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Archive for July, 2011

QUICK AND SIMPLE GUIDE TO CLEANING YOUR LAPTOP SCREEN:

A laptop monitor is a flat screen called an LCD (liquid crystal display) and LCD monitors are especially susceptible to scratches so they require some extra care and attention.

You can leave your monitor on during cleaning but if you turn it off you will be able to see the smears and smudges much better. WARNING: NEVER put your fingers on the laptop screen as this can burn out pixels.

Dry Dusting: If your screen is not too dirty you can just use a plain cotton cloth.

VERY GENTLY wipe the screen in the same direction starting from the top and working your way down. The cloth must be soft and preferably cotton (an old soft t-shirt is fine). DO NOT USE cheap paper towels, towels, rags as they may scratch the surface.

Deep Cleaning: If your monitor is really dirty then you can use a cleaning solution for a deep cleaning. NEVER use any products that contain ethyl alcohol, ammonia, acetone, toluene, ethyl acid, or methyl chloride based cleaners these will yellow your screen.

You can go to the store and buy a cleaner especially made for laptop LCD screens there are plenty of those. If you don’t want to spend extra money there is a homemade solution.

Homemade Cleaning Solution: Ingredients: Isopropyl Alcohol (Must be Isopropyl Alcohol) Distilled Water (Do not use tap water because it contains salts that can whiten your screen)

Mix equal parts distilled water to isopropyl alcohol (example: 1/2 cup water to 1/2 cup isopropyl alcohol) Make sure to use only isopropyl alcohol and distilled water (not tap).

Always use a soft cloth, cotton preferably or those special electrostatic cloths used to clean eyeglasses. NEVER use a rag, paper towel or napkins as these can scratch the surface of your monitor.

Apply a very small amount of the solution ONTO THE CLOTH (never pour over the screen as this can short circuit your monitor) and very gently (without pressure) wipe the screen in one direction from the top of the screen to the bottom.

Removable Storage industry has a high-speed development with rapid spread of network, digital, entertainment-oriented. External hard disk has become the largest and greatest potential market of the blue ocean on the field of IT.

External hard disk has been well known by consumer through the rapid expansion and popularity in the past decade. It have grown to 12 million in 2008 from 4 million in 2005, the average sales are 1 million every month, in just four years, an increase is more than 300%, which is the fastest-growing Computer Peripherals products. HDD market is expected in 2009 will be maintained in 2008 average according to market forecast although affected by the global financial crisis 2008.

According to IDC market research reports, the whole market of HDD is around of 12 million in 2008, of which DIY assembly is still dominant or monopolistic position, about 75% market share. The original brand which represented as Lenovo, Seagate, Yi Jie, Patriot only take up 25%. Therefore, regardless of the trend of the future growth of it, or to the original DIY evolving process, all of this provides the conditions for rapid growth of the original hard drive.

2009 external hard disk market share analysis, based on industry, business, markets, industrial chain and other details of the four major areas, with the DIY to the original evolving process, and original brands (such as Lenovo, Yi Jie, Seagate) is approximately 35% (that is 350,000 monthly) in 2009, assembly is about 65% (that is 650,000 monthly), in which general assembly is about 20%.

The next five years (2010-2014), external hard disk market will maintain steady growth to about 2.5 million per month in 2014, the growth compared to the same period last year is about 250%, period-on-perion growth is more than 20%, and it will break the DIY monopoly and the excessive proportion of the historical situation in 2014, the original hdd will occupy about 60%, the assembly is only 40%.

Sometimes you might be questioning or wondering about why do most women seem like never really feel satisfied with the way they look no matter how many accessories they have, a really simple question but hard to answer! The answer might actually hiding in men, because men also never feel satisfied of what they see, every time there is a new chick then they will surely turn their head and stare like never see something like that before! And if you try to notice it mostly man also yearns for new things not only for their girls but also for their hobbies, like staying up to date with the latest trend.

That condition of course also includes hobby for loving Harleys! The feeling of never really feel satisfied with how your Harley looks like now if there is something new is a normal thing, but the problem is how are you going to get the latest update regarding your Harley accessories or enhancements? Another simple question appeared! The answer is already right before your eyes! Simply click on the link and you will be taken to the best deals plus the best source of Harley a, b, c! Anything you ever need to make your Harley looks better and better!

Dedicated graphics cards, which we will be discussing in this guide, are needed if you want to do 3D gaming or watch high definition movies (even though it may sometimes suffice with a powerful CPU and lot’s of internal RAM)

Important Specifications to Consider When Choosing a Graphics Card

GPU
GPU stands for “Graphic Processing Unit” and is the main controlling circuit on every graphics card. The GPU is the most determinant feature of every graphics card when it comes to the overall performance and speed. The two biggest manufacturers of GPUs are NVIDIA and ATI (which is owned by CPU manufacturer AMD). They do the reference designs for each new generation of graphics card. But most graphics cards are sold by other manufacturers who produce their own flavour of the reference cards from NVIDIA and ATI. Examples of those manufacturers are MSI, Asus, ECS Elitegroup, XFX and more.

Examples of recent generations of graphic GPUs from NVIDIA are; GeForce 8500/8600/8800/9800 GT/GTX/GX2 and GTX 260/280. ATIs latest generations of graphics cards are: RADEON HD 3850/4850/4870 in different versions.

RAM
It is also important to consider the amount and type of the onboard RAM of the graphics card, which is a different thing than the RAM of your computer. The RAM is important for a number of technical reasons we will not go into further here. But in short you should go for a graphics card with at least 256MB of RAM. The type of RAM is less important, but we recommend that you buy a graphics card with the second or later generation of GDDR (GDDR2 or later).

Different Slot Types
There are three different slots available on the PC market. The “slot” is where you connect the graphics card on the mainboard of your computer. You must verify which type of slot your mainboard has before purchasing a graphic card, or you may waste money on something you cannot use. The available slots are PCI (very old), AGP (old) or PCI express (today’s standard). All fairly recent bought computers are outfitted with a PCI Express slot, but be sure to check it. PCI express is the newest technology and allows the largest bandwidth which means better performance for you.

External Connectors
The connecters on the graphics cards are also important. Standard analog VGA connectors have been replaced by DVI (digital) connectors. The DVI connector is a must, some cards even come with two DVI connectors which will allow you to connect an extra display. Additional external connectors to look for are:
oHDMI, which will enable you to connect your computer to a plasma or LCD-TV. (This can also be done through a DVI connector with a DVI/HDMI converter)
oS-Video outputs are used to connect the PC to an older style VCR or TV and allow outputting the same display as present on your screen.
oDB-15/VGS/SVGA connectors are basically utilized for a standard output to an analog monitor. Good if you have an old monitor.

Considering your budget
Of course, you financial possibilities will limit your purchase options too. Let’s take a look of what you can expect depending on how much you want or can afford. Remember that graphics cards are products with short cycles so suggestions below are only guide lines.

Low budget graphic cards
We are talking about spending $50 to $80, what can you expect?

In this lower budget level the most popular and valuable GPUs from ATI and NVIDIA are the ATI Radeon HD 3650 and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 and 8600GT/GTS. These cards typically carry a RAM of 256MB-512MB depending on model and manufacturer. There are no problems to find cards with multiple DVI connectors and some even carry a HDMI connector.

These types of cards are suitable for silent HTPCs and media centres since you can get them with silent passive coolers. We cannot recommend the entry level graphics cards for hardcore gaming rigs, even though they will play some older games with no sweat.

Medium priced graphic cards
In this segment, with prices from $80 to $250, you will find graphics cards with good performance even for gaming. You should be aware, because as we said, this is a fast moving market and you can sometimes find real bargains on the current generation of graphics cards when the next generation cards are introduced to the market. Prices drops fast when retailers and e-tailers have to make place in their stock for the new generation of cards.

As always we recommend you to read expert reviews of graphics cards to find which the leading expert editors have recommended. Also based on the reviews, try to find out which is the last generation of GPU for the time being. Right now the last generation high end GPU from NVIDIA is the GTX 280. We couldn’t find a 280 GTX card below $250, but we did find one for $260 so the prices are dropping.

We recommend you to go with the next to last generation cards like the GeForce 9800GTX or 9800GX2 (dual onboard GPU) and the ATI HD 3850 and 4870. They will offer you a great performance/price ratio.

Advanced graphic cards
Obtaining maximal performance and resolution may lead you to spend $400 and above on a high end graphics cards. This is for real gamers who need that extra FPS rate and resolution to perform optimally. You should look for dual GPU solutions, either onboard dual GPUs or using SLI or Crossfire technology (two physically separated graphics cards working together).

The 3870 X2 with 1GB RAM from ATI is a good alternative and is somewhat cheaper than the 4870 X2 which naturally gives some extra percents of performance. From NVIDIA you should take a look at the GTX 280 and 9800GX2.

In the business for nearly a decade, ATI driver is one of the products of the AMD Corporation that gave us the famous and affordable processors that we all use. An ATI catalyst driver is one of the most sophisticated drivers that you will find in the market today. What makes it so special? Her we will understand its components and then you will see for yourself if this is what you need in a driver.

Many computer drivers are just made up of several small files or codes. On the other hand, the ATI catalyst driver contains more than these things. In fact, it is considered as a complete program by itself. With this driver, you can even make adjustments in the graphics and tweak graphic settings based on your preference. With this kind of driver, you as an end-user will be able to control DTV Support, VPU recovery, power settings, multiple monitors, hardware acceleration, and other things.

An ATI catalyst driver can support a vast number of ATI products or hard wares. This means you do not have to buy several different drives for each hard ware you buy under the ATI hard ware family. ATI also supports the latest or most updated operating systems for Windows and this includes Vista. On top of that, the driver also supports other operating systems such as MAC and LINUX.

With these features in mind, you know that you have more advantage having the ATI catalyst driver than getting an ordinary device driver. Although there are so many other upgrades to choose from, you should not get confused. As long as you know what you need, ATI can provide you exactly what you need to keep your computer in pristine condition. Your other option is to look for websites that specialize in explaining and troubleshooting driver issues so you will get a good recommendation which driver is the best for you.

A computer processor is in charge of analyzing data and controlling the flow of data in a computer. Also called the CPU or central processing unit, it is considered to be the brain of the computer since it performs the actual data processing. A computer processor is packaged as a small microchip which is designed to fit a socket of a motherboard. With speeds ranging between 2.66 and 3.66 gigahertz, there are different types of computer processors available.

Different types of computer processors

Some of the types you can choose from include:

Intel computer processors – exclusively designed by Intel, the latest and most popular models of these computer processors include the Pentium 4 processor, Pentium 4 processor with HT Technology, and the Celeron Processor. As for functions, the Pentium 4 model is a powerful processor that’s capable of handling demanding applications like 3D gaming, DVD authoring, and other multimedia applications, while the Pentium 4 with HT Technology is made to run efficiently with lesser response times even though multiple applications are running simultaneously. The Celeron processors, on the other hand, is ideal because it is compatible with all software and computer hardware brands.

AMD computer processors – providing excellent value and performance, these processors are exclusively made by AMD or Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., compatible as well with most off-the-shelf applications and programs. Some of these computer processors are also programmed to include their own anti-virus protection. The most popular models are the Athlon 64 and the Athlon XP. The Athlon 64 is made for more advanced computers, particularly those running 64-bit programs, allowing complex games and other software to be used, while the Athlon XP enhances XP applications with better images and graphics.

How to choose

The different types of computer processors available in the market today all have a particular function that they’re good at. As such, understanding what you require will help you in figuring out the right one for you. If your budget will also allow it, go for the latest models so you don’t have to upgrade frequently.