Writing In The Clouds

We interrupt this novel in progress to bring you a word from our sponsor ...

Ever since I traded my little netbook for a Chromebook I've been experiencing an interesting migration. Mostly I'm happy with the Google cloud-based computer. It boots in 30 seconds, shuts down in about 3. (Don't you wonder why it takes Windows PCs so long to turn off? What are they doing?) The only time I've been aware of the invisible updates is when I noticed a tiny text message in the lower right corner that said softly, "Reboot to finish update." And I have never had to bide my time while staring at a screen warning me not to turn off my computer.

The adjustment came when I tried to determine the best way to use this as a writing machine, which is its main purpose in my life. I like writing on my desktop, too, but sometimes there's nothing like a comfy chair and a lap full of keys. Not to mention travel.

First thing I did, being an inveterate geek, was to use Crouton to install a full Linux system under the hood. Lots of online guides make this a pretty simple process. You still start up in Chrome's online world, but with a few keystrokes you can boot into a full Linux desktop. The only disappointment in my case was that I have not been able to get one of the features to work. You're supposed to be able to quickly flip back and forth between the two environments, but it doesn't happen on my HP. Not a big thing, though, since if I go into Linux I expect to stay there.

The Dropbox Snag

As I did with my netbook before, this let me install LibreOffice for document editing. Then I hit my first snag. I use Dropbox to make my documents available to me everywhere, but the HP has an Nvidia Tegra Arm processor -- and Dropbox, though it supports Linux, does not have a Linux client that runs on Arm chips. This meant I had to start out in Chrome, copy whatever files I wanted to edit into the Download folder which is also available when running Linux, then start Linux and open them from there.

A similar process would have been needed to copy the modified files back to Dropbox, but clearly this whole exercise would have seemed more trouble than it was worth. Someone has written some command line tools to do one-time Dropbox syncs in this situation, but I didn't care for that either.

Back in Chrome, there is support for Dropbox through a third-party app that integrates it into the file manager. The files are not synced to the SSD drive on the Chromebook, which would quickly eat up the limited space, but you can find your files and copy them or open them. Editing apps don't seem to be able to write directly to Dropbox, however, so you still have to save them to the Download folder, then copy them from the file manager.

What To Do?

Mentally kicking myself for not discovering this shortcoming in advance (and making a mental note to choose one with an Intel processor next time), I set out to explore my alternatives. Google, of course, would love for me to use their Docs suite for everything, and to save it all in Google Drive. But I've never been happy with the way Drive pushes you toward Docs, and vice versa. If Microsoft were in that driver's seat I'd be equally displeased. But they've actually done a better job at openness with OneDrive. And Docs is woefully lacking in formatting features, even for something as simple as fiction.

I played around with editing some of my Open Document text files (.odt) in Docs. You can do it, but it requires you to upload your file to Drive first. If you're trying to start a new Doc you can only do it in Google's own format. If you want to convert it so you can edit with LibreOffice too, you have to Download As .odt and save it back to your Drive, which is available in the file menu, then open that version of it. Are you kidding me? I think there used to be a Save As option that would let you change the format of the original file, but it's been removed.

With Docs eliminated, and still favoring Dropbox for storage, I looked for alternatives and found two options.

ZOHO To The Rescue

Zoho Office, a project started in India, was my first choice. It has a much more full set of editing features, including the ability to save named style sheets. It has Dropbox integration built in, though the free version (yes, it's free) is limited to syncing only a single folder with no subfolders. It will edit Open Document formats and save them as such. If you're creating a new document, you still have to do Export As, but you can save it directly to your shared Dropbox folder and then continue editing it there.

About the best endorsement I can offer Zoho is that I quickly went from experimenting to writing. I forgot entirely about what tool I was using and entered into creative work. And isn't that what good tools do? They disappear, and let you get something productive done.

The only glitch I found was the first time I went into Dropbox on my desktop and discovered 187 versions of the chapter I'd been editing. Apparently Zoho automatically saves every sixty seconds, and Dropbox treats each one as a new version. But I found there is a choice to do one-time syncs to Dropbox, and that alleviates the replication issue.

Zoho also offers their own cloud storage that will sync to your desktop, with 5 megabytes under the free plan. So if you're not wedded to Dropbox like I am, that might be an option. 

The OnlyOffice Route

I also explored OnlyOffice, which has a similar set of cloud based apps and storage. The initial attraction was the beautiful and complete Dropbox integration it offers. But there were downsides. You can edit Open Document files, but it has to convert them to Microsoft Office format for editing. There is an option to "also save in original format," but I didn't see any evidence that it did that when I selected it.

OnlyOffice uses HTML5 and Canvas to render your work on screen. While that sounds very hip and contemporary, I found it takes a long time to open and display anything. And on my Chromebook I couldn't find any resolution or zoom combination that would render the text in anything other than a fuzzy gray, which was intolerable. 

Anyone Else?

OnlyOffice has a 30 day free trial, but no free version. After that it costs $5 per user per month, with a minimum of two users. Do the math. Zoho has the free version, or you can upgrade for $5 per user per month, with no minimum. Combined with my pleasant user experience, I know which one I prefer.

We might well ask at this point, with Microsoft offering Office online, where are the LibreOffice developers and what are their intentions as everything moves to the cloud? At the moment, the only option is RollApp, which lets you run LibreOffice on a remote server -- as well as dozens of other open source apps like Gimp. There is a free version that offers read-only access to Dropbox. The paid version with read-write access is $7 per month, or $6 if paid annually. It sounds like a bargain compared to the option of just an office suite, but it seems a cumbersome way to go about it. And there's no way to use the apps offline since they're not really running on your own computer.

To Sum Up What We've Learned

Though some of this experience has been annoying and frustrating, it has demonstrated to me that the basic idea of the Chromebook is the future -- or the present, if you're already using one. With files in the cloud already, and an OS that updates from the cloud, why not apps in the cloud too? Increasingly, the bulk of what we do is destined for the online realm, and fully interdependent with it. 

Take this blog, for example -- composed entirely in Blogger, automatically saved and backed up so I won't lose anything, and instantly published everywhere. Excuse me a moment while I click the button...

Small vs. Fast

The smaller it gets, the faster it goes ... the faster it goes, the smaller it gets ...

I had a small epiphany recently while watching the apps on my phone download and update themselves. Of course it's not necessary to watch, but I have to. Long years of experience on PCs have accustomed me to the virtues of monitoring this activity for signs of trouble. Plus, there's something satisfying about watching the little progress bars turn blue from end to end while the status line indicates a download icon, then an "installing" message, then "installed", then a security scan, and finally "Application X is safe," indicating that all is well with the world.

Only once in a blue moon does anything go wrong. My wi-fi connection might flake out, interrupting the download, or something is amiss with the package on the server so that it won't install. But even then there is little downside. Simply trying again will insure success, if not today then tomorrow, and in the meantime the existing app will keep plugging merrily along.

Gone are the days of waiting hours for a huge file to trickle down through a dialup connection only to have it error out a few percent before completion, making it necessary to start over. Gone, too, are the frequent disasters that sometimes still plague complex software installations on PCs -- be they Windows, Mac, or (dare I say it?) even Linux. Let's face it, Android and IOS have taken the end user experience to new levels of ease and reliability. People who used to stare dumbfounded at a screen asking them to press CTRL-ALT-DEL can now do whatever they want with the swipe of a finger or even by uttering some verbal commands.

But my epiphany was not about ease of use. Instead I found myself marveling over how small and compact all my apps were, and therefore how efficiently coded they must be. Some were only a megabyte or two, while the largest were not much above 20 megs -- miniscule in comparison with 700 meg CDs or 8 gigabyte DVDs. Then it suddenly hit me. Back when we had to install everything from floppy disks, each disk held barely more than a single megabyte (about 1.4). So those 20 meg files I was downloading in a fraction of a minute represented a dozen or more floppy disks -- exactly the sort of packaging that used to be required by something like Windows 95, Adobe Photoshop, or MS Office. In other words, these baby apps are about the same size as major applications used to be, only speed has made them seem trivially small. And the smaller the hardware gets, the faster it goes.

The same thing happened to Unix. If the PCs of 1985 had been able to run it, there would have been no need for DOS, Netware, and Windows (or the Mac OS) to serve as poor substitutes. But back then you needed a huge mainframe to get the resources of memory and disk space that the full-blown, multiuser, multitasking, network-connected Unix had to offer. Ten years later a Finnish computer student was able to create a Unix-like kernel small enough to run on a 386 PC. With the GNU project added on top it became Linux, which now runs on everything from supercomputers down to TV set-top boxes, and yes, Android phones -- while incidentally powering most of the Internet. (A different Unix clone, FreeBSD, lies beneath the pretty skin of OSX.)

So the next time you're fidgeting with impatience at how slow your updates are happening, reflect on the alternative. You could wait for a package to come in the mail, then start feeding one disk after another into that voracious slot on the front of your PC, listening to the measured thunks as the head moved from one track to the next (80 tracks per diskette -- you could count them), while hoping and praying that there were no bad spots or copying errors that might crash the whole procedure.

Don't you feel better now? I know I do.

My Device Family Tree

How many do YOU own ...?

For a long while now I've had multiple computers in my household, most of them mine. But until recently they were always some form of desktop or laptop connected through a router. Now I find I've accumulated a family of devices, each one smaller than the last, that seem to specialize in the jobs that each does best. They all feed from the same pool of online files and services, but each fills a niche based on the size of images it can display and the level of operating system it runs.

The Dell desktop with its 22" screen is still my platform of choice for web development. I can boot it into LinuxMint or Windows 7, and the ample display size is great for keeping multiple windows open. It has enough horsepower to run Windows XP in a virtual machine with VirtualBox while simultaneously playing music and browsing the Internet. For spreadsheets, document formatting, web pages, graphic design, and games, this is the place to be. It's a year and a half old with "only" a dual core processor, but 8 gigs of RAM keeps it going smooth as silk.

Next up is its little brother, an Acer netbook, which shows how much can be crammed into a much smaller package. This also boots my choice of LinuxMint or Windows 8 (I know, but I had to put it somewhere), and offers a more comfy way to answer email and do writing while ensconced on the couch. The 10" screen is easy to read while still compact, and the whole package weighs in at just 2 pounds, probably less than the power supply on the Dell. It also sports a dual core chip, though its 2 gigs of memory is only adequate, and graphics are just meh -- OK for games as long as they don't require 3D acceleration. Tiny and underpowered as it is, this gadget still outperforms the desktop system I had 10 years ago, and does it on batteries.

The newest size slot belongs to the Nexus 7 tablet, which is doing its best to displace my now archaic Sony as my ebook reader of choice. There is still something comforting about the solid e-paper display of the Sony and a battery that lasts for weeks instead of draining while you watch. But when it comes to magazines and news feeds like Flipboard, not to mention Facebook and Google+ updates, not to mention Youtube and Netflix, it's pretty clear where the future lies. We just have to trust that in the fullness of time Modern Science will deliver a combination of screen and battery technology that will give us the best of both worlds.

And when deciding whether to use the netbook or tablet, it's easy: am I going to be typing or reading? For us inveterate touch typists there is no substitute for real keys. I've tried a bluetooth keyboard with the Nexus and it feels OK, but if I'm going to put the keyboard on my lap where do I put the tablet? The netbook is a typewriter, amplified. And the tablet is a book, electrified. Simple as that.

"But don't forget me!" says my Android phone. (It's an HTC Vivid running 4.0.) After all, the phone started all this by showing me how much could be done in the tiniest of packages. It's my second one, but this is the one with a big enough screen and adequate resources to let me read books and watch movies. True, the 4.5" screen is kind of tight for those things, but I always have it with me in my pocket and it's always ready to whip out and go to work.

Now it seems as if the Nexus tablet is just a grown up version of the phone. It still runs Android with its wealth of apps and beautiful integration with Google's wide world of services, but now with a form factor that feels like a book and performs like a personal TV. Dare we imagine that a desktop version is in our futures? Rumor has it that Google is about to merge Android with its Chrome operating system to put the final desktop nail in the Microsoft coffin. Or if you don't care for that scenario, how about integrating a tablet with your home entertainment system? It can be done even now if you can assemble all the bits and pieces, but it's easy to imagine it becoming a seamless standard.

On the other end of the scale, we're about to see even smaller devices coming online. Pebble and Apple will be selling smart watches that we can expect to take on more and more of the things phones are doing. So instead of pocketing them we'll be wearing them. And then there's Google Glass which is pioneering the kinds of user interface we will need when the devices grow too small for a touchpad. The lower limit, it seems, has yet to be reached. And the upper one, too.

Windows - Now Cheaper Than Ever

NOW how much would you pay?

For months I've been watching the approach of Windows 8 with dread. Ever since I tried running one of the preview versions in a virtual machine it's been giving me the heebie jeebies every time I see an ad for that screen full of multicolored tiles.

Anticipating an "intuitive" experience I had attempted to blunder around in it like a normal user might and found myself completely stymied. No start menu. No apparent way to find my programs. No way to quit an "app" or switch between the ones that were open. No apparent way to even turn it off -- I had to force my virtual machine to shut down, the equivalent of pulling the plug, before I discovered that you have to 1) open the "charms" menu, 2) select Settings, 3) select Power, and 4) select Shut down. Or, alternatively,  1) figure out how to log out (click on your user name in the corner of the screen), 2) click in the lock screen to get back to the login page, then 3) click the power button in the corner. Sheesh! Who designed this thing?

But love it or hate it I knew I would have to deal with it someday. I might never run it myself, but sooner or later either my company or one of my family or friends would expect me to be able to help them with it, so I'd better get some familiarity with it. On the other hand, I was reluctant to actually pay for something I didn't want. But Microsoft had an answer for me. For a limited time I could upgrade for only 40 bucks -- and if I had purchased a computer running Windows 7 recently I could get it for even less: $14.99. Wow -- the only deal better than that would come with free steak knives! (Or a free Linux download, but don't get me started on that.)

I hesitated to sacrifice my Windows 7 dual boot installation on my desktop. Even though I seldom use it I have to be able to get real work done when I need it, and the last thing I wanted was those bloody tiles in my face. Anyway, I bought it too long ago to qualify for the $14.99 deal. But wait -- I bought another Windows 7 machine more recently, namely the Acer netbook that I wrote about, and which I wouldn't mind sacrificing to the cause. Especially since I still had the version of Windows 7 that it came with tucked away on the hard drive that I replaced with an SSD, so I could always downgrade.

Best of all, the Acer was purchased within the magic time period that qualified me for the lowest possible price, so it seemed to be a no-brainer. I proceeded with my online purchase, jumping through a couple of hoops to enter a promo code that I had to register for, and then downloaded the approximately 2 gig package for installation.

Right away I detected differences that told me Microsoft is really making an effort to get more hip. Download instead of CD or DVD. Offering ISO files that can be burned to disk, and even packages for USB flash drives. A software assistant that pre-certified my hardware and existing programs for compatibility -- it even cleared LibreOffice! This is not your father's Microsoft, even though Balmer is still at the helm.

First I tried out the ISO file, but learned it was not a "hybrid" image that would boot from a flash drive. So they are still one step behind the convenience of some contemporary Linux distros. But they didn't at all complain when I went back to download the flash drive version. There is also  no option to boot directly into a working version of the OS to try it out before installation -- the "live" disk is still the province of Linux. But this was the first time I ever made it through a fresh Windows installation without any complaints about missing drivers for the built in devices on my motherboard -- and this was on a netbook with wifi card, camera, and touchpad.

The only complaint I have is the amount of disk space it demanded. I had pared down the Windows 7 partition to 40 gigabytes, which gave me about 10 gigs for file storage. There was 8 gigs remaining, but the installation program insisted on having a bit more -- about 8.9. So I uninstalled LibreOffice, deleted files, and ran disk cleanup to increase it to almost 9 gigs free. But now the installer warned me that I "should" have at least 1.2 gigs more than what it told me in the first place. Ah, now this is more like the Windows I'm familiar with.

This disk space issue was just because I had asked it to do an upgrade instead of a fresh install, so it needed enough working room to do its business before overwriting my existing installation. I decided to do a clean install instead. Accordingly I used the partition manager to delete all my partitions -- even the Linux ones -- so I could start from scratch. (Integrating a nice graphical partition editor with the installer is another way they have caught up to Linux installers. Though naturally it only handles FAT and NTFS filesystems.) This time I gave 50 gigs to Windows just to be sure it had plenty of room. The joke is that once the installation was done it only took up 20 gigs, so my original partition would have been ample.

The installation itself was effortless and completed much more quickly than I expected, though I forgot to time it. OK, so installation done -- but how would Windows 8 feel about dual booting with Linux? I was encouraged that the Advisor told me my computer did not support UEFI Secure Boot, so that "feature" would not be available. Yay! And I was further encouraged that the installer told me I should use the Advanced option in case I wanted to dual boot with "other operating systems." But I still had to try it to be sure. So I reinstalled LinuxMint, and voila, I was back to where I started except with Windows 8 in my boot menu instead of 7.

There I was at last, face to face with the dreaded tiles of the Start screen. The touchpad on a netbook is not the best way to do the fancy swiping that the Start screen is designed for. But I knew that touching the Windows key would always whisk me back to the beginning, and that Windows+D would jump to the traditional desktop. And trial and error showed that scrolling up and down on the edge of the trackpad was equivalent to scrolling side to side on the Start screen. A little confusing, but better than click and drag. So I started playing around.

Gee, those tiles are pretty. I think the colors have been designed to appeal to something childlike in us which is attracted to bright geometric objects. They perform a function also, which is to add color coding to the white icons on them, making them easier to recognize. Google could take a lesson from this, since they seem to be seriously challenged when it comes to icon design -- they really prefer words. Apple is at the other end of the spectrum, creating eye candy that resembles 3D objects. The new Windows look is flat, clean, and simple, and there is certainly a design argument to be made for it.

People praise this new interface as "fluid." It does scroll fluidly, and when you click a tile (or touch it) it fluidly flips and expands to fill the screen. Even when you don't touch them they fluidly scroll information updates, such as emails or news feeds. Fluid fluid fluid. The problem comes when you actually try to, well, do something. It soon becomes clear that the apps have been designed for the child in us as well -- the toddler who can only bang on big buttons or Whack the Mole with a hammer.

Gone is the richness and subtlety that have won praise -- however grudging -- for past versions of Windows even from those of us who might prefer to use something else. Windows 7, for example, is about as nice a user experience as I've ever had. I certainly prefer it to OSX, and it offers conveniences that I actually miss when using KDE under Linux. For example, the ability to rename a file while selecting it as an attachment. It doesn't seem like a big thing until you find that without it you have to cancel out of the attach dialog, open a file manager window, find the file and rename it, then go back and select it again.

Then of course there is the schizoid nature of the two separate and competing interfaces that seem to be fighting for your attention. Just when you think you might be able to live in the new world of tiles, something as basic as the Control Panel flips you back into the old world, And you can't really stay in the old world either, because to start a different program you must go back to the tiled Start screen. The fact that third party "start buttons" are selling like hotcakes should be a big red flag to the MS developers.

Another frustration turned out to be trying to watch Netflix. I had just got the movie service to run under Linux using the Wine kludge that made it think it was really running under Windows, but on the netbook playback was so jerky it was unusable. Surely this was something Windows 8, with its fluid fluid fluid interface would excel at, right? Well, I grabbed the free Netflix app from the Store, and it started up smoothly enough. But when I tried to play a movie it failed to load and gave me an error message stating that my video card was not adequate and I should see if there was a new driver for it that was compatible with Windows 8.

Aha, the dreaded driver issue. Unfortunately, the support site for the Radeon graphics reported that I was already using the latest driver. So out of curiosity I fired up my Chrome browser instead of the Netflix app, went to their website, and tried to run a movie that way. Result? NO PROBLEM. So what's the big deal with the app and special drivers? The difference is something to do with that new world of tiles, giving me one more reason to ignore and avoid it.

I fear that for all their bold efforts to strike out in a new direction Microsoft is going to experience the exact opposite of the "halo effect." With Windows phone barely making a dent in the smart phone market they have tried to force us to pay attention to their tiled interface by shoving it under our noses on the desktop. But after learning to hate it there, it is unlikely we'll learn to love it on phones and tablets.

Which is kind of a shame, since it is actually a fresh and interesting attempt at a tactile interface that could be useful on handheld devices, at least after it matures. Unfortunately it was rushed out the door half baked, and it really really REALLY doesn't belong on the desktop.

Life in Geek Heaven, Part I: Software

I don't usually get all geeked out here, but indulge me for once ...

In the Beginning

Way back around 1996 I first tried installing Red Hat Linux on my home computer. At that time Windows 95 had recently replaced Windows 3.1 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 while Microsoft server functions, such as they were, were still being addressed by Windows NT 3.51. The ever more bewildering mishmash of versions yet to come (Windows NT 4.0, 98, 2000, Me, 2003, XP, Vista, and 7) were still pipe dreams in the head of Bill Gates and his numerically challenged marketing staff.

 After years of watching DOS boot on my screens and then various versions of the Windows GUI, it was unbelievably cool to see a totally alien set of status messages scrolling across my 12" CRT monitor and terminating in a cryptic command prompt. I felt as if in the middle of the Cold War I'd been given a computer from the Soviet Union, something with an entirely different heritage. From reading the documentation I knew enough to type "startx" to launch a graphical desktop. Unlike Windows, I learned that you had a choice of such environments in Linux. One of them, called FVWM, bore a resemblance to Windows 95 with its flat teal background and bottom task bar. It was a new project, a bit half baked, but seemed like a way for the programmers to say, "You want something that looks like this? We can do that."

In the years since then Linux has grown by leaps and bounds. FVWM never really went anywhere, but soon enough there were not one but two premier user environments to choose from -- KDE and Gnome -- with still more to try if you cared to. On the server side, Linux and the related open source software that ran on it, like the Apache web server and MySQL database, were largely responsible for the explosive growth of the Internet. Now, 15 years later, it powers the likes of Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Skype, not to mention everything from Android phones to wireless routers to more than 95% of the fastest supercomputers in the world -- even the Large Hadron Collider. Don't you want some of that?

Progress

In those early days it was often a struggle to get Linux running with your particular brand of hardware -- especially on laptops with their custom touchpads, graphics, and network interfaces. Linux user groups would hold "install fests" to help people over the technical hurdles, just for the fun of it. But once you were up and running, there wasn't a lot of software available for the desktop user. Unless of course you wanted to built a web or file or database server, in which case your tool set was second only to the big commercial versions of Unix. That too has changed. So much free software now comes along with most Linux distributions that someone has claimed, "If Microsoft put all this stuff on one disk the Department of Justice would be all over them for monopolistic practices."

Over the years I've installed various flavors of Linux on a succession of ever more powerful hardware. Starting with an old 486 processor with 16 megabytes of RAM and a 10 gig hard drive, and ending up with a dual core beast with 8 gigabytes of RAM and a full terabyte drive. This thing has enough horsepower to run one or more extra operating systems in their own virtual machine windows while hardly breaking a sweat. (Of course, dual core processors are now so last year. Any self respecting video gamer is running an i7 with 8 cores.)

The Challenge

Until recently, though, I have only tried installing Linux on one laptop. This was a reconditioned machine purchased by a friend that was delivered for cheap without an operating system. Rather than blowing over a hundred bucks to add Windows, it turned out to be a simple matter to get a free Linux installation working on it. There was only one challenge. The friend wanted to use a cellular data card to access the Internet, and the system refused to recognize it as a valid network connection. Finally I realized that it worked like a dialup modem -- it was basically making a cell phone call to get online, like in the old AOL days. Naturally, Linux has had dialup support for years, so all I had to do was configure PPPD (for Point to Point Protocol Daemon) to make the connection, then write a simple script to connect, and another to disconnect. Voila, le Google.

This was not a task that an average user could be expected to perform. But luckily things have progressed even further now, to the point where I can pretty much recommend that installing my favorite operating system on your laptop -- even the most basic netbook -- is a thing you should really try. I know because I just did it myself.

[Next time -- my own netbook experience.]