Most OpenOffice users run Windows

However, Apache's download stats might not tell the whole story

Nearly 9 out of 10 downloads of the new version of OpenOffice have been for Windows machines, rather than Linux, according to recently released statistics from Apache.

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Of the first 1,000,663 Sourceforge downloads of OpenOffice 3.4, 87% were Windows users, 11% were running Mac OS, and just 2% were on Linux, the team said.

A Reddit discussion, however, highlighted that these statistics could be misleading, due mostly to the fact that Linux users tend not to simply download programs from the Internet.

"Even before it was forked, how many Linux users were going to download it direct from openoffice.org instead of getting it direct from the software repository for their distribution of choice?" asked user houseofzeus.

That said, many others argued that the success of LibreOffice -- a relatively recent fork of OpenOffice -- has undercut the older product's market share across operating systems.

"The LibreOffice fork is MUCH more popular in the Linux community. I prefer it to OpenOffice.org anyways due to various improvements," wrote aliendude5300. LibreOffice's shorter load times were widely cited as the central advantage.

OpenOffice's lack of recent success, argues a recent Unixmen article, is partially due to the folding of the Oracle team that largely fueled the development of the office suite. Since OpenOffice was handed over to Apache, that organization has attempted to compete directly with the successful fork -- and, according to most, has made little headway.

For its part, Apache stated in March that it has had to spend a great deal of time migrating infrastructure over from Oracle and rework "copylefted" components to ensure that they comply with Apache's licensing policy.

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Windows Phone 8, or 'Apollo,' Debuts Next Month at San Francisco Conference

Microsoft will finally lay out the details on the next version of its smartphone OS, which could be a precursor to Windows 8.

June is turning into Developer's Month. Along with Microsoft's TechEd, there's Apple's WWDC, Google I/O, and a two-day Windows Phone developer conference in San Francisco that will be the coming out party for Windows Phone 8, otherwise known as "Apollo."

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Little has been disclosed on Apollo, but thanks to leaks, we have a pretty good idea of what Microsoft has in store. Last February, a leak gave some insight into what Microsoft was planning.

Most significant is that Windows Phone 8 will share components with Windows 8, allowing developers to reuse most of their code when porting an app from desktop to phone. It's believed the kernel, networking stacks, security, and multimedia support will all have heavy overlap between desktop, tablet and phone.

Apollo will also support Near Field Communication (NFC) radios for contactless payments, full Skydrive integration and full integration with Skype and support for multicore processors.

Microsoft has said, and reiterated in an April 5 blog post, that current Windows Phone applications and games will run on the next major version of Windows Phone. How much recoding you'll have to do to accomplish this will probably be discussed at the San Francisco show.

Another question that hopefully will be answered next month is what will change under the hood. Other Microsoft watchers with better connections than me have said they believe Microsoft will change the kernel from Windows CE to Windows 8 RT.

The potential is tremendous. If Microsoft does pull this off, you will have portability between desktop PCs, tablets and phones with relatively minor modification.

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Speed Up Windows XP With System Mechanic 10.8

System Mechanic 10.8 Put Through The Test

We've all seen those annoying television commercials that promise to speed up a slow computer, but do such solutions really work? The CRN Test Center put Iolo's System Mechanic 10.8 through its paces and was impressed with the results.

Our test subject was an old Pentium III-era PC running Windows XP so slowly that the machine was completely unusable. Just opening the Start menu easily took 20 seconds, opening an app required about a minute, and we could fix a steak-and-egg breakfast in the time it took to reboot this dinosaur.

But it was perfect for our purposes. We installed System Mechanic 10.8 and, after running a scan, the tool reported that the overall system status was poor and health and security were at alarming levels.

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Performance Problems
After many years of use (and neglect), Windows machines develop all sorts of issues that can sap performance and open the door to more problems. Listed first are the security flaws, which include absence of a firewall, dangerous start-up items and other security vulnerabilities.

System Mechanic also identified hundreds of registry problems, which happen normally over the course of time but nevertheless can slow down a system and make it prone to crashes. The tool also found more than 1 GB of junk. While this might not seem like much by today's standards, it represented more than 1 percent of this system's total hard drive capacity of 80 GB.

Results Of First Pass
System Mechanic was able to clean out all the clutter and remove the unwanted start-up items. Of the 611 registry errors found in the first scan, 591 were repaired, leaving 20 unfixed. Performance results after the first pass were moderate. After restarting, system responsiveness was slightly faster but still far too slow.

When we relaunched the tool, it reported that while our system's health was now firmly in the green, its security was still at warning levels and our system status had only been upgraded from poor to fair. So we ran another scan.

Third Time's The Charm
During a second pass at diagnosing the system, System Mechanic found 44 new registry errors in addition to the 20 problems left unrepaired from the first scan for a total of 64. It also found a new security vulnerability. But during the second repair pass, the tool fixed only 62 of the registry errors and did not repair the security problem.

A third pass found those issues, a third registry problem, and reported that available memory was running low. System Mechanic offered us the option of optimizing memory to fix the problem, which we did.

Getting Rid of CRUDD
We call them something else, but In Iolo's parlance, "commonly redundant or unnecessary decelerators and destabilizers" are known as CRUDD. Whatever they've called, System Mechanic gets rid of them with its CRUDD remover. On our system there were four: an AOL Toolbar, an Ask Toolbar, a Google Toolbar for IE and a Yahoo Toolbar.

The screen here identifies each along with a judgment as to its favorability and presents options to keep, kill or decide later. We killed them all.

Good Enough
During the last repair pass, System Mechanic reported it had done some repairs on the system drive, realigning more than 30,000 files and defragmenting another 6,518. This led on the next pass to even more misalignments and fragmentations, a problem so pervasive that it affected more than the total size of the 80-GB volume. System Mechanic was able to repair all the problems but was never able to achieve more than a "fair" system status. However, the test system was transformed from "a hammer and chisel would be faster" to one that performs well enough to be used as a jukebox, backup PC for Internet access or for doing school papers.

With more than half of all Windows computers still using Windows XP, there are millions of systems out there in need of similar repairs. For such systems, the CRN Test Center recommends System Mechanic, which provides 50 tools in all, including those for acceleration, repair, cleanup and security, for $40 list. System Mechanic 10.8, released in April, is compatible with the current Windows 8 beta. A free version of System Mechanic 10.8 includes.

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