"If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" Here at Freelock, we're strong believers in that maxim. The problem is, so much about computing is broken these days. And in most cases, we've just learned to live with the problems.
You have had choices. For the past decade, your choice has been between crash-prone and insecure Windows, incompatible, expensive, and slightly strange Macs, or highly technical, user-unfriendly Linux. Times are changing, for all three.
Now here's something everyone should do, before plopping down a few hundred dollars on Microsoft Office:
NewsForge | NewsForge presents free OpenOffice.org training videos.
Fascinating read here, about how a copy-protected music CD from Sony installed a surriptitious program on a computer, hid itself completely from view, and made itself nearly impossible to remove without crippling the user's computer.
Another very technical article. This one describes how to set up an infrastructure for securely providing single sign-ons to multiple systems in a LAN. Paranoid Penguin - Single Sign-on and the Corporate Directory, Part I | Linux Journal
... we've done a few rescues at Freelock Computing lately. I just stumbled across a nice article with some in-depth troubleshooting tips over at Linux Magazine.
This is a bit technical, but contains steps for securing LDAP to control user access to your network. Linux.com | Advanced Linux LDAP authentication.
Voice Over IP (VoIP) is becoming a main part of the small business infrastructure. As phone networks converge with data networks, security becomes more of a concern.
Here's a fascinating interview with Gary Edwards, who was on the committee that developed OpenDocument as a standard.
New Open Source ERP vendor in Belgium. Interview with the founder here: Open source start-up updates its ERP suite for SMBs
Computer history has some interesting parallels in the history of the American West. After the initial forays of Lewis and Clark and the first set of explorers, early settlers crossed the plains in covered wagons. But the West wasn't accessible to most Americans until the age of the railroads, when the Union Pacific Railroad put tracks across the continent and started running regular passenger service.
This school made 60 Pentium I and Pentium II computers useful for their students, using a Linux thin-client solution, on a tiny technology budget.
There are a number of ways to integrate Linux clients and servers into an Active Directory environment. This article discusses a few of them.