Discount Computers

After a long, exhausting day you came home, had your dinner and
then sat in front of the TV looking for a nice relaxing movie.
Nothing! Then suddenly you remembered that you bought the CD of
the new, Oscar-winning movie “Million Dollar Baby”. You took out
your laptop, inserted the first CD and hit “play”. To your
surprise, the only thing you could see was a green screen. You
took out the CD, cursing at the media market that gave you a
“broken” CD for the fifth time. Tried the second CD; again the
frustrating green screen. First thing in the morning, you took
your “broken” movies and went to the shop. Having yelled at the
owner of the shop for five minutes, you suddenly noticed the
cynical smile on the guy’s face. Having the opportunity to talk,
the shop keeper said “CODEX”.

All you needed were the codecs for these movies. They were not
broken; they were just coded in a “foreign” language to your
media player. The codecs were the dictionary that your laptop
had to use to translate the absurd computer language to the nice
scenes of the movies.

Every video, audio, picture or even word document files are
coded in a different way. In the case of big data entries like
movies, the computer has to use different algorithms to compress
the data so that the size does not exceed the standard limits.
We see this compression in PDF files (Acrobat Reader), in MP3
files (WinAMP), in MPEG files (movies), in each and every data
storage file that you can imagine. While the compression is
being done, the programs use some kind of a dictionary. Without
these “dictionaries” (codecs in the case of video and audio
files) the code would seem as meaningless to the player or the
viewer as it is to you. So you have to install certain codecs to
be able to use certain files.

Some codecs replace the repetitive symbols over the file, ome
codecs changes the aspect ratio of the movie; some of them
decrease the quality of the picture and yet, all of them turn
gigabytes of data into fair size that can fit into a CD or a
DVD.

As the user demands increases, codecs are multiplying in a
logarithmic scale. There are several codecs that are musts for
movie fans, however. You should install most of these if you
don’t want to be disappointed.

1. MPEG4 – It is the default codec which is already included in
WMP. 2. DIVX – A series of sound and display codex which come
with shareware DIVX player. 3. XVID – Relatively new, one of the
most used video codecs. 4. AC3 – Most common sound codec. 5.
Intel Indeo – Rather useful series of codec which a new version
pops out everyday.

Overall the way movies are encoded is changing day by day.
Everyday we see a new aspect ratio. Everyday we encounter a new
codec. To many, it would seem that it is getting harder and hard
to watch movies. The least you can do is to download a codec
viewer program which would help you on your quest for a pleasant
evening.

About the author:

Jay is the web owner of http://www.dsl-in.com DSL, a website that provides
information and resources on DSL, DSL Service, and DSL Service
Providers. You can visit his website at: DSL Service

Working from home has its advantages, including no commute, a
more flexible work schedule and fresh coffee and home-cooked
meals whenever you want.

But working from home while using a wireless local area network
(WLAN) may lead to theft of sensitive information and hacker or
virus infiltration unless proper measures are taken. As WLANs
send information over radio waves, someone with a receiver in
your area could be picking up the transmission, thus gaining
access to your computer.

They could load viruses on to your laptop which could be
transferred to the company’s network when you go back to work.

Up to 75 per cent of WLAN users do not have standard security
features installed, while 20 per cent are left completely open
as default configurations are not secured, but made for the
users to have their network up and running ASAP.

It is recommended that wireless router/access point setup be
always done though a wired client.

Change default administrative password on wireless router/access
point to a secured password.

Enable at least 128-bit WEP encryption on both card and access
point. Change your WEP keys periodically. If equipment does not
support at least 128-bit WEP encryption, consider replacing it.

Although there are security issues with WEP, it represents
minimum level of security, and it should be enabled.

Change the default SSID on your router/access point to a hard to
guess name. Setup your computer device to connect to this SSID
by default.

Setup router/access point not to broadcast the SSID. The same
SSID needs to be setup on the client side manually. This feature
may not be available on all equipment.

Block anonymous Internet requests or pings.

On each computer having wireless network card, network
connection properties should be configured to allow connection
to Access Point Networks Only. Computer to Computer (peer to
peer) Connection should not be allowed.

Enable MAC filtering. Deny association to wireless network for
unspecified MAC addresses. Mac or Physical addresses are
available through your computer device network connection setup
and they are physically written on network cards. When adding
new wireless cards / computer to the network, their MAC
addresses should be registered with the router /access point.

Network router should have firewall features enabled and
demilitarized zone (DMZ) feature disabled.

You can test your hardware and personal firewalls using Shields
Up test available at http://www.grc.com.

All computers should have a properly configured personal
firewall in addition to a hardware firewall.

Update router/access point firmware when new versions become
available.

Locate router/access point away from strangers so they cannot
reset the router/access point to default settings.

Locate router/access point in the middle of the building rather
than near windows to limit signal coverage outside the building.

While none of the measure suggested above provides full
protection as countermeasures exist, a collection of suggested
measures will act as a deterrent against attacker when other
insecure networks represent easier targets.

About the author:

Jay is the web owner of http://www.dsl-in.com DSL, a website that provides
information and resources on DSL, DSL Service, and DSL Service
Providers. You can visit his website at: DSL Service

It’s easy to make a mistake when buying a new computer. Many
people end up spending a ton of money on something expensive
that they’ll never use to its full potential, while others buy
something so small that they have to do expensive upgrading in a
matter of months. There’s few things more disappointing than
finding out your 6 month old computer can’t do what you want it
to do, or that you don’t really need that $400 graphics card to
run Microsoft Word.

Don’t just buy blindly. Hopefully this article will help you ask
the right questions and get the right hardware for your needs in
return.

Power Supply:

Often overlooked as a component, your power supply is an
important part of your computer as it powers all the internal
components. The power supply you need will largely be determined
by the components in your PC – in particular CPU type, graphics
card and number of internal devices. For Pentium 4 and all AMD
CPUs, a minimum 300W power supply is recommended. If you want to
run one of the new ATI X8xx or GeForce 6xxx series 3D graphics
cards, don’t even try anything weaker than a 400W power supply.
Never overlook the significance of a power supply – an
underpowered system will be prone not only to unreliable
operation, but also to component damage.

CPU:

On the entry level side of things you have a choice between
AMD’s Sempron CPUs and Intel’s Celeron D. These CPUs are not for
the hardcore gamer – they’re for the average user who only want
to run office applications and use the Internet. For the
hardcore user/gamer there’s the Pentium 4 and the AMD Athlon 64
CPUs. There’s little to choose between the two big guns in the
CPU business. The slowest Pentium 4 CPU readily available at
present is the 3Ghz version, while AMD’s equivalent, the Athlon
64 3000+ will likewise satisfy most users’ demand for processing
power. Go faster than that and the increase in cost becomes
quite significant, and you’ll have to weigh that up against your
budget and your demands.

Motherboard:

The most important thing to keep in mind when picking a
motherboard is to get one that’s fairly future proof. For
Pentium 4 that means a motherboard that supports socket 775
CPUs, and for AMD a motherboard that supports socket 939 CPUs.
Also, make sure your motherboard has enough expansion slots
(most commonly PCI slots) to support all additional cards you
may want to use in future – including sound cards, TV cards,
wireless network cards, etc. If you’re a gamer, also make sure
that your motherboard supports either an AGP 8x (obsolete soon),
but preferably a PCI-Express 16x slot for a 3D graphics card.

3D Graphics Card:

While most motherboards these days feature an onboard graphics
card that is suitable for the casual user, these aren’t adequate
for gamers. With the old AGP 8x architecture almost obsolete,
the way to go is a PCI-Express graphics card if you have a
motherboard that supports it. For casual gamers who want to play
a bit of Sims and Harry Potter, nVidia’s GeForce 6600 and ATI’s
X700 series of cards will do the trick. For the hardcore gamer
who wants to play cutting edge games like Doom 3 and Battlefield
2 at rocking frame rates, don’t get anything smaller than a
GeForce 6600GT or ATI X800 with 256MB of GDDR3 memory on the
card. 128MB is also acceptable if you don’t want to play at
resolutions higher than 1152×864. Before buying a graphics card,
make sure that a) your motherboard has the appropriate slot for
it and b) that your power supply is strong enough to support it.

RAM:

RAM is fast memory used by your computer to execute tasks. When
your computer runs out of RAM, it starts swapping data to the
much slower hard drive, which slows down your entire system.
With RAM being so cheap these days I’d recommend you get at
least 512MB. If you’re going to run Windows XP, don’t get less
than 256MB or you’ll slow even the fastest CPU powered computer
to a crawl. For hardcore gamers, less than 1GB simply isn’t an
option anymore.

Hard drive:

The smallest hard drive you can buy at the time of writing is
80GB. That’s more than the average home/office user will ever
fill, while it’s not nearly enough for music/video collectors or
avid gamers. At the moment the first big price jump in hard
drives comes between 200GB and 250GB, so 200GB would be a great
option if you need some serious space. Be sure to make
comparisons if you need more space – for example, two 200GB
drives are much cheaper than one 400GB, even though you get the
same amount of space. On the other hand again, two 80GB drives
are more expensive than one 160GB drive. It’s also worth getting
a SATA hard drive if your motherboard supports it. It’s much
faster than IDE drives, which are still abundantly available.

Optical Drives:

Fortunately CD-ROM drives have quietly vanished off the market,
so you can now get more versatile DVD-ROM and CD-ReWriter drives
very cheaply. If you want to be able to write DVDs, naturally go
for a DVD-RW drive, and make sure the drive you get supports
double-layer writing so you can use the new 8.5GB double layer
DVD discs in it, which is a whole lot of backup storage.

So, that’s just a quick rundown of the things to keep in mind
when buying a new computer. Fortunately it’s almost impossible
to buy a slow computer these days – only

About the author:

Jay is the web owner of http://www.dsl-in.com DSL, a website that provides
information and resources on DSL, DSL Service, and DSL Service
Providers. You can visit his website at: DSL Service