Time to upgrade VirtualBox

VirtualBox is a great software application that enables you to run other operating systems on your computer. It enables you to run any version of Windows on a Linux PC or on your Apple Mac, or to run Linux on a Windows PC or a Mac. You can even run Windows on a Windows PC, such as Windows 7 on Vista or vice versa. It's perfect for running Windows software on your Linux PC or Mac, or for testing software before installing it on your Windows PC. A couple of weeks ago, version 3.2.0 of the software was released and it has some new features that make it worthwhile upgrading.

There are two very closely related versions of VirtualBox and one is open source and the other is from Oracle. Both are free, but of the two, the Oracle one is slightly better. It used to be a Sun project, but when Oracle bought Sun, it was renamed to Oracle VM VirtualBox.

Version 3.2.0 is available for Windows, Mac and various Linux distros, including the brand new Ubuntu 10.04.

The new features include support for the latest Intel Core i5 and i7 processors, better switching between the guest OS and host with 25% faster networking, new virtual disk subsystem with improved performance, remote video acceleration, up to eight virtual monitors, merging snapshots while the virtual machine is running, and more. You can even run OS X server in a virtual machine on a Mac.

If you've not tried it, take a look at this Mac article, this, this or this Linux article, or even this old article about Microsoft Virtual PC, which works in a similar way.

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What makes Flash crash?

Adobe's Flash has had a lot of bad publicity lately, mainly from Apple, but also from Microsoft too. Both companies report that it is the cause of many of the crashes that users experience on both Windows and Mac OS X. Ed Bott has written a couple of interesting articles too and How secure is Flash? Here's what Adobe won't tell you, and Sorry, Adobe: Flash is the new Vista are well worth reading. In one of those articles he says that Flash crashes once or twice a day on his wife's computer. He didn't say whether his computer was OK, but presumably it was or he would have said. I don't have any problems on my computer and Flash doesn't crash. The question is, what makes Flash so unstable on some computers, but not others?

I don't know what the answer to this is, but surely it must have something to do with other software destabilising it. It is unlikely to be the hardware because Steve Jobs has said that Flash crashes a lot on the Mac and nowhere is the hardware more tightly controlled. It's not like the Windows world where anyone can put Windows on any combination of hardware components cobbled together in someone's back bedroom by someone that barely knows how to assemble a computer. It's got to be software.

Perhaps it is some other web browser plug-ins and Flash clashes with something else that is installed. I'm not a fan of browser plug-ins, add-ons and toolbars and have hardly anything installed. Maybe that's why I don't get any Flash crashes. (The one plug-in on my Mac is ClickToFlash, which lets me run Flash only when I need it.)

As a general rule of thumb, it's always a good idea to install the minimum of software and the more you have, the worse the computer sometimes becomes. These days I often install software into a virtual machine. The virtual machines run either Windows or Linux and they run on Windows and Linux PCs, so I can run Windows on a Linux PC, Linux on a Windows PC, Windows on Windows (here) and Linux on Linux, and both Windows and Linux on a Mac (see here). (It would be great if OS X ran in a virtual machine too.) I only install software on the computer if I've tested it first and it is indispensable.

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iPad UK prices - are they too high?

There is no doubt that the Apple iPad has been a big success over in the US, with 1 million units sold in 28 days and the big question now is how successful it will be in the rest of the world. We've been waiting for shipping dates and prices for ages, but now we know. You can get your iPad in the UK on 28th May, with the cheapest model (16Gb Wi-Fi) costing £429 and the top of the range model (64Gb 3G) costing £699. At today's exchange rate, that's US $636 for the cheapest and an eye-watering US $1,038 for the top one (don't forget the monthly data plan too). That's more than (the US price of) a MacBook!

(The figures look worse because UK prices include sales tax, but US prices don't. However, subtract the sales tax and UK prices are still $50 more than US prices. We pay also 17.5% sales tax, which is double most US states' sales taxes, so add $50 to the base price and then double the sales tax, and you've got quite an expensive iPad here in the UK.)

I spent exactly £429 at Christmas and got a new PC with 2.5GHz quad-core processor, 4Gb RAM, 1Tb hard disk etc. Hmm, quad-core power PC that does everything or iPad that's, well, cool and fun, but also limited.

Don't get me wrong, I think that the iPad is a brilliant device and the best tablet I have ever seen. Nothing comes close, but although it is highly desirable, it is also just a luxury item. I can argue that I couldn't live without my smartphone and that it is essential. I can argue that I couldn't manage without my laptop and that it is essential. But an iPad. Sure it would be nice to have one, but it is a device I can live without because I can do everything I need to right now.

If I had lots of money to spend on luxury items then yes I'd go out and buy an iPad, but I don't and that's why I won't be queueing up on May 28th at the nearest Apple store. Unless I suddenly come into a lot of money, that is. It's a lottery rollover this Wednesday, I think I might chance a pound on it.

Sales predictions

With much higher prices here in the UK, and probably the rest of the world too, there probably won't big as big a demand for iPad. It took a week for Apple to sell the first half million iPads, but it then took three weeks to sell the second half million, so sales are falling every day. They'll be boosted by UK and other international sales at the end of May, but I wonder what sales will be like in 6 months or a year from now when everyone that wants one has bought one.

You can change mobile phones quite easily because they are subsidised and even free on some contracts, and iPods are cheap enough to replace frequently anyway, but a £699 iPad ($1,038) is too expensive to change every year or even two years. It's more like a computer and it will have to last three to five years before it is replaced. This will inevitably have an impact on long term sales. Those people that are predicting iPhone-like sales of 10 million units a year are wrong. Initial sales will undoubtedly be high, but then they'll fall to Mac-like figures at best.

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