| Hard-drive
Technicalities (click to go back) |
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Two technical
tips to bear in mind when choosing a hard-disc drive in a
new computer or when upgrading your current machine.
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Go for a drive with a high "rpm". |
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And look for a low "seek time", sometimes called "access
time". |
But you'll
have to balance rpm/seek time with capacity. Very fast hard
discs currently have relatively low capacities by today's
standards. A good balance is 7200 rpm with an 8.5ms to 9ms
seek time. You should be able to find drives with 60Gb to
120Gb capacities at these technical specifications.
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| WHO
wants .health (click to go back) |
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The World
Health Organization (WHO) has asked the Web co-ordinating
body, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(ICANN), to make the top-level domain (TLD) name ".health"
available. WHO would like to see.health reserved for "screened
health information providers".
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One supporter has welcomed the proposal commenting that
.health would allow WHO to "provide neutral, international
support for standards of health information on the Internet". |
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But an opposer has questioned whether such a narrow TLD
as .health would have "any real value to the general e-public". |
Have your
say at: www.icann.org/tlds
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| Beat
the Bugs (click to go back) |
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Although
the antivirus-software companies are pretty good at passing
on details of new viruses to one another, it is still
worth running more than one antivirus program on your
computer to be on the safe side. |
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| Look
for front-mounted USB (click to go
back) |
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Some
computer manufacturers provide only rear-mounted Universal
Serial Bus (USB) ports. Having to delve behind your computer
every time you want to connect a USB peripheral rather defeats
the swap-and-play advantage of many of these devices. So,
if you are thinking of buying a new machine, check that at
least one, and preferably two of the commonly provided four
USBs, are front mounted.
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| Play
before printing (click to go back) |
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Photo-quality
printing paper and inkjet cartridges are expensive. Save money
by:
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manipulating and cropping images before you print them;
and |
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running a test print out in rough/draft/test mode on standard-paper
stock to preview the result of your work before using
the glossy paper for the final result. |
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| Beware
with Broadband (click to go back) |
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Always-on
connectivity to the Internet -- Broadband -- is gradually
becoming much-more widely available to UK households. But
its availability is not yet universal. Nor will older computers
necessarily be able to run it.
To find
out where you stand, log onto your chosen Internet Service
Provider's (ISP's) Website with your dial-up modem connection.
Most of these sites provide two useful "diagnostic tools".
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The first allows you to find out if Broadband is available
in your road. |
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The other will run a diagnostic test on your computer
to find out if it has the resources -- operating system,
memory, disc space, etc -- to cope with the Broadband
solution the ISP is offering. |
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