Preview tabs with Tab Scope (Firefox)

Firefox only: Tab Scope displays a thumbnail preview of any open tab just by mousing over it.

If this sounds familiar to the popular Tab Preview extension, that's because it is. However, Tab Scope's previews include navigation tools (back, forward, reload and stop) and support mouse-wheel scrolling. Also, you can click the magnifying-glass icon to toggle between small and large thumbnails, though you can also set custom sizes in the options menu.

This insanely useful extension has already earned a permanent home in my Firefox. Tab Scope is free, natch; it requires Firefox 1.5 or later. Thanks, Joel! —Rick Broida

Tab Scope

Safely test new software with Sandboxie

Windows only: Freeware application Sandboxie provides a safe "sandbox" for you to test out new software without making any permanent changes to your system.

Sandboxie is a lot like previously mentioned Altiris SVS, but since I've started using Sandboxie I've become somewhat of a convert to its no-nonsense operation. One really great feature of Sandboxie is the quick sandboxing of your browser, which - aside from giving you a completely safe browsing session - lets you run a second instance of Firefox. That means you can run two profiles at the same time (something I do on a semi-regular basis). Both Sandboxie and Altiris SVS are great choices for testing out apps before you completely install and for browsing the internet with nearly complete safety, so if you haven't tried out virtualization as a testing bed, I'd recommend giving one of these a try. — Adam Pash

Sandboxie [via FreewareGenius]

Dell condemns laser printer power waste

By Peter Judge. Techworld

Personal printers are grossly inefficient compared with network printers - burning extra power which dwarfs the toner bill and bloats companies' carbon footprint, according to Dell.

The company claims personal laser printers cost €85 per year in power costs alone, compared with €5 per user each year for a networked printer. Users continue to provide them because they are simply unaware of the costs involved, says Dell's research.

Seventy-nine percent of IT managers simply don't know the cost of running their printers, according to a Dell survey of small-to-medium businesses in the UK, France and Germany. Ninety percent of managers don't restrict printing in any way, and more than half of them (58 percent) don't even know how many printers they have in their organisation.

"There are thousands of personal printers out there, because IT staff feel people need them," said Stephen Burt, Dell's European imaging business manager. Around 40 percent of these in business are personal laser printers, he said which are power-hogs: "The power costs are much greater than the toner costs."

Laser printers are inefficient when they are lightly used, because the drum mechanism is kept hot for half an hour after each use, in case of further printing, he said. A group of thirty users with personal mono printers will use 17,000 kWh of power per year, costing €85 per user, he said - figures which assume three hours printing each day, and the power consumption of a comparatively efficient modern laser such as they Dell 1110.

A single networked printer could replace all thirty personal printers and print the same number of pages for only 1,000 kWh per year, which works out at €5 in power costs. Consumables would also cost less for the networked printer.

Centralised printing could also manage the arrival of colour lasers, which are now becoming cheap enough to use across the organization, said Burt. Networked printers are more likely to have controls that can ration colour printing to certain users, so it is used where it will be effective.

Currently at number eight in printer market share in Europe (and number six in colour lasers) Dell hopes economy and efficiency measures will move it up the league table. Higher placed manufacturers such as HP are often felt to be focusing on selling more ink and toner.

Comparing efficiency of colour printers could become easier with the arrival of new ISO standards to compare printer yields, including ISO 24712, a set of colour test pages. "You can now compare colour printer yields between vendors," he said. Till now, printer makers have been free to define their own test pages, allowing them to achieve unrealistically high yields.

Lexmark's recent inclusion of Wi-Fi as standard in lower-end printers, is misplaced in devices which are rarely mobile, said Burt: "Ninety-eight percent of people don't use Wi-Fi," he said, asking why the majority should pay for a feature which can add an extra £50 to the price of a printer. Dell offers Wi-Fi with optional USB dongles. "When 98 percent of people want it, it will be a standard."

DRAM Prices Drop

Users may find bargains this spring, as a glut keeps prices below $2 on a downward spiral.

Dan Nystedt, IDG News Service

Users looking to add more DRAM (dynamic RAM) to their PCs are likely to continue to see bargains throughout May and June, as prices of the memory chips continue to crash.

The contract price of the most widely used DRAM chips, 512M bit, 667MHz DDR2 (double data rate, second generation), slid below US$2 for the first time in the first half of May. The chips dropped 8.8 percent from mid-April to $1.94 per chip, according to DRAMeXchange Technology Inc., a Taiwanese company that runs an online DRAM market.

It's great news for users. Falling DRAM rates can help offset recent increases in prices for LCD (liquid crystal display) panels, and keep PC prices in check. Users wanting to boost their system speed can also add more DRAM at a low cost. These prices aren't likely to last longer than the next few months. At $1.94 each, the chips are well below the $2.50-$3.00 cost of production for chip makers, and they'll likely shift their production strategies in order to reverse the decline. The second half of the year is also the strongest for PC sales, another factor that could stop the current downtrend.

DRAMeXchange said the DRAM market appears to be weaker than expected in May and June, and many companies in the supply chain, including module makers and PC vendors, have already built up inventories. Prices won't rebound until these inventories are worked down.

The fall below $2 was also significant because of its relative ease, noted Gartner Inc. There was less resistance at that psychologically important level than expected, the industry researcher said.

Even though chip makers are producing DRAM at a loss, prices may not rebound quickly. The companies have to continue selling the chips to bring in cash so they can pay for their expensive DRAM factories. They could try shifting some production to other products, such as NAND flash memory and image sensors, where prices are firmer, but it takes months to tweak production lines for such a change. They could miss an uptick in the DRAM market.

Around three-fourths of all DRAM chips are bought and sold by contracts between DRAM makers and major PC vendors such as Dell Inc. Prices are renegotiated twice per month. The remaining one-fourth is sold on open spot markets, like commodities such as oil and gold.

Contract prices of the chips have fallen 67 percent since the start of the year, when they were fetching $5.95 each. Although many analysts watch DRAM prices as an indication PC shipments might be slowing down, that's not likely the case this time. DRAMeXchange says the decline was caused by chip makers switching some production lines to DRAM from NAND flash memory, which had seen prices fall for nearly six months before recently stabilizing. The changeover has caused an oversupply in DRAM, while the glut in NAND flash memory has eased. There does not appear to be any problem with the PC market, analysts said.

Java Goes Open Source

Sun says the bulk of core Java technology is now converted to open source under GNU.

China Martens, IDG News Service

Sun Microsystems Inc. announced Tuesday it has finished the process of making the bulk of its core Java technology available as open-source software under the GNU general public license version 2 (GPLv2). The vendor made the announcement at its JavaOne conference in San Francisco.

However, Sun hopes the open-source community will help it resolve the issue of Java source code that remains "encumbered," where Sun doesn't hold enough rights to release the code under GPLv2, according to Rich Sands, community marketing manager for OpenJDK community at Sun. While he declined to put a percentage on how much of Java's 6.5 million lines of code are encumbered, Sands said the issue was primarily with Java 2D graphics technology, particularly around font and graphics rasterizing. While open-source alternatives are already available, they don't currently support all the necessary features of the Java 2D API (application programming interface).

For now, Sun will provide plug-ins for the Java 2D technology that can be combined with the rest of Java available under GPLv2 so developers will have access to a complete Java Development Kit (JDK). In the future, Sun plans to work with the open-source community to rewrite the encumbered components to replace the current closed-source code and make it available under GPL2.

Sun first pledged to make Java freely available just over a year ago at JavaOne in May 2006 and then in November announced its somewhat surprising choice of open-source license and began releasing OpenJDK components. In all of the vendor's previous open sourcing of its software, Sun relied on its own CDDL (common development and distribution license). Java was the first time the vendor opted for GPL, a popular license with the free and open-source software community.

Sun's hoping that open sourcing Java under the GPL will lead to Linux distributors embedding the software in their operating systems and thus widening the technology's appeal to more developers. Last month, Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu, said once Java was fully available under GPL, Canonical Ltd., the commercial sponsor of the Linux distribution, would consider including the technology in the core of Ubuntu.

Software implementations based on OpenJDK can now use the Sun Java SE 6 Compatibility Kit to help developers establish compatibility with the current Java SE 6 specification, Sands said. Once such implementations achieve certification, developers will be able to use the "Java Compatible" brand.

Open sourcing Java represents one of the largest donations of code to the developer community, Sands said, but merely making software freely available is insufficient. "Open-source developers need to have rules and governance spelled out for them for how they use and interact with the code base," he added.

With that in mind, Sun is establishing an OpenJDK interim governance board, which is to create a constitution and gain the community's approval for it over the coming year. Sands wouldn't reveal the identities of the five-person board, other than to say only two of them will be Sun employees. A formal naming of the members will take place at JavaOne, he said. Once a constitution is in place, the OpenJDK community will vote to elect a new governance board, again only two of whom will work for Sun, Sands added.

Things you can do in Linux but not Windows

If you're on the fence about whether or not to pick up a new Dell PC with Ubuntu or Windows pre-installed, open source enthusiast dmartin offers a list of things you can do on Linux that you can't on Windows. Lots of good stuff here, like number 5:

Take my settings with me where ever I go. In Linux, all your personal settings are stored in your Home folder, most in folders that begin with a period (like .gaim). So, I can copy all these settings from one computer to another. I can put these settings on a USB drive. When I switched from Gentoo to Ubuntu, I kept all my settings. On Windows, some settings are under your home folder and some are in the registry. So your settings are not portable.

You Linux users have anything to add to the list? Post it up in the comments. —Gina Trapani

Things I can do in Linux that I can't do on Windows. [dmartin.org via Geeks are Sexy]

Windows Live Toolbar 03.01.0000.0130

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Download : Windows Live Toolbar 03.01.0000.0130