Tech Review

The buying of large-screen TVs has absolutely skyrocketed lately. It seems that everyone wants one – and with good reason. The large-screen TV has come a long way from those faded-out behemoths of old that took up half your living room and never really produced a picture of decent quality. Now, however, especially in combination with HDTV, you can get not only a nice, large picture, but a crisp, clean one too.

Once you decide that you’re ready for a large-screen TV, you quickly discover that you only really have two main options – a plasma TV or an LCD TV. Plasma TVs were first on the scene, but the recent mass production of LCD TVs by major manufactures has put LCD TVs pretty much on equal footing with plasmas. That said, you will still have to make a choice.

If you’re like most people, you not only have no idea how the two differ, you don’t even know the areas you should be considering in order to determine how they differ. But they do indeed differ, and knowing the difference is extremely important if you’re going to get the TV that’s right for you.

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Tired of switching CD/DVD discs while backing up? Flash USB drives to the rescue!

If you already backup often, you are doing the most you can to secure your files against accidental file deletion and recovery, file damage and what not. Also, you may be considering making your backups as easy and painless as possible. So what may be a remedy to this issue?

Naturally, you need to consider several backup media and select the one suitting your needs and requirements. Among all, CD, DVD and flash USB drives are considered.

You may as well use CD to backup, but you will either need to dump CD-R discs often, or insert a CD-/+RW discs often to make another backup. Someone else can also misplace your backup CD disc or overwrite your backup data with other information. Moreover, a CD only admits about 700Mb of data, which may not be convenient. Nor is storing multiple CDs of your backup copy.

The same can be said about backing up to DVD. Of course, a DVD admits from 4.7Gb to about 18.6Gb of data, but is it really convenient backing up to DVD? An external hard disk drive or a flash USB drive will be speedier, more reliable and easier overall.

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Buying a laptop is a commitment! Once you buy it, you can’t decide to change or upgrade any part of the system, as doing so is impractical in terms of cost and time. So plan before buying laptop, and make sure it’s a fully loaded model that is up to date.

One of the important features of a laptop is its memory. While most laptops come with a 128 MB memory, it’s wise to invest in more memory such as a system memory (RAM) of 256 MB or even better, 512 MB, for the easier running of programs under Windows ME, Windows XP, and others. After all, the more memory the merrier!

Another main feature of a laptop is its port. A port is a slot through which external material such as microphones and cameras are connected. Laptops come with a serial port, infrared, parallel, and a Universal Serial Bus (USB) ports. Most external equipment correspond with different ports, which is why there are several types of ports in a laptop. However, it is best to opt for at least two USBs, as this is fast becoming the most popular of ports.

CD-ROM drives are not a standard feature of laptops, but it is best to have one installed, as most software comes in CDs these days. Even better would be to install a DVD-ROM drive, which can be used to read CD-ROMs too. A DVD-RW drive is capable of writing and rewriting CDs and DVDs. Also, when on a lengthy trip, having a DVD drive means you can check out your favourite DVD!

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Video technology has increased significantly over the past years, and is continuing to grow at an incredible rate. Digital Video Disc’s aka DVD’s are the most likely the last big jump in consumer video technology that everyone is familiar with. To keep up with the ever advancing world of electronics a new format of video storage will be released soon called Blu-ray.

Blu-Ray is a next generation optical disc that will blow the socks off of what we all know today: DVD. Conventional DVD’s use a red laser that have long wave lengths, which limits the storage capacity on a disc. Blu-Ray uses a blue laser which has much shorter wave lengths. Because the wave lengths on the Blu-Ray are much smaller it can focus on a spot with much greater precision, allowing for data to be packed much more tightly than the red laser DVD’s.

Blu-Ray discs can hold up to 50GB’s of information which 10 times that of a 4.5GB DVD. 10 times the storage will greatly increase the amount of information that we can save on any one disc and will change the way we save information. Dual Layer Blu-Ray discs will be able to hold up to 4 hours of High-Definition Video. High Definition video is going to hit big here, Blu-Ray is an example of a technology that is going to make it happen. 50GB is probably comparable to size of many of our hard-drives, and to picture having all of that information on a small disc that we can slide into a pocket and take wherever we want is a bit scary.

Expect to see Blu-Ray replacing DVD and VCR over the next few years, following along with the transition of video to High Definition Video. Video isn’t the only thing that will benefit from Blu-Ray technology; I would expect that it will also become the standard for PC and other types of storage.

Once or twice a week I would visit DVD rental store, choose from the selection of DVDs available, and settle down for a relaxing evening of movie watching. The only problem was that I often had trouble getting to the video store to return my rental on time. More often than not I was paying overdue fees that meant my DVD evening was becoming a very expensive affair. Then I saw an advert about online DVD rentals and I have never paid a late fee since.

The way that online DVD rental companies work is very simple. You sign up for the service, and pay a monthly fee. This fee depends on how many DVDs you want to have out at any one time. I chose the maximum three from my service. Once you have your account set up then you need to prepare your list of DVDs. This is easy to do, and you can compile your list from all DVDs that have ever been released. I usually have a few old favourites, as well as a few new releases to keep a nice balance. I also change the order of my list around depending on the mood that I am in. The system then selects the first three DVDs from your list that are available, and mails them to you.

Once you have watched a DVD, you place it in the pre-paid envelope that it came with, and mail it back to the company. They then send you another from your list. It is as simple as that. There is no time limit as to how long you ca keep a particular DVD, so no late fees – ever! Many of the services have a mix and match type of facility where you can specify the genre of the films that you want to have. This helps ensure that you don’t have all horror movies or all children’s at one time. Also, my service has a first-to-last feature to enable me to watch a series of films in the order that they were made. I wouldn’t want to watch The Ring 2, before The Ring, for example.