Babel Machine

Apple Tablet, a long awaited new gadget, Microsoft Courier, Gates’s answer to apple’s tablet and the old flop revitalized, 3D TV, here are  some of the most anticipated gadgets of 2010.

apple islate concept.

1. Apple Tablet

Not much is known about Apple’s new magazine sized gadget since Steve Jobs and company are secretive. What little we do know about the iSlate is that it is an offspring from iphone and a Macintosh computer. An inheritance from iphone, touch screens are coveted by those who prefer larger screened computer gadgets. What makes this such an item? It is an e-reader, a game player, and a music repository.

2. Ford’s MyKey

Parents will love this one. The new cars out for 2010 will have a chip in the ignition prohibiting speeding. Over 80 miles an hour won’t be permitted. New standard features: Alerts will sound if seatbelts aren’t worn; gas lowering at 75 miles until empty instead at 50 and a persistent chime that won’t shut up until you buckle up. These warnings are not only for youngsters — even though Ford markets it for their safety — parents and others often are victims of their own neglect. Yet, wisely, Ford understands Parents control the pocket book.

3. Microsoft Courier

Not to be outdone by Apple’s rumors of their new tablet, Microsoft is also in the competition with their Courier. He calls this a booklet, not a tablet. Courier has dual multi touch, hinged screens and is an electronic note taking device, doodler, diary, reader, and yes, it has a camera. It works with either fingers or a stylus.

Samsung P9000 World's First 4G Phone

4. 4G Phones

The phone improvements seem never to stop. This years improvements will be in faster speed in data transmission. Faster even than the 3G phones. Data to be received at 100Mbps while moving along highways will replace static and, hopefully cutoffs. Enthusiastic viewers are no doubt waiting in line to grab them off shelves. (And speaking of phone technology, something for the older folks, phones are available that don’t play music or take pictures. They are just phones.)

5. 3D TV

Will 3D make it this time around? 3D television is nothing new. They tried it in the early fifties and it lasted only a few months. Yet, 2010 expect a newer more enticing version. What’s so different about the newer more improved versions over the older versions? Glasses won’t be needed. Apparently that’s the drawback. So will be the price of the first ones which are expected to be around $25,000.

Regrettably, unlike Vista, Windows XP does not use Windows Experience Index, so it is considerably harder to judge whether your current Windows XP machine can meet Windows 7 requirements and run at anything more than a snail’s pace.  Generally, you can use Windows 7 on nearly any machines made in the past four years - although there could be trouble in finding the right drivers. This statement may sound innocuous, but finding the right driver can present some real headaches.  For example, in a laptop with a webcam, you may still run Windows 7 smoothly although there could be no way to make your webcam work. While, in a desktop with an old sound card, you may find that your sound card doesn’t work at all in Windows 7.

If you are not sure about the availability of Windows 7 drivers- especially for an obscure hardware built-in to your machine - you may want to visit the manufacturer’s internet site and search for an updated driver. In rare cases, if the manufacturer released a driver for Vista, it could work in Windows 7.

Before you take the Windows 7 plunge and proceed to install Windows 7 on a Windows XP machine, keep these facts in mind:

• Generally, just because you can install Windows 7, it does not mean that you should continue using it. For example, Windows 7 will run at snail’s pace with an old Pentium III 1 GHz and 512 Mb of SDRAM memory.
• Your motherboard must support DVD booting. If you have a really old motherboard that doesn’t even support a DVD drive, get an external DVD drive, however, there is a possibility that you can’t boot from it.
• If you seek the pretty Glass effects, you must have a graphic card that can handle the strain. If your graphic card has 128 Mb or more of dedicated VRAM (not shared memory - you need to look at the specifications for your card), maybe it can handle Glass. Affordable graphic cards at $55 like ATI Radeon HD 4650 and GeForce 9500GT should be able to handle Glass just fine.

Many netbooks come with preinstalled Windows XP Home due to its low hardware requirements, and maybe you want to know if you can install Windows 7 Home Premium to yours. (Windows 7 Starter, the edition that ships with recent netbooks - only comes preinstalled and not available in store). The quick answer is: it depends.

For a netbook with 1 Gb RAM and about 50 Gb of hard disk space, you may be able to get away with upgrading and you need to do a clean install. If you use Linux, search at Google to know whether your particular Linux distro can use dual boot and coexist peacefully with Windows 7. Each time you start the netbook, you can decide whether to choose the Big Seven or that funny penguin.

Linux and Mac users may not be impressed with Glass interface and Windows 7 may not be as snappy as a lightweight Linux distro. But at least, it acts, looks and sounds like the good ol’ Windows.

Do you ever get those annoying emails trying to sell the latest video on crazy fetishes, invented in some country you’ve never heard of? Well if you have a good anti-spam program the answer is no. Anti-spam software not only protects you from outrageous emails, such as these fetishes videos, but it can prevent the more harmful emails, such phishing scams from reaching your inbox.

A phishing scam is very simply a way for the scammer to steal your personal information, such as driver’s license, bank details, passport and other things of this nature. They can use the information you give them to do unimaginable things. The good news is in no country is it legal and anyone caught phishing is usually prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Now as these scammers are coming up with new ways to get past the anti-spam programs and into your inbox, you should be aware you can fall into their trap at any given moment. To avoid becoming their next meal, have a read through these useful tips to help you steer clear of phishing scams.

Using Money Services on the Internet

No matter where you sign up on the internet to use services that touch your money, they give you a list of rules and regulations to read and agree to before you become a member.  If you actually bother to read them, which most people don’t, they tell you that they will never ask you for any personal information via email, such as passwords and bank account numbers. Some websites such as EBay and PayPal also warn you, on a regular basis, that some scammers may pose as their company and ask for your details through an email, but you should never respond as that is not their policy or the way they handle business. So no matter who asks you for your details through email, NEVER give them out.

Email Addresses

With scammers getting smarter these days they now buy websites with a very similar name to the site they are mimicking. For example a phishing scammer pretending to be from PayPal may buy a website like www.PayPaI.com (the L is replaced with a capital i) OR www.PayPall.com . With this website they also get email addresses that might be Admin@PayPaI.com OR J.Johnson@PayPall.com. You find that if you actually look at the email address it is different in some way to a real email from a real company. You can always just copy and paste it in notebook or something similar to see if things like L’s or capital o’s have been swapped with capital i’s or 0(zero)’s. The easiest thing to do is look at a real email from the company and if you don’t have one, go to their website and request an email in some way, through support or tell them you think you have a false email from them and they’ll go out of their way to help you. Of course if the scammer isn’t too bright and the email address is something like JBloggs@hotmail.com then he is just an idiot, but never the less, make sure you’re not fooled by this scamming idiot.

Spamming

A lot of the time these phishing jerks will send one email to many people at a time. They might do this by having a data base where all they do is enter your name and email address, along with the 50 other names and email addresses its being sent to. They collect your name and email from places like MySpace, Facebook and Bebo. Many times they don’t even care about names and just collect email addresses through forums where they are often freely given out. So when you receive a dodgy email prying for personal information, just check to see if you were the only recipient or if there were many. Chances are you were not the only recipient and it is a phishing scam.

Check the Internet

Remember that good old saying, ‘If it sounds too good to be true, it is!’ Well even in today’s world this is still the case. Any suspicious email I get now, I pick a few lines and then run it straight through several search engines to see if anyone else has had problems. I can almost guarantee if it is a scam someone has posted something about it somewhere. I received a few odd phishing scams several weeks back. One was from Microsoft claiming I won $1,000,000 for having a hotmail account and the other was from an exotic dancer that wanted to live with me providing I helped her get her $1,000,000 over to Australia and then set us up a place together. As tempting as the second one was, well a) the Mrs didn’t like it and b) it was clearly a scam. When I ran a few words like, $1,000,000 bullshit Microsoft through Google I had hundreds of results, all saying that it was a scam and of course the first link I clicked http://www.hoax-slayer.com/microsoft-lottery-scam.html gave me the answers I was looking for. So no matter how real the email seems, a simple Google search will see you deleting all those phishing scams that managed to navigate their way to your inbox.

The email is a phishing scam!

Believe it or not this is actually a good thing (providing you haven’t been scammed) as it means you can report it to the company that is being imitated. This allows these bigger companies like Microsoft and Banks, to take legal action against these scamming mongrels, often landing them a nice prison sentence. The first thing you should do is logon to the website that the scammer is posing as, then hit the contact us/support button and send them the exact email you were sent, with a brief outline of what has happened. Another thing I would suggest doing if you don’t receive an email back from this company is calling them. Remember it is you being scammed and you are helping out these big companies by reporting what they aren’t aware of. After all, reporting it helps you end up with your personal information in more secure databases. Scammers imitating these big companies are often the reason you see them change their logo and/or email templates on a periodical basis.

So whether you need to go and buy a new anti-spam filter/program for your email or get an ice cold glass of coca-cola, just be sure to remember phishing scams are out there and they can easily be prevented providing you keep these useful tips in mind. Make sure you pass these tips around to your friends and colleagues by linking them back to this page.

One of the inevitabilities of owning a computer is that performance will suffer over time. A speedy system can end up slowing to a crawl after a few months of adding new hardware, installing and uninstalling software, as well as general use.

Vista has a number of tools that can help maintain the performance of your computer. By using them regularly, you can keep your computer healthy and reduce the risk of crashes and data loss. A computer’s hard disk is among its most important components, so it will come as no surprise that the majority of maintenance tools included in Vista focus on cleaning up the disk and reorganising files so they can be accessed quickly and easily. Luckily, some maintenance tasks can be scheduled to happen automatically.

Read on to find out how to keep your Vista PC happy.

Tip 1 – Physical errors on your hard disk can not only lead to Windows crashing, but can also result in data loss. Should an area of the disk become corrupt, any data saved to it becomes unstable. Thankfully, Vista’s built-in Check Disk can be used to test the drive for errors in the way files are stored and move information out of any bad sectors. Go to Start > Computer, right-click on the icon for your hard drive and select Properties. Move to the Tools Tab and click the Check Now button. Tick both of the boxes and click Start. If you are checking the drive that has Windows installed on it, you will need to click the ‘Schedule disk check’ button and then restart your computer for the scan to continue.

Tip 2 – Although hard disks now have hue capacities, it is still a good idea to keep as much free space available as possible. As well as manually deleting files you no longer need, the Disk Cleanup tool can remove other unnecessary files. Click the Start button, then All Programs. From the Accessories menu select System Tools, then Disk Cleanup. Click the option ‘Files from all users on this computer’, then select the drive to be checked before clicking OK. Move to the More Options tab and you can start freeing up disk space by uninstalling programs you no longer need, as well as removing all but the most recent of System Restore points.

Tip 3 – This done, return to the Disk Cleanup tab and a list of unnecessary files in various categories will be listed. The different types of file are easy enough to identify, but after selecting an item in the list, you can click the View Files button to check anything you are not sure about. Work through the list of options and tick the box next to the relevant entry, then click the OK button to start the removal process. This will not remove all the temporary files completely, and if you want to do this press the Windows key and R simultaneously, type %temp%, press Enter and delete all the files in the folder that opens.

Tip 4 – It’s possible to store your Disk Cleanup settings. Click the Start button, type cleanmgr.exe /Sageset:100 (where 100 is any number between 0 and 65535) and choose your options. You will notice a number of other options are now available. Click OK. Now click the Start button, then All Programs, then Accessories. From the System Tools menu select Task Scheduler. Click ‘Create Basic Task’, enter a name and description, and click Next. Set your scheduling options. In the Action section, type cleanmgr.exe in the Program/script box and /Sagerun:100 (or the number you previously used) in the Arguments box.

Tip 5 – When creating and deleting files, your computer can become so disorganised that files take longer to open. By defragmenting the hard disk, files are reorganised so that all their component parts are next to each other on the drive, thus improving performance. Go to Start > Computer, right-click the icon for your hard disk, select Properties, then go to the Tools tab. Click the Defragment now button, followed by ‘Defragment now’ and your drive will be optimised. The defragmentation tool can also be accessed by clicking the Start button, followed by All Programs, then Accessories, then System Tools, followed by Disk Defragmenter.

Tip 6 – Remembering to defragment your disk regularly can be difficult, but it is possible to create a schedule so that the tools will run without the need for user intervention. Launch the disk Defragmenter. On the first screen make sure the option labelled ‘Run on a schedule (recommended)’ is ticked. Click the Modify Schedule button, then use the dropdown menu to choose how frequently the tool should be run. Most people will not need to defragment more than once a month, but if you create and delete a large number of files, weekly runs may help to maintain peak performance.

Netbook computers have taken the world by storm, but not all netbooks are equal. While the overwhelming majority of models seem to use the 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor, there are different storage configurations, screen sizes and, most importantly, battery capacities that mean getting a decent runtime while you’re on the go is not a given. However, there are a number of ways to improve battery life.
Your netbook’s battery has a certain capacity measured in milliamp hours (mAh). That means it can deliver a certain amount of currentAdd nenetbook, battery, life, better, increase, extend, how to, diy, brightness, ma, milliamp, usage, time, short, longer, cuts  Add nenetbook, battery, life, better, increase, extend, how to, diy, brightness, ma, milliamp, usage, time, short, longer, cuts (measured in milliamps, or mA) for a certain amount of time. The more current you use, the faster you drain the battery and the less time it can deliver the current.
Putting it really simply, think of your netbook’s battery as though it were a full bucket of water. You can allow the water to trickle out over a long time or you can up-end the bucket and get a big flow for a very short time. The bucket has a fixed capacity – how we use it determines how long that capacity lasts. What we wasn’t to do is get the flow of current from the battery down to a tiny trickle. So I’ve come up with 10 ways you can ensure your netbook (or any notebook for that matter) runs for as long as possible on whatever battery size you’ve got.

1.    Drop the screen brightness.

If you’re running any full version Linux operating system, you can actually see just how much power your netbook is using.
Open up Terminal (think Window’s Command Prompt) and type: cat/proc/acpi/battery/BAT1/state. The current drain will be shown alongside the ‘Present rate’ indicator. That number tells you the total current being drawn from the battery.
If you vary the screen brightness and do a ‘before’ and ‘after’ test with that cat command above, you’ll see that the power consumption on the MSI Wind U100 netbook varies by as much as 25%. The Wind U100’s battery current drain dropped from 1,181mA to just 944mA going from full brightness to the minimum brightness level, which is still easily bright enough to see.
In my testing, the LCD backlight is the single most power-hungry feature on a netbook that you have direct control over. Therefore the basic rule here is to drop the brightness and you could get ad much as and extra hour’s battery life.

2.    Turn off Wi-Fi

If you’re not connected to a Wi-Fi network, there’s not much point in having your Wi-Fi connection switched on. Turning off the 802.11n Wi-Fi option inside the Wind U100 dropped the current from around 950mA to approximately 870mA, or roughly 8-9%. That’s not as dramatic an improvement as dropping the screen brightness, but it’s significant nonetheless and it all adds up.
As with all of these power-saving options, the actual power saved will vary between different netbook models, but I guarantee that switching off the wireless networking will gain you at least some extra battery life.

3.    Turn off Bluetooth

Bluetooth is another power drain on your netbook, although it’s not as big a drain on the battery as Wi-Fi. The power saving here amounts to around 20-30mA of current saved – not huge, but that’s still about 2-3% and every little bit helps. Bluetooth is normally used for low-powered peripheral devices and some telephony work, but like Wi-Fi, if you’re not using it there’s no real reason to have it powered up.

4.    Use aggressive power management

Setting the operating system’s power management aggressively – that means setting it to maximum battery life – will also ensure you get better battery life because it will use the netbook’s power management features to reduce consumption. Basically, if it’s not being used it’ll be shut down. Even if it’s only shut down momentarily, it’s all power saved and any power saved will result in longer battery life.

5.    Disconnect any USB flash drives

USB flash drives are known for their ability to store data without the need for power, but if you’ve got one plugged into a USB port on your netbook it will be drawing some power. On my calculations, it’s typically only small – a 4GB Corsair Voyager adds around 10-20mA at idle, but it can be as high as 150mA when it’s transferring data or being accessed. That’s a huge amount, so do as little data transfer as you can while on battery power, and preferably don’t use and USB flash drives at all.

6.    Switch off any compositing effects

If you’re running a full Linux OS with the compositing feature switched on, switch it off to get better battery life. Fancy 3D effects on the desktop look great, but they require extra processing horsepower to create and that loads down the battery. The same thing goes for Vista – if you’re running Windows Vista and you have Aero switched on, turning it off will give your battery a tiny nit of extra breathing space because the integrated graphics chip won’t have to work so hard.

7.    Set the hard drive and screen power-down times low

You don’t want to be turning off your netbook every 2 minutes because you have to leave it momentarily, but there’s no point burning up battery power if it’s not doing anything. Set the screen and hard drive power-down times relatively low to ensure that if you do need to leave you netbook running, they’re not wasting power keeping things lit up or spinning for no reason. The only caveat here is that regularly spinning up and down the hard drive motor isn’t a great thing to do in the long term, as it places extra wear on the motor itself. But in short bursts, it shouldn’t do too much harm.

8.    Turn off any background applets

Background applications are great for adding little bits of extra usefulness, but they’re a luxury you can’t really afford if you want the maximum battery life you can get. Things like antivirus programs, system monitors and other bits and pieces all require CPU time and the more the processor is loaded up, the more power it consumes.
Switching off your antivirus normally isn’t a great thing to do, but if you’re not connected to the internet, you’re not accessing files from external sources and the antivirus has already done a sweep of your netbook’s hard drive and found nothing untoward, switching it off for a small period while you’re working on battery power shouldn’t do your netbook any harm. Of course, as soon as you hit the internet or get back to AC mains power, switch it back on again.

9.    Disable the audio and flash card reader

This sounds like we’re getting a bit desperate for things to turn off, but in the end, it’s pretty simple – anything that consumes power is going to reduce your netbook’s battery life, so if you can turn it off, the battery will last longer. By disabling the audio, you should be able to reduce the power consumption because the device won’t be used. The same thing goes for the flash card reader.

10.    Turn off the webcam

I have to admit that if I were designing a netbook, I probably wouldn’t include a webcam. One thing the webcam will do is drain the battery like no-one’s business. The MSI Wind U100 pulls as much as 150mA of current, which is a hefty load, especially if your netbook happens to only have a small three-cell battery. Turning this off as well will help the battery to no end.
So there are my 10 tips. The two most effective are making sure the webcam is off and that the screen brightness is at its lowest level. That’s how I use my netbook and it’s still easily visible in normal room lighting. These tips will definitely make a difference to overall battery life, regardless of whether you’ve got a three, six or even a big nine-cell battery inside.
Just remember the golden rules when it comes to battery life: the less you use, the longer it will last.

Belkin Miniglow Optical Mouse

The MiniGlow Optical Mouse couldn’t be more aptly named; it’s a tiny mouse with a retractable cable that has a gentle pulsing glow that runs around the body of the mouse and through the scroll wheel.
Pros: It’s driverless and, thanks to the retractable cable, immensely portable. Tracking with the mouse was generally very good over most surfaces, except that…
Cons: The tiny size does make it a hand-cramp candidate for many users. The glowing effect is initially cool, but I’d hate to be stuck on a plane next to someone using it while I was trying to sleep.
Rating: 3/5 – Cool concept, but impossibly the world’s most anti-social mouse.

Bento 2

The second release of FileMaker’s friendly, Mac OS X-only database product adds a few new simple tweaks, including RSS and Apple Mail integration.
Pros: Bento’s biggest plus is that it’s a genuinely easy-to-use database product, with little to no knowledge of forms, relational database or programming required. It’s also aesthetically very nice, right out of the box.
Cons: It’s OS X only – FileMaker does its main database product in a Windows version, but not Bento. In some ways, this is a bit of a ‘point’ release of the product, as the new features aren’t that great, and could have arguably been included in a patch.
Rating: 3.5/5 – A great, easy-to-use database product for Mac users.

Acronis True Image 2009

Acronis True Image 2009

Backup software is just about the most dull software on the planet, but with the increasing amount of digital data we possess these days, it’s also quite vital. Acronis’ True Image 2009 offers the ability to back up your entire PC – or just selected folders.

Pros: New improvements include a very Vista-looking interface and a slick text search ability. One new feature I liked was that after the initial installation, Acronis sets up a simple one-click backup of your existing system, with all the necessary files pre-selected for you.

Cons: As with a lot of backup utilities, initial backup can be rather slow

Rating: 4/5 - A solid backup utility

Avanquest Fix it Utilities 8

Avanquest Fix-it Utilities 8

Fix-it Utilities doesn’t shirk when it comes to offering features – it’s a registry cleaner, Windows system tweaker, anti-virus/spyware package, startup manager and file recovery tool – or rather, a suite of tools.

Pros: The default install offers a three-user license, so it’s easy to keep an entire houseful of PCs covered. The range of utilities offered is impressive, but not overwhelming, as it’s easy to do a one-click security or system stability check and update.

Cons: With that much to do, it’s perhaps not surprising that Fix-it Utilities can be slow to run through its tasks. If you’re already using an anti-virus package, you’ll have to remember not to install that component, but if you do, you’ll need to keep it updated for it to have any relevance.

Rating: 4/5 – A good overall package, if no the fastest available.

Iolo System Mechanic Professional

Iolo System Mechanic Professional

Like Fix-it Utilities 8, System Mechanic promises to make your PC run a lot more smoothly, although in System Mechanic’s case, it’s through a number of rather more in-depth utilities, including anti-virus, firewall, file recovery and drive deleting utilities.

Pros: It’s comprehensive, and covers some factors other utilities leave out, including in-depth hard drive deletion utilities.

Cons: The firewall is very chatty, as is the anti-virus package. You can opt not to install them, but then you may find yourself better served by the standard utility, which is $69.95. Some of the vendor claims, such as the ability to “Accelerate download and Web surfing speeds up to 300%” are pure snake oil.

Rating: 3/5 – A decent suite of utilities, but a little overhyped.