Stories by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

For the good of the nation, broadband for all

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski recently announced a plan that would expand the Universal Service Fund's Lifeline program to include broadband Internet service.

Microsoft Finally Making Good Products -- Too Late

If you've read many of my articles over the past 20 years, you may have noticed that I don't care for Microsoft or its products. That isn't because I think open-source software or Apple products are unbeatably great. It's because Microsoft's products are usually awful.

Fedora, Mint, openSUSE, Ubuntu: Which Linux desktop is for you?

There are more interesting Linux desktop distributions to choose from than ever before. However, if you're looking for major distros with a great deal of support, you'll want to look at the big four: Fedora, Mint, openSUSE, and Ubuntu.

Operating Systems Don't Matter Much Anymore

For decades now, we've been fussing about operating systems. "Mac OS X is better than Windows!" "Why upgrade to Windows 7 when XP works just fine?" "You're all wrong. Linux rules." Such arguments are about to become history.

After Jobs: The Enterprise?

We're finding out all sorts of things about Steve Jobs now that he's left us. For example, he wanted to crush Android because it was "stealing" from him. That's funny, considering that one of Jobs' pet phrases was "Good artists copy; great artists steal." He knew what he was talking about, since much of Apple's early success can be ascribed to his "theft" of the mouse and GUI from Xerox. We've also learned that his next big idea was to transform the living room with Apple TV sets . That's all well and good, but Jobs is gone now. What should Apple do next?

Metro on the Wrong Track for Many Windows Users

You know me. I'm a Linux guy. Still, I think Windows has gone from being a bad joke of a desktop operating system (Windows ME) to being a reasonable choice (Windows 7). Its course hasn't been steady, though: After the still popular XP SP3 , we got Vista . And now we have Windows 8. What the heck is Steve Ballmer thinking?

Ready or not, here come the business tablets

OK, we all know that people want to bring their consumer technology into the office. In particular, though, people really want to use tablets in the workplace.

The day of the password is done

When the popular Web site Gawker was hacked into recently, more than a million user IDs and passwords were released. If you were one of the people compromised that's annoying -- very annoying. Not that it's a big deal that someone could log into a gossip site under your name. But many of those people used those same IDs and passwords on other sites that are a wee bit more important, such as LinkedIn. Now, that's a problem.

RockMelt: A social networking spin on Google Chrome

Would you like to do your Web browsing while keeping a constant eye on what your Facebook friends are doing? If so, then RockMelt is for you.

The iPad stands alone

Where is the iPad's competition?

Linux tablets, where are you?

Apple has long had a history of being arrogant. But, more often than not, they've been able to back it up by the quality of their products.

Is there a replacement for Facebook?

Facebook claims to have more than 400 million active users. In fact, according to Web analytics firm Alexa, only Google is a more popular site. So, with all that going for it, why are so many users unhappy, with one poll showing that more than half of Facebook users are thinking about leaving?

HTML 5: Less than it's cracked up to be

The core idea behind HTML 5, the latest proposed version of the Web's foundation markup language, is to make all resources, not just text and links, widely and uniformly usable across all platforms. Well, that was the theory. In practice, things aren't going to change that much from today's Web, with its reliance on proprietary media formats and methods.

CrossOver Linux 9: Run Windows apps without Windows

Some Linux users insist that anything you can do on Windows, you can do better on Linux. While there's some truth to that, many of us have Windows applications that make completely leaving Windows close to impossible. That's where CodeWeavers' latest version of CrossOver Linux comes in.

All Google, all the time, everywhere

We all use Google. Well, maybe not Bill Gates, but that's about it. Now, Google is hoping to become an even bigger part of our everyday lives.