But wait.  The Google Chrome OS may give that old PC a second life.  Google is claiming that the Google Chrome OS is being built to target the netbook monitor, but that should mean it should help infuse new energy into any old Pentium 4 PC running Windows XP or even Windows 2000. 

And that’s exactly what I’m planning on doing with an Windows XP system I recently built.  It has decent specs.  A Pentium 4 2.25 GHz Processor with 1 GB of RAM.  I originally purchased it around 2002, then put it into a closet when I bought a new Vista capable desktop.  Just recently, I dusted it off, reinstalled the operating system and put it into use in an office where I’m doing some contract work.  Two big things I’ve found out in the past month:

First, even Firefox tends to bog the machine down.  Sure I’ve got a lot of extensions running, but its pretty clear that much of today’s software wasn’t built with older processors in mind. 

Second, I’ve yet to install Microsoft Office on it.  It’s been a month and to be honest, I didn’t think I’d make it this far without having to cave in and load up Office.  In fact, the Office DVD is currently sitting within my eyesight.  Collecting dust on the corner of my desk.  Instead I’ve been easily getting by with Google Docs.

Go I’m fairly certain I can get by with GMail and Google Docs; Meebo.com for IM; Pandora, Hulu, and Netflix Watch Instantly for entertainment; and the other 500+ bookmarks in my browser. 

I’m with Michael Arrington of TechCrunch:

The Internet Is Everything. All the OS has to do is boot the damn computer, get me to a browser as fast as possible and then stay the hell out of the way.

I’ve agreed with that sentiment for a long time.  It’s one of the reason’s I pursued a career in web development.

Now, I disagree with the ridiculous statements that many blogs are making. The Google Chrome OS is not a stake to the heart of Microsoft’s business.  This is a very cool possible step forward for technology.  But not a groundbreaking move that will make a big dent in Microsoft’s OS business.  I think Fake Steve Jobs did a good job of keeping things in proper perspective.

You also may not have noticed, but nobody uses Chrome. I mean think about it. Do you know anyone who uses Chrome? Really?

Now Fake Steve’s post is rich in comedy and snark, but he’s right.  Mainstream America is not using Chrome simply as a browser.  There’s no way their going to flock to a Google Chrome Operating System.

But me?  I’ve got another reason to keep my old PC’s around. 

In so doing, I left my Palm Treo 755p behind. And I’m now off the Palm platform for the first time in a decade.  As you might imagine, I had years of contacts and data building up on my Treo.  Critical data which I couldn’t afford to lose and that I had to move over to my new iPhone.  I was worried that this process was going to be full of gaseous pain, but it wasn’t so bad.  Here’s how I moved my data to my iPhone.

1. Sync the Treo with Palm Desktop.  This captures your contacts and calendar data off of the Treo.  In addition, it backups the memos, tasks, and photos.  Contacts and calendar are the most important elements so that’s what I’m going to focus on. 
2. I’m already a Gmail user.  I want to manage all my data with Google contacts and Google calendar.  So…download and install a trial version of CompanionLink for Google.  This will help you get your data from Palm Desktop into Google.  It’s available at http://www.companionlink.com/products/companionlinkforgoogle.html
3. Make some backups before you try the Palm Desktop sync.  Backup your Google contacts and also create .csv backup file of your Palm Desktop data
4. Configure Companion Link for Google for your GMail account, then synchronize.
5. Now that everything is in Google, configure your iPhone to use this data and then use Google Mobile Sync to sync over the air going forward.  Instructions on that are at at http://www.google.com/mobile/apple/sync.html

That’s pretty much it!

Yes, it loads super fast.  And that is definitely a welcome improvement from my beloved, but sometimes hated Mozilla Firefox.  Firefox currently takes almost a minute to boot up on my laptop.  True, this may be because of all the extensions I’ve got loaded into Firefox, but still a minute to load a web browser is a frustrating one when all my data is in the computing cloud and Firefox is keeping me from it.

I also like the idea of each browser tab having its own processing space.  Hate it when one crappy website takes down the 15 other tabs I’ve got running in Firefox.  The “Restore Session” feature of Firefox has helped back me from jumping off the top of a building on more than one occasion, but those occasions still exist where you can still find me thinking of taking the stairs to the roof.

The other thing I noticed about Chrome?  I really missed those Firefox extensions.  Especially the Gmail Notifier extension that tells alerts me to new messages in my various inboxes.  Even after 30 minutes I knew that without the ability to extend Chrome, it would be almost impossible for me to switch to it.  I’m sure community contributed Chrome evolutions will come in due time. 

Chrome’s not a bad browser, but…

In the end, I’m not sure I want yet another web browser in the marketplace.

What I’m most afraid of is that web development test plans will become that much more of a pain.  That Chrome will reach significant market share without putting a large enough dent in any other browser.  So what that means is just another browser that I have to plan for testing web sites on and possibly hack at so that it works in everything that people use.  For web site designers and developers, the best case scenario with Chrome is that IE 6 usage finally dies.   We can dream, right?

But what should John Q. Public do?

Remember, I’ve test driven Chrome for about 30 minutes.  But if you’re just looking for a basic web browser and you’re not into all the extensions that live in Firefox, then I  jumping onto Chrome just for the performance gains alone is worth consideration.  If you’re a web developer of power user, I don’t see any way you can abandon Firefox at this time. 

Web Hosting: Dreamhost

Having used Dreamhost for a few years now, we were pretty proficient with their services and the Dreamhost admin panel.  Additionally, we find them pretty cooperative folks to work with.  The debate over who is the best web hosting company is a heated one.  Ask 10 different people who the best hosting provider is and you’ll probably get 10 different answers.  There certainly may be better providers out there than Dreamhost.  But it doesn’t matter, we like Dreamhost, they’re cool to us, and we’re sticking with them.

Total annual cost for unlimited web site hosting: $320

Public web site: WordPress 2.5

Of course we’re using WordPress to power to our public site.  One of the reasons Holly and I continue to work together is our fondness for WordPress and especially the user community. Simply put, we think its the best online communications platform available today.

Total expense: $0

Email and Calendar Services: Google Apps

Email and calendaring.  Two critical parts of any office infrastructure, virtual or not.  Also, one of those areas where it didn’t make much sense for us to spend time futzing with the best solution.  Sure, using Google Apps means all your data is running thru Google’s servers, but I can live with that.  Maybe we shouldn’t trust Google, but we do.

Total expense: $0

Intranet: Google Sites

Originally, we were using pbWIki and in many ways it is still a superior Wiki.  But when Google made Site available, it made sense as we were already using Google Apps for Your Domain

Total expense: $0

Voice Services: Grand Central + our cell phone plans

Yup.  Grand Central is another Google service.  But it’s super flexbile.  Grand Central provides  you with a single phone number to do what you want with.  You can set it to go straight to voicemail, you can set it to ring on a number of other phone number.  You can switch up these preferences at will.  It’s the Swiss Army knife of phone numbers.

Total expense for GrandCentral: $0
Total monthly cost for cell phone plans: $125

Business Cards: Moo.com

To me bootstrapping means finding solutions that allow remove some of the thinking for you, allowing you to focus on what’s most important.  Your business card is definitely one of those items which you could dwell upon and over analyze for weeks.  But your business card is not critical once you have something with your contact info on it to hand out.  Enter Moo Cards. 

Total expense for 200 cards: $25

Note: We’ve since replace our Moo Cards with custom designed cards printed at Overnight Prints.  Moo Cards are great and we love them.  But their cute, little size is both a strength and a weakness.  Sure, they’re awfully adorable, but when you place them in a stack of other cards you gathered a conference, they are prone to sliding out and ending up on the floor when you gather the stack. That’s no good. 

Virtual Presentations: Google Presentations

The cool thing about Google presentations isn’t that you can use it as a replacement for PowerPoint.  No, the coolest thing is that you can use it a replacement for WebEx.  Google presentations allows you to share your presentation with your audience even if they don’t have a Google account.  You can share your presentation in a remote control format, so your audience sees the slides as you click through them.

Total expense: $0

Invoicing: FreshBooks

While most other decisions we made were pretty easy, choosing a solution for invoicing was a tough one between FreshBooks and Blinksale.  For pure invoicing, both make excellent solutions.  But in the end, we decided that FreshBooks provided us with some additional bookeeping solutions (like time tracking) that could take us to to places that Blinksale simply wouldn’t. 

Freshbooks has an initial 3 client package that is free.  Using Freshbooks to manage up to 25 clients is $14 per month.  Quite honestly, after 25 clients, you might want to look into outsourcing to dedicated accountant to keep your books.

Monthly expense: $14

Project Collaboration: WordPress MU

Most people opt for Basecamp in this category.  And that makes a fine choice.   But what we’ve found in the past is that it tries to do too much and our clients find it overwhelming to the point that it paralyzes them and they avoid participation.  What clients really want to know about their project is what is going on with it.  So we modified WordPress MU with the Prologue Theme so that our clients can easily log in and see the latest activity.  It’s quick, easy, and without all the complex barriers to participation that Basecamp seems to come with.

Total expense: $0

Grand Totals

So we have about $350 in annual costs.  And $144 in monthly cost.  Over the course of a year, that’s a grand total of $2078.  Not too bad.