Discount Computers

With more players jumping into the already populated space of
Voice over the Internet Protocol (VoIP), the perceptive user has
that much more choice. Vonage is a leading player in this
marketplace with over a million subscribers worldwide in a short
lifespan of three years. However, there is a set of negatives
too, so wait until you reach the end of this review before you
decide to switch from your traditional landline service to
Vonage telephony.

What is Vonage and how does it differ from your landline
connection? For a start, you must have a broadband connection,
preferably cable-based; a dial-up is no good. When you call
Vonage customer service for a connection, Vonage sends you a
tiny box, which you have to plug to your telephone and your
cable modem or DSL. You are now set to start a Vonage
conversation. With a Vonage connection, you have access to your
telephone through your computer and the broadband connection.
The other big difference from a traditional phone service is
cost effectiveness; with a Vonage, you can cut your telephone
bill significantly, and converse worldwide by buying local
telephone numbers from Vonage.

Vonage offers a set of four monthly packages for all calls in
the US, Canada, and Puerto Rico: a premium unlimited offer at
US$24.99, a basic plan of 500 minutes at US$14.99, a
small-business unlimited package at US$49.99, and a basic
small-business offer of 1500 minutes at US$39.99. For calls from
the US to other world destinations, there is a nominal
per-minute rate applicable, which is well below what you would
pay to your landline service provider. For example, for a
minute’s call to Mumbai (India), you need to pay only US$0.17;
for a call to the UK, it is as low as US$0.04 per minute. The
Vonage Website lists the charges applicable to each city on its
network. Perhaps the best part of Vonage is that you can carry
your US telephone number to any part of the world with broadband
connectivity, and call the US at local call rates. For any
reason, if you are dissatisfied with Vonage services, you can
opt for the 14-day (or 30-day for some packages) money-back
offer. This trial period is enough time to try out the excellent
features that you get with Vonage:

* An unlisted telephone number

* Call waiting, callerID

* Call forwarding, 7-digit dialing (rather than area code
+number used in many markets, including Lingo)

* An innovative voicemail feature

* Repeat dial

* Dynamic periodic feature updates

However, Vonage is not all positives. Its founding premise is a
bit wobbly; your connection is afloat only as long as your
broadband connection is. Any Internet outage and Vonage will
cease to function. Call quality is also dependent on the speed
of your broadband. Then there is the question of availability of
a local number for your city; Vonage may not have your city
listed, so you should confirm this with Vonage customer support
before deciding on the service. Vonage is facing stern
competition from AT&T and Verizon, and users have preferred the
call quality of AT&T to that of Vonage. Vonage is also not the
cheapest VoIP service around in the marketplace.

However, Vonage is a winner on features. If you have a
dependable broadband connection, need to make frequent
international calls, and travel to world destinations but need
to stay in touch with the US, Vonage is for you.

About the author:
Hamesh Brown enjoys writing about VoIP. For more information,
see this Vonage review.

The heart of any computer is the motherboard. It is that big
board inside the computer that everything is connected to. It
performs the role of traffic lights and policemen, directing
flows of information to where they are needed, when they are
needed.

Choosing the right motherboard does not have to be a huge issue,
even though there is a lot to consider. I will start off with
the most major parts and move onto the the things that are less
important or non-essential.

Firstly is the socket type.

The socket is the place where the processor (CPU) connects to
the motherboard. There is no compatiblility between sockets, so
it has to be the right one. The socket connection needs to match
the connection of the processor you have or the one you intend
to buy for the computer.

Most older Intel Pentium 4s utilise socket 478. Newer ones use
socket 775. AMD chips utilised socket A for a long time, but now
the AMD Athlon 64 series and Semprons use socket 939. Just check
with someone as to what yours or your intended one will have.

Your choice of chip will have a lot to do with your needs, but
choosing one with an up to date socket type will ensure slightly
longer motherboard life as you can upgrade the chip for a while.

Second is the memory type

DDR is the RAM of choice for most systems, but some newer
systems, which includes all Pentiums with socket 775 use DDR2.
These two kinds are not interchangable and have a different
number of pins. Both DDR and DDR2 come in different speed
ratings measured in MHz. DDR has a usual 400MHz denoted as
DDR400 or PC3200, while DDR2 can go a little higher and comes in
slightly faster speeds. Just make it match what the board needs.

Third is expansion slots

The expansion slots are the places where you put extra cards
onto the motherboard, like graphics cards, extra sound card or a
wireless internet card. The old standard is a PCI slot and these
are appropriate for most expansion cards, excepts new graphics
cards.

The most simple of graphics cards are sometimes available for
PCI slots, but not too many. More common are AGP cards and the
newer PCI express (PCIe) cards. AGP slots come in speed variants
up to 8x, make sure the slot matches your card. PCI and PCIe are
incompatible, so don’t be confused by that. The PCIe slots are
much longer and have a securing latch. If you want an SLI
graphics card setup with two PCIe cards with SLI attached
together, make sure the motherboard specifically states that it
supports SLI.

Fourth is hard drive and optical drive connections

Two kinds are available, IDE and SATA, IDE is older with a thick
cable and SATA is newer with a thinner cable. SATA capability is
usually an add-on, you can see a dedicated chip on the
motherboard. IDE is being phased out, but is still used for many
drives and all optical devices like DVD and CD drives. IDE has
speeds of ATA66, ATA100 and ATA133, SATA has speeds of 150Mbps
and 300Mbps the latter sometimes referred to as SATA2. Make sure
your board supports as much or more than you intend to install.

Fifth is the extras

The number of extras available on motherboard has increased
greatly and so has the quality of the extras. Things to be
expected are USB 2.0, a sound card and network slot. Other
things which it may or may not have are firewire and extra USB
slots.

So with all that in mind you should be in good stead to make a
good decision on your purchase. Happy shopping.

Roundup

Socket type – A, 478, 775, 939

Memory (RAM) – DDR, DDR2

Expansion slots – PCI and one of AGP or PCIe

ATA – ATA66, 100 or 133. SATA or SATA2

Extras – USB, network and sound card (expected), firewire, extra
USB, extra SATA slots (optional but becoming more common)

About the author:
Peter Stewart is a computer enthusiast, his interest in
computers and focus on practical down to earth advice inspired
his two websites.

http://computer-buying-gu
ide.com – Practical buying tips

http://computer-reviews.net – Fair and honest reviews and opinions

You may reprint or publish this article free of charge as long
as the bylines are included.

Original URL (The Web version of the article)

————

-Deployment-Of-Security-Tools.htm" Virtual Machines

Title

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Virtual Machines

Rapid Security Tool Deployment

————

Virtual Machines – Many of you have probably heard of them,
and/or even used them . But for those of you who have not, here
is a brief description.

Virtual Machines, or OS Virtualization, allows heterogeneous
operating systems to run simultaneously on the same physical
hardware. In a very basic form, imagine running Windows XP,
Windows 2003 Enterprise Server, and Linux on the same computer
at the same time. Each virtualized operating system, or
environment, has access to disk drives, memory, video, input
devices, and communications devices, all at the same time, on
the same system.

Before we conclude this article on how virtualization is used to
rapidly and securely deploy security toolsets, we will provide
you with links to Virtual Machine software you can work with on
a trial bases (or purchase) and at least one that is free of
cost.

How We Use Virtual Machines For Various Testing

————

Although the majority of the work we do is security assessment,
we routinely deploy security measures such as perimeter defense,
or enterprise firewall solutions. Many times, we are replacing
an existing defense system and need to make sure that when we
cut-over to the new system, everything will function properly.
For instance, when deploying a firewall, or firewall clusters,
we can simulate the cluster design by installed the software
into virtual machines, on one physical system, and test the
internal firewall to firewall communications. Also, prior to
deploying the firewalls, we can create a virtual machine to
represent each network protected by the firewalls and test
connectivity / communication on each network e.g. Internet,
private network, DMZ’s, and other protected nets, all with just
one system (usually a beefy laptop with a good bit of memory).
This method of testing prior to cutting over has proven
invaluable and mitigates the risk of serious problems that might
present themselves.

How We Use Virtual Machines In Security Assessments

————

Each time we perform a security assessment for a customer, we
utilize specialized and proprietary software / tools. However,
once the assessment is completed, and we move on to the next
test or new customer, we need to start with a clean platform. We
never use the same OS install or instance of tools for different
testing phases or different customers.

Using Virtualization, we have pre-created many operating
environments such as Windows, Linux, BSD, and Solaris to name a
few, with clean installs and hardened operating systems. These
pre-created, secure environments also contain all the necessary
tools for the type of customer environment and security
assessment we will be working on. By using Virtual Machines, we
can deploy our testing platforms within minutes, not hours, and
feel confident they are secure and ready to function. In fact,
we can carry many of these ready-to-go operating environments
with us when we travel using high capacity external disk
systems. Typically the size of a regular paperback book.

How Else Can Virtual Machines Be Used

————

The application, use, and benefit of Virtualization is quite
broad. For people at home, or technical people who wish to learn
new operating environments, Virtual Machines can be a great tool
for learning. Instead of purchasing multiple physical machines
to install the operating system and applications you wish to
become educated on, you can purchase one performance based
system, even a laptop, and use virtualization to run them all at
once. They can even be configured quite easily to communicate
with each other.

Another “big” benefit in using Virtual Machines, is they can be
configured to more effectively and efficiently utilize your
hardware investment. For instance, instead of purchasing two
mid-range systems to run two different applications, you could
purchase one an use virtualization to run them side-by-side. In
many cases, when using dedicated systems for just one or two
applications, the hardware is underutilized. Would it be a wise
investment if the server you purchased is only being used at
say, “25″ percent of its capacity / capability? Virtualization
can help you maximize the investment you make in performance
based systems, and has the added benefit of server
consolidation.

Conclusion

————

Even if you are just curious about Virtual Machine technology,
it can b a great way to learn many aspects of computing and
network essentials. There are several major players within the
Virtualization industry, such as VMware. VMware provides
commercial Virtualization products, even for workstation or
desktop environments. You can also visit Xensource, a great
open-source (at no cost) Virtual Machine solution. They have a
demo you can download, burn to CD, and boot from, or you can
download the entire product and install it on a dedicated
system.

Regardless of the reason you have for looking into
Virtualization, I can tell you that this technology as going to
be a big player in the near future. In fact, processor
manufacturers are even taking steps to create processors that
are Virtual Machine aware.

About the author:
About The Author

————

Darren Miller is an Information Security Consultant with over
sixteen years experience. He has written many technology &
security articles, some of which have been published in
nationally circulated magazines & periodicals. If you would like
to contact Darren you can e-mail him at
Darren.Miller@ParaLogic.Net. If you would like to know more
about computer security and auto-dialer virus please visit us