So if city like Lucknow where the IT industry or business industry is small as compared to the metros, is costing nearly $10 million to Microsoft then I’m sure that the number will be way to high when it comes to cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta, Chennai, Bangalore and so on..

Imagine that if the companies will reduce the price to an extent where people will prefer to use an original copy of the operating system, I’m sure that they’ll be able to make more than double their revenues and will be able to sell more services to those customers – Did someone mention the word SaaS (software as a service)?

Anyway, this situation is not bad till here, it starts to look ugly when you’ll know that most of the computer shop owners sell these pirated windows 7 copies and defend themselves by saying that if these things are available on the internet for free, then why sell original copy. They even say that if I’ll not do it, someone else will do it!

That story is from the shop keepers side, I’m sure most of you’ll not be amazed when I’ll tell you that these shop keepers easily sell the pirated copies to the customers because many of the Indian customers don’t have any idea about computers and they don’t even know that one needs to pay a heavy amount to the companies for buying a legal copy of the operating system. What are your thoughts on the same topic? In our next discussion we’ll talk about making use of Linux and ensuring that you get use the computer and still use a legal copy and that too all for free! Other than that, we’ll discuss the pros and cons of the same. All of this will be discussed from a regular computer user’s point of view.

I’ve already covered quite a lot on how one can ensure that there computer can stay away from spyware & viruses, I’ve even covered on the topic that how some one can use ReadyBoost technology on Windows Vista to use pen drives as RAM, however I still say that this technology isn’t the permanent solution and one should put actual RAM on the computers.

RAM’s are pretty cheap these days, I got 4 Gb of RAM for my Apple Macbook for as low as $ 110. It has considerably improved the performance of my laptop and I know that I’m already safe for like 2-3 yrs. Of course, I’m a power user and I run more than 3-4 heavy applications at a time, thus it makes sense for me to install more RAM on my computer – the question remains though that should an average computer user install more RAM on their computers or not? I’ve tried to answer the question and here it is -

1. More RAM will ensure that your computer is future proof – Generally operating system makers (Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac) release new versions of their respective operating systems in every 2-3 yrs. and with every new release, they start acting as memory hog for your computer. So, if you’ll have more RAM, you know that with every update and release you won’t have the trouble of changing the RAM. At any given day, I would suggest at least 2 Gb of RAM if you are using Windows Vista.

2. If you start playing Games – Same is the case with PC Games! With advancement in hardware and their slashing prices, companies are trying to improve the quality of their games for better gaming experience, however that results in heavy applications that need more RAM & Video memory. If you are planning to play games on your computers then you should consider installing more RAM on your computer.

3. Run multiple applications at a time – Having more RAM allows you to utilize the multi-tasking ability of the computer systems. There are people who prefer to run light music in background while they work on their business application. I’m doing that same at this point of time, while writing the article – I’m listening to music and occasionally I’m checking my emails too. Having more RAM allows me to run all these applications at one time and no worry about my computer being slow.

In short, to improve the user experience – software companies include more features and have rich user interface and that causes the software to become memory hog and thus one needs more memory. If you think that your computer is running slow then you should consider checking it for virus and even if that doesn’t solve your problem, you should consider buying more RAM.

1) Make sure you keep a note of how much memory have or RAM and you know exactly how big your hard drive is. The system actually uses some hard drive space as memory. Basically don’t want too many programs at once will system can overload and crashes start to take place. One way to make sure you aren’t using too much memory or CPU is by hitting ctrl-alt-delete and the
same time. This starts “Task Manager”. You can then decide how many simultaneous processes you can run, based on the amount of physical memory you have available.
2) Make sure you check your disk space and you have enough left. Sometimes if your screen freezes it may be an indication that you are running out of disk space. If you go to computer on your desktop and click on your C: Drive it will tell you how much space on your hard drive. You need at least 500 meg storage space free on your hard drive for your computer to run without
crashing.

3) Make sure you have anti-virus software on your computer and make sure it is updated regularly there is plenty of free anti-virus that’s some software you have to pay a subscription usually a year. Virus threats change on a daily basis so make sure the virus definition updated daily.

4) On a side note you should always back up your files are software such as partition Magic ghost where you can copy files onto other partition or copy the entire image of your hard drive onto another harddrive. Backups should
occur at least once a month. When working on important documents make sure that you have the program set on automatic save. You can set some programs to save every 10 mins like Word or Excel. So if the computer suddenly crashes you can quickly recover files on reboot.

5) It is very common operating systems need upgrading once in a while so for instance Microsoft will allow you to download patches to make the running of your computer smoother and prevent crashes.

6) Make sure you’re using the proper security settings for your PC. You need to ensure that nobody can access system settings or the registry apart from the administrator. This is because if some system settings are accidentally tampered with or hacked into, this can cause major problems.

7) Make sure you keep the drivers like the sound driver or the graphics drivers updated.

8) Make sure you keep your computer dust free especially around the CPU fan. You can prevent overheating by adding a hard drive fan or a chipset fan. Sometimes laptops can overheat therefore you can purchase laptop coolers that will prevent crashes if the laptop is switched on for a long period of time.

Author’s resource box: Bob is a freelance writer and software developer for http://www.qiqisoft.com.

Before I go further, lets understand that what exactly Rich Internet Applications means and why I think that it’s going to be the future of computing (via WikiPedia)-

Rich Internet applications (RIAs) are web applications that have most of the characteristics of desktop applications, typically delivered by way of standards based web browser plug-ins or independently via sandboxes or virtual machines. RIAs can be developed through the following frameworks – Curl, Adobe Flash/Adobe Flex/AIR, Java/JavaFX, uniPaaS and Microsoft Silverlight.

There was a time when computer industry required desktop software and around 1996, it was hit by the term “Internet”. The world continued as normal and then “Internet” was hit by what we all got bored of “Web 2.0″. With the advancement of technologies and the requirement of people, its becoming clearer that people now just don’t want to work on software, they want to collaborate, share and want their work ported on various devices and for that Internet is one medium through which it’s possible. So here comes the need of Rich Internet Applications – these are those applications that’ll be available on your computer, web & mobile phones – not only that, they’ll all be synced to ensure that no matter where you are, you’ll be able to perform all the tasks.

Coming back to the topic of will Adobe technologies rule the world of RIAs or not? Well, I’m too new in the field of development to make an expert comment on it. However, as I said that it seems pretty easy to develop the applications in Adobe technologies, so I’m assuming that Adobe will surely capture a big market ahead. There are already tons and thousands of Adobe AIR applications on the internet and I don’t see much development going around Mozilla Prism or any popular application built on SilverLight – I’m assuming that Adobe technologies will surely enjoy a bigger developer base supporting them. None the less, I’ve to say that with the launch of SilverLight 3, it seems that MicroSoft is ready to give good competition to Adobe Technologies. What are your thoughts on this debatable topic?

As per the trend, developers have always tried to keep the web running through open-source technologies (php, mysql, ruby on rails are some of the examples), however, there wasn’t any other technology that we could say would be able to replace Adobe Flash until Microsoft launched SilverLight. That’s a different thing that Microsoft itself uses Adobe Flash even after SilverLight was released!

Ogg Vorbis has been around for a while, however it literally lost the competition in the hands of MP3 format, although because of its open nature, developers have worked on it and are trying their best to make it a better format for music and videos. One of the drawbacks of Ogg theora format is that it doesn’t support h.264 video compression that helps in making video size smaller and apt for sharing videos on the web and thus it wasn’t considered as web standard for videos on the web.

Although, the good news is that Google, one of the biggest supporter for open technologies is planning to integrate Ogg in Chrome browser, so as to ensure that no plugins will be required to run the videos that use Ogg file format. This means, that web developers will be able to embed videos (powered by OGG) in the webpages just like they used to embed images and links.

Interestingly, upcoming Firefox 3.5, latest versions of Opera and Apple Safari are supporting Ogg theora and since YouTube is owned by Google, we may see the transition once this open format will be much refined as compared to today’s standard. With all these developments, it seems to me that soon we’ll see the videos on the web running on Ogg format rather than Flash. What are your thoughts about it?

Recently, Twitter did censor some of the trending topic and ReadWriteWeb was quick to post about it too! (thanks Techmeme) however, we haven’t seen them moderate any other fun meme’s. I personally think that Twitter should moderate the trending topics and should allow the deserving topic to be in the trends, otherwise the positive value of twitter will only go down – as reported by TechCrunchers.

If at all, Twitter will start moderating the trending topics, I’m sure there will mixed reactions from the twitter users and there will be fun loving people who’d definitely hate to see that there trending topics or meme’s will not reach the trending topic and if at all it will, they’d see it go. However, there will be a great bunch of people who’d love to see this kind of feature, as I’ve seen many users who want tweet filter feature to avoid such “not-so-fun” meme’s.

Would you like to see Twitter moderate the trending topics or do you think Twitter should not interfere the way its users want to use the service?

Search just isn’t strategic to Microsoft, no matter how obsessed Steve Ballmer is with beating Google. Microsoft can’t do everything–no company can–and winning the search war is not critical to Microsoft’s long-term survival. Protecting its operating system and office suite monopoly is critical, however, and that business is also under attack.

Microsoft has already invested in Bing and have made it live as well for the world to use and comment on it. For your reference, here are some of the comments from industry’s best known pundits -

Here’s what Rafe Needleman has to say about Bing -

Google keeps improving in the area of in-search collation and display as well, but Bing makes Google look complacent, and that’s not good for Google. For the moment, Bing’s on top in this game. Try this search engine. I do not think you will regret it.

Michael Arrington shares similar thoughts -

“My thoughts on Bing: I like it. And I’d consider using it as my search engine. But like many people I’m used to Google and I know how to find the things I’m looking for. Bing returns very different results for a lot of queries, which is great. But it also means spending time learning how to use Bing to get what you need out of it. I’ll spend that time because it’s my job. But for most people, they’ll stick to what they know, and that’s Google….

I’ll sum up with this – whether Microsoft ultimately succeeds or not in “winning” the search war, the competition is very good for the rest of the Internet. Google needs to be pushed to try innovating new things.”

We’ve seen many attempts from many innovators to beat Google and haven’t seen anyone get close to it, rather we have only seen Google’s market share rise every month. So will the word “Fools” be apt for all those innovators & investors? I guess no. And if that be the case then we are accepting Google’s monopoly – then will we be able to believe Google for not being evil after that? I guess the answer will be no in this case too! So, should Microsoft continue to invest in Bing or do you think that Steve Ballmer should listen to Henry?

It has all the basic features of any Word Processor like spell check, document formatting, image insertion etc. Although, it fails to introduce the ability to export the documents in various other formats like PDF, OpenOffice.Org files or even Word itself. Now, one can easily live without this as all these features are present in Zoho Writer and Box.Net has integrated Zoho Writer with its online storage service.

Although, it keeps me wondering that why exactly Box.Net is wasting its resources in building another online processor when there are tons of processors available at the moment. I think they should rather use their resources in making various applications that will help integrate desktop computers with this service.

I have to say that if at all, Twitter starts to provide the same kind of features as provided by Tumblr then it will become the hot favorite service and will add more and more fans as it has now. I myself will switch my personal domain name to Twitter service. So, if you are one of the Tumblr user and flaunt an iPhone then you will surely love this application!

Talking about the applications for iPhone – here are the top blogging/iphone applications available on the internet -

WordPress for iPhone – While we are talking about blogging and iPhone application; how can we miss WordPress for iPhone. This official application by team automattic is one of the best wordpress application for iPhone.

LifeCast – This wonderful application lets you blog on the go and works with both blogger and wordpress based blogs. Its not that if Google isn’t interested in providing iPhone app for blogger then you’ll be left behind. You can very well use this application to make your blog posts.

VirtueSoft BlogWriter – This application covers almost all of the blogging platforms available on the internet. Be it, Blogger, WordPress.com or self hosted wordpress blogs, msn live space etc. – you will be able to blog using your iPhone. Sounds like a cool deal!

TypePad for iPhone – One of the official iPhone application for Typepad users. Without a doubt one of the applications with lots and lots of features inbuilt that iPhone/Typepad users will be able to flaunt!

Twitterrific – Ad-supported application allows you to post tweets in the most simple manner. It is also available as native mac application, so you’ll love using it on your mac as well as iPhone.