the “cynthia rodriguez” edition : tech news 5/30

since the last edition of tech news, crazy things have been popping up all over the place a la similar sentiment cynthia rodriguez must be feeling right now after seeing her husband alex rodriguez in a wtf moment.

and so, we press on…

walmart, the evil big company that destroys helps our economy with its criminal low prices has inked a deal with dell computers to sell…get this…DELL COMPUTERS! for as long as i can remember, dell’s were always offered straight from the factory via their website. well, come june 10th, you can get your dell goodness from walmart and sam’s club. (walmartfacts via engadget)

continuing along the ‘dell news’ theme, the computer maker is also rolling out an offering to have your computer loaded with an alternate operating system. no, windows vista won’t be replaced my apple’s OS X, but you do have an option to have ubuntu 7.04 (named feisty fawn) pre-loaded. for those not even close to knowing what i’m referring to, know this:

• ubuntu is a version of linux
• linux is an operating system (if the motherboard is the brains and the monitor the face, the operating system is the personality)
• ubuntu is free
• ubuntu is cool

this move was prompted by an outpouring of consumers who used dell’s new customer feedback website to ask the computer maker for a windows alternative. i have ubuntu loaded on an old laptop and so far it kicks butt. (direct2dell via engadget)

last, but not least, is a few things about good ol’ apple. as i type this post, steve jobs is holding a press conference to not only announce that the new iphone will be available through cingular (the new at&t) by late june, but also that itunes will be selling music sans drm. while i’m not one of the millions of people that use itunes to buy music, i can definitely empathize with the impace of such announcement considering how everyone has an ipod. what this basically means to all the ybp’s is that now you can buy music on itunes (and update your current collection for about $0.30 a song) so that it can be shared on all your friend’s computer and friend’s ipod without the stupid ‘please login to listen’ dialog. it’s called itunes plus, each track is now $1.29, it will feature music distributed by EMI for right now, and it is available immediately. (apple via engadget)