David's Computer Blog

There are several videos on YouTube that demonstrate Haiku, and its BeOS predecessor, running multimedia applications efficiently on old x86 desktop and laptop computers. See Haiku performance videos here and here , and see a performance video of its predecessor BeOS here . Such great performance makes Haiku a great Operating System with which to re-purpose old x86 desktop and laptop computers. See this video for a 10 minute demonstration produced by Be, Inc. for the original BeOS. It is quite impressive what could be done on a Pentium III back in 1999. So if you have any older x86 hardware laying around, then verify that it will still work and then download the new Beta version from Haiku's website and try out the OS. Once Haiku OS is installed, there are other application to download to get productive. For web browsing the OS includes a web browser called WebPositive . It is a decent web browser and should be able to work on most common websites.  For office applicati...

The Beta release of Haiku OS is now available . If you enjoy tinkering with computer software, then give it a try. There are several advantages of Haiku. In this post I'll only discuss one of the advantages.That advantage being the unity of the Haiku platform. I first used Haiku back when it was called BeOS, and I continued to use if for a few years after Be, Inc, which was the original developer, went bankrupt. I had stopped using it mainly because it lacked a decent web browser. Web surfing is a common pastime of mine, and the lack of a good web browser was annoying. But recently the web browser situation has been improving as the Haiku team has been slowly improving its web browser to the point of which is bearable for me. Although this is still an area that needs improvement and could be considered a disadvantage by some, it is much better than it has been in the past and it continues to show improvements. The biggest and, I think, the best advantage of Haiku OS is that i...

Several years ago I discovered the Be Operating System. I really enjoyed using BeOS , as it was commonly named. It was a light-weight OS that was very responsive. I had been an AmigaOS fan for several years, and at the time when I discovered BeOS, the AmigaOS was stagnant and no new hardware was being produced.  But time has progressed and software has been written for a BeOS replacement named Haiku OS . A beta version of the Operating System has been produced and is now available for download .  I will write more about Haiku in the future. For a good video overview of Haiku OS Beta 1, please see Bryan Lunduke's review on YouTube .