by Peter Alcibiades 11 Apr '10

11 Apr '10

Has anyone succeeded in using a serial port from Wine, and if so, how did you do it, and how did you test it? I have done the usual things, linked as the Wine guide says, my user is a member of dialout. I've also installed setserial and minicom, got the port configured correctly, and I have managed to connect two computers with a serial cable and then have stuff typed in one minicom window show up in the other. I have also tried setting /dev/ttyS0 to 775 so permissions should not be a problem. But what I don't seem able to do is have applications in Wine get to the serial port. And is there some kind of minicom package for windows that you should use, in the same way you can use the minicom on Linux, so that you can actually see the thing working? Sometimes people suggest you should make loopback by jumpering two of the leads on the serial cable. Have you tried that, and will it explode if you get the leads wrong? And what did you use, a bit of copper wire? Peter

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Youtube Flash player control weirdness
by Srdjan Todorovic 11 Apr '10

11 Apr '10

Hi All, I'm experiencing weirdness with Youtube flash player where one can play the video but sometimes (happens too often IMO) you cannot interact with the player controls (pause/play/position slider). Sometimes it can be "unstuck" if you randomly right-click on the HTML area of the page in Firefox. Anyone knows the cause and/or the solution to this? Firefox: 3.5.8 Shockwave Flash: 10.0 r45 OS: Linux Distro: Kubuntu 9.10 Thanks, Srdjan

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Now look out!
by Anthony Anson 11 Apr '10

11 Apr '10

Lenny now ensconced on the Acer Wide-screen flaptop, so it is likely that a superplethora of questions will cascade into the list innit. Most impressed by the relative loading and shut-down speeds as compared with the P it came with. Until everything is working sensibly, Mr. Grub gives me the chance to regress into a comfort-zone - like ATM, when the dongle won't connect... -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

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Using a Blackberry as a modem
by Paul Grenyer 10 Apr '10

10 Apr '10

Hi All Does any one have thier Blackberry working as a modem with Ubuntu 9.10. I've found plent of stuff on google, but nothing works. Help! -- Thanks Paul Paul Grenyer e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com

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OS Map Data ???
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 10 Apr '10

10 Apr '10

Hi Folks, Has any one tried to actually download any of the OS Map Data, supposedly just released on "OpenData" access? As detailed, for instance, by the Guardian today: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/apr/02/ ordnance-survey-open-data [equivalent: http://tinyurl.com/yf9dr5y ] I've tried three times today. When you choose a map to download, you fill in a form including your email address. When it is complete, you are told that they will email you the links for download. If you don't get an email within two hour, you are invited to try again. I went through the process for two maps about 4 hours ago, and have heard nothing. I have recently repeated it for one of them (the "Land-Form PANORAMA (vector)" map -- see the Guardian article), and still have heard nothing. Anyone want to compare notes? Thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 03-Apr-10 Time: 14:25:14 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Digital Ignorance Bill
by Richard Lewis 09 Apr '10

09 Apr '10

http://i.imgur.com/1pXlO.jpg Doesn't bode well for digital Britain :-/ -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis ISMS, Computing Goldsmiths, University of London Tel: +44 (0)20 7078 5134 Skype: richardjlewis JID: ironchicken(a)jabber.earth.li http://www.richard-lewis.me.uk/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- +----------------------------------------------+ | Support open access to scholarship | | http://freeculture.org/ http://www.doaj.org/ | +----------------------------------------------+

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Ubuntu Wireless
by Paul Grenyer 09 Apr '10

09 Apr '10

Hi All I'm after some wireless card advice. I have the latest Ubuntu installed on my wife's old: HP Pavilion Pentium 4 and I'm using it as a build box. I need to go wireless. The machine has a couple of PCI slots free. What would people recommend in terms of a wireless card? How would I then go about setting it up? I also have an old USB Belkin F5D6050 wireless adapter. I think it's only 16 bit. Could I use that? I have no idea where to start to set it up.... -- Thanks Paul Paul Grenyer e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com

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Static HTML templating
by Mark Rogers 08 Apr '10

08 Apr '10

I'm (fairly) sure someone here was talking about a templating system for generating static HTML (ie you write the templates, run a script, and get a set of HTML that you upload to the website). I can't find it by searching my ALUG archive for phrases like static, HTML or template, though. Does anyone recall what it was? If not (or regardless), does anyone have any recommendations? I'm building a website for someone who will need to maintain the static HTML themselves when finished. Since all the pages have common elements it's a pain not templating it for my own benefit, however. I could just work in PHP/Smarty as I normally would, then "wget --mirror" the site to generate the static HTML, but if there are better solutions I'm always happy to learn something new! -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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Slow network performance with lots of connections
by Mark Rogers 08 Apr '10

08 Apr '10

When my Linux box has a lot of connections (eg when downloading an ISO via BitTorrent), the network connectivity gets very slow for other things. Now this could be because the total bandwidth usage is high, but I'm seeing this even when the total bandwidth on my cable connection is say 50kbps down, 10kbps up. As this is cable, I may be hitting Virgin bandwidth limits (I'm not sure how to tell), and this may sometimes be the case because if I test with another PC on my home network I sometimes find it is also slow. Other times the other PC is fine. In any case, killing the torrent download usually (not always) speeds everything up. So, there seem to me to be several possible issues (any/all of which may be applying at different times), but I don't know how to diagnose it. For example, it may be the total number of connections at the router (a cheap Netgear wireless cable router supplied by Virgin), or maybe even at the virgin cable modem box? I try rebooting any of these and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but I am very aware that I'm just trying random things and not really getting anywhere! -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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Re: [ALUG] Increasing Tomcat Memory
by Paul Grenyer 07 Apr '10

07 Apr '10

Hi > On Sun, Apr 4, 2010 at 10:47 AM, James Elsey <james.elsey(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> From this forum post[1] you should just be able to modify the catalina >> startup script, >> >> Gotta go out so I don't have time to try it myself, but good luck! >> >> [1] >> http://www.coderanch.com/t/421341/Tomcat/change-JVM-setting-Xms-Xmx#1858331 > > I've managed to increase the memory by adding: > > export CATALINA_OPTS="-XmX2048 -Xms2048" > > to /etc/init.d/tomcat. However, it hasn't fixed my deployment problem: > > > deploy-webapp: > > BUILD FAILED > java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space > at java.util.Arrays.copyOf(Arrays.java:2786) > at java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream.write(ByteArrayOutputStream.java:94) > at sun.net.www.http.PosterOutputStream.write(PosterOutputStream.java:61) > at java.io.BufferedOutputStream.write(BufferedOutputStream.java:105) > at org.apache.catalina.ant.AbstractCatalinaTask.execute(AbstractCatalinaTask.java:215) > at org.apache.catalina.ant.DeployTask.execute(DeployTask.java:201) > at org.apache.tools.ant.UnknownElement.execute(UnknownElement.java:288) > at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) > at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39) > at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25) > at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597) > at org.apache.tools.ant.dispatch.DispatchUtils.execute(DispatchUtils.java:106) > at org.apache.tools.ant.Task.perform(Task.java:348) > at org.apache.tools.ant.Target.execute(Target.java:357) > at org.apache.tools.ant.Target.performTasks(Target.java:385) > at org.apache.tools.ant.Project.executeSortedTargets(Project.java:1337) > at org.apache.tools.ant.Project.executeTarget(Project.java:1306) > at org.apache.tools.ant.helper.DefaultExecutor.executeTargets(DefaultExecutor.java:41) > at org.apache.tools.ant.Project.executeTargets(Project.java:1189) > at org.apache.tools.ant.Main.runBuild(Main.java:758) > at org.apache.tools.ant.Main.startAnt(Main.java:217) > at org.apache.tools.ant.launch.Launcher.run(Launcher.java:257) > at org.apache.tools.ant.launch.Launcher.main(Launcher.java:104) > > And now I look at the stack trace a bit closer, I wonder if it's Ant > that's running out of space. It was Ant by the look of things. In the end I added: ANT_OPTS="-Xmx1024m -Xms1024m" export ANT_OPTS to /usr/share/ant/bin/ant and it appears to have fixed the problem. -- Thanks Paul Paul Grenyer e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com

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Re: [ALUG] 2 part question!
by Paul Grenyer 06 Apr '10

06 Apr '10

Hi I can't access the link properly on my Blackberry. As it's Qt is it C++? Paul ------Original Message------ From: Chris Walker Sender: main-bounces(a)lists.alug.org.uk To: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk ReplyTo: cdw_alug(a)the-walker-household.co.uk Subject: [ALUG] 2 part question! Sent: 6 Apr 2010 16:23 I am going to have a go at writing an application for my Nokia N900 phone based on this - http://www.forum.nokia.com/info/sw.nokia.com/id/f28e1110-5ef3-4e24-8ff0-29a… What I would also like to do is have a similar database on my desktop machine - it runs Mandriva 2010 64 bit so that I can update one and 'sync' it with the other one. Can somebody point me in the direction of some suitable SQL Lite code please? I've looked and I'm even more confused than I was when I started. TIA. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________| _______________________________________________ main(a)lists.alug.org.uk http://www.alug.org.uk/ http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above!

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2 part question!
by Chris Walker 06 Apr '10

06 Apr '10

I am going to have a go at writing an application for my Nokia N900 phone based on this - http://www.forum.nokia.com/info/sw.nokia.com/id/f28e1110-5ef3-4e24-8ff0-29a… What I would also like to do is have a similar database on my desktop machine - it runs Mandriva 2010 64 bit so that I can update one and 'sync' it with the other one. Can somebody point me in the direction of some suitable SQL Lite code please? I've looked and I'm even more confused than I was when I started. TIA. -- __ __| |_ __ __ .----------------------------------------------. / _/ _` \ V V / | mailto:cdw_alug@the-walker-household.co.uk | \__\__,_|\_/\_/ |______________________________________________|

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MySQL Arrrgg!
by James Bensley 06 Apr '10

06 Apr '10

Knowers of all (I have cross-posted this question to two different lists hence the BCC to not cause unwanted traffic so reply either on list or directly to me off list, its your choice); I am trying to execute the following MySQL statement and am coming up a croppa' SELECT name FROM `visitor` WHERE dob = DATE_SUB(CURDATE(), INTERVAL 21 YEAR) This is to select everyone from a table who is 21 years old, just as an example. The statement runs and returns with no errors but returns no entries (and there are entries that are 21 years old) Ultimately I am going to do something like this (I am just free-writing this so the syntax is probably wrong but hopefully you will get the idea); SELECT name FROM `visitor` WHERE dob BETWEEN DATE_SUB(CURDATE(), INTERVAL 21 YEAR) AND DATE_SUB(CURDATE(), INTERVAL 30 YEAR) to get everyone who is between X and Y years old. Do people think the problem is in my statement or my database? -- Regards, James. http://www.jamesbensley.co.cc/

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Fwd: [Gllug] Open Source Hardware - event & list.
by Richard Lewis 06 Apr '10

06 Apr '10

Hi ALUG, I know there are a few very keen hardware geeks reading this list. The following may be of interest. I guess meetings will be in London, but the list <http://oshug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/oshug> may be quite fun. Of course, there's also the question of whether LUGs should splinter off hardware enthusiasts; after all, hardware is pretty useless without software and software is pretty tedious without hardware. -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis ISMS, Computing Goldsmiths, University of London Tel: +44 (0)20 7078 5134 Skype: richardjlewis JID: ironchicken(a)jabber.earth.li http://www.richard-lewis.me.uk/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- +----------------------------------------------+ | Support open access to scholarship | | http://freeculture.org/ http://www.doaj.org/ | +----------------------------------------------+

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Re: [ALUG] Increasing Tomcat Memory
by James Elsey 04 Apr '10

04 Apr '10

>From this forum post[1] you should just be able to modify the catalina startup script, Gotta go out so I don't have time to try it myself, but good luck! [1] http://www.coderanch.com/t/421341/Tomcat/change-JVM-setting-Xms-Xmx#1858331 James Elsey On 4 April 2010 10:37, Paul Grenyer <paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Hi > > On Sun, Apr 4, 2010 at 10:34 AM, James Elsey <james.elsey(a)gmail.com> > wrote: > > Hey Paul, > > > > Have you tried playing with the xmx options? > > > > From command prompt, run java -X > > > > There are some options to set the heap size/maximum heap size > > Yeah, my problem is which script to put those options into. > > -- > Thanks > Paul > > Paul Grenyer > e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com > b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com >

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Increasing Tomcat Memory
by Paul Grenyer 04 Apr '10

04 Apr '10

Hi All I've installed Tomcat 6.0 on my build server running ubuntu 9.10. I followed the instructions here: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/linux/installing-tomcat-6-on-ubuntu/ And it's been working well. However, I think my application has got too big now (lots of third party JARs) and I keep getting out of heap space on deploy. I've googled but I'm struggling to find a way to increase the memory that works. Can anyone give me some pointers, please? -- Thanks Paul Paul Grenyer e: paul.grenyer(a)gmail.com b: paulgrenyer.blogspot.com

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Can anyone help me with this problem
by Tony Aldous 03 Apr '10

03 Apr '10

Hi I'm ald0; Can anyone help me with my Ubuntu installation, I get this message "fsck from-linux-ng 2.16 /dev/sda7: clean, 129398/616512 files, 852648/2465969 blocks" & then everthing stops. Being new to Ubuntu I don't know what to do to sort it out.

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Personal thingies....
by Montmorency 03 Apr '10

03 Apr '10

Thanks for all the positive responses, both on the list and by email. A fair number of people claim to be unsurprised. Which I guess shows how generally crappy I am about being closeted. Also, as somebody commented, April 1st, was possibly a VERY BAD day on which to post such a thing, but I guess I didn't think. Anyway, thanks again. katsmeat. montmorency(a)ukfsn.org bellphegore(a)nerdshack.com

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Personal Announcement
by Bellphegore 01 Apr '10

01 Apr '10

People don't seem to do much in the way of personal announcements on this list. But I though what the hell as a handful of ALUG people already know about me, as do almost all of my non-ALUG friends. I thought there'd be no harm in throwing it out there, with the vague hope that nobody will actually give a damn. So yeah.... I'm actually one of those funny transexual people. Which really amounts to finding the whole maleness thing a complete annoyance and wishing it would go away. Actually, when I say annoyance, I mean gut-churning feeling of fundamental wrongness that's there 24/7. The next point is what am I doing about it? Well, early days and all that. I've been seeing a therapist, and living part-time as a woman. Sort-of a try-before-you-buy deal, trying to seeing if being a woman actually works for me. It actually does, though at the moment, nothing is certain. The whole process of physical transformation, which is lengthy, expensive and complicated, seems to be a possibility right now, rather than a probability. I'm simply engaging in a process of exploration to see if it'd be right for me. The third point is how does this affect you? Well, if you don't show up to the Norwich pub meets then you've just wasted 30 seconds of your life reading something that's completely irrelevant to you. If you do come to the pub meet, then you may see me come in female role. That's about it. I get the impression this isn't amazingly uncommon in the tech field. A surprising number of geeky women became geeks before they became women, it's not unlikely you know, or know of, some already. Anyway, please view this as my small, personal contribution to redressing the gender imbalance in tech. Katsmeat bellphegore(a)nerdshack.com montmorency(a)ukfsn.org

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Firebug, how to use it to investigate CSS?
by Chris G 01 Apr '10

01 Apr '10

I'm trying to work out another CSS conundrum and, as per Brett's advice, I am trying to use Firebug to do it. However, at the moment, I really can't see how Firebug can be used to help me find what CSS is applied to a specific bit of HTML. I can follow the HTML facilities of Firebug OK, how it highlights the sections of a page as you click on different bits of HTML in the Firebug window. However I'm not at all sure how to then try and work out what particular bit of CSS is affecting something. Can anyone (Brett?) elucidate a little for me. -- Chris Green

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Graphics package to produce neat, aligned protocol table (TCP header) pictures?
by Srdjan Todorovic 01 Apr '10

01 Apr '10

Hi, Lets say I'm documenting a low-level protocol or file format and want to produce a picture such as the TCP header (etc) table (http://izecksohn.com/pedro/pub/tcp_header.jpg), what's the best program to use for that? Another example: http://www.wtcs.org/snmp4tpc/images/TCP-Header.jpg I have tried Openoffice drawing tool in Writer, and it does not align well. Inkscape might be good as I can snap to grid. I could use a spreadsheet and then export to picture. Is there a special purpose application for this that anyone has used and would reccommend? I need to be able to insert text into the cells or perhaps refer to the cells in some markup way - also the cells should be fixed width as each cell would represent one byte. Any suggestions please? How would, for example, a graphics designer go about doing this? Thanks all, Srdjan

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Replacing popped-off key onlaptop
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 30 Mar '10

30 Mar '10

Hi Folks, Appealing to the hardware-savvy anongst you! I have an Advent 8117 laptop (nice machine, by the way), and one of the keys has popped off (the down-arrow key near the bottom right). For the life of me I can;t suss out how to put the key back on again. The details are probably not specific to this particular machine -- they may well be identical on other makes and models, so if you recognise the description below and know how to put a key back on, I'll be pleased to hear! The key itself has a kind of "trestle-like" hinged frame underneath it, whose function seems to be to keep the key-top level as it goes up and down. This is very tiny. It is presumably also intended to attach itself to something on the keyboard (see below). The bed of the keyboard has a little rubber/plastic nipple which is pushed down by the key (and, lacking the key-top, I can operate it by pressing on the nipple). Above and below this nipple are two lttle metal mountings, each with two little metal flanges projecting upwards. The two flanges on the top mounting have each a little notch near the keyboard bed, as if something is supposed to go in there. The two flanges on the bottom mounting also have a little notch each, in this case being directed somewhat upwards. I guess that the "trestle" structure on the key-top is meant to somehow engage with the notches in the flanges as described above. However, no matter how I try to manipulate things, I can NOT get the key-top to re-attach! I hope that's enough to describe the situation to Those Who Know. Looking forward to very simple and easy-to-execute instructions on how to put things together again! With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 29-Mar-10 Time: 20:42:24 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Version control choices for web development
by Mark Rogers 27 Mar '10

27 Mar '10

I've experimented a little with version control over the years (cvs, svn) but never used it in anger even though I know I should. The thing that's always stopped me is that I've never found one that I've liked for web development. What I have is a server in my office that everything gets developed on. When I am happy, I use unison to synchronise the changes to the live site. What this gives me, is no ability to roll back changes if something goes wrong. What I want is for the version on the live site to just be a checked out version from a version control system, with the changes on the dev server being checked in to the version control as we develop. However, to me the logical location for the version control system is therefore my dev server in the office (which has plenty of disk space), but I don't want to open up ports to allow live servers to "pull" a version from the system. I want to be able to "push" a version to the server from the dev server, and that's where I get stuck. The best solution I've ever come up with is to check out a separate local copy which I then unison to the live site, but this is two steps instead of one and (more importantly) means duplicating the site locally for no real benefit - which is a pain if a site has several hundred MB of images, for example. The other part that I've never found a good solution for is handling databases; ideally there should be a way to perform diffs against different MySQL database schemas and apply them but I'm not aware of a way to do this either. On the other hand, what I want to do seems like a fairly "standard" thing so I'm sure either there must be a way or that other people in similar situations have found a better way to do it than I am suggesting? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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Re-ordering columns in an sqlite database
by Chris G 26 Mar '10

26 Mar '10

I know it isn't really necessary as it doesn't actually affect anything (except my sensibilities) but I'd like the ability to re-order columns in some sqlite databases. Well, it *does* have some advantages, it would mean I can do things like "SELECT * FROM database" and get the columns displayed in the order I want rather than the order resulting from database creation followed by adding extra columns as I found I needed them. So, is there any way to re-order columns other than by creating a new table with the required column order, copying all the data across, deleting the old table and renaming the new one? I can't find any neat utilities out there to do this for me. -- Chris Green

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iTunes on EEE
by Mark Rogers 26 Mar '10

26 Mar '10

I've done a bit of Googling but as a non-iTunes user I'd like some real user experience if possible. A customer of mine has ended up with a "ASUS little shitty netbook thing" (his words!) for his daughter, and with the requirement that "all she wants to do on it is surf the internet & manage her itunes on it". They don't like the noddy interface (presumably Xandros?) and I could replace that for him. But iTunes I know nothing about. I gather that Songbird is a suitable replacement, but I have no idea how similar it is to iTunes and whether it'll allow her to manage her music files. Surfing the internet is easy, and they can already do it. What they'd like, of-course, is the XP model. But installing XP is expensive and I'd like to show them that they don't need XP to do what they want. Assuming that they can.... -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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