The Refresh Orlando Heirs » The Technology Way

August 29, 2008: 4:50 pm: adminThe Technology Way

Too Many Companies Enter the Gaming Laptops Arena

The days where laptops for gaming were a small sector are disappearing really rapidly. The notebooks were sold in insignificant numbers but each one had a significant profit margin. Everybody desired this type of laptop, however it was too pricey. Everyone thought they were the best laptops and rightly so. I would get really excited by them however I knew I could not go out and buy laptops at the prices they were selling for. Things look set to shift though because now the gaming laptops niche has attracted the attention of bigger brands.

Compared to the littler resellers these companies are aware that they can generate even more cash. It is an ideal opportunity for them to get back gross margins as the margins on standard laptops are so minute nowadays. Why would anyone buy laptops like this? I think big manufacturers have the marketing money to answer that. What could small resellers possibly do if their prices are undercut? Now prospects will have greater options it makes it hard for the small companies. I think the ignorant automatically feel safe by buying from a company they are familiar with.

The laptops hitting the market place are proving to be the best laptops ever released. I reckon that littler resellers could still have an opportunity. I can determine the ability of being able to customize the laptop computer to be a key buying factor. Educated in the technology, these kinds of purchasers are savvy to what details to look for. For particular customers specifications and performance data are more important than style. This is great news from a buyers position. In the end, the costs will be lowered even further causing the latest technology to be an option that we can buy. Don’t hold me to that however because unpredictable thing can happen in the laptop computer sector. I reckon technology is getting more advanced however the new laptops will usually remain over priced. The big manufacturers have already entered the gaming laptops division so we will have to be patient and see what the outcome is I guess.

This site (http://www.rizeon.com) is selling some good gaming notebooks at really cheap prices.

August 23, 2008: 12:16 pm: adminThe Technology Way

Kevin Trudeau - Fraud or Nutritional Savior

Is Kevin Trudeau a fraud or a nutritional savior? Based on the runaway sales of his book, Natural Cures They Don’t Want You to Know About, you’d think he was the latter - but you’d be dead wrong. Although “Fraud” isn’t really Trudeau’s last name, it should be.

Before reaching thirty, he was already a twice convicted felon serving time in a Federal penitentiary. He had posed as a doctor to gain credibility with bank officials, deposited $80,000 in fraudulent checks and misappropriated (for personal use) $128,000 from customer credit cards.

“That’s old news,” says Trudeau. “I made a few mistakes in my 20s. So what? I also s— my pants in the third grade. Come on. This is America!”

After being released from prison, Trudeau got caught running an illegal pyramid scheme. Under investigation by 18 state Attorney Generals and the U.S. Postal Service, he was stopped from doing business and fined a half million dollars - a drop in the bucket to the millions he had made at the expense of others.

He then became king of the late night TV infomercials, selling worthless products by playing on people’s hope for a “miracle” cure. By the mid 90’s, he was in trouble again. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) began successfully prosecuting him for fraudulent infomercials ripping off millions of people for millions of dollars.

Trudeau is now banned from “appearing in, producing or disseminating future infomercials that advertise any type of product, service or program to the public” with the exception of informational publications. In addition, he’s prohibited from making any “disease or health benefit claims for any type of product, service or program in any advertising, including print, radio, internet, television and direct mail solicitations, regardless of the format and duration.”

In defiance of his settlement, Trudeau, a convicted felon, outlaw operator of an illegal pyramid scheme and banned TV snake oil salesman, is now claiming to be a “victim of a government conspiracy.” Demanding his right to free speech, he self-published his best-selling book promising to expose “the natural cures for over 50 specific diseases.” But, once again, he doesn’t deliver. The book is just one long advertisement for a “lifetime membership” to his $495 online newsletter.

Trudeau is a real CON artist. After being convicted of numerous crimes, he’s so CONvincing that people can’t resist his hype. This man, who’s ripped off millions of people, is now posing as a “consumer activist” and purportedly preparing himself for a run in national politics. All I can say is “God save America!”

Let’s see Trudeau for what he really is - a criminal sociopath without any moral responsibility, conscience or remorse. Sure he’s charming, but don’t let him CON you. Don’t buy his book. Don’t subscribe to his newsletter. And certainly don’t vote for him.

Moss Greene makes it easy for you to look and feel better. Visit her site at http://nutrition.bellaonline.com to learn the simple things you can do for yourself right now. Be sure to subscribe to her free newsletter - you don’t want to miss a thing!

August 22, 2008: 4:55 pm: adminThe Technology Way

RAM - What is It & Why You Need Plenty

This is the first article in the Understanding Your Computer series from aworldofhelp.com. Our goal is to help people understand how their computer works, not simply tell them what they need to buy or use. When you know how your computer works, buying the right system or upgrade is easy. The series is designed to provide valuable information to users of all knowledge levels, so if part of it seems too complicated or too simple for you, I hope you read on and get all you can out of the articles. If you have questions or comments about this or any article, please ask in the forums!

RAM - What is it & why you need plenty

Many people picture a computer as consisting in part of a

Processor - CPU

Memory - RAM

Hard Drive

The way these three components interact is important to understanding how a computer works, and ultimately to understanding why you need enough RAM for your programs. Around the Internet and in Magazines you can find recommended RAM amounts for typical users. You also will find many places proclaiming RAM as the best performance for your dollar upgrade. I don’t disagree at all, but I want you to understand what RAM actually does, and why it can be such a valuable upgrade.

I covered this subject briefly in the aworldofhelp Notebook Buyer’s Guide on page 4. The information in that article is accurate, but I want to try to make things a little clearer here.

The article is divided into four sections, covering:

1. The functions of the three components we are discussing and their relative speeds

2. Why you need RAM and what takes up RAM

3. Multitasking and how RAM improves performance

4. How much RAM you need

CPU stands for Central Processing Unit. It is the brain of your computer. When you open a program, like Microsoft Word for example, the CPU reads through lines of computer code and follows the instructions so you can use your program. When you play an audio file like an MP3, the CPU has to do work to decompress it while it plays. When you edit a picture the CPU has to perform many calculations to make even the smallest changes.

One thing to note is that the CPU actually does have a very small amount of memory in it. This is the fastest memory in a computer system, but it is so small it doesn’t really affect this article. Generally speaking, the CPU doesn’t store the information that makes up the program, MP3, or picture, it only processes it. The data has to be located somewhere in your computer, and the CPU has to find it and then retrieve it.

That action, the problem of locating the data and how it affects your overall system performance is what this article is about.

RAM

RAM stands for Random Access Memory. This memory is very fast, and you will see it in sizes like 256 MB, 512 MB, or 1024 MB. When you turn off your computer, the contents are erased, so it is only temporary memory. This is where the CPU looks first to get data to process. So if you are editing a picture, and its data is in this RAM, because RAM is fast memory, editing the picture will happen relatively quickly.

Hard Drive

Your Hard Drive is where you store all of your programs, music, video, and everything you keep on your computer. This is the memory where you store your files that remain even after you turn your system off. You will see them in all sizes, now typically ranging from 30 GB, to hundreds of GB. Hard drives are very slow compared to your CPU and RAM because they are mechanical. Inside the disk there are actually small readers that physically move around to locate and read data.

If you are editing a picture, the CPU will first look in RAM memory to see if it is there, because RAM is fast. If it isn’t, the CPU will go to the hard drive and edit the picture there. Because your hard drive is so slow, this takes a much longer time than if the picture had been in RAM.

Again, the CPU only stores a tiny bit of data, so it has to get it from somewhere to operate on. If the CPU has data to process, it will do so as fast as it can, but if it doesn’t, the brain of your computer simply sits and waits doing nothing. Only after it finds and retrieves the data it needs can it process it.

So ideally, you want your CPU to find data in the fastest place possible. As you can see, if the data is in RAM you are far better off than if it is in your hard disk because RAM is so much faster. Just take a look at the graph below. It shows the time it takes to access each memory type in nanoseconds.

Clearly, your hard drive is slow, but when you look at the above graph, and you see the numbers it is based on below, you realize just how slow it is. Each is an approximate access time in nanoseconds:

CPU 1 ns
RAM 60 ns
Hard Drive 10,000,000 ns

It should be clear why the bars for your CPU and RAM do not even show up on this graph, your hard drive is simply extremely slow.

So why bother with a hard disk?

Seeing that, you might think that it would be great if you could just use huge amounts of RAM instead of a hard disk. You are right, this would be a great situation, but as you might imagine, the faster the memory in your computer, the more expensive it is. RAM prices have come down significantly in recent years, but it will still cost you much more compared to Hard Drive space.

Computers work within this constraint - that faster memory is more expensive - by looking in the fastest place for information first, then moving to slower locations only when they need to. So if you hear your hard drive making noise or you see a light telling you it is being accessed, you know the data could not be found in RAM.

Now you know that the hard drive access that’s going on is very slow, and that is the reason your CPU, and in turn you, have to wait.

So now you know that you want lots of RAM, at least enough for all your programs, so you don’t have to access your slow hard drive too often. But what actually uses your RAM, and how can you see whether your system has enough?

Windows itself takes up a lot of RAM. Microsoft says Windows XP will run on a machine with 64 MB of RAM, though they recommend 128 MB or 256 MB. If you have even more RAM than that, and I recommend you do, Windows will use some of it as well.

Everything that loads when you boot up your computer also uses RAM. What these programs are actually doing is putting themselves in to RAM, if enough is available, so that they can be used very quickly. The problem is when there isn’t enough memory for all these programs, and your computer runs very slowly.

On my machine these programs load when I turn on my computer:

AVG Antivirus
Scanner Software
Digital Camera Software
Gmail Notifier
AOL Instant Messenger
And some server software for testing

Then, everything I run after the boot up uses more RAM. Whatever Internet Browser I use, for example, takes up RAM. Microsoft Word does too, as well as all my programs. To see how much RAM you have and how much free RAM you have, you can open up Task Manager by right clicking on the start menu and selecting it, it looks like this.

On the right, in the Physical Memory section my RAM is listed. My total and available memory is listed, and as you can see, just booting my computer into Windows XP and loading all the things I do, I have less than half of my RAM available for other programs.

Your system will probably have less total RAM, but you’ll be able to see how much and how much you have free. You can easily find out how much ram you have by right clicking on “My Computer” and going to properties, but it’s useful to see it here so you understand what the Task Manager is showing. You can use this tool to convert the number shown in “K” to a number that you may be more comfortable with, in “MB”.

K MB

On my computer, 1048040 K converts to 1023.4 MB, which is 1024 MB.

Your own system may give you a number a few megabytes lower than the actual. For example, 252 instead of 256. That is normal, and is a result of something else, like a video chip, using a portion of the RAM. The actual RAM your programs has to work with is the number listed in the Task Manager.

In my example, I have a hundreds of Megabytes of free RAM. I sometimes fill the RAM if I am video editing or photo editing, but beyond that, it is rare. This is a good thing though, remember the chart. If your RAM is full, your Hard Drive will be used more, and since it is so slow, your system will grind to near a halt.

By looking at the Task Manager, you can get a good idea of how your system is running. If you have lots of available RAM, you are in good shape. But many systems I see actually have almost no free RAM, and this is what causes the system to use the hard disk instead and run slower. Note that the available RAM will generally never hit zero, but will fluctuate around very low numbers if your system is out of memory.

Our example so far has been simplified to show how doing one thing on your computer needs memory. But a real benefit of having adequate memory is multitasking. Basically, if you are doing more than one thing at a time, you are multitasking. If you are reading this article and editing a picture at the same time, you are multitasking.

Generally, if you can switch between two open programs on your machine very quickly, they both are loaded into RAM. In this case, you can likely see plenty of available memory in Task Manager. On my machine, since I have plenty of RAM, I switch between two or three Internet browsers, Excel, PowerPoint, Instant Messenger, my audio player, and more very quickly.

On the other hand if you don’t have enough RAM, even with just two programs open, when you switch between them your computer may slow down considerably. The program you are switching to is not in RAM, and the CPU is forced to get information from the hard disk. As you open more programs, the situation only gets worse. A check on task manager in this case will likely show very little free RAM, too little in fact to fit all your programs.

How Much RAM do you need?

The best answer is that you need enough RAM to run all your programs and multitask between them quickly. If your system is running well and you check Task Manager and have lots of available RAM, you are probably in good shape. If your system is slow switching between more than one program, look at the task manager and see if your available RAM is low. If it is, adding more will likely make your entire system run faster, just by fitting more programs into RAM.

You’ll be amazed how fixing this problem will improve you computing experience overall. That is the reason so many people talk about RAM as being the best upgrade for older systems.

If you are buying a new computer 512 MB is a good amount of RAM for most users. If you edit a lot of pictures or video, or if you can just afford the upgrade, moving up to 1024 MB (1 GB) is not a bad idea. Memory prices are much lower than they used to be, and you’ll have extra memory for more programs now. For most users, the biggest advantage to getting more RAM is that if you keep your computer for a long time, the extra RAM could save you an upgrade down the road.

But how much RAM is too much? Well you won’t really slow down your system by adding RAM. Typical systems currently can accommodate up to anywhere from 512 MB - 2 GB of RAM. The problem is, after you have enough RAM, adding more really doesn’t get you much, if any performance gain.

With that in mind, check back soon for an article comparing performance of common applications, including multitasking, with different amounts of RAM. We’ll test from 256 MB to 1024MB, and you’ll be able to see how all we’ve covered here has a real affect on the speed of your computer.

Steve Perlow is the founder of aworldofhelp.com, where you can find the aworldofhelp Top Picks in desktop and notebook systems.

Visit aworldofhelp.com to get answers from real people to your questions about technology, travel and more.

August 17, 2008: 7:40 am: adminThe Technology Way

Why Do I Need a Paper Shredder?

There are many reasons for purchasing a paper shredder, and the need for such an office device increased since the FACTA Law “Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act” was passed in 2005. Many offices consider such a purchase but are worried about the room the paper shredder will occupy. There is good news for them - small office paper shredders - they take very little room and offer more than enough shredding capacity for a small 3-5 person office. Another issue some company managers come across is related to paper shredder costs. However, the devices requires almost no cash to maintenance and run and the fact of knowing that your disposed documents cannot be pieced together is worth every cost.

Identity theft prevention

The scale of identity theft has been recently analyzed in a federal report and the general results were worrying. The report states that lately, one out of four American homes is targeted by identity theft. This is a very large-scale problem, it was shown, and home owners, together with business managers, started putting more thought into efficiently protecting themselves against this plague. Business and employee personal information is often thrown away in the garbage, from where it is easily removed by someone who wishes to use that information illegally. One answer to this problem is the new June 2005 FACTA Law (Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act) which brings new regulations concerning identity theft.

Office paper shredders

An increased rigor in safety rules determined many companies to acquire office paper shredders. They are one of the safest ways to dispose of official documents or any other sensitive document type that has served its purpose. Most office paper shredders are getting close to flawlessness in cutting paper in a way that prevents any form of document restoration. Once such documents are shredded, the potential risk factor of someone putting them back together decreases to almost zero. There are various office paper shredder types to choose from, from basic to advanced models.

Work load of office paper shredders

Office shredders are presented in various sizes, colors and models. There are very few things that can break the shredder and their affordable price and increased durability recommends them as a smart investment. Most office paper shredder models are easily adjusted to the environment of your office and maintenance is easy to perform. You can also choose different color schemes for the office paper shredder, so that they blend in perfectly with your environment. The work capability of the paper shredder is usually very high, more than enough for regular office needs. Industrial paper shredders are also available for companies that deal with a lot of paper documentation.

Platinum First

Please visit our website for detailed paper shredder information:
Paper Shredder Expert

August 15, 2008: 2:53 am: adminThe Technology Way

How to Have an Impressive Date With a Woman

Asking her for a date:

• Ask her out in person. Your conversations together is an opportunity for you to discover if both your personalities and ideas are attuned with each other, before you do decide to ask her out for a date.

• When calling through the phone. Don’t forget to mention to her the conversations you had. This will give her the impression that you do listen, making her feel important. Then if you feel that it is time to ask her, go ahead; ask gently, not in a demanding manner.

• Ask when you both are alone. Never ask a girl out on a date in front of others, like her friends. This will either embarrass her, and may say yes or embarrass you, if she says no.

During the date:

• Look good, be neat. Put extra effort to the way you look. Take the time be well groomed, smell nice and choose your clothes well. It must correspond to the place with which your date is set. Make a good impression, so you can charm her and she can be proud of you.

• Do not be late. Prepare for the big day ahead. Make the necessary reservations and planning for your date. If you have planned for it, she will be impressed that you did put some effort on your night together. Be sure that during the “big day” you have no appointments so you won’t be cramming and be on time.

• Be polite. Be sure to make her feel good by complementing the way she looks. And when seated at the table, turn your cell phone off. This will signal to her that you are very much interested in your moment together.

• Say her name. Make it a point to say her name ever so often in your conversations, to make her feel at ease and special.

• Smile. Aside from putting up a positive attitude, your smile is an indication that you are happy to be with her.

• Have a Sense of Humor. Making a woman laugh means you have won half your battle. This means that she is having a nice time and creates a positive atmosphere. This will be an occasion she would remember, because she had fun!

• Be attentive. Listen to what she has to say or is saying, do not interrupt. Let her finish, before you state your opinion and make eye contact.

• Be honest. Let her get to know you by telling her what you do, what interests you, don’t make up stories. If she will not like you for who you are, then she is not worth your time. Show interest in her too, by asking her about her work, hobbies and her likes. Be sensible and honest in initiating such conversations.

• Relax. Do not worry that your date is not having a good time. Go ahead and ask her. Just manage yourself well and enjoy the evening. Keep the conversations open and ask questions. Be sincere.

• Do not pretend. Be yourself. Pretending into somebody that you’re not, will not work in the long run. The truth will always come out sooner or later. It is a rewarding feeling if someone is drawn to you for who you really are.

• Never compare. It will be very unfair of you if you compare your date to your past girlfriend. Keep in mind that she is a totally different person with her own personality. Take the time to discover her; you might be pleased if you do. Comparing won’t get you anywhere. An important thing to remember, do not ever articulate your comparisons with your date, this will surely lead to disaster.

• Never tell your date about your break-up. Keep in mind that you asked her out so you both could have fun together. She is not your therapist, so do not recount your past relationship. Burry the past and move on. Here is a woman in front of you who is interested to know you more. Get to know her too, initiate a conversation that could lead to a common interest.

• Enjoy. Dating should be exciting and relaxing. A woman could sense if you are enjoying or not. Don’t stress yourself trying so hard to make it “The Perfect date” because it won’t be. But you both can enjoy it. After all, you did invite her out because you liked her in the first place. Be spontaneous and have fun.

About The Author:

Lawrence Andrews is an ePublisher, software developer, consultant,
and author of numerous books. Visit his Private Label Content and
Software site at http://www.lmamedia.com for more information about
Dating Do’s and Dont’s.

You may use this article freely on your website as long as this resource
box is included, a link point back to my site, and this article remains
unchanged! Copyright 2005 Lawrence Andrews