Thom Holwerda Archive

"In this article, we walk you through the process of constructing a special set of bootable media called a kickstart, designed to help you rebuild systems when and as needed with minimal time and effort. Of course, it does require some planning, preparation and work to build a kickstart, but we'll cover that here."

"Today I learned about memcached, which I'd heard of before, but never really investigated. From the project's site, 'memcached is a high-performance, distributed memory object caching system, generic in nature, but intended for use in speeding up dynamic web applications by alleviating database load.' So, even though I don't have a huge amount of traffic, I still have dynamic sites, and I'm always looking at ways to speed up my Typo blog. So, using memcached, you can get a big performance boost in databases calls, which sold me on giving it a go."

Geek Patrol benchmarks the MacBook against the MacBook Pro, and concludes: "The difference between the MacBook and the MacBook Pro varies between 75% and 115%; sometimes the MacBook is faster, sometimes the MacBook Pro is faster. For CPU-intensive tasks, I doubt most will notice the difference between the MacBook and the MacBook Pro. Unfortunately, Geekbench doesn’t measure GPU performance, which is the biggest difference between the MacBook and the MacBook Pro. For GPU-intensive tasks, most users will probably prefer the dedicated GPU in the MacBook Pro over the integrated GPU in the MacBook."

"Although Apple's machines are more expensive than PCs, one Wall Street researcher says the price of a Mac isn't that much more than a comparable Windows-based computer. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said that his research shows an average price difference of only 13 percent for desktops and 10 percent for laptops, once you factor in the same components that Apple uses." Run, Forrest, run!

Sony will ship its Vaio UX UMPC on 27 May, the consumer electronics giant said today. The successor to the company's U series of handheld mini PCs will ship as the retail-oriented UX-50 and as the Sony-sold UX-90S and UX-90PS. As expected, the UX-50 will contain a 1.06GHz ultra-low voltage Intel Core Solo U1300 processor backed by 512MB of 400MHz SDRAM and a 30GB, 4,200rpm hard disk. The unit's display is a 4.5in, 1,024 x 600 panel driven by Intel's integrated GMA950 GPU - the chipset's a 945GMS. The handheld PC runs Windows XP Home Edition. Connectivity comes courtesy of Bluetooth 2 and 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi. There's an integrated webcam and a fingerprint sensor.

IsComputerOn reports that Haiku now has OpenGL and DVB-T support. You will need Rudolph's drivers for it to work, naturally. IsComputerOn has more information and screenshots. "And the icing on the cake... Quake 3 also runs on Haiku in OGL! As you can see from the screenshots here and here over at 's Flickr page."