All PC Tips

It often becomes necessary to bring your data stored in storage devices with you. The size of the floppy disk is 1.44MB, therefore the use of floppy disk is getting lesser and lesser. The storage capacity should be high but at the same time it should be easy to carry around. Immediately it reminds you of CD rom disks. But recently there are more options available such as external hard disk drives, zip disks, mobile CD writers, mobile DVD writers and thumb drivers.

These storage devices are used to copy audio, video, images or data files from your hard disk and carry it with your anywhere you go. Here let us discuss all these devices and their features.

External hard disk

The external hard disks come in 20GB, 30GB, 40GB, 60GB, 80GB and 120GB. They are connected to the computer using Firewire or USB. Both AC and DC supported external hard disks are available.

If you have an external hard disk with the inbuilt battery, then if there is power supply the battery will be charging itself and if there is a power failure then the battery will supply the power. So your work will not be interrupted.

Some external hard disks use USB to connect to the computer. The required power will be taken from the USB board itself.

Some external hard disks come with software required to take backups of data.

You can read more about external hard disks from www.adstech.com , www.cmsproducts.com , www.maxtor.com, www.simpletech.com

External hard disks with PC Card (Type B) interface are also available to connect to notebooks. You can read about it at www.toshiba.com

Mobile CD and DVD writers

Instead of just the external hard disks there are many multi function writers with USB and firewire interface.

External CD writers are few. There are many DVD+RW, DVDR and DVDRW DVD writers in the market. Both cable charged DVD writers as well as USB DVD chargeable writers are also available.

You can read about DVD writers at iomega, sony, plextor and addonics websites.

Addonics company’s multi function recorder is a CD writer, DVD reader and MP3 player. You can connect this device to TV projector directly if needed.

Thumb drives

Now the size of the drives have become so small that you can hang it in your neck or key chain. These are called thumb drives.

16MB, 128MB, 2565MB, 1GB, 1.5GB or higher thumb drives are available. All these are with USM interfaces. They will extract power from the USB itself.

Kangaru, Thumbdrive, disk onkey, verbatim, imation are some of the companies that provide thumb drives.

Have you noticed that the CDs that you buy or the CDs that comes with books runs automatically when you insert the CD into your CD drive. This is because of the ‘Autorun’ facility in the CDs.

But using this Auto Run feature you can only execute executable programs. Therefore the webpages and any other files cannot be opened automatically using Autorun.

Imagine that you want to copy the powerpoint presentation that you created or the Word document into a CD and pass it to your friend. Will it not be nice if the powerpoint presentation or the document opens automatically when the friend inserts the the CD into his computer?

Now every computer comes with a CD writer. You may wonder whether the CDs that you create using your CD writer can use the Autorun facility. Yes you can.

You have to create a file named ‘autorun.inf’. You can create this file using a normal notepad. You have to copy this file in the root folder of the CD. If you want to use any icon then you can also copy an icon file into the root folder.

How to execute an executable file in a CD automatically.

For example assume that you have a myprogram.exe file and myicon.ico file. And you want to run myprogram.exe file automatically when the CD is inserted

Keep both these files in the same folder.

Open a notepad and type these three lines in the notepad

(autorun)
open=myprogram.exe
icon=myicon.ico

save this file as ‘autorun.inf’.

If your executable file is not in the root folder then you have to specify the full path. (eg. open=myfoler/myprogram.exe)

To create autorun cds for non executable files

If your file is not an executable file like .xls, .doc, .htm, .html, .mp3, .wma, .wav, .mpg, .avi, .jpg, .bmp, .zip or any other file then how to write the autorun.inf file.

Let us assume that you have index.htm file as the autorun file. Then the autorun.inf file will be as follows:

(autorun)
open=start index.htm
icon=myicon.ico

In this case when you insert the CD, a small black window will open and close very fast and then you will see the index.htm file in Internet Explorer.

If you do not want the dos window to open then create the autorun.inf file as below:

(autorun)
shellexecute=index.htm
icon=myicon.ico

However the shellexecute will not work in Windows 98 or older versions. It will work in Windows XP and the newer versions of Windows. In earlier versions you can use the DOS batch file. So you will have one more file autorun.bat in addition to autorun.inf

(autorun)
open=autorun.bat index.htm
icon=myicon.ico

and the autorun.bat file will as follows:

echo off
“start % 1
“exit

How to use autorun.exe

In the above example we used two files autorun.bat and autorun.inf. However the use of autorun.bat is not a wise option. Because a batch files cannot handle errors.

Therefore you can use the free autorun.exe instead of autorun.bat

autorun.exe file is provided by Tarma software research freely. Anybody can use this software. You can download autorun.exe from www.tarma.com/products/index.htm . Download this file and copy it to the root folder of the copied CD.

The autorun.inf file should be as follows:

(autorun)
open=autorun.exe index.htm
icon=myicon.ico

Most of the computer monitors will have a ‘Degauss’ button. What is the use of this deguass feature. On pressing the degauss button the monitor will shutdown for a second and come back to life. Why does this happen? By pressing this the magnetic energy is destroyed. Here we will discuss in detail about this technology.

Monitor has a cathode ray tube. This monitors the electrons that produce the magnetic fields in the tube. The magnetic fields outside the tube for example the earth’s magnetic fields mix with the tube’s magnetic fields and distort the picture. When we press the degauss button the magnetic fields inside the tube is adjusted to match the magnetic fields outside.

Degauss is the name of a scientist. He is Johan Gauss, who researched on the electro magnetic waves.

There is another interesting news. Earth’s south and north poles have difference in magnetic fields. Therefore the monitor manufacturers make the monitor based on the customers’ location. That is the reason why when you turn your monitor to face some other direction the picture quality may change. So you may need to deguass the monitor.

But if you are using a flat monitor then you don’t need to degauss because the flat monitors do not use magnetic fields to function.

In this article we will discuss the basics of broadband and tips to choose the right broad band plan for your home or office.

What is Broadband?

The definition of a broadband connection may differ between different countries. But generally you can say that any Internet connection with a minimum speed of 256Kbps and above can be considered as a broadband connection.

In a ‘Dialup’ connection, we dialup whenever we need to connect to the Internet and then close the connection when we have finished using the Internet.

But you can connect your computer to Internet 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. In other words it is ‘Always On’. Broadband connection is an always on connection. Your computer will be always connected to the Internet.

While using a dialup connection the maximum speed of the connection is only 56Kbps. Moreover when you are connected to the Internet using your phone dialup line, you cannot make or receive phone calls.

Broadband may be available in your area in any of these forms, Copper, Fiber Optics, cable, ADSL, IP VPN or Wireless.

What you need to ask before choosing your broadband provider.

• Which broadband technology the provider is using
• What is the monthly subscription and what is the one time set up fee
• What is the speed of the broadband? Most of them just tell you the download speed. Ask them about the upload speed also.
• What is the bandwidth allowed? That means how much data can be downloaded or uploaded. If there is a limit then what is the charges for additional data usage.
• Is free email provided? If yes what is the storage capacity
• What software and hardware are required to use that broadband connection. Is the hardware proprietary or can be bought from anywhere?
• Is the installation free or you have to do it yourself
• What are other conditions such as contracts etc.
• What is the support provided?

Every office in this world is full of paper. You can see thousands of printed paper in various files in any office. Additionally you will find many books, magazines and photo copies of documents everywhere in the office. A paperless office has many advantages. Here are the advantages of using digital form of information instead of paper form.

• Cutting trees to manufacture paper will be reduced. Therefore trees will live longer.
• Since information will be stored in digital form, it will be easier to handle information. You can search and find information faster and easier.
• You can save space by storing information digitally rather than in paper
• Paper can be lost or decayed. Digital information can be backed up and therefore safer.
• Information stored digitally can be easily found and transfered and shared between different people.

No doubt the digital form is better than the paper form. But many have the following questions and doubts while shifting from paper to digital form.

• Is it too expensive to convert to digital form
• Is it enough to have digital form of all current and future information while maintaining the old existing information in paper
• The digital files are stored in a hard disk. what if the hard disk is corrupted. Will all the information be lost?

All these doubts are unnecessary. It is not expensive to convert data to digital format. It is always better to convert all the data including old and existing to digital format. The price of a hard disk is cheap. Therefore you can backup the contents of one disk to another disk. You can also backup data in CDR and DVD disks. You can use RAID technology to backup data using multiple hard disks. RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Devices.

What you need, to convert to digital format?

1. A high end, fast computer with a good scanner is required.
2. If you do not want to save the scanned documents as images and you want to convert them to text then you need a software called OCR (Optical Character Recognition). Usually the OCR software comes free with the scanner. If you have many paper documents that needs to be converted to text then you can buy an OCR software such as ABBYY Fine Reader.
3. To backup the your digital data you need quality software that has Scheduler facility. With the scheduler facility the software specific files at specified intervals automatically without your intervention. You can use ‘Second Copy’, ‘Win Backup’ or any other backup software.
4. The next this you need is the ‘Document Management Software’. New Soft’s Presto1 Page Manager is one such software. Some scanners come with this software freely.

The photos that we keep bring back sweet memories in our lives. They help us to remember our history. The digital Photo Album is the best way to keep your photos safe. In this article we can see how to use free photo album software to create digital photo albums.

As a first step, if you still have printed photos then scan it and save it as image files. If you use digital cameras then the photos are already in digital format. Now you can copy these photos into CDs or DVDs. This will keep your photos safe for many years to come.
Instead of just copying the files, you can order them properly before copying. You can list photos based on the dates. Or you can order them based on categories such as Friends, Relatives etc.

The Photo Album software does all these easily. Some of them are available for free and some need to be bought.Jalbum, Picasa, Adobe Photo Shop, Album and Flphoto are some Photo Album software.

Picasa is a free photo organizer software from google that makes your job very easy. Just

Adobe Photoshop album is also quite popular. If you are not prepared to buy this software then you can try the free edition of Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0 Starter edition. You can download fromwww.adobe.com/products/photoshopalbum/starter.html

Listed below are some of the features of Photoshop Album software

1. Photoshop album can scan and search for images in your hard disk from every directory very effectively. Not only hard disks even from your CDs and thumb drives. You can also search images from your hand phone or digital camera.
2. Photoshop album also orders and lists them based on the dates in which the photos were taken. If required you can edit each of these photos. You can do things link adjusting Brightness, Contrast, Color Correction etc.
3. You can create very attractive albums using these photos. You can also create slide shows. Or you can create beautiful calendars using the photos. You can even add audio and create video cd disks and send to your friends and relatives
4. You can create greeting cards with your photos in it and print them. Or you can just create ecards and email it. Or you can insert into PDF files.
5. You can increase the size of your photos or decrease it. You can give borders for your photos. Or you can extract a part of the image and create another image.
6. You can use templates to create photo albums. There are many templates available. You can give title and caption for each photo.
7. You can give ‘Transition Effect’ when one photo is shown after another photo.

In 1980s there was a tussle between VHS and Betamax technologies. VHS (Victor Home System) and Sony’s Betmax were two different standards in Video tapes. People were confused as to which video tape to choose. Twenty five years later now there is a similar comparison in DVD technologies. They are DVD+R and DVD-R.

The use of DVD writers is increasing tremendously. If you are thinking of buying a DVD writer, you can read buying tips on DVD writers. Though the DVD disks are same, the DVD burning methods differ. Among these two technologies DVD+R is a more advanced technology. That is why these DVD+R disks are expensive compared to DVD-R. DVD-R is a comparitively older technology.

Now the next issue is your DVD burning software. Some buy DVD burning software without checking whether that DVD burning software supports both DVD+R and DVD-R disks. So though it is a bit more expensive get a software that supports both DVD+R and DVD-R technologies.

Bluetooth is a very common buzzword used in computer and electronics Industry. In this tutorial let us see what is bluetooth and what are the features of bluetooth.

What is Bluetooth?

Bluetooth is a technology which uses Radio Frequency to connect different computer equipments and telecommmunication devices and transfer voice and data between them. Bluetooth operates at 2.4 Ghz frequency. We connect devices that support bluetooth and talk or send data. Bluetooth plays an important role in wireless technologies. You may wonder how the name bluetooth came about. A king named ‘Herald Bluetooth Blaatand’ integrated Denmark and Norway countries together. Therefore, the technology that connects various devices was named after this king.

Is WiFi and Bluetooth Same?

No. Both are wireless technologies. Both are related to computers. However they both differ in many ways. Computer, Cellphone, PDAs, headsets etc can be connected using bluetooth. Bluetooth is used to connect devices that are near to each other. Bluetooth consumes very less power. Whereas WiFi is used to connect computers, notebooks and PDAs that are far from or near to each other.

What is the distance required between two bluetooth devices?

Bluetooth devices should be within less than 10 meters (32 feet) apart to connect to each other. There are also high power bluetooth devices that can operate upto 100 meter distance. But these high power bluetooth devices are expensive. For normal home users the normal 10 meter distance is more than enough.

What is the speed of bluetooth?

Two bluetooth devices transfer data upto 1MBPS speed between them. But in reality you maynot get this 1MBPS speed. Normally you will get speed upto 721 KBPS. Is the data transfer in bluetooth secure? Bluetooth uses Frequency hopping. Furthermore the data is encrypted. Hence the data is fully secure in bluetooth.

How many devices can be connected in bluetooth?

Consider Bluetooth 1.0 and Bluetooth 1.1 standards. Using Bluetooth 1.0 based devices you can connect only one device to another device. But using Bluetooth 1.1 based devices, one device can connect to eight other bluetooth devices simultaneously.

What are the different types of Bluetooth devices?

Mobile phones, Notebook computers, Printers, PDAs are some of the bluetooth enabled devices. Many manufacturers including Nokia, IBM, Ericsson, Toshiba, 3 Com, Intel, Motorola produce bluetooth devices.

Bluetooth Frequency Interference.

Bluetooth operates in 2.4 Ghz frequency. Microwave oven, Cordless telephone are other devices that use the same 2.4 Ghz frequency. Moreover 802.11b, 802.11g Wi-Fi standards also use the same 2.4 Ghz frequency. By right there will not be any interference from these other devices though they are using the same frequency. This is because bluetooth uses frequency hopping and Direct Sequence Spreading methods. However it is advisable to keep these devices atleast 10 meters apart from bluetooth devices.

How to use Bluetooth?

Most of the latest mobile phones are bluetooth enabled. Normally to turn it on you need to turn on bluetooth using your phone’s manual since it may differ in various models of phones.

You can get bluetooth cards and connect to your computer. Or buy a USB or PCMCIA bluetooth card and connect it to your notebook. Now just give a name to each of your bluetooth device and then using your bluetooth utility scan for nearest bluetooth devices to connect to. Once you find the bluetooth device to connect to just select it and connect and then you can start to transfer data files between them.

You can read more tutorials on bluetooth here and tutorials on wifi here.

We measure size of files created in computer by kilobytes, megabytes. We measure modems speed by bits. Let’s see what they denote and let’s see some difference between them.

BIT: In the computer-associated measures this is the smallest one. No file can be in the measures of bits; its value is 0 or 1.
BYTE: combinations of 8 bits are called one byte. To create a file that containing one byte of data is very hard.
KILOBYTE (KB): proximately it has 1024 bytes of combinations. While downloading a file from net we denote it by the units of kilobytes.
MEGABYTE (MB): combinations of 1,048,576 bytes (or) 1024 kilobytes are called 1 megabyte.
GIGABYTE (GB): combinations of 1024 megabytes are called 1 gigabyte. This unit denotes capacity of hard disk.
Now we can fix this unit to some more devices.

* We can store 1.44 MB of data’s into a 3.25 inch floppy.
* In a compact disk we can store 650 to 700 MB data’s. But we won’t completely utilize the space available in cd.one cd contains the space equals to 450 3.25 inch floppy.
* A 20 gigabyte hard disk contains the space equal to 31 cd’s.(i.e.)14,222 floppy’s data.
* In an ordinary dial up connection .it takes 7 to 10 min’s for download a 1 Mega byte file.
* A normal single text page will be in 4 KB when it is changed as a file.

To find the size of a file, just right click on it .now you got a menu and then select the “PROPERTIES” from it. Now you got the size of that particular file.

ASCII and ANSI codes are two types of codes used in the computer. American Standard Code for Information Interchange is the expansion for ASCII. American National Standards Institute is the expansion for ANSI.

ANSI and ASCII definitions are very important. We use keyboard to type ‘A’ to ‘Z’ , ‘a’ to ‘z’ , numbers from ‘0’ to ‘9’ and special symbols. These symbols though helpful to us, computer understand only numerical. Each key has a value. Computer takes in account the value of the key you press and produces it in monitor

ASCII CODE: ASCII codes are seven digits numbers. If we multiply 2 for 7 times it gives 128,is’nt it? So the number of ASCII numbers is 128,So each number takes values between 0 to 127.For e.g. The alphabet A takes the value 65,the alphabet a takes the value 97.8 bits are used to represent a single ASCII number.

ANSI CODE: The total number ANSI numbers that uses 16 bits is 65,536. (If 2 is multiplied for 16 times we get 65536. ANSI is called as the superset of ASCII, so lot special symbols can be typed using it.

To type ANSI and ASCII numbers: To display letter in the monitor we need to type the ASCII or ANSI value of the number. 3 digits denote ASCII and, 4 digits denote ANSI. We already see that the ANSI value of A is 65 when we specifies this in ANSI we have to specify as 065 in three digits. As same as in ASCII we have to specify as 0065 in four digits. For typing the ANSI and ASCII codes we should use the Numeric Keypad, which is in left side of our keyboard. We should not use the number keys, which is in second row of our keyboard. For typing ANSI and ASCII code open the word document in Microsoft. Press the Num lock key the light should glow.

*Press Alt key and type the keys 065(in Numeric Keypad). Letter A will display. Press Alt key and type other values (example 078,094,). From typing the three digit numbers we get the ASCII letters.

*Press Alt key and type the keys 0128. Displays the Euro money symbol, as same as type other four digit numbers (example 0065,0163,). We get ANSI letters.