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T
THIS CHRISTMAS WAS the first time I did all my shop-
ping online. Giving the finishing touches to this issue
and many trips out of town meant little or no time for
the luxury of doing the mall rounds. Add to it the
sheer convenience of online… I was through with my
purchases in all of 30 minutes. And this included
Googling for the best shopping sites, the best deals on
offer, choosing the gifts, and the credit card bit.
I happened to have been signed into Google—what
they call the “Personalized Home.” It hadn’t occurred
to me, though, in those 30 minutes I’d left digital foot-
prints all across the Web—right from my gift prefer-
ences to my choice of Web sites to even the amount
of time it took me to nail down the gifts. Now e-pay-
ments are more or less secure these days and robust
systems have lent a great deal of credibility to pay-
ments online, but what I’m concerned about is that
somewhere on Google’s servers are locked away little
titbits about me. Very personal things. Well, they do Deepak Ajwani Executive Editor
call it “Personalized.”
The sheer dominance of a handful of search
engines is my concern here. Especially Google. It is “In a very real way, Google
not me who determines whether I get to search all controls my Web experience”
existing sites; it depends on whether Google has
decided to index the site. In a very real way, Google
controls my Web experience and my online exposure. they did, we’d all take it in our stride—and sign in
Now what if Google were to make it mandatory to every time. Google is also offering an online payment
sign in before you could use its search services? service (in the US right now), so, happily, they’ll also
They’re well within their rights to do it! have your credit card details. And possibly your
Every day we send millions of search queries to mother’s maiden name. And God knows what else.
Google and give away a daily log of our online pref- In a way, it might seem justified: you’re getting so
erences. Imagine if Personalized were mandatory. much information without clicking a single ad, so
What might they do with all that data? Will they use you’ve got to give something in return—right? No,
it to enhance our search experience, or will they limit there’s something wrong here.
our search to the sites that pay them? I do not want Them to know I spent six and a half
And then, one day, say Google decides to link minutes choosing a yellow soft toy for my daughter on
search with its other services such as Gmail, Orkut, the 22nd of December 2006. It might seem insignifi-
and Google Earth… they’ll end up knowing our cant, but I’m just not comfortable.
friends, our social interactions, our location. And
editor@thinkdigit.com
there’s more—wait till we get habituated to using
Google Docs and Spreadsheets! You, just a few giga-
bytes of data on Google’s servers, locked for posterity!
The scary thing here is that, like I said, there’s
nothing to stop them from making Personalized
mandatory. We’re so dependant on search, even if
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Enter Digital Passion Lead Feature
27 Going With The Flow
Tell the air in your cabinet
Cover Story where to go, and
35 The High-Definition Itch you’ll see
The marketing seems to have worked—HD remarkable results!
this, HD that, go HD or die alone—but Here’s how to plan
16 what is HD and how do you not get your rig’s innards
Former Miss cheated by all this nonsense? on a budget
India Tanushree
Dutta and her
travails with
tech
16
Europe wants
Linux, but they Tomorrow
miss MS Office
42 Battle For Tomorrow
18 A look at the changing face of warfare.
e-Donkey—and The future of information exchange
others of its promises more precise and deadly battles
ilk—are dead,
thanks to the
prize Ass’es Take a Crack
50 Add “Restart In Safe Mode” To
22 Your Start Menu
An open-source You know you want to say goodbye to all
gaming device?
those “Whoops I forgot to hit F8” days!
Contents Magazine
Digital Tools
Test Centre
Main Story 72 Dinky Data Vaults
51 The More The Merrier CD? DVD? Bah! The best way
There are other reasons for you to have two to carry data is the USB Flash
GPUs—like hooking up a bunch of extra drive, and now you can use
monitors to clear all that desktop clutter our opinions on 46 of them—
ranging from a slim 512 MB
to a ridiculous 8 GB!
Agent 001
90 Agent 001 Wants It Test Centre
On Paper 94 POPping The Cork
Which is the best inkjet With so many free e-mail providers giving you
printer of them all? The Agent POP3 access, isn’t it wise to use a mail client to
wants a copy of his memories, store and browse them on your PC? Here are the
and getting some work done ones you should try out
wouldn’t hurt either
Smart Soho
117 To Simpler Times
Fear not Excel’s PivotTable, for it is your friend.
Really. Say goodbye to complex code; making
simple, professional reports will never be the
same again!
Tech Careers
103 Enterprise in ERP
If terms like “efficient
resource management”
get your bonnet buzzing,
read on!
January 2007
Digital Leisure 128 Game On Escape
Epic Adventures
Main Story Neverwinter Nights 2 has finally
123 Art For released, and it was worth the wait!
The Asking Also featuring IL-2 Sturmovik 1946—
What are these easily the best flight simulator you can
mesmeric things buy today
called fractals? 133
Presenting a look Where would we
at mathematics be without James
T Russell and his
gone trippy CD-ROM?
134
We Indians suffer
from a rare
148 Tabloid Tech disease: it’s called
We promised not to mention her again, but Mouse Rage
She Who Must Not Be Named has topped Syndrome. A little
another of Yahoo!’s lists. Somehow people fat in our pipes
wouldn’t hurt
can’t get enough!
Three Incredibly Useful Sites ..........18 30 Days With ..................................46 Old Way, Tech Way ..........................92
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taste technology at
www.thinkdigit.com
MADNESS ON THE FORUM (www.thinkdigit.com/forum)
We’ve dealt with some crazy stuff on the forum, but just watch how this thread starts out and goes
completely nuts.
Enter
Tanushree Dutta LINUX EVERYWHERE
Model and Actress
T he now-well-known
actress got her first
Europe Wants It, Won’t Do It
glimpse of fame with the
Ponds Femina Miss India
L
ike many Asian One official put it thus: done the migrating.
Universe 2004 award. countries, European “If the technicians say ‘no’, According to market
She is best known governments want to it’s not going to happen.” research firm IDC, more
for her shift to Linux—in And why, indeed, are the than 95 per cent of all PCs
performances in some cases entirely—in a technicians saying “no”? For used by government
Aashiq Banaya bid to save money and all the basic reasons: workers in Europe still run
Aapne and break free of the M$ compatibility issues, on Windows.
Chocolate. hegemony. But not just for conflicts with MS Exchange The most ambitious
these reasons. Servers, and the problem of open source initiative in
There are several educating governmental IT Europe thus far was a
Technology… interesting perspectives on departments about Linux, project by the local
Helps one in day-to-day life. why it is that Europe wants OpenOffice and more. government in Spain’s
People’s entire life revolves to take the lead in Extremadura region,
around technology, and has moving to the OSS which has managed to
now become an integral part business model, migrate some 75,000
of our lives. much more so PCs to Linux. Tellingly,
than the United some of the computers
What gadgets do you use? States does, for in the project’s
I use a laptop, and of course, example. administrative office still
a mobile—a Nokia N72 to be Xavier Cazin, run Windows, an
precise. I also have a a Chief Editor at employee told Wired
handycam and an iPod. O’Reilly Editions News. Under condition of
What would be your dream France, has an anonymity, of course.
gadget be? interesting take: as The drive continues.
Something that would read computers become a France, in particular, is
people’s minds… daily necessity, the trying to hasten the
French crossover, as we indicated
What do you mostly do philosophical above. Over the next few
online? perspective has months, lawmakers in
I chat with my friends, e- led people to France’s National
mail, and I go online if I revolt. “The more Assembly will start using
need to watch movie the role of Linux, OpenOffice, and
trailers. I also listen to music something is Firefox on PCs. The
online and download MP3s. I essential, the official reason stated goes
don’t watch movies online, less it should thus: the French
and would prefer to go to a cost. People hate government’s push away
theatre—or watch them on paying for from Microsoft platforms is
Illustration Harsho Mohan Chattoraj
my DVD player. something that is driven in large part
An instance where unavoidable. That’s why The suspects and the concerns about security and
technology has really French people didn’t feel figures: elected officials industrial espionage in the
helped you? guilty in pirating Microsoft have, for some time now, economic war between
Technology has always software for years.” been making a fuss about Europe and the US.
helped me. One instance I But unfortunately, most migrating to open source on In the case of the French
can recall is when I was in of the current talk is major scales. Migrations of Gendarmes—the police
college: my vehicle broke rhetoric in nature, and it’s governmental computers in department—the PCs used
down at night on a lonely a case of I-can’t-get-myself- France, Germany, Norway, by the 1,00,000-member
road, and it was quite a to-do-it. Or something like and Spain have been police force run almost
distance to walk. Thanks to “the spirit is willing but planned at some point or entirely on Windows. The
my mobile, I was able to call the flesh is weak,” in the other, but few unit plans to make 5,000 of
my friends for help. dramatic terms. departments have actually its PCs run under Linux this
SOUTH KOREA
Legislators will ban online trading of
virtual currencies used by gamers.
GREECE Reportedly, this step is being taken to
The education ministry has banned control “virtual social ills” such as
the use of mobile phones by children identity theft, bribery, gambling
at schools, the reason being that the addiction, and more.
rape of a teen was video-ed by a few
other students.
SOUTH AFRICA
Intel has donated a supercomputer to
the country. It will be dedicated to
research on fatal diseases such as AIDS,
malaria, and tuberculosis. The
supercomputer, costing $1 million, will
be free of charge for local scientists. It
has a speed of 1 TeraFLOPS
reason, silicon valley has LimeWire and The Pirate Three Incredibly Useful Sites
hogged the limelight for Bay. The developers behind
good, and “iron oxide LimeWire will soon be A source for facts, a conversion tool, and a how-to
valley”—possibly the more hauled to court, too: in
important one—will always November, the RIAA filed refdesk.com www.refdesk.com
remain in the shadow. suit against LimeWire, and “The Single Best Source For Facts,” this is
RIAA CEO Mitch Bainwol one site where much of the information
THEY’VE MADE A DENT has gone on to pronounce: clutter on the Internet is organised in an
“Our settlement with easily-accessible manner. Browse through
Of Asses And eDonkey will make
operations such as
dictionaries and encyclopaedias. Conduct
Business Searches, People Searches and
Donkeys LimeWire that continue to
break the law... all the
Fact Searches. Check weather forecasts.
Keep in touch with the latest news. Read
more conspicuous.” As about the significance of this day in
T
he M. P. Ass. of A. and precedents go, it’s a bleak history. Just head to the site!
the R. I. Ass. of A. outlook for LimeWire.
aren’t doing the silly In very related news,
Zamzar Beta www.zamzar.com
thing anymore—going the MPAA has declared it
behind 12-year-old will launch a legal attack Zamzar lets you convert image, document,
schoolboys and 89-year-old on BitTorrent server music, and video files up to 100 MB in size
grannies demanding money operators. This could to different formats. Image files can be
for filched songs. They’re ultimately prove to be the converted between BMP, GIF, etc.,
hitting P2P where it hurts. sock in the b***s for the document files to CSV, DOC, HTML, etc.
eDonkey is dead: a New BitTorrent community, at music files between AAC, AC3, OGG, etc.,
York court ruled that the least the 99 per cent or so video files to and from 3GP, AVI, MPEG,
P2P site did enable users to of it that comprises illegal- OGG… there’s a caveat, though: read the
illegally share copyrighted file sharers. terms of service, but beware of spam.
material. The owners have eDonkey.com and
another P2P network— Overnet.com now bring up eHow www.ehow.com
Overnet—which, too, the ominous-looking How do you tie a tie? How do you
court has declared illegal. messages: “The install a GPS receiver or strip the paint
The ruling is a major eDonkey2000 Network is from your car? How do you open a
victory for the record labels. no longer available. If you stuck jar lid? eHow has answers to all
Their RIAA has, by now, steal music or movies, you the above: 20,000 articles! From the
managed to dent all the are breaking the law. Your everyday to the exotic, from the
major file-sharing networks IP address is xxx.xxx. simple to the complex—find out how to
with the exceptions of xxx.xxx and is being do it all right here.
Digit Caption
“Umm... it does have
Notepad, though”
logged.” ThePirateBay.org, timed just right: cable distribution when it was “We’re working on making
however, looks fresh as ever. companies are just about warranted.” BitTorrent come preinstalled
People will doubtless beginning to strain under After BitTorrent’s on many embedded devices,
continue to share music and increased costs of HD acquisition of µTorrent, as one of the basic services
movies, regardless of what delivery, as more and more Cohen and µTorrent creator they support—in the same
happens to the P2P people get the idea that HD Ludvig Strigeus said in a class as Web browsers,”
operators. There are simply is the way video was meant joint statement, “Bringing Cohen said in a recent
too many people who will to be. And with demand together µTorrent’s efficient interview.
lend their servers to the naturally poised to increase implementation with Asked by Wired News
“Darknet” for the whole over the next couple of BitTorrent’s expertise in about where he sees file-
thing to be wiped out. years, will P2P come to the networking protocols will sharing going, Cohen had
But what’s happening rescue? significantly benefit the just this to say: “We’re going
here is that it’s not going to BitTorrent’s pitch could community.” And: “We will to see everything... become
be for Joe Average any have something to it, though continue to develop more Web-based, and the
more—it’s going to become there are detractors aplenty. µTorrent, and will be using special status of high-quality
more of a geek thing. Like it The technology could need the code base in other video files... as somehow
once was a geek thing to some work, but it does seem applications, such as different will go away. The
connect to another to hold promise. It’s all embedded systems on TVs, current limitations on
computer using a modem. about bandwidth cell phones...” Meaning, distributing them will cease
This, if the Ass.es have their efficiency—and one only effectively, that P2P is the to exist.”
way—and they just might. needs to put out the way to go. On the other side of the
mindset that one is It’s been a while since story, HDNet (an HDTV cable
BEYOND ILLEGAL P2P “sharing” something while Cohen’s company signed network in the US) chairman
watching a movie deals with major Hollywood Mark Cuban, billionaire
BitTorrent To downloaded via P2P, or that
one is somehow doing
studios including 20th
Century Fox and MTV
investor and dot-com
veteran, has dismissed the
Deliver something shady. Such
misconceptions were once
Networks. BitTorrent is
forming distribution
notion of P2P as a content
delivery platform as, well,
Movies? prevalent: Cohen, in an
interview, said there were
partnerships with film and
TV studios including 20th
nonsense: “I think P2P is
great for corporate and
instances of “companies Century Fox, MTV Networks, controlled apps, but not for
B
itTorrent CEO Bram having a policy of not using and Paramount Pictures. open distribution. P2P has
Cohen now seems all any P2P technology at all, One of the goals, of course, content-distribution
set to pitch P2P as the but some sysadmin would is to be able to deliver—via capabilities, but mass
most efficient way of surreptitiously use P2P—content directly to distribution of content isn’t
delivering HD content. It’s BitTorrent for internal users’ set-top boxes. And, one of them.”
M
and decided to use the it? arketers are in line
“Liquefy > Bloat” tool to give the image a The whole thing smacks to boost their
bulged-eye look. The hair underwent some of wasted eloquence: “We companies’ profiles
changes. Asmita just wouldn’t give up on the
colours—there had to be the red on the lips also worked like crazy. We at the expense of Digg. This
before she stopped! reviewed books at Amazon rather interesting news story
and recorded podcasts. We doesn’t, at first look, seem to
blogged about our hold much: it starts off,
Cuban had said in called Web 2.0—including candidates losing and wrote “Digg continues to crack
September, “Only a moron “you”—as the People of the songs about getting dumped. down on users who plant
would buy YouTube.” So Year. This is a cop-out of a We camcordered bombing phony stories on behalf of
what does that tell us? We major order. runs and built open-source marketers.” The story goes
aren’t clear either. Lev Grossman of Time software.” In much of the like this: Digg recently
waxes eloquent: “It’s a story above, what’s to do with deleted a user who posted a
COP-OUT about community and Web 2.0? And in any case, story about a company that
collaboration on a scale would you read a blog about offered to pay him. Karim
Time Goes never seen before. It’s about
the cosmic compendium of
someone getting dumped—
something that, in
Yergaliyev is one of Digg’s
top-rated users. Yergaliyev
Ga-Ga About knowledge Wikipedia and
the million-channel people’s
Grossman’s opinion, is
revolutionising things? Is it
was booted for violating the
company’s terms of service,
Web 2.0 network YouTube and the
online metropolis MySpace.”
“changing the way the world
changes”? Are the book
but was reinstated after he
acknowledged the
Wikipedia is an event of the reviews at Amazon.com infraction, apologised nicely,
T
hey probably expected year? Seriously, we’re all avid more credible than those and promised never to do
such sneers, and they users of Wikipedia, but you can read in The New York it again.
probably didn’t care. when it comes to naming Times? Seriously, again, does “I receive two or three
Time Magazine has gone on to something of global Web 2.0 have the will to offers from marketers a
name participants in the importance we must point change the world, is our week to promote some
inexplicable experiment out, we’ve had question. product or service,”
AMD Quad FX
The hottest tech talk on the Internet now is, of Power consumption is much higher than an
course, about cores. AMD has officially announced its equivalent Intel system, though. Some forums are
Quad FX Platform, in which a pair of AMD Athlon 64 talking about an upgrade possibility—using eight
FX series dual-core processors can be used together cores on the platform after the release of AMD’s
on a supporting motherboard. This dual-socket quad-core chips. Some experts believe there isn’t
platform enables use of four cores for megatasking— any potential in hooking up more than two cores,
use of multiple displays or running multithreaded and that there will not be any performance boosts
applications such as games, while running other with new titles. In any case, the battle of the
processes like disc burning and so on. multiple cores continues…
Y
worldwide. Right now it et another format, but London-based New Medium lysts are saying “no,” and
seems to be very popular in one we’ve spoken Enterprises’ VMD (Versatile state media have reported
the UK and Europe. The UK about earlier. EVD— Multi-Layer Disc), a red-laser that the EVD players have
price is £124.99 (Rs 11,000)! Enhanced Versatile Disc, or system offering 50 GB on ten fared poorly in tests. Hedge
Enhanced Video Disc, 5 GB data layers. Analysts, your bets now!
Digital
35 The High-
Definition Itch 42 Battle for
Tomorrow 48 Drool Maal
Passion
Technology For Personal And SoHo Productivity
Lead Feature
Keeping It Cool
PC cabinets are just boxes that hold our components, and keeping it
cool is only a matter of adding fans, right? Wrong!
12 fans in all—overkill for sure! However, what
Robert Sovereign-Smith and he didn’t know was that his 12 fans were not
Nimish Chandiramani helping much…
Temperature Readings
It isn’t as descriptive as it seeing it live, but the smoke from the incense sticks is fairly indicative as to how air flows in the top section of the cabinet.
What you can’t see here is the smoke being blown out the sides of the processor heatsink and then sucked and expunged by the power supply
Note: You should know that we did leave black Getting Ready
charred marks in our white cabinet, and at least one First things first—we decided to get rid of all
person burnt his fingers, so be careful. the dust in the cabinet. Using our little orange
hand blower, we realized that keeping the
The PC insides of the cabinet clean was quite a task.
We used a regular-looking cabinet, and tried to We took apart the whole system, and coughed
recreate an average PC configuration to gen- and sneezed our way through blowing away all
erate the type of heat that most of you should the dust. Even in our temperature-controlled
have within your cabinet. office with sealed windows, we found quite a
lot of it, so if you haven’t opened your cabinet
The configuration was: for over a year, wear a surgeon’s mask!
■ AMD Athlon 64 3200+ The only thing we
■ 2 x 512 MB Transcend DDR 400 RAM (without didn’t open in search
heatsinks) for dust was the SMPS,
Tip
■ 80 GB Seagate hard drive (SATA) which was still within Round IDE Cable
■ 120 GB Maxtor hard drive (SATA) the warranty period. A round IDE cable will help you push it to one side, and not
■ MSI RS 480 motherboard
obstruct airflow the way the flat cables do. If you have mainly
You should also avoid IDE drives, make sure you get yourself a few round IDE cables
■ ATI Radeon X1300 graphics card breaking any seals to help air flow inside your cabinet. Unless they came bundled
■ 380 W PowerSafe SMPS that can void your with your motherboard, the costs can be a little daunting, at
■ 1 stock rear cabinet fan warranty. If all war- around Rs 400. You could, however, gingerly pry out individual
■ Plextor DVD-Writer (for the IDE cable)
wires, or even pairs, from your flat IDE cable and bunch the lot
ranties have expired, together to make your own round IDE cable, as we have done
don’t be afraid to open here. Note that we take no responsibility if you botch up.
This configuration generated 34 degrees cel- out the SMPS cover as
sius of ambient cabinet temperature, which we well (after discon-
measured using a temperature sensor that we necting it from the
got from a Zebronics cabinet we had. This tem- mains, obviously) to
perature was measured at the Windows get at that cake of dust
desktop, after leaving the PC on, idling, for that forms within all
about half an hour. power supplies.
In order to be able to show you the smoke / Now that we had a
airflow, we also went out and bought a clear nice, gleaming PC, we
acrylic sheet for Rs 80. You can do this yourself went a little off track
as well, to keep the innards of your cabinet vis- and Arctic Silver-ed
ible at all times. the CPU, after
The entire setup. Don’t get awed by the low temperature, though—this shot was taken without the acrylic sheet
We found that the ATI Radeon X1300XL It worked! Soon after the cabinet was filled
graphics card we used had active cooling, but with smoke, we found that switching it on
due to its design, sent its exhaust (hot air) made the smoke accumulated around the hard
towards the centre of the cabinet. When we drive disappear almost instantly and flow
compared it to the newer design of the towards the rear cabinet fan. If anything, the
X1900XT, which occupies two slots but sends flow of air from the X1300XL was the only
its exhaust directly out the back of the cabinet, obstruction to smooth airflow. When we
we found that older graphics cards really leave removed the X1300XL and used the onboard
a lot to be desired in terms of airflow! graphics, we found that air flowed much
We also noticed that there was hardly any better! We also saw that smoke from outside
air flowing over or under the hard drives or the the front of the cabinet was being drawn in
DVD-Writer. Now a DVD-Writer may not need through the gaps in the front, so despite being
cooling, but hard drives certainly do! covered, the front fan was working well.
Tip
Cable Organising
Inside your cabinet, or outside, organising your cables prop-
erly is essential. You can use plastic wire binders, or even
rubber-bands, but make sure your cables are all arranged
along the sides and the bottom. This prevents them from
getting in the way of the airflow, and thus helps keep your
cabinet cooler.
The High-
You might not be
Definition Itch
Ahmed Shaikh
look before you leap into the HD stream, you
can’t help but scratch that big-screen itch.
able to afford So, hearts filled with joyful consumerism,
T
here is no clear path to HD land. The idea let’s take a walk through the HD swamp—learn
one. There is of high-definition television is a beehive a bit about what makes an HDTV, and take a look
nothing to watch of activity with new tech replacing the at some of the numerous technologies available,
on one. But you old, faster than a speeding bullet. With no with a strong emphasis on the pros and cons of
clear winner, choices are numerous, with each. Which technology to pick? There is no clear
still want one. We many pros and cons to weigh. Things are not answer. Consider this an interesting journey
help you scratch very clear on the content either: HD content without a destination.
producers are ambiguous on their DRM (Digital
that HDTV itch Rights Management) policies—will they, won’t What Makes An HDTV?
they, and when (because they will)? What reso- All televisions display images as a grid of
lution will be widely adopted, to what extent coloured dots or pixels. The more the dots a TV
will DRM shackle our media? To make matters can display, the higher its resolution. The TV sets
worse, the content sources are anaemic in that most of us currently use is called SDTV; it
India (neither over-the-air nor broadcast HD has the lowest resolution possible. An enhanced
channels available); the only HD content version of this type of TV—called EDTV—is also
currently on offer being games. Nor is there available, but even that type does not differ much
any clarity on the next-generation of HD over the SD variety. The drawback of a low reso-
media—will Blu-Ray best HD-DVD or vice-versa? lution is that as the screen size of a television set
But walk into an electronics shop and your increases, the TV has to fit the same number of
jaw drops—pretty HDTVs all in pixels to a larger screen area. This results in poor
a row and none of the image quality; it’s similar to watching a video
above matters, lust recorded by a cell phone on a PC in full-screen
overtakes logic; and mode. Larger displays offer a more cinematic
while some practi- experience. This is where HDTV steps in.
cal corner of your TVs generally come in two screen ratios—a
brain pleads to 4:3 screen and a 16:9 screen; some sets also sport
HDMI Demystified
home theatre setup, faster response time than LCD, than LCD, display gradually dims over time
brighter than LCD (loses brightness)
Widest range of sizes available, no danger of burn-in, Image quality generally not as good as plasma
LCD television (poor blacks); relatively narrow viewing angle,
higher resolution than comparably-sized plasmas,
generally cheaper than plasma might show ghosting while displaying fast-
moving images like in games
CRT Inexpensive, good black levels, good colour satura- Need professional calibration for ideal setup,
tion, sharp picture deep cabinets, not suited for bright rooms
Rear Projection TV
DLP (Digital Light Good pixel fill and uniformity; deep blacks in better Rainbow effect might be visible in some sets, low-
Processing) models level noise, wobulated resolution on some TVs
Microdisplays
LCD No rainbow effect, good colour reproduction, light- 1080p currently unavailable, black level lacking,
weight, perfect sharpness at native resolution, excel- uniformity issues, not as bright as DLP, currently
lent longevity no 1080p chips, poor contrast ratios, weak and
stuck pixels are common
LCoS No rainbow effect, true 1080p resolution (not wobu- Some uniformity issues
lated), excellent black levels, great interpixel fill
DLP Better black level than LCD, good uniformity, good Rainbow effect, more expensive than LCD
Projectors
Projection
brightness
(Front
LCD Usually cheaper and more feature-packed than DLP Not as bright as DLP, might show screen-door
of same resolution effect
W
ar is a sad reality: has been teh same “Each person is a network with routing capa-
movement of in the past and will continue to bility to everyone else. Think of cascading
warfare from a remain so in future. It is anybody’s networks, all IP-based, that are dynamic and
conjecture what war will be like, say, five self-configured as the troops advance.”
blood-drenched decades from now. It will not involve the loss of Sensors, commanders and soldiers will all
killing affair to lives in direct combat: we would have passed be linked to a dynamic network that will adapt
well beyond that stage. But what can it be to the situation and satisfy the information
something more about? Will it be about the destruction of phys- demands of the battlefield. This vision is not
precisely- ical targets via what the Internet will be at that far from being realised. By the end of this
targeted and yet time? Or will it be entirely cyber-warfare… decade, major armed forces across the globe
attacks solely on information systems? will have sensors and communication gear that
more powerful Whatever the case, the fact is that technol- will make such connectivity possible.
ogy has decisively entered the battlefield, just In addition to conventional weapons, the
as it has entered the sports arena. It makes it soldier of the future will have the necessary
less fun and more serious business, but war is equipment to make him a network-enabled
fun only when you’re watching a movie! “smart warrior.” Using his helmet-mounted
Here, then, are some things that have drop-down eyepiece, he will see a virtual, GPS-
happened in recent years, which point to the linked display showing his current location and
inexorable rush of technology into combat of that of friendly and hostile units in the area.
all sorts. We focus on the communications and He will be able to switch the display to watch
networking aspect, because that’s where it’s live video feeds from UAVs (Unmanned Aerial
happening most. We have good reason to Vehicles) coming via a secure data link. His
believe that what’s happening today is indica- rifle-mounted TWS (Thermal Weapon Sight)
tive of what will be tomorrow. will not only help him identify enemy positions
in the dark, but also pass on the same infor-
The Networked Soldier mation to allied units on the network.
In the US Army’s vision called the Future A soldier is just a part of a platoon or
Combat System, networks will acquire the company of similarly-equipped soldiers. The
capability of being set up on the fly to adapt to soldier utilises data fed in by sensors like UAVs,
the progress of a battle. aircraft, satellites, and other sensors to iden-
Peter Marcotullio, director of development tify important targets and detect potential
Imaging Sivala
lS
Digital Passion l Drool Maal
Drool Maal
Flybook VM
he innovative design of the Flybook VM is a far
T cry from the monotony of “regular” ones. It has
a tilting screen you can pull towards you while
working, and push away to enjoy a movie. Because the
screen can lift up, you won’t need to strain your neck
when working with the laptop at a table—you can adopt
a more natural posture.
The screen is a wide 12.1-inch, and the device sports
a reasonably good configuration for its size: powered
by Intel’s energy-efficient Core Duo processor, it allows
up to 2 GB of RAM. Price? A little more than Rs 2 lakh.
It’s all about design and ergonomics!
Win!
Our challenge last month was to create a
Windows XP installation CD that requires
no driver installation.
Santhosh S
Nagasandra Post
Bangalore
Employees of Jasubhai
Digital Media and their relatives
are not permitted to participate
in this contest. The source CD tab in Windows Unattended CD Creator
Readers are encouraged to
send their replies by e-mail. 5. Select “Work in source directory” Finalise the CD compilation
Jasubhai Digital Media will not under the “Target directory for new
entertain any unsolicited CD” column. 10. Head straight to the Done tab,
communication. 6. Bypass all other options and head to making no changes.
Jasubhai Digital Media is the Driver tab. 11. Click Save and then on “Create ISO-
not responsible for any damage 7. Insert the driver CD that came with image”. Enter the path of where the
to your system that may be your motherboard. image should be written to.
caused while you are trying to 8. Give a name to the driver group in 12. After completion, burn the ISO
solve the problem.
the General Drivers text box, for image to a CD using a disc burning
example, “Gigabyte”. Click Add. tool such as Nero. You’re done!
Digital
72 Dinky Data
Vaults 85 RAID 94 POPping The
Cork
Tools
Technology For Personal And SoHo Productivity
Lead Feature
R
emember the days when using a computer the amount of multi-tasking expected from all of
meant just having one browser window, us, the whole “lack of desk space” argument falls
one mail client and maybe an office appli- flat—pardon the pun! Televisions aren’t cool
cation? I know a lot of us found just those three unless they’re LCD/Plasma gizmos, and a com-
windows intimidating at times. Today, however, puter monitor also just has to be an LCD today. So
whether it’s at work or at home, we’ve got so why buy one when you can get two? Sure… that
many things happening at once that it’s hard to is, if your daddy has a multi-crore business and
keep track of everything that’s open on your loves splurging on your whims! For the rest of us
Desktop. No, don’t worry, we’re not going to be unfortunate souls, when we think two monitors,
preaching about silly taskbar applications or it’s usually our spanking new LCD and the
telling you how to [Alt] + [Tab] better… instead, antique CRT that’s now collecting dust. Regard-
we wonder why the majority of the computer less, if you have more than one monitor, you
users in the world stick to just one screen! should be using them all!
There are quite a few ways in which you can
Why? put multiple (two or more) monitors to good
In the heyday of the good old CRT, where the use, but before we get to where this can be
average monitor was a 15-inch monstrosity that useful, let’s look at…
WORKSHOP
First, connect the monitors to the VGA/DVI outputs. In our case we For ATI graphics, you need to enable their SurroundView option from
had an ATI onboard working with a ATI Radeon 1900XT the BIOS. The procedure is similar for NVIDIA solutions
The BIOS and Startup screens are displayed on the two monitors Here’s how you will be able to work on Adobe Photoshop on one screen,
connected to the GPU. The onboard is enabled after Windows starts have the toolbars on another and leave the third for other activities
Flash designers will find this setup a gift from god! You can move the For better control, you can use Ultramon. This will give you their
timeline to one monitor, design in one and code in another Smart Taskbar, which gives you better control over your monitors
Digital Tigers (www.digitaltigers.com): These tion: we learnt the hard way that it’s very hard
guys boast of clients such as NASA, Microsoft, to get back to using just a single monitor… this
and Dell, and offer “affordable prices” for their writer found himself looking to the right (where
screens. A triple display 21-inch will set you back the extended desktop was) into a blank space,
by a mere $2499 (Rs 1,13,000)! and moving the mouse pointlessly to the right
every time he sat on another computer! It’s
Custom Trading Computers (www.custom- addictive, and once you get the hang of using
tradingcomputers.com): Their ClearView multiple monitors (which is about an hour at
series are designed for stock traders, so that they most), you will find your productivity soar.
can view multiple feeds at once. So if you’re used to working on several appli-
As you’ve seen in the workshop above, setting cations simultaneously, you just have to give this a
it all up is really easy. Now you can sit back and try! Let us know how it goes!
enjoy the extra desktop space, but a word of cau- robert_smith@thinkdigit.com
N VIDIA’s holiday-season
gift to Intel’s latest
breed of processors, the 680i
bottlenecks while
overclocking.
LinkBoost—an NVIDIA
sports small (meaning better) trademark—automatically
chipset-cooling heatsinks overclocks the individual
which share a single PCI-Express lanes when you
heatpipe. The inclusion of a SLI with any of the 8 series fine-tune the neatly laid-out
hex POST debugger is cards or 7900GTX cards. BIOS.
appreciated, as is the huge There’s a couple of We managed to get our
gap between the two x16 PCI- Gigabit LAN ports sporting QX 6700 (Core 2 Quad, 2.66
Express slots (no more issues something called DualNet GHz default) to 3.45 GHz at a Core 2 Quad processor, you
with dual-slot coolers). technology. These ports can multiplier of 13 (default 10), can’t go wrong here.
The 680i sports a new actually be clubbed together without any tweaking…
BIOS aimed at the hardcore for twice the theoretical simply awesome! Super Pi Specifications
enthusiast. Voltages from throughput, while the 1M calculations took 14 Intel Socket 775; 1333 MHz FSB;
CPU to memory to even the TCP/IP acceleration engine seconds at this speed, and 18 2x16 SLi; third PCIe Graphics
Northbridge and aboard each LAN controller seconds at stock. Expansion Slot; supports DDR2
Southbridge can be reduces CPU utilisation. For the enthusiast who 800 MHz (SLI-Ready memory
tweaked, ensuring minimal nTune has also been wants performance at stock with EPP: 1200 MHz); 46 PCIe
reworked, and now allows and stability under lanes and 9 links; 6xSATA II;
RATINGS changing most BIOS options overclocking, the 680i makes 2xPATA; RAID: 0,1,0+1,5; Dual
Performance from Windows itself. This for a very a potent package. Gigabit Ethernet; 10xUSB 2.0;
Features
can be a huge advantage for It’s future-proof, and a rock- 5xPCI; HAD (Azalia) audio
overclockers who are in an solid overclocker as well. If
Build Quality
all-fired hurry, though the you want the best platform Contact: NVIDIA Corporation
Overall hardcore will still want to for your new Core 2 Duo or Web site: www.nvidia.com
Internal SATA Hard Drive Hard drive-based MP3 Processors Wi-Fi Access Points
Seagate ST3750840AS Players Intel QX6700 Core 2 Extreme Linksys WAP54G
Huge 750 GB storage capacity Apple iPod 80 GB Extreme performance Great performance
Expensive Expensive None in particular
Contact Intel Corporation Contact Ingram Micro India Pvt Ltd
Contact eSys Distribution Pvt Ltd
Phone 080-25075000 Phone 9323112279
Phone 011-41811694
E-mail saranya.rustagi@intel.com E-mail sunil.z@ingrammicro.co.in
E-mail msinghal@esysmail.com
Price Rs 52,000 Price Rs 3,816
Price Rs 23,500
Feature-rich Cell Phones Flash Drives Mono Laser MFDs Thin And Light Laptops
Nokia N80 Transcend JetFlash 150 1 GB Samsung SCX-4521F Dell Inspiron 6400
Brilliant screen; extremely Fast Good performance and Amazing performance
feature-rich Poor package bundle quality Looks gaudy
Slightly bulky Low input tray capacity
Contact Mediaman Infotech Pvt Contact Dell India Pvt. Ltd.
Contact Nokia
Ltd. Contact Samsung India Phone 080-25068026
Phone 0124-5199000
Phone 022-23828100 Electronics Pvt Ltd E-mail belgundi_indrajit@dell.com
Website www.nokia.com
E-mail santosh@ Phone 011-26431313 Price Rs 64,000
Price Rs 21,000
mediamangroup.com E-mail vikram.negi@
Price Rs 1,500 samsung.com
Price Rs 21,990 Performance Laptops
Mice Sony VAIO AR18GP
Logitech MX Revolution Mind boggling performance
Has a flywheel Very expensive
Expensive
Contact Sony India
Contact Logitech Electronic Phone 022-28231558
India Pvt Ltd E-mail sonyindia.care
Phone 022-26571160 @ap.sony.com
E-mail response@logitech.com Price Rs 1,99,900
Price Rs 8,000 PC Webcams
Tech-Com SSD-641-MP
Budget Cell Phones Good image quality,
Nokia 6070 inexpensive
Great value for money No software bundle,
Poor-quality camera bad build quality
61
Digital Tools l Net Gain
T
his Web site is heaven for pro- D-Zine, another category, talks
fessional programmers and about design aspects beyond HTML
development teams. It’s bound and JavaScript. You’ll see important
to go over the heads of beginners, topics like site colours, graphic stan-
though—and that’s a word of warning! dards, and design perception that
The site deals for the most part with determines the pulling power of a
application development—program- Web site. Search engine types as well
ming languages such as .NET, Java, as off-beat ways of pushing your
and C++, as well as domains such as page up the search rankings are also
Web development, architecture, data- explained. Then there are the tech-
bases, security, and many more are niques for fast loading of pages using
discussed and dissected. CCS and JavaScript. Tables and
The site provides “just in time” XHTML are explained in detail.
e-learning to help development The 10-minute solutions section gets The Tutorials section is sub-
teams move ahead with project bot- you your answers in, well, 10 minutes! divided into Page Building, Compo-
tlenecks. The site aims to broaden nent Building, and Server
the knowledge and hone the skills of tips: workarounds and pieces of code Programming. Though only HTML,
developers through Webcasts, tuto- that are oh-so-just-what-you-were- JavaScript, Flash and Java applets
rials, and tools under partnership looking-for. For example, how do you are explained in detail, there are links
with IBM, Microsoft, and more. The create a favicon? How do you call a to various external sites.
Webcasts are dedicated to streaming Java method from XQuery or animate “Online tools” has some cool pre-
online IT education and business form icons? Then, “Sourcebank” coding to enhance Web site presen-
events, though the content sites gives links to source code and scripts tation. One just needs to enter the
might need free or paid registration. posted from around the world. type of look and the links required,
Sub-sections under “Zones” are “10-Minute solutions” is a library and the online tools return code that
based on language and domain, and of questions and answers and how- can be pasted to your site!
the topics covered in these sections to articles that can be accomplished
are based on real-world experiences. under 10 minutes: how do you
encrypt sensitive configuration data
with Java? How do you programmat-
ically apply XSLT in a dynamic Java
application? (See—we told you the
site isn’t for beginners.)
“APIFinder” redirects you to a
sister site. Here, again, are articles,
news, and so on, and most impor-
tantly, “the majority of APIs (here)
are Web Services—a.k.a. Web 2.0—
APIs, but the site is designed to
include APIs of absolutely any type.” EchoEcho’s Online Tools section
We suppose you’ve gotten the shouldn’t be missed
The DevX main page idea by now. Newbies, stay out; inter-
mediates and experts, explore, con- In the Free Resources section,
tribute, learn, use, code! you can find links to host your site for
For example, if you’re a team leader free, and also graphics like back-
and need to choose an AJAX library grounds, buttons, and bullets. Pro-
type—server-based or pure EchoEcho.com grams such as image editors, GIF
JavaScript—you’ll find something at
this site to help you out.
The home page features general
I f you’re a beginner to intermediate-
level Web programmer, you’ll prob-
ably find EchoEcho.com
animators, and HTML editors can be
downloaded from here—as well as
applets like a weather updater,
programming articles as well as indispensable. The site is categorised fading text, image peeling, and pop-
some on implementations of new into eight broad categories. up menus.
technologies. Programming and At the first category, User There’s one anomaly, though:
enterprise trends are also talked Forums, you’ll find opinions about we’re wondering why EchoEcho
about in these articles. Then there’s various Web sites and how they hasn’t implemented some of the
the incredibly useful “Tip Bank,” could have been done better. A “best practices” it preaches!
which contains more than 10,000 forum on Page Development has prakash_ballakoor@thinkdigit.com
W
herever the Registry Editor is delete the unwanted programs. This
mentioned in the following, key is where Windows reads from when
you will need to go to Start > using the All Users profile. Now you
Run, type in “regedit” and press [Enter]. will only see the programs that you
You also need to remember that editing want in the Open With list... well, most
the Windows Registry can be dangerous, of the time; the problem is that
and if not done right, might require you Windows also reads the Open With list
to format and re-install Windows to get from another registry key:
your system working again. Ideally, you HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFile
should back up your Registry before Associations\
making any changes to it. Here’s where it reads the default
Open With list from, but we strongly
Open Without? advise you against changing it because
When you right-click on a file, one it might affect multiple file types.
of the options you see is “Open With”.
These usually contain what Windows Show Desktop Not Showing
thinks are valid programs to open Sometimes, we accidently delete
particular file types. Now, sometimes, the Show Desktop icon in the Quick Here’s the perfect example of wasted space:
when you have bad installers or Launch menu. You can manually 272 MB of update uninstallers!
Basics
WINDOWS GAMES When you click on a square and see
a number, the number signifies how
many of the eight squares that touch the
open square are mines—so a “3” means
that three of the eight surrounding
squares are mines. Using logic and
arithmetic, you have to try and identify
which squares are mines, and which are
safe to be opened.
Openings
Left-click randomly, and fast, in a
circular motion trying to get a nice, big
opening so that you can start sweeping
with some options. This will beat getting a
small opening and then trying to figure
your way out of a corner. Also, the
techniques of the best sweepers in the
world suggest that starting at the corners,
and making a circular sweeping motion Look for patterns in the clues. Red highlights
towards the centre for an opening works are the patterns and yellow highllights are
best. There’s no hard and fast rule, but it where the mines will always be
is a lot easier if you start off with a nice
big opening.
A
lot of us are addicted to games,
especially the simple ones that Use Both Clicks
Windows bundles. Here’s a look at If you spend all your time left-
some tips, tricks, and cheats for Spider clicking to open and right-clicking to mark
Solitaire and Minesweeper—two of the most mines, you will never get anywhere in
difficult Windows games to master. terms of breaking time records. And yes,
Minesweeper is all about timing. Let’s say
MINESWEEPER you have a “1” on the grid, and you’ve
Most people just play Minesweeper by already marked the one bomb that touches what we mean.) Once you learn these
guessing and randomly clicking, hoping that square. Now, that same “1” has four patterns, you will no longer need to think
to open out the empty squares. Most more squares touching it that are yet to be about solving them, and will be able to
people also end up never finishing even opened. If you left-click to open each of the blindly mark them, solve them and move
the Beginner level of Minesweeper! The tips four squares, you waste time. Instead, hover on to more complex problems.
provided here guarantee to shave at least the mouse over the square with the “1” in
30 per cent off your best time in all it and press the left and right mouse Don’t Mark Them All
levels—unless you’re already an expert! buttons together. All the touching squares You don’t have to mark every mine
Before we start, you should: will be opened. Remember, this is not in the field. The objective of the game is
Turn off Marks (?). Go to Game > magic, so if you marked the wrong square, to uncover every empty square, and
Marks(?). This will get rid of the “?” mark you will explode a mine by opening all once you’ve done that, the game
that appears when you mark and then try touching squares using the left-right click. automatically stops the clock and marks
to unmark a mine. Often we mark mines Also, when stuck in a corner, and not all all the mines you didn’t bother
incorrectly by mistake, and then waste mines touching a square have been marking. So when you get an opening,
precious seconds right-clicking twice to marked, you can use the left-right click to and off to one side are squares that are
get rid of that pesky “?”. see which squares are unmarked and obviously all mines, ignore them—get on
Position yourself in such a way that touching the number you’re hovering over. to solving and opening all squares that
your left index finger is resting on the This is great to visually finding out aren’t mines instead. This can shave as
[F2] button. This will help you quickly common squares between adjacent much as 10 seconds off your time in the
start a new game when you click on a numbers—like a visual aid for your Intermediate and Expert levels.
mine and die. thinking. Just get an opening, don’t mark
If you’re using a ball mouse, clean any mines, and left-right click on numbers Don’t Hesitate To Guess
the ball. Position your mouse in such a to better understand what this tip is trying No, we don’t mean to tell you to
way that you can be comfortable using it to teach you. guess you way through this game,
for hours. because you will never succeed.
Go to Start > Run and type in Pattern Recognition Sometimes, you’re just left stuck with a
“control mouse”. Click on the Pointer If you waste time solving the position where either of two squares is
Options tab and reduce the pointer position of every mine, you’re never going a mine, and it has to be a complete
speed. How slow depends on the to get past your own record. Instead, use fluke to mark the right one. In such
quality of the mouse and the precision pattern recognition to quickly calculate cases, delaying the inevitable is
you require. Only playing Minesweeper which squares are mines and which pointless—just make a guess and get it
regularly and experimenting with aren’t. The most common examples are over with. There’s nothing more
these settings can help you find that shown below. These mostly involve what frustrating than finding yourself way
perfect pointer speed where you have are called wall patterns. (A wall pattern is below your best time and only one mine
precision control. shown in the screenshot, to help illustrate to sweep, only to make the wrong guess.
Play Anything!
Lessons to familiarise yourselves with the most versatile media player
players, VLC, too, supports skinning. stream to your hard drive. To launch
Jayesh Limaye Go to Settings > Switch interface > this wizard, go to File > Wizard or
simply press [Ctrl] + [W]. Choose
check whether your video is really effects. Moving the Smooth slider to
streaming, open another instance of the right will control the blending of
VLC. Click on the File menu, select the equalizer bands. The more
“Open Network Stream”, select the towards the right it is, the more corre-
“HTTP/HTTPS/..” radio button on the lated the movements of adjoining
Network tab, and enter “local- equalisers will be. The equaliser has
host:8080” in the URL dialog box. preset modes as well, but to access
Click OK. them, you need to enter the
If all is well, you should now be Preferences section in VLC.
able to see the video you’re broad- VLC features two audio filters—a
casting, in this new instance of VLC. If volume normaliser and Headphone
you pause the video in the server, the
video will pause playing in the second Displaying video from capture devices
VLC instance. To access the video on
another computer in the network, just use for video and audio capture using
replace “localhost” with the IP address the “Video device name” and “Audio
of the server PC. device name” selectors. You can access
You can even adapt this to stream the settings of your selected device
live video such as from a TV-Tuner or a through the Configure button.
webcam across the network. To do this,
open the Wizard, and with the “Stream The Extended GUI
to Network” radio button checked, click Go to Settings > Extended GUI for the
Next. Then click Choose. Click on the Extended GUI, which gives you access
DirectShow tab and choose the device to to a load of settings that let you tweak
use for video and audio capture using your video. Under the Video tab, check More audio tuning
the “Video device name” and “Audio the box next to Enable, and you will
device name” selectors. Click on the be able to adjust the Hue, Contrast, virtualisation. The Volume Normaliser
Configure button to access the settings Brightness, Saturation, and Gamma to is nothing but a limiter that caps the
of your selected device. suit your viewing needs. VLC also fea- maximum volume of the player.
tures additional video effects such as Headphone virtualisation is a filter
Playing A DVD that provides sound spatialisation
VLC is fully capable of playing DVDs as when using headphones.
well; it even lets you easily navigate a Spatialisation of sound is an enhanced
DVD using its menu structure. Go to reproduction of sound that mimics
File > Open Disc or press [Ctrl]+[D]. In multiple speakers even when only two
the window that opens, select the speakers (in this case, headphones) are
being used, thereby adding the
immersive touch.
Additional Preferences
You can further tweak the various set-
tings of VLC by entering the
Preferences. Go to Settings >
Adjusting image quality Preferences; here, you can adjust var-
You can play DVDs using VLC Image Clone, Distortion, Image inver-
sion and Blurring, Transformation,
DVD (menus) radio button and enter and Magnify.
the DVD drive letter followed by a Like any other media player, VLC,
colon, such as “I:” as the Device Name. too, has a 10-band graphic equaliser.
Alternatively, you can enter the MRL Click on the Equalizer tab to access it.
(Media Resource Locator) as “dvd://E:” Check the box next to “2 Pass” to
in the Customize dialog box apply the equaliser twice for sharper
(assuming E is your DVD drive letter).
Click OK. You can choose the Audio
format, Subtitle, Language, etc. by Adjusting the Preferences
clicking on the appropriate menus.
ious audio settings such as Filters,
Working With Capture Devices Output modules, and even
You can even play and stream the con- Visualisations.
tent from a capture device, be it a There’s a whole lot more to
webcam, video capture card, or a TV- explore, and you should now be in a
Tuner, using VLC. The only prerequisite position to experiment with the
is that you need to install the WDM player on your own. VLC media player
drivers for the capture device. Click on is certainly the jack of all codecs and
File > Open Capture Device or simply the master of most!
press [Ctrl] + [A]. Choose the device to The 10-band graphic equaliser jayesh_limaye@thinkdigit.com
Cut your losses and get on to the It’s All In The Suit
next game. If you want to have any kind of
success in Spider Solitaire, always try to
Cheats build according to suit. This is the most
In older versions of Minesweeper basic point of the game, because only
(before Windows XP), you could stop the when you have King through Ace of the
clock by keeping the left and right mouse same suit (all 13 cards) does it get taken
buttons pressed and pressing [Esc]. This off the playing board. Also, if you have,
doesn’t work with Windows XP’s version say, Jack of Clubs through Six of Clubs,
of Minesweeper, but you can always you can move that whole build of cards 1: If you have to mix suits, add to an already
download the Windows 98 version and to another slot, together. So building in- mixed pile. 2: This helps you build better
overwrite winmine.exe in the suit allows you to reveal more of the
C:\Windows\System32\ folder. covered cards. of Hearts again. In such a case, keep an
Another interesting cheat is to start eye out for the first opportunity where
Minesweeper, then type [X] + [Y] + [Z] + [Z] + Exposé an Eight of Hearts is available, and any
[Y] + [Shift] + [Enter] + [Enter] (that’s xyzzy This holds true for any form of other Nine is free. Let’s say you have the
+ Shift + Enter twice) on your keyboard. Solitaire: try your best to expose the Eight of hearts open, quickly move the
This will display a single pixel on the top covered cards. The only way you can win Seven through Ace of Hearts on to the
left of your desktop that glows white at this game is if you focus more on Eight of Hearts, then the Eight of spades
when you hover an empty space and black opening all the covered cards rather than on to any available Nine, and then move
when you hover over a mine—this building a single sequence and losing the Eight through Ace of hearts back on
obviously only works to your advantage focus on the rest. Besides, covered cards to the original pile to complete the
when you have a black desktop are of no use to anyone, so the faster you sequence. This holds true when any
background, so that you can see the pixel uncover them the better your chances of sequence is broken up by one card from
glow white when you are over a square building multiple sequences. a different suit.
that doesn’t contain a mine. It also will
not help your time much, especially if you Kings High Don’t Touch The King
depend on this pixel to solve your game. Kings are your friends, unless there A very common mistake all novice
However, this can help a lot when you’re are no Queens to be found, that is. Focus Spider Solitaire players make is to move a
stuck with an unsolvable pattern (where on building on top of higher-ranked cards. King to the first available empty space.
guesswork is needed). An Ace on a covered pile is just useless Unless you can get that whole sequence
unless there’s a two around; a Jack, on the (King to Ace) in three moves or less, you’re
Alternatives other hand, is a nice option for a Ten of asking for trouble. Empty spaces on the
There are many clones for any suit. So make sure to try and keep all board (created after all the covered cards
Minesweeper, including those that use playable cards as high as possible. in that pile have been opened and moved)
hexagons instead of squares, making the are what will help you win the game. Any
sweeping more complicated. There is also Don’t Mix card from Queen through Ace, when put
the official Minesweeper Clone, which has Although in Spider Solitaire you are in an empty space, can be moved out
an inbuilt recording facility and is cheat- allowed to place, say, a Six of any suit on a again, but a King in an empty space can
proof. If you find yourself getting good Seven of any other suit. This is just going only be moved off the board—when the
enough to challenge the masters of to get you stuck. Obviously, sometimes entire sequence of King to Ace of that suit
Minesweeper, you will need Minesweeper you might want to mix and match to try is completed. So next time a King is on top
Clone. Records are only acknowledged if and open out more covered cards in the of a pile and a space opens out, don’t just
you send in a recording of it, and hope that you get the cards that you’re pop it into the empty slot hoping to be
Minesweeper Clone will let you play back the looking for; but as far as possible, don’t able to build from there.
records of the masters, in case you want to ruin a built sequence by adding a card of
see how they play. Just visit www.planet- another suit. Whenever possible, always Think Ahead
minesweeper.com to delve into the mix suits in sequences that already have Spider Solitaire, like any thinking
wonderful world of minesweeping. mixed cards. Later you can always un-mix game, requires some planning. You should
We should mention that, currently, them when you have a few free spaces on always be thinking at least three moves
the world records for the three levels are: the board. ahead for even a single suit (easy) game.
Beginner : 1 second Good players think as much as 10 moves
Intermediate : 10 seconds Dealing Is Death ahead when playing with all four suits
Expert : 38 Seconds Don’t just deal the next hand in the (highest difficulty). You will have to learn
You can only get into the hall of fame hope that you will get some good cards. to visualise your moves before you make
if your combined time (Beginner + It’s better to try and keep playing without them. So when you’re thinking of moving
Intermediate + Expert) is 99 seconds or dealing. The longer you play and the more a card, look at the board in your mind
less! Happy sweeping! options you try, the better your chances of and see what that move will mean for the
opening out covered cards. Dealing the rest of the game—will you be able to
next hand is like the “Get out of jail free” continue? Will moving this card really
SPIDER SOLITAIRE card in Monopoly—only to be used in help? Also, it’s most important to see all
The aim of this game is to empty out 10 emergencies, or when there’s no your available moves before making any
stacks of cards by building each suit from other choice. move, even the very first one. Sometimes
King to Ace. It involves two decks of cards, games are lost just because the first move
and you can choose between just a single Mixed Suits was wrong. Also never be shy to use the
suit (easy) to all four suits (highest Often, you find yourself with, say, [Ctrl] + [Z] (undo) option that’s available,
difficulty). King through Nine of Hearts, then Eight but remember that it is only available till
of Spades, and then Seven through Ace the last hand was dealt.
I
E7, at first look, is decent. You’d down arrow next to it and it’s clear from files, go to Tools > Delete Browsing
expect it to be perfect, what with its there on what to do. Now, press the History.
having been released so late (two Favorites button at any time to see a list To find and install add-ons, go to Tools >
years late, in our opinion). And it’s not. of Favorites and Feeds as well as History. Manage Add-ons > Find More Add-ons.
The zoom feature has some problems— Right-click a feed and select Properties: To print only part of a page, select the
certain zoom and/or text size levels you’ll be able to select how often to part, press [Ctrl] + [P], click Selection,
make some text disappear altogether; update it, and other things. then click Print.
favicons (the icons associated with Web
pages, which appear next to the site Internet Explorer 7 Keyboard Shortcuts
name) sometimes don’t load, and so on.
But on the whole, it’s decent: there’s Open a link in a new tab in the background [Ctrl] + Click (or just middle-click)
tabbed browsing (finally), an easy way Open a link in a new tab in the foreground [Ctrl] + [Shift] + Click
to add feeds and organise Favorites, a Open a new tab in the foreground [Ctrl] + [T]
Quick Tab feature that shows you Switch between tabs [Ctrl] + [Tab] (forward) OR [Ctrl] +
thumbnails of open tabs in the full [Shift] + [Tab] (backward)
window so you can switch to one or Close current tab (closes current window when [Ctrl] + [W] OR [Ctrl] + [F4]
close some, and more. there are no open tabs)
Open a new tab in the foreground from the address bar [Alt] + [Enter]
Why’s The File Menu There? Switch to the nth tab (n can be 1 to 8) [Ctrl] + [n]
You might want to bring the File Switch to the last tab [Ctrl] + [9]
and other menus back where they Close all other tabs [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [F4]
“belong,” that is, at the top. (That’s one Open quick tab view [Ctrl] + [Q]
funny decision on the developers’ part). View list of open tabs [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [Q]
It’s a Registry edit. First back up the Increase zoom (+10%) [Ctrl] + [+]
Registry, then navigate to Decrease zoom (-10%) [Ctrl] + [-]
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Micros Original zoom [Ctrl] + [0] OR [Ctrl] + [*]
oft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar\ Go to the Toolbar search box [Ctrl] + [E]
WebBrowser Bring down the search provider menu [Ctrl] + [Down Arrow]
Right-click in an empty area of the right Go to home page [Alt] + [Home]
pane, then select New > DWORD. Give it Go backward a page [Alt] + [Left Arrow]
the name “ITBar7Position” (without the Go forward a page [Alt] + [Right Arrow]
quotes). Double-click the newly-created Refresh the page and the cache [Ctrl] + [F5]
value to give it a value of 1. Re-opening Stop loading page [Esc]
IE7 should make the change visible. Open Favorites [Ctrl] + [I]
Open Favorites in pinned mode [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [I]
Setting A Wallpaper Organise Favorites [Ctrl] + [B]
One issue with IE7 is that in some Add current page to Favorites [Ctrl] + [D]
cases, you might be trying to set an Open Feeds [Ctrl] + [J]
image as a wallpaper, and the option Open Feeds in pinned mode [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [J]
“Set as Background” might be greyed Open History [Ctrl] + [H]
out. If that’s the case, you’ll need to do Open History in pinned mode [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [H]
a Registry edit. First back up the Select the Address Bar [Alt] + [D]
Registry, then navigate to View list of previously-typed addresses [F4]
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Micro View list of search providers [Ctrl] + [Down Arrow]
soft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies
FIREFOX 2 set size, and then have a tab scroll results in a new tab, set
button, you ask? There is, in Firefox 2. browser.search.openintab to True. The
(We’re not sure about earlier versions). key might not be present, in which
F
irefox 2 has been eagerly awaited To specify the minimum size for a tab case you’ll have to add it yourself.
by many, and it was released in modify browser.tabs.tabMinWidth. For
December. It’s got some nice some reason, if you want to, you can The Spell Checker
improvements over earlier versions, also specify the maximum size of a tab: Spell checking is disabled by
and there’s no reason you won’t want modify browser.tabs.tabClipWidth. default in single line text boxes. To
to install the latest version. make it do the spell check (if you’re
Attention has been paid to the A Helpful Warning? that conscious about your spelling!),
smallest of details: where in the old Firefox 2 warns you when set layout.spellcheckDefault to 2.
versions you had “Open in Tabs” under opening more than 15 tabs at a time.
a bookmark with multiple tabs, you This typically happens when you click The Search Button
now have “Open All in Tabs”! You’ll be If you want to remove the Search
pleased to know that people are button, you’ll need to edit the
coming up with updated extensions userChrome.css file. Add the
rapidly, so you won’t be deprived following lines:
of yours very long—and many .search-go-button-stack {display: none
already work. !important; }
#searchbar { margin-right: 1em
Tab Close Buttons !important; }
Probably the first thing you’ll To find the userChrome.css file,
notice when you open a new tab in navigate to
Firefox 2 is that each tab has a tab- {Drive}:\Documents and
close button! This is nice, really, but Settings\your_user_name\Application
you might just be used to the old Firefox 2 gives you a warning when you try to Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\random
version’s behaviour. open many tabs at once. You don’t need it! _name.default\chrome
It turns out there are more than two Here you’ll find “userChrome-
options. Open the about:config page, example.css”. Rename it to
go to browser.tabs.closeButtons. Set it on “Open All in Tabs” in a bookmarks userChrome.css when you’re done with
to one of the following. folder. It says something about Firefox your changes.
0 shows a close button only on the slowing down. You can modify this at
active tab. browser.tabs.maxOpenBeforeWarn. Adding Feed Readers
1 makes close buttons visible on all Just set it to the number of tabs at Firefox 2 by default supports only
tabs—Firefox 2’s default behaviour. which you’d “like” the warning, or three Web feed readers: Bloglines,
2 makes it no close buttons at all! just type in “999” or something to Yahoo! and Google Reader. You can,
You’ll have to use the right-click to save yourselves a few picoseconds however, add as many providers as you
close a tab. of thought. like, and use any of them as your
3 is the old default—a close button at subscription manager. For this, you’ll
the end of the strip of tabs. Closing A Tab need to do a couple of about:config
OK. This is a tiny niggle, but when tweaks, and add some preferences.
The Go Button Annoyance you have a fresh new browser, you
The “Go” button is now want everything just perfect, don’t Under about:config, create a new
(irritatingly) merged with the location you? Consider this: when you close a preference by right-clicking on any
bar. What does it do, anyway? All you tab, Firefox 2 takes you back to the tab preference and selecting New >
need to do to make it go away is to set “that opened it” (meaning the tab you String.
browser.urlbar.hideGoButton to True. were in when you opened the new tab) Enter “browser.contentHandlers.
if you haven’t changed to another tab types .6.title” for the preference
Tab Sizes in the meantime. (Open and close a name. Then enter the URL of
One irritant can be the vanishing few tabs to get what we’re saying.) In whichever service you want to use—
size of tabs when there are too many Firefox 1.5, you were always taken to Newsgator, for example (www.news-
open. Isn’t there a way to make them a the immediately previous tab. To gator.com) for the value.
restore that behaviour, set As you add more Web feed readers,
browser.tabs.selectOwnerOnClose you will need to change the “6” to the
to False. next number. 6 happens to be the
first available.
SSL Support Create a new preference and enter
Support for SSL version 2 is “browser.contentHandlers.types.6.ty
deactivated by default in Firefox 2. pe” for the preference name. Enter
Only SSL 3 is supported. If you happen “application/vnd.mozilla.maybe.fee
to encounter an old Web site that d” for the value.
requires SSL 2, you’ll need to enable it. Create yet another preference name
This is pretty rare, but here’s the and enter “browser.con-
about:config key anyway—set tentHandlers.types.6. uri” for the
security.enable_ssl2 to True. preference name, and “http://
www.newsgator.com/subscribe.php?
Search Results url=%s” for the preference value.
With one setting, make all tabs the same width To make Firefox display search You’re done—just restart Firefox.
T
hey’re called “pen drives,” “thumb
drives,” “data vaults,” and “Flash drives”—
of which the last is the technically correct
name. Small and more rugged than any
other popular media, they’re particularly useful
for people who keep transferring data between
different machines. You can even carry your
office with you thanks to the newer U3 drives,
which allow you to use any application without
installing it on a computer. What’s more, you can
install a Linux distro onto your Flash drive and
use it off the drive itself.
Most Flash drives offer password protection,
and for the paranoid, some even have biometric
scanners. You can also use one as a key to lock or
unlock your computer.
We classified the Flash drives based on their
capacity—512 MB, 1 GB, 2 GB, and 4 GB. While
there are drives ranging from 256 MB to 16 GB
available in the market, the price difference
between 256 MB and 512 MB is negligible, so look
for nothing less than 512 MB.
512 MB Drives
We received ten 512 MB drives—two from SanDisk
and one each from A-DATA, iball, intex, Kingston,
Odyssey, TECH-COM, Transcend and Zion. They
don’t have particularly fancy features, but are
useful for those who want to carry documents
and pictures around with them.
Performance
O ur test bed used an Intel Core 2 Duo Extreme E6800 on an ECS PX1
Extreme Motherboard with 1 GB of Kingston HyperX DDR2 RAM. The hard
drive was clean-formatted before loading Windows XP, and all the latest
Since these drives will mostly be used to carry drivers for the motherboard and USB ports were loaded. To maintain a
documents and presentations, data transfer standard environment, we installed only the required benchmarking utilities
speed is critical. The A-DATA Oriental Elite 512 and the files we used in our tests.
MB was the fastest of the lot and took little
more than 11 seconds to Test Methodology
transfer 50 MB of files, All the storage devices we tested were evaluated on the basis of their scores
which included docu- in three primary areas, namely Features, Performance, and Price. To help in
ments, spreadsheets, our calculations, we assigned a relevant weightage (refer table for the
pictures, MP3s, and breakup) to these parameters.
JANUARY 2007
The parameters included are:
Features
We looked at the various inbuilt characteristics such as U3 or password
protection. We also observed the build quality, with primary importance
given to the sturdiness of the product. We gave extra points for any security
features such as biometric protection, and also for any useful software in
the package.
Performance
To gauge performance, we conducted two types of tests—synthetic and real-
world. For the synthetic tests, we used the HD Tach 3 benchmarking suite to
assess theoretical read and write speeds, as well as the average access time.
Due to the varying storage capacities of the models, we also carried out an
additional test, where the thumb drive was filled to capacity with both
sequential (a single large file) as well as assorted data. We observed the
time taken for each transfer, and then calculated the actual data transfer
SanDisk Cruzer Profile 512 MB rate in terms of megabytes transferred per second.
As secure as it gets
JANUARY 2007
2 GB DRIVES
Nine drives turned up in this category: SanDisk
sent in three, and Corsair, iball, Lexar, TECH-
COM, Transcend, and Zion sent in one each. This
category is for those who use pen drives to trans-
fer large amounts of data such as MP3s, movie
clips, and games. Speeds fall again because of
increased storage space.
Features
Corsair Flash Voyager 1 GB There’s nothing different about the drives’
Built like a mini-truck! bundled software—it was similar to what
came with the 1 GB drives. Since these drives
are a bit expensive, some more value-added
U3 software wouldn’t have disappointed.
JANUARY 2007
In Sum
Our Gold winner, the Corsair Flash Voyager, is
fast, has sturdy build quality, and offers a
good software bundle. To top it off, Corsair
offers a 10-year warranty and over-the-counter
replacement, no questions asked. Our Silver
winner is the Cruzer Titanium; the Zion lost
JANUARY 2007
ReadyBoost
75
Digital Tools l Flash Drive Test
JANUARY 2007
Scoreboard Flash Drives (512 MB)
BRAND A-DATA iball Intex Kingston Odyssey SanDisk
MODEL Oriental 512 MB 512 MB 512 MB DataTraveler mini Fun 512 MB Cruzer Micro 512 MB
Features
Storage Capacity (Stated) 512 MB 512 MB 512 MB 512 MB 512 MB 512 MB
Storage Capacity (Actual) 499 MB 480 MB 476 MB 476 MB 505 MB 483 MB
Security Password protection Password protection ✖ Password protection Password protection Password protection
Software features ✖ Partition software ✖ ✖ ✖ U3
Visual indicators such as an LED etc. ✔ ✔ ✖ ✔ ✔ ✔
Other accessories provided Face plate, Lanyard, Lanyard, protective Protective case ✖ Lanyard Lanyard
USB cable case
Build quality (Scale of 10)
Sturdiness of the overall package 6 6 4 6 6 7
Cap locking mechanism 7 5 4 9 7 8
Performance
HD-Tach 3
Random Access Time 38.6 40.7 1.1 9.6 8.1 1
Average read speed 23.8 18.5 20 13.1 7.5 12.8
Average write speed 16.8 5 3.2 4.1 6.1 6.6
Read burst Speed 25 25 20.6 13.5 11.2 13.1
CPU utilisation 1 7 10 7 3 1
File Transfer Test (seconds)
Write (Sequential)* 3.4 11.2 22.3 13 10 9.2
Read (Sequential)* 1.2 1.3 2 1.3 1.3 1.5
Write (Assorted)* 11.6 44.9 209 28.5 51.7 31.5
Read (Assorted)* 1.7 2 2.3 2 1.8 1.7
Write—max capacity (Sequential) 30 102.7 146 122 90 76
Read—max capacity (Sequential) 8.3 22.7 9.8 16 8.9 9
Write—max capacity (Assorted) 112 425.5 279.3 277 472 301
Read—max capacity (Assorted) 19.3 38.6 38 19.3 25 23.7
Final Scores
Features 1 16.45 14.70 2.10 13.65 15.05 21.00
Performance (out of 50) 34.46 17.36 16.51 16.73 16.04 20.00
Price 2 7.58 12.71 5.00 11.72 11.11 6.85
Grand Total (out of 100) 58.49 44.77 23.61 42.10 42.20 47.85
Price (Rs) 990 590 1500 640 675 1095
Warranty (years) 3 2 1 5 2 2
1
512 MB drives - out of 15
1 GB drives - out of 10
2
512 MB drives - out of 35
1 GB drives - out of 40
8 6 6 8 8 6 6 6
9 7 5 6 7 6 6 5
Biometric scanner Cheap Good software bun- Fast Rubber body External display Looks different Inexpensive
dle
Heavy Slow Slow Poor package None in particu- Looks gaudy Slow Poor build quality
bundle lar
Good software Reasonable price Package bundle U3 Software Reasonable price Reasonable price
bundle
Slow Slow None in particular Slow Slow Slow
JANUARY 2007
Flash Drives (1 GB)
PQI SanDisk SanDisk SanDisk TECH-COM Transcend Transcend Transcend
Intelligent Stick 1 GB Cruzer Micro 1 GB Cruzer CrossFire 1 GB Cruzer Titanium 1 GB 1 GB JetFlash 150 1 GB JetFlash V30 1 GB JetFlash 130 1 GB
1 GB 1 GB 1 GB 1 GB 1 GB 1 GB 1 GB 1 GB
983 MB 971 MB 976 MB 976 MB 939 MB 979 MB 967 MB 997 MB
Password protection Password protection Password protection Password protection Password protection Password protection Password protection Password protection
U3 CSI3 demo U3 ✖ PC lock, secure zip PC lock, secure zip PC lock, secure zip
✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Casing, stick slot Lanyard Lanyard Lanyard Lanyard, USB cable Lanyard Lanyard Lanyard, two extra
caps
6 6 6 8 6 6 6 6
5 8 7 6 6 6 6 6
Small form factor U3 software Looks Different Rugged build Cheap Fast Good package Good package
bundle bundle
Fragile Slow Poor package Poor package Slow Poor package Slow None in particular
bundle bundle bundle
JANUARY 2007
Scoreboard Flash Drives (1 GB)
BRAND UMAX UMAX UMAX Zion Corsair iball
MODEL APUS PRO 1 GB APUS ELITE 1 GB APUS 210 1 GB 1 GB Flash Voyager 2 GB 2 GB
Features
Storage Capacity (Stated) 1 GB 1 GB 1 GB 1 GB 2 GB 2 GB
Storage Capacity (Actual) 979 MB 983 MB 960 MB 991 MB 1.9 GB 1.91 GB
Security Password ✖ ✖ ✖ Password protection Password protection
Software features Secure zip, bootable ✖ ✖ ✖ PC lock, bootable Partition
Visual indicators such as an LED etc. ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Other accessories provided Lanyard, USB cable ✖ ✖ Lanyard, USB cable, Lanyard, USB cable Lanyard, protective
retention cap case
Build quality (Scale of 10)
Sturdiness of the overall package 6 6 6 8 6 6
Cap locking mechanism 6 6 5 6 8 5
Performance
HD-Tach 3
Random access time 5.6 7.1 53.2 0.7 29.8 8.6
Average read speed 10.8 10.1 21.3 9.5 17.9 23.3
Average write speed 3.1 2.6 4.4 13.1 10.5 5.7
Read burst Speed 10.9 10.1 27.6 14.6 20.2 30.9
CPU utilisation 4 1 5 2 1 3
File Transfer Test (seconds)
Write - 700 MB (Sequential) 235.4 340.1 134.5 64.8 91.6 95.1
Read—700 MB (Sequential) 42 44.7 38.53 11.9 11.7 25.7
Write—700 MB (Assorted) 236.8 345.9 160.4 69.5 97.5 142.5
Read—700 MB (Assorted) 69 80.3 59.8 38.7 34.7 24.2
Write—max capacity (Sequential) 299 438.7 287.6 84 231.1 298.4
Read—max capacity (Sequential) 90.7 92.2 84.3 68.6 105.4 63.9
Write—max capacity (Assorted) 309.4 439.8 292.3 91.7 266.7 353.8
Read—max capacity (Assorted) 89.5 96.3 86 75.6 100.7 83
Final Scores
Features 1 25.60 6.40 6.00 11.20 27.45 26.10
Performance (out of 50) 7.72 7.90 12.91 16.29 34.30 29.97
Price 2 4.83 5.60 5.38 6.51 1.67 4.04
Grand Total (out of 100) 38.15 19.90 24.30 34.00 63.41 60.11
Price (Rs) 1450 1250 1300 1075 3300 1360
Warranty (Years) Lifetime 2 Lifetime 3 10 2
1
1 GB drives 40
2 GB drives 45
2
1 GB drives 10
2 GB drives 5
Package bundle None Transparent Fast Rubber body Cheap and fast
casing
Slow Slow Slow Poor Package Expensive Poor build quality
bundle
JANUARY 2007
Flash Drives (2 GB)
Lexar SanDisk SanDisk SanDisk TECH-COM Transcend Zion
JumpDrive FireFly 2 GB Cruzer Titanium 2 GB Cruzer Micro 2 GB Cruzer CrossFire 2 GB 2 GB JetFlash V30 2 GB 2 GB
2 GB 2 GB 2 GB 2 GB 2 GB 2 GB 2 GB
1.88 GB 1.86 GB 1.86 GB 1.9 GB 1.9 GB 1.88 GB 1.92 GB
Password protection Password protection Password protection Password protection Password protection Password protection ✖
Google software U3 U3 CSI3 demo ✖ PC look, bootable ✖
✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
✖ Lanyard Lanyard Lanyard Lanyard, USB cable Lanyard Lanyard, USB cable,
retention cap
6 8 6 6 6 6 8
6 6 6 7 6 6 6
Good software bun- Fast Fast Looks Different Cheap Good package Fast
dle bundle
Slow Poor Package Poor package Poor package Slow Slow Poor package
bundle bundle bundle bundle
JANUARY 2007
RAID
More than one hard disk need not just mean more partitions
data. This code helps the RAID desktop users,
Arvind Subramanian system recognise the data. During since most files
a read of the same block, the that are accessed
R
AID is the abbreviation for parity check code is again gener- are typically very
“Redundant Array Of ated, and this is matched with the small. Disk striping
Independent Disks.” It parity check code generated using RAID 0
refers to the technology of stor- during the write. Now, the parity increases the per-
ing data with a higher degree of code generated during the write formance of a
protection and/or performance is stored on one of the disks in the sequential read
than regular storage. array, and this increases the relia- /write operation—
There are many different bility of the data—and thus that of such as one for a
“levels” of RAID, and typical the entire database in use. single, large video
examples are RAID 0, RAID 1, file—but does hardly
RAID 1+0, RAID 0+1, RAID 3+0, What RAID Can Do anything for a
and many more. At each level, RAID levels 1, 0+1, 1+0, 5, 6, 5+0, random seek. For users
Imaging Pradip Ingale RAID takes a different approach and 5+1 allow a single hard disk with high performance as a
to the storage of data. to fail while keeping the data on goal, it is better to buy a faster and
RAID works on the concepts of the system accessible to users. bigger single disk with a higher
Data Mirroring, Data Striping, and Users in general would not realise rpm and buffer than to run two
Parity Checks. That’s where the that a disk has failed, and would smaller drives under RAID 0.
levels come in: RAID 0 uses only continue to work normally. The
striping, RAID 1 uses only mirror- use of RAID allows the disk in Problem Areas
ing, and further levels include question to be changed, and the RAID systems are not easily inter-
parity checks and/or a combina- data restored and updated, with- changeable, unlike the case with
tion of these. You get many per- out hampering work. Data from single disks. The RAID BIOS, which
mutations as a result, but RAID the working disk can then be mir- controls the reads and writes of
always uses at least two hard disks rored back on to a new disk. the data to the disks in the array,
that work as a single unit. Backups taken on tape or on a must be made available to the
separate hard drive are not operating system. Moreover, RAID
The Basic Concepts “online” or in real-time; there controllers make use of different
Data Mirroring will necessarily be a delay before formats depending on the level
Simply put, mirroring means the system can be restored. used. Even moving the controllers
making simultaneous writes of In RAID levels that use strip- to a new system might see a degra-
the same block of data on multi- ing, at the byte (RAID 3) level, dation in performance.
ple disks. That’s where the each byte of the stream is stored
“Redundant” in “RAID” comes on a different disk; at the bit Proprietary RAID
from. It is expensive but far from (RAID 2) level, data is broken Different vendors have their own
redundant in transaction- and down into bits and then stored on adoptions of RAID:
data-intensive applications such different disks. This is very useful
as accounts, finance, and bank- in applications that deal with DVRAID by ATTO technology:
ing. In the case of a hard disk large image files, as well as video This was developed for digital
crash, data can be restored from editing applications, which audio and video applications,
a “mirrored” disk. demand a good amount of speed. which typically require a lot of
speed. RAID 0 provides speed but
Data Striping What RAID Cannot Do not fault tolerance. ATTO used
Here, a stream of data is divided RAID can help in the recovery the striped parity concept, where
into blocks, and each block is and restoration of data, but it a parity check code is generated,
written to a different disk in the cannot protect it. It cannot, for and the code itself is striped and
array. The writing of the blocks example, stop viruses or mali- stored across disks.
takes place concurrently after cious code from attacking data.
the division, thus increasing the Any such attack will cause simul- RAID S or Parity RAID by EMC
speed of the write operation. taneous and equal harm to all Corporation: A single disk is used
Concurrent reads, too, are faster: the disks in the system. to store the parity check code, the
if you need 10 KB of data, 5 KB RAID does not simplify disas- difference being that it is distrib-
can come from each disk at the ter recovery. Restoration from tape uted across different volumes.
same time, so theoretically, you get backups is still much simpler
double the data rate. This, how- than recovery from a disk MATRIX RAID—Intel ICH6R
ever, is a broad generalisation. attached to the array in question. RAID BIOS: Nothing new,
RAID also cannot provide a except for the fact that each disk
Parity Checks performance boost to all running in the array acts as RAID 0 as
A “parity check code” is generated applications. Increasing the data well as RAID 1.
during the write of every block of transfer rate does little to help arvind_subramanian@thinkdigit.com
T
his is the first time I’m mentioning this, Moving up the ladder, HP has the DeskJet
but reading happens to be my favourite D4168 that retails at Rs 3,750, and Canon has its
hobby. I’ve collected more than 600 books Pixma iP3300 retailing at Rs 5,500. Epson has its
thus far! Nowadays, however, I’m most often Stylus C58, C79, and C87 in this range, retailing
reading PDFs and e-books, and this was one of at Rs 3,250, Rs 4,150 and Rs 5,000 respectively.
the reasons I bought a Nokia N80. Printers in this range are for people who print
However, I find reading on such devices is a around a hundred pages a week—typical office
pain, especially for extended periods. How about desktop usage.
printing them out? My older HP DeskJet 640C Moving on, the price of the “average” laser
has been in operation for the last seven years, printer has fallen to an affordable Rs 6,000.
and has now lost its ability to deliver crisp print- Almost every vendor has a laser printer for mass
outs. I just had to buy a new printer, and since consumption. HP, Canon, Samsung, and Xerox
we haven’t done a good printer comparison for are the major players in the mass-market cate-
almost a year now, the setting seemed perfect gory. HP’s LaserJet 1020 and LaserJet 1022 are
for me to go about my business. mono lasers available at attractive prices of
In the good old days, selecting a printer was Rs 6,900 and Rs 9,700 respectively. Samsung, has
a no-brainer: there were only a few models to their ML-1610 at a low Rs 5,000. Samsung also
choose from, and each had a distinct advantage has the ML-2010 and ML-2570 , which are higher-
over the other. But now? Too many models, spec laser printers, featuring faster printing
extremely focused categorisation, and the sig- speeds. Similar to entry-level inkjet printers,
nificant onslaught of MFDs. Further, “should I these entry-level laser printers require cartridges
opt for an inkjet or a laser printer” is the ques- (laser cartridges) that often cost around Rs 3,000,
tion one has to answer before buying. and can print around 2,500 pages. These lasers
Instead of narrating how I went about are good for typical office desktop usage, but not
buying a printer for myself, I’ve decided to touch for a large team.
upon these issues. When colour laser printers were intro-
Nearly everyone who buys a PC ends up duced, they cost too much; however, in
buying a printer, and this very demand recent months, they have seen a drastic
has ensured easy availability of price drop. The HP Colour LaserJet
printers, which earlier were quite 1600 can be had for Rs 15,000, and the
expensive; in addition, very few souped-up LaserJet 2600n that used to
dealers were selling them. When it cost Rs 40,000 can be bought for Rs
comes to printers, India has been 19,000. Samsung recently introduced
a very pro-HP country, pretty the CLP-300, an entry-level colour
much like it is pro-NVIDIA in the laser. It retails at Rs 14,500.
graphics card category. But you While talking to a HP dealer, I
also get good printers from came across the new HP Officejet
Canon, Lexmark, Epson, Xerox, K550 Pro. This is a business-class
Samsung, and Brother. inkjet, and is supposed to deliver
A home user can buy an inkjet better performance than a laser, or at
for as little as Rs 2,250; the Epson least on par. The demo the dealer gave
C45, to be precise. In the same me proved its capability—good speeds,
league, you get HP’s 2360, high-capacity cartridges, and
which costs about Rs 2,400, as superb print quality. The attrac-
well as the Canon IP 1000, for tive pricing of just Rs 8,999
the same price. The Lexmark sold me, and I coughed it up
Z645 also falls into this cat- immediately—but why not a
egory. Before you invest laser? Well, with an inkjet I
in one of these entry- can print good quality colour
level printers, make prints not possible even on a
sure to ask about car- colour laser. Bet you didn’t
tridge prices; most know that!
often, it would work
out to be the same or a
little less than what you Want more of Agent 001? Turn
paid for the printer. These over to read his answers to
printers are for those who print your buying questions
like ten pages a week. Illustration Pravin Warhokar
You haven’t mentioned your configura- You have two options—USB TV-Tuners
tion, so I’ll assume you have a PCI-Express Ask Away! and the Card Bus type. The former plug
compatible motherboard. For Rs 7,000, you can Want a tech product, but
into a USB 2.0 port and can be connected
expect a decent enough graphics card. Get a card don’t know how to go to regular PCs as well as laptops. The Card
based on the NVIDIA 7600 chipset—you will be about buying it? E-mail Bus type of TV-Tuners go into the PCMCIA slot
able to get a 7600 GS at your budget. Try for a agent001@thinkdigit.com and are specifically designed for laptops. Card
7600 GT, though; if you’re lucky, you might be with your complete bus tuners are available from Pinnacle,
able to get yourself a deal. contact details, and he Compro, and AVER. There are different vari-
might answer them here! ants available—some have an FM tuner and/or
Please note that PVR functionalities, and the price will depend
How Good Is A Cam-Phone? Agent001 only answers on these features. USB TV-Tuners are relatively
purchase-related
I am a hobby photographer and am looking to questions in this space.
bulky, and carrying them around might
buy a new digital camera. Should I buy a good be inconvenient.
Malshej Ghat is a hill station close to Mumbai, one We were highly sceptical about the site. India actually
2
Naturally, the problem is, it’s not a town—it’s a ghat; not a town. A simple “directions” search from Panvel
an area. But there it was—in tiny print—the entire to there brought up a detailed directions list—along
green stretch. We still had no clue where the nearest with the nearest town to the place, called Walhivale.
town was, though. We’d never have known this from the paper map.
3
The map showed us the roadway as well as the The directions were a little confusing though: “At
railways—so we could choose. Not much of a value- Kalyan-Dombivli, turn right—go 1.34 km.” The
add—the railways—because we’d decided to go by next one, perplexingly: “At Kalyan-Dombivli,
road anyway. continue...”. “Turn right” and “continue” to do so?
5
Looking at the map is all well and good, but where We’ll have to ask for directions anyway, but we
exactly do we turn? It was all we could do to note knew each place along the way, so no getting lost
down the towns along the way, and we’ll have to ask beyond a few kilometres!
for directions at each.
Fun: 4.5/10 (What did you expect?) Fun: 7/10 (A novel experience!)
D
espite Instant Messaging, SMS, and other connected. Mails composed offline can be sent
new forms of communication, the de across once you connect to the internet. This way,
facto way of keeping in touch is still e- if you’re on dial-up, or on any other access
mail. It was the killer app of the Inter- scheme that makes you pay by the minute, you’re
net, and its importance has not diminished one better off using an e-mail client than Web mail.
bit. In fact, it’s the lifeline of many businesses. Still, Web mail services offer the convenience
The simplest way of checking and sending of letting you check your mail from anywhere.
mail from anywhere is by using Web-based Many e-mail service providers have revamped
e-mail. In this case, you need to be online and their interfaces to mimic that of e-mail clients.
log on to the Web site of your e-mail provider— Some of us use both—an e-mail client at work
such as Gmail, Rediffmail, and so on. However, for our office e-mails, if, for example, we aren’t
there are times when you can connect to the allowed to check personal e-mail during work
Internet only once in a while; in such situations, hours—and Web-based mail at home. Ultimately,
Web-based e-mail solutions cannot be relied each method has its pros and cons, and this test
upon. Another scenario: you have a company e- is for those who do use an e-mail client—which
mail account, and you’re connected to the Inter- will be Outlook or Outlook Express in most cases!
net all the time. Why should you log on to a Web We wish to remind you that there are alternatives.
Imaging Shrikrishna Patkar
site each time you want to check your mail? It’s We will take a look at twelve of the most popu-
Photograph Amrut Patki
preferable to just let the mail come into your lar e-mail clients. These are RimArts Inc.’s Becky!
Inbox as and when it is received. Here is where Internet Mail, Qualcomm’s Eudora, IncrediMail
e-mail clients come in. Xe, MemeCode’s i.Scribe, Mulberry, Opera Mail
When you send an e-mail, it goes to the e-mail Client, Microsoft Outlook 2003, Microsoft Outlook
server and is stored there. An e-mail client Express 6.0, Pegasus, Sylpheed, RITLABS S.R.L.’s The
retrieves the mail from the server to the Bat! Home Edition, and Mozilla Thunderbird.
Digital Tools l E-Mail Client Test
The Postmen
Becky! Internet Mail you can send yourself
an e-mail and specify
the date when you
Windows Mail
installed text-to-speech
Mulberry 4.0.6 engine in the OS to
read your e-mail to you.
The search engine is
The Bat! Home Edition You can set rules and search
with seemingly endless options
that yield highly refined results.
Price $40 (Rs 1800) $19.95 (Rs 900) Free Free Free
Website www.rimarts.co.jp www.eudora.com www.memecode.com www.incredimail.com www.mulberrymail.com
POP3 mail preview Good Bayesian spam Small and portable, Lively, easy interface Good search and
Expensive filters Windows-Linux Vulnerable message filters
Difficult interface operability Hard-to-learn
Single account interface
can be created
Opera Mail Client MS Outlook 2003 MS Outlook Express 6.0 Thunderbird Pegasus Sylpheed The Bat! Home Edition
✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
✔ ✖ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✔ ✔
✖ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
✔ ✖ ✖ RSS 0.91, ATOM ✖ Via Plug-in Via Plug-in
✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
✖ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✔ ✖ ✔
✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
✔ ✔ ✖ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✔
✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✔
3.5 4.5 4 3.5 3.5 4 4.5
3 4.5 4 4 3 4 4.5
✖ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
✖ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✔
Plug-in ✔ ✖ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✔ ✔
✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✔ ✔
Eudora, Opera, OE, Eudora, Netscape, MS Eudora, Outlook, Eudora, Outlook, OE, ✖ NA (mbox files) Eudora, Pegasus,
Netscape, Thunderbird Internet Mail, Outlook Exchange, MS Internet Netscape Netscape, Outlook, OE
Express Mail, Netscape
✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
✖ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✔
✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✔
✖ ✔ ✖ ✖ ✔ ✖ ✔
✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✔ ✔
✖ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✔
✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
✔ ✔ ✖ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
✖ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✔ ✔
✖ ✔ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✔
✔ ✖ ✖ ✔ ✖ ✖ ✖
3.5 4 4 4 3 4 4
✖ Calender, Tasks, Notes ✖ ✖ ✖ ✖ Scheduler, Memo
✖ Connects to MS ✖ ✖ Public folders GnuPG Mail Chat, OpenPGP.
Exchange Server Connects to MS
Exchange Server
Free $109 (Rs 4,900) Free Free Free Free $24.5 (Rs 1,100)
www.opera.com www.microsoft.com www.microsoft.com www.mozilla.com www.pmail.com sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en www.ritlabs.com
Supports all Ultimate in seamless Simple to use, Unlimited plug-ins POP3 mail preview Simple interface, Almost every feature
protocols integration and bundles with XP Search could have Confusing interface cross-platform you’ll ever need
Primitive mail features Vulnerable to threats been better operability None in particular
composer Very Expensive Bad mail composer
Digital Tools l E-Mail Client Test
POP3 IMAP
You may encounter the following problems with POP3 access since e- Since the email is kept on the server, it has the following benefits:
mail needs to be downloaded onto the PC before being displayed: You There is no need to download all e-mail when using other PC to
are required to download all e-mail again when using another PC to check your mail. Unread mail can be easily identified.
check your email. If you need to check e-mail at office as well as home
in this way, it can lead to confusion. Depending on the settings of your
e-mail client, the downloaded e-mail may be deleted from the server.
During the “Check new mail” process, all messages as well as their A complete message will be downloaded if and only if it is opened
attachments will be downloaded to your computer. for display to access its contents.
While multiple mailboxes can be created on the PC to download the IMAP has the provision of letting you create multiple mailboxes on
mail, there is only one mailbox on the server that stores all the mail. the home PC as well as on the mail server.
Incoming and outgoing messages are filtered and transferred only to Incoming and outgoing messages are filtered and transferred to
local mailboxes. other mailboxes no matter where the mailboxes are located (on
the server or on the PC).
Outgoing mail is temporarily stored locally. Outgoing mail is stored on a mailbox on the mail server and can
be accessed from another computer.
While you can delete the messages on the home PC very easily, clean- You can delete messages directly on the server, thus making it
ing up messages from the server requires you to download all mes- more convenient to clean up your mailbox on the server.
sages with the mail client configured to delete mail after downloading.
If your hard drive crashes, you lose all your e-mails. Since the mail is stored on the server, you won’t lose your mail if
your hard drive crashes.
The client connects to the e-mail server for a short period of time, only When using IMAP4, the client stays connected to the server as
as long as it takes to download any new messages. long as the user interface is active and downloads message con-
tent on demand. In case of many or large messages, this can result
in much faster response times.
Digital
106 Clutterless
117 To Simpler
122 Thin Clients
Business
How Technology Can Help Your Organisation
Connectivity! Times Experiences
Tech Careers
A
n ERP software package helps organisa- nerated, the finance department uses the same
about any tions in effective and efficient manage- database for calculating the employee’s salary
industry. Are you ment of available resources such as after the necessary costs, rates, and taxes have
machines, material, manpower, inventory, etc. A been applied.
ready to position unified database serves the needs and require- ERP systems have been used for ages, and
yourself as one of ments of various departments, leading to opti- software packages provided by the vendors have
mised functioning. The aim of a business in undergone several changes. Today, ERP is used by
the leaders in the using an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) sys- large corporations as well as small-and-medium
multi-faceted tem is to bring all its departments to a common businesses; almost every sector has some form of
expansion of platform, such that the departments can easily ERP implemented.
share information and communicate with
business models? each other. The Opportunities
To elaborate, in ERP, a single software pack- Earlier, ERP was confined to the manufacturing
age has modules customised to the needs of dif- sectors. Its success led to a further demand for it
ferent departments—financial accounting, pro- in industries such as automobiles, media, phar-
duction, distribution, marketing, inventory con- maceuticals, textiles, telecom, heavy machines,
trol, data warehousing, etc. ERP is, in sum, an and many more.
application for effective and efficient manage- “The growth of ERP as a business solution has
ment of the resources of an organisation. fuelled the adoption of upcoming technologies
Let’s say the human resources department and implementation of ERP packages in several
keeps a record of the
attendance, per-
formance on the
job, contribution,
H
ouseholds and offices front of your PC and surfing, ing functions. What type of Wi-
in the US and Europe when you could be in bed, chat- Fi device you require depends on
crested the wireless ting with your significant other your need as always. Do you just
wave a couple of years and your friends online simul- want to enable Net browsing on
ago. The wave has struck our taneously! The biggest advan- your laptop or Wi-Fi enabled
shores more recently. While we tage of Wi-Fi is, of course, PDA? Do you need to transfer
cannot deny the fact that freedom from ugly, restricting data from laptop to desktop
cables are still very much the wires. Your kids could be surfing without cable hassles? You may
preferred means for data the Net for school projects while need an Access Point (AP) in such
communications today, Wi-Fi, you browse on your laptop, cases. Do you plan to setup a
both as a technology and as a lounging in your lawn chair. small SoHo network, combining
means to communicate has The first challenge you’ll two or three PCs with a couple
made strong inroads in our face before going cable-free will of laptops wirelessly? In such
comparatively emerging market. be to decide what sort of wire- a case, you should invest in a
To the home user, Wi-Fi a.k.a. less device to buy. Wi-Fi ADSL Wi-Fi router.
C
Routers offer all the functional- Whatever your need, there’s
LUTTERLESS
ONNECTIVITY! Going cable-free is the in thing. We’ve
tested 14 devices designed to de-wire
your life!
ity of a regular wireless router in always a solution to it. This is
addition to having ADSL where we come in! Just so that
modems inbuilt. Regular Wi-Fi you can make an informed deci-
Routers offer multiple connec- sion, we’ve torture-tested 14 Wi-
tors, and some even offer USB Fi devices.
A
mongst the wireless routers we received, just two were ADSL-ready: the Netgear DG834G and the
ASUS WL-600G were the only two routers with ADSL modems inbuilt. Such routers are your first
choice if your Internet Service Provider (ISP) provides you with a telephone line based broadband
connection. Most telecom-based companies such as MTNL and Airtel will provide you with ADSL connec-
tivity (RJ11-based). When getting such a connection, you are generally given the option of either purchas-
ing your own modem or buying one from the ISP.
Now if you have a laptop or any wireless devices that you might want to share this Internet connec-
tion with, it’s probably your best bet to invest in a Wi-Fi ADSL router. As you’ll see from our tests, Wi-Fi
ADSL routers offer extra features without compromising on performance. To top it off, they’re not as
expensive as you’d perceived them to be!
ASUS WL-600G highest we got, but what blew us away were the
signal strength figures, espe-
Features, performance, and looks collide… cially in Zones 2 and 3.
At 54 per cent in
Netgear DG834G
Sleek and fast
tests, clocking the fastest time in
WI-FI ROUTERS
W e received seven such devices. The difference between these and their ADSL counterparts is they
don’t have ADSL modems inbuilt. They cannot therefore utilise an RJ11 WAN connection. Most
routers will have an RJ45 interface for WAN connections.
ASUS WL-530G that we tested, and neither is the main menu very
Tiny but mighty! intuitive.
Due to its tiny footprint, we’d recommend it to
Buffalo WHR-HP-AG108 “Air Station” One-touch Secure System). Very simply, this button
Great show with the go! automatically assigns WPA keys to all clients on
the wireless network, once you’ve installed the
How We Tested
Excellent value Very fast, well- Lots of features Good signal Good bundle and
Fast and feature-
for money priced Lacking in per- strength features
rich
None in particu- None in particu- formance Low on perform- Low on perform-
Expensive
lar lar ance ance, high on price
✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✔ ✔
✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
✖ ✖ ✔ ✔ ✖ ✔ (Kit provided) ✔ (Kit provided) ✖
✖ ✖ ✖ ✖ ✔ ✖ ✖ ✔
NAT & SPI NAT & SPI NAT & SPI NAT & SPI NAT & SPI NAT & SPI NAT & SPI NAT & SPI
✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Decent performance, Very feature-rich, Fast transfer Decent features PoE support Good bundle Great Great signal
good warranty Pre n support speeds Very poor Very poor per- Low on perform- performance coverage and
Low on features Expensive None in particular performance formance ance None in particular performance
Quite expensive
ACCESS POINTS
F ive Access Points (APs) competed in our test. An AP is the simplest way to set up a Wi-Fi network at
home. It’s convenient to connect a single laptop to a PC. SoHos should look elsewhere, because APs typ-
ically have just a single RJ45 connect.
Wi-Fi Demystified
Wi-Fi: An acronym for Wireless Fidelity, method adopted by the 802.11 invisible beyond the LAN, and any
Wi-Fi quite simply denotes “Wireless standard, providing 64- and 128-bit external communication occurs through
Networks” that conform to IEEE keys (hexadecimal coded) to protect the gateway machine. Packets of data
(International Electrical and Electronics wireless devices from unwanted recieved by the gateway machine are
Engineers) standards. The Wireless intrusion. then routed to the clients that
standard accepted by the IEEE is 802.11. WPA/WPA2: An acronym for Wireless requested them. In case the packet
The most common Wi-FI standards Protected Access, which is a more received doesn’t correspond with a
within 802.11 are 802.11a, 802.11b, secure method of protecting data request sent by a machine on a
802.11g, 802.11 Super g, and 802.11 transmission than WEP. WPA 2 is a network, it is rejected.
Pre n. newer protocol. It’s also known as Port Mapping: Port Mapping or Port
Gateway: A gateway is responsible for 802.11i. Address Translation is the process of
proper data flow and distribution within DHCP: Acronym for Dynamic Host translating and routing packets arriving
a network and externally to other Configuration Protocol. It’s a at a particular IP address or port to
networks. The gateway machine is also communications protocol that another IP address. Port Mapping
called the host computer or network automatically assigns IP addresses to bypasses NAT.
router. clients logging on to a TCP/IP network. Deep Packet Inspection: Deep Packet
SSID: Service Set Identifier or simply MAC Address: An acronym for Media Inspection (DPI) is a form of packet
“Network Name” is the name (typically Access Control Address. It’s a unique filtering that inspects the data portion
alphanumeric) by which a Wireless identifier for an individual node on a of data packets as opposed to just
Local Area Network (WLAN) identifies Wi-Fi network. It is represented as a checking the header portion. DPI is
itself. To communicate with any devices string of six pairs of hex characters, for basically an evolved form of SPI
on a wireless network, all wireless example, FF.EE.FF.FF.00.FF (Stateful Packet Inspection).
devices must use the same SSID. The NAT: An acronym for Network Address PoE (Power over Ethernet): This
SSID can be kept private, in which case Translation, it’s basically a firewall describes the ability to transmit power
a user who doesn’t know the SSID feature. NAT is available on most as well as data to devices over an
cannot gain access to that network. routers today, both wired and Ethernet cable. PoE is extremely useful
WEP: Acronym for Wired Equivalent otherwise. NAT enables individual IPs of in cases where the AP is placed in an
Privacy. This was the earliest security clients on a network LAN to remain area with no power point.
Zone 3
3D Modelling Shrikrishna Patkar
Zone 1
Zone 2
A Decision Maker
You Want You Need We Recommend
Wireless connectivity to your laptop from your desktop PC An Access Point (AP) Linksys WAT54G
To set up a small home network, between two PCs and your laptop or Wi-Fi enabled PDA A Wireless Router ASUS WL-530G, Linksys WRT54G
To stream movies from your PC’s hard drive to your laptop(s) wirelessly A Wireless Router/ AP ASUS WL-530G, Senao ECB-3220
To set up a small office network wirelessly, complete with a network printer A Wireless Router ASUS WL-600G, Compex NP27G
An ADSL modem and a wireless router for a broadband connection, perferably wire- A Wireless ADSL Netgear DG834G, ASUS WL-
less-enabled Router 600G
To Simpler Times
Cut through all the madness to generate reports quick and easy with Excel’s PivotTables
Of course not. They will use code to generate
their summaries—through judicious use of the
Nimish Chandiramani SUMIF() and COUNTIF() functions and through
macros meticulously crafted in long hours of
I
f you’ve ever heard of PivotTables, you either overtime, impressing all and sundry and gener-
swear by them or they’ve successfully baffled ally feeling good about their expertise. And then
you into not going near them. For a feature there are those who will use PivotTables—no
that does what it does, the PivotTable is probably code, no million mouse-clicks, same result.
Excel’s best-kept secret—this despite the fact that
it’s the easiest way to generate reports of your Gearing Up
data without knowing even a line of VB code. You Before we get down to creating and using Pivot-
don’t even need to know what VB stands for to Tables, you need to know whether you’re going
create one! (Visual Basic, incidentally) to benefit from it in the first place. There are just
We’ll be using Office 2007 for this article— two basic requirements that your table needs to
most of the features carry over from Office 2003, meet—at least one of your columns should have
but the new ribbon on Office 2007 exposes a lot lots of repeated values (like City or Salespeople
more features that you can use with PivotTables, in our sample case)
so you might find something new even if you’ve and numerical data.
been using them for a while. The latter is the more
important of the two,
Life Before The Pivot which is why PivotTa-
Imagine this rather innocuous table that looks bles find themselves
at the sales of five products in three cities, by used more for such
three salesmen. We’ll be using this as a refer- things as sales and
ence, but the principles will apply to any data financial reports.
that fits the “pivot-able” bill (we’ll come to that Next, you need to
in a bit). ensure that the table
Gauging a salesperson’s performance in is formatted properly:
Mumbai, for example, is quite simple. You first 1. Each column
need to apply a data filter and select Mumbai Your basic sales chart should have a heading
under City, then select each salesperson one by 2. There shouldn’t be
one from the respective column. Select the Units any blank rows between
Sold column, and Excel gives you a total at the the headings and the data
bottom right of your screen. Repeat for each 3. There shouldn’t be any blank rows or
salesperson, then repeat for each city. Ten rows columns within the data; if possible, try to avoid
of data, no code, fifty-odd mouse-clicks. In the blank cells as well
real world, people need to deal with hundreds, Once you’ve made sure of all this, your table
even thousands of rows of data, perhaps fifty is now pivot-worthy, or pivot-able.
cities, a hundred salespeople and a whole lot
more than just five columns. They also need to
print out summary reports—something you can’t
achieve by the method above. Will they really
resort to such ridiculousness?
WORKSHOP
Little Things
When you start dragging fields to create the Piv-
otTable, Excel updates your view in real time. If The PivotChart is a graphical version of your PivotTable
you’re working with copious amounts of data,
this can become a real burden on your system,
especially if you’re experimenting with different Endnote
layouts. The best way to avoid this is to use the The only trouble with PivotTables is that you
little “Defer Layout Update” checkbox at the never really know whether it applies to your data,
bottom of the Field List, and click the Update which is probably why most people avoid it.
button only when you’re ready to see how your As you’ve seen, though, they’re very simple to
new layout looks. understand, and the best way to find out if it
When you update any data in the source applies to you is to try it—you might have your
table, you need to manually refresh the Pivot- answer in as little as half an hour!
Table for the change to get reflected, so it’s nimish_chandiramani@thinkdigit.com
“W
New Delhi, the firm’s office has about 25 thin clients. e use Windows NT on the server and XP
Professional on the clients. We have an in-
“W
e have been using thin clients for the past house development team. Our primary
one year and I must say I am happy with application is the Dealer Management System. We use
the way things have turned out. My Access, VB, and SQL Server. Response time is very impor-
employees, too, seem quite satisfied because as far as tant, as we are directly dealing with customers all the
they are concerned, nothing has really changed except time. I am not convinced that thin clients would give me
for the better. They still use all the applications they the same response time as my current setup. That’s the
used to, and it’s faster, too. For the kind of applications whole idea of client/server technology—distribute com-
we use—Tally, MS Office, IE, and IIS, I think thin clients puting to enhance speed.
are most appropriate. There have been no complaints of “Our DMS system incorporates a lot of features like
different performance on different systems—all the generation of ad-hoc reports by the users themselves.
clients run at the same high speed. We have a server This can be practically possible only with a fat client
with two dual-core processors, 4 GB of RAM, and RAID with enough computing power of its own, else you
0+1 protection. would simply end up taxing the server, resulting in a
“Look at what we have gained. The data is breakdown. I would like the server to remain what its
centralised, so management has become easier. name suggests—a file server, and leave the actual com-
Software updates take place only on the server. The puting to the clients.
administrative staff no longer run about fixing a system “A lot of our code has been specially written to work
or an application every now and then. Virus protection on the client. Some of the code is even stored and can be
has also gotten a lot better. Moreover, we now have only executed by only specific clients. Some of our worksta-
the server to back up. Due to better organisation, tions are dedicated to users of huge Excel sheets through-
maintenance costs have been brought down, and is out the day. We have quite a few users who have their
under better control. own Excel sheets at their workstations, which are updat-
“The workstations themselves are scaled down, and ed to the server only at the end of the day. I shudder to
so are far cheaper. No hard disk, no CD, no DVD on the think of the state of the server with such user demands. I
clients. Expensive peripherals like printers and scanners guess we would be constantly reconfiguring and upgrad-
have also been centralised, cutting down on costs. We ing our server—probably every three months—with thin
now have a UPS connected only to the server. I do not client technology. It’s not for applications that deal with
need to buy expensive workstations for each additional a huge database.
staff—I can use old, outdated systems as thin clients. The “We would definitely not be using thin clients—on
old 10 Mbps hub is usable again. There has been a great the contrary, we are constantly looking to free our server
investment utilisation. of as much work as possible.”
“Things have been pretty stable, except during the
installation and testing. It’s been smooth since. A setup As told to Arvind Subramanian
without thin clients is simply unthinkable for us. For (arvind_subramanian@thinkdigit.com)
similar setups, I believe thin clients are the way to go.”
Digital
128 Epic
Adventures 133 James
Russell
T
148 Here We Go
Again…
Leisure
Technology Beyond Work
Lead Feature
S
eek and ye shall find… but there are fortu- talking about structures arising from extremely
itous exceptions. Benoît Mandelbrot sought simple mathematical formulas. And what good
nothing, but he found. We aren’t being are they? Mostly, they’re trippy, fun, and
historically accurate here, but essen- addictive. That’s why we’re writing
Creativity 101
Fractals are, generally speaking, so intricately
beautiful that it’s easy to think you’re being
creative when you generate a sufficiently Figure 2: Hills, islands, rivers, and oceans—the Phoenix set
complex one!
The fact is, it’s nature doing it for you—it’s
numbers working their magic. Now what’s squaring and adding. Twists happen when you
hard is coming across something unique—like add functions such as the sine and the cosine
a fractal island or river in uncharted territory— to the equation.
which comes only with patience, hard work, However, if you follow the rule of continu-
and all the other virtues. ally squaring and adding, you’re still in the
Mandelbrot “family” of fractals. There are many
more—explore the other sets in, for example,
Fractint, which are generated using different
formulas. Remember that the key attribute of a
fractal is that it is self-repeating.
Happening Places
Now that you’re hooked, you need to go out and
look for where the interesting patterns are.
Let’s use the standard Mandelbrot set.
Generally, you need to look at two kinds of
things, which are usually at the intersection of
two major dark areas:
Figure 1: An incredibly elaborate spiral (top left), when zoomed into (the
white circle), gives more of the same... there’s no getting to the centre!
Taking Control
We’re not going into the mathematics here,
but there are a few things you need to know. Figure 3: The typical Mandelbrot Shooting Star (upper
First read box How It Happens, then come back. left), which can be seen in many forms in the Mandelbrot
Good. Now, the basic Mandelbrot set is gener- set, shoots into baby Mandelbrots like this one. Note
ated without any special functions; it’s just that this is typical of an “explosive” landscape
S omeone once said the sales of a book would drop by a factor of two for
each equation inserted. In that vein, we’ll explain how fractals work
without using a single equation! However, you’ll need to know about
bly find the same pattern repeated infinitely.
The above is just a rough introduction, and
fractals in nature is an immensely interesting
imaginary numbers, otherwise you might as well skip this. OK, to ease up subject.
a bit, think of the square root of -1. It cannot have a real square root, of Visit http://snipurl.com/fract2 (http://
course, because no real number, when squared, will give a negative kluge.in-chemnitz.de/documents/fractal/
number! The square root of -1 is therefore called “i”, standing for node2.html), and http://snipurl.com/fract3
“imaginary”; it’s a number that’s not on the line of real numbers. (www.miqel.com/fractals_math_patterns/visu
Now, think of a number plane. “2 + 3i” represents the point which is 2 al-math-natural-fractals.html).
units from the origin on the X axis, and 3 units from the origin on the Y
axis. See how the concept of an imaginary number leads to a number Getting Down To It
plane instead of just a number line? Now, it’s rather pointless telling you what
And now, take that number and square it. You get (-5 + 12i), because i2 parameters to change and why and how. FF
is -1. Square it again. You get (-119 - 120i)... and so on. If the number runs features a comprehensive tutorial. We’ll tell
away to infinity, it’s not “part of the fractal set,” and is painted white. If you this, though—that seemingly unrelated
the number does not go to infinity, and stays within limits, it’s part of the parameters, when changed at the same time,
set, and is painted black. Take (0,0): it’s obviously part of the set, because can lead to a drastically different picture.
no matter how much squaring you do, it’ll remain 0. Also, just try changing the real and imagi-
So how do you get colours? A point is marked with a certain colour nary parts of the “perturbations” in FF a wee
depending on how long it takes to move to infinity. Light colours are for bit and be amazed! In other words, just keep
those that become huge fairly quickly; dark colours are for the ones that playing around...
take longer to become large. But how many times does one keep It’s a matter of discovery, and we can’t teach
squaring? Obviously, one sets a stop point: “we’ll iterate 200 times,” for you fractal art. Just explore as many regions of
example. After the 200 iterations are done, a colour is assigned, based on the initial fractal as you can.
how far it has moved to infinity (or how close it has stayed to zero). If you come across something truly
You’ll often see the word “Julia” in fractals. This is the “complement” unique—such as interesting symmetries—do
of the main set: there is a Julia set for each point in the plane. A point remember to save them and send them in to us.
within the main set will generate a Julia set with only one shape; one Welcome to psychedelia—the natural way!
outside the set will result in two shapes close to each other. ram_mohan@thinkdigit.com
Epic Adventures
T
he follow-up to NWN—the much-revered then packed off by “dad” to the city of
“RPG Game of the Year 2002”— Neverwinter. Needless to say, adventures
Neverwinter Nights 2 (NWN 2) is finally abound en route and later.
here. NWN went down in the annals of gaming What’s really wonderful is the way the story
history as the first RPG ever to combine the involves you, with storyline missions, sideline
hardcore D&D rule set into such an involving missions, and some mini-game-like elements,
game. NWN 2 follows suit, with a brand-new like playing Lord of your very own keep! That’s
graphics engine, an even more epic storyline, all the tantalising storyline titbits you’ll get
and subtle elements interwoven into the game- from me…
play that add to the overall experience. NWN 2 earns a must-play tag even before
Like the new playable classes. Besides you consider its excellent visuals. Although not
adding a race to the mix of elves, dwarves, and the most splendid-looking RPG title, the
barbarians, you now have a bunch of new pres- graphics are very much up there. Spell and
tige classes, and a new base class The Warlock. weapon effects are excellent, and so are charac-
Character customisation is much more involving ter model animations. The Aurora 2 engine real-
than in NWN, and fans will spend a lot of time ly delivers!
building characters and customising them. NWN 2 isn’t really taxing graphically, except
Without any spoilers, the story plays you as at maximum detail and high resolutions, at which
a nondescript resident of a tiny village, West even the 512 MB on my x1900xt didn’t help much.
Harbor. You’re tasked by your rather stern step- There were just a couple of instances of framing,
father with retrieving a magical shard from though, during the countless late-night sessions
nearby. Upon successful return you discover the spent smiting evil and great cleaving! A must-try
town’s been attacked—naturally, the attackers for any gamer worth his sand.
wanted the shard you just acquired. You are michael_browne@thinkdigit.com
Rating:
9/10
Developer:
Atari
Publisher:
Obsidian
System Requirements:
Pentium IV 1.8 GHz or equivalent,
512 MB RAM, Direct X 9 compliant 128
MB graphics card,
Direct X 9 compliant sound card
T
he best way to elicit tortured groans from any game
reviewer is to throw a World War II game at him. The
theme has spawned some of the most ridiculous
games we’ve played, but thankfully, IL-2 Sturmovik 1946
isn’t a product of that heartless factory.
The IL-2 flight simulator series has been around for five
years now, and this edition is effectively a round-up of the
game and its expansion packs through the years, plus three
new ones—PE-2, Sturmoviks over Manchuria and 46. The mis-
sions and campaigns give some long-overdue attention to the
Axis side of WWII as well, even letting you bomb Pearl Harbour!
All this adds up to a total of more than 300 different aircraft
(and you can fly around 200 of these), so expect to be kept busy
for a long time.
Like all worthy flight sims, you can’t just jump into the game
without familiarising yourself with the long list of flight controls
and training missions. Gameplay is as beginner-friendly as these
games can get—you can tweak the level of realism you get, though
it’s fairly tough even at the easiest level. At its most realistic, IL-2 is
pure torture, and will only appeal to hardcore fans of the genre. One
nifty feature you’ll need when you’re starting out is the time-stretch-
ing feature, which lets you slow down the game to a quarter of its nor-
mal speed—excellent when you’re learning combat. Low-altitude dog-
fights are extremely challenging, and can be a thrill as you battle it out
while trying to keep your wings from hitting treetops. The variety of air-
craft at your disposal is mind-boggling, and each has its own perfectly-
crafted eccentricities.
The game’s graphics look dated—they haven’t been updated much since
2001—but the developers’ attention to detail is marvellous. Textures degen-
erate according to the punishment they take (including getting blackened by
engine exhaust!), and each plane’s cockpit is a near-perfect replica of the real
thing, as explained in the 450-page aircraft guide that comes with the game.
IL-2 Sturmovik 1946 is an important milestone in the series, and because it
comes loaded with the entire set, you don’t need to buy any of the previous lot.
Invest in this game if you want something that lets you start out with flight sim-
ulators at a comparitively easy level, and adds realism to the gameplay as you get
better. If you’re a hardcore flight-sim fan, it’s a crime to miss this one.
nimish_chandiramani@thinkdigit.com
Rating: 8/10
Developer: Maddox Games, Publisher: Ubisoft
Distributor: E-Xpress Interactive
Contact: sales@e-xpressindia.com
Price: To Be Announced
Minimum System Requirements: Pentium III 1 GHz, 512 MB RAM, 64MB Graphics Card
S
id Meier’s Railroads! is a revival the actual building of the railroads—to building your railroad in Eastern Europe
of the old Railroad Tycoon make you feel like you’re totally in con- or America. All these treats come at a
series that we’ve all known and trol, but this never feels tedious. price, though—it’s not as gentle on your
loved for so long. The objective For a strategy/simulation game, I graphics card as you’d expect. There are
remains the same—build your found this surprisingly fast-paced. Your also a few aberrations here and there—
own railroad empire, connect a nation, opponents—the AI equivalents of greats trains wantonly going through houses
buy out your competition, and become like J.P. Morgan and the Baron and the like—but they’re all forgiven
the king of the railways. You can make Rothschild—work fast, and you’re going when you look at the big picture.
your money by connecting cities so they to have to make some really quick deci- That big picture is that Railroads!
can exchange goods and passengers, sions—some of which might bite you has tremendous appeal for people of all
buying businesses in those cities, and later—as you compete against them. At ages, shapes and sizes, and that appeal
dabbling a bit in the stock market. no point did I feel deprived of entertain- isn’t going to go away soon. It’s one of
We’ve reached a point where any ment through my hours of play. Online or those few games that force you to use
game with the Sid Meier name comes LAN play is even more entertaining, and your brains, so grab yourselves a copy
with high expectations attached, and the game comes with some very interest- before your grey cells rot.
Railroads! is no doubt one of the most ing and challenging maps to compete on.
enjoyable games this reviewer has come Visually, graphics are meticulously nimish_chandiramani@thinkdigit.com
across in ages. Most importantly, the detailed—train models are like the real
game’s structure has been vastly over- things, stations have little people walk-
hauled. There is just enough microman- ing about, and you can even tell the dif-
agement—both in your finances and in ference in architecture when you’re
Rating: 9/10
Developer: Firaxis Games
Publisher: THQ
Distributor: E-Xpress Interactive
Contact: sales@e-xpressindia.com
Price: Rs 1,299
Minimum System Requirements: Pentium 4 1.4 GHz or AMD
Athlon equivalent, 512 MB RAM, DirectX 9.0c 64 MB video card
First
Escape
MAN-HACKS?
Whatever
Virtual Newsroom Attacked By Flying Penises Happened To…
Horizontal PC
Cabinets?
D
aniel Sadville, a CNET Graef refused to continue. wonder about is, how some
reporter who is She then agreed to do so, people can take a world like
famous for hyping
Second Life, the online virtual
world that’s the rage now,
providing the location was
shifted to her own private
space. Didn’t help though,
Second Life more seriously
than their real lives? When
was the last time you saw
S urely you remember the
time when the average PC
consisted of a monitor
was recently trying to because as soon as the members of a terrorist perched atop the cabinet. The
interview one of the virtual interview was restarted, the organisation attack with… design had been around for
millionaires when they were obscene appendages well… their… err… members? ages, and nobody messed with
attacked by giant flying returned. In fact the hacker Whatever the case, watch it—not until the coming of the
penises! All this happened in seemed to have been this space for more Tower, anyway. Since then, the
the virtual world of Second following Graef, because he unbelievable nonsense from picture of the PC itself
Life, of course, which then managed to crash the the world of Second Life. changed, and the monitor-
explains how it was possible server on which Graef’s We shudder to think, tower-everything else setup
for them to be attacked by space was hosted. “What next?” has become staple, but what
the animated appendages. Perseverance paid off of our horizontal friends?
The interview was being though, and after restarting CHRISTMAS CHAOS A horizontal cabinet
conducted in CNET’s office the server, the interview occupies a little more space
within the popular virtual
world, and Sadville was
continued normally without
further incident. Looks like
Seller than your monitor, so it’s not a
space hog if you use it with
trying to get virtual
millionaire Ailin Graef to
it’s not just real-life anchors
and news reporters who
Beware? the monitor on top. Any
airflow considerations you’d
share her secrets of setting suffer from bloopers or have to make would apply no
D
up and successfully running intrusions! If people ecember seemed to be matter which way your
businesses in Second Life. continue to take Second Life the month of e- cabinet is oriented, so that
Then the attack happened— as seriously as they are right commerce boo-boos couldn’t have been a factor in
animated flying penises flew now, we’re going to need a for UK-based retailers. First it its fadeout. We aren’t saying
at the virtual CNET building lot more security online—as was retail outlet they’re totally history—you’ll
for about 15 minutes. much as we have offline, Woolworths’ online store find them being peddled as
Obviously, the interview was it seems. that was offering all sizes of cabinets for Home Theatre
halted immediately, and However, what we must LCD TVs for just £150 (about PCs, small form-factor PCs,
and other applications where
compactness and prettiness
My Desktop matter more than core
Last month’s winner is functionality. But towers have
Vaibhav Sharma, Gorakhpur (UP) their advantages—they occupy
We’re invariably content with still desktops, but the same area irrespective of
Vaibhav Sharma’s Flash escapades have made us height, so you can stack them
think different. Sadly, we can’t show you how it with more hardware.
animates. He used: The horizontal cabinet’s
1. Macromedia Flash 8 to design the background fall from top spot could have
and publish to HTML. There are navigation buttons
something to do with the fact
to view the next or previous wallpaper
that monitors became bigger
2. ObjectDock, 3. CrystalXP
Congratulations!
before cabinets could get
stronger. Or that they raise
Participate in this contest the monitor to a height that
and win next month qualifies as an ergonomic no-
Street Smart no. Maybe they just weren’t
by Joseph L Jorden Send in your Desktop with a description of how you cool enough. Got any
Published by made it to mydesktop@thinkdigit.com with the subject theories? Write to us and put
“My Desktop”, and tell us your postal address, too. in your own two cents (91
paise)!
[Weapon]-whore: Such as
Quad-Core Intel doesn’t expect their
quad-core processors to sell
conservative estimates, but
really, now! With both Intel
Rocket-whore, Rail-whore,
etc. This is a derogatory term
Not For 2007 much at all.
As the slide represents,
and AMD planning on
taking the multi-core
used to describe a person Core 2 Duos will rule the architecture beyond four
who always tries to get and n December, a Chinese roost for Intel in 2007—like cores, it’s a little hard to
use just one type of weapon.
Usually a weapon that the
“whore” has practised and is
good with.
I site reportedly got hold of
some slides of a
confidential Intel
we didn’t expect that!
What’s surprising is that
despite the newer quads
imagine they will not be
aggressively pushing their
own quads a lot more.
presentation, which was shifting to the 45-nanometer
supposedly meant for intra- fabrication process, which KILLER SPEEDS INDEED
Spawn: The act of entering a
company circulation only. we hope will make them a
multi-player game where you
appear out of nowhere. Also The presentation is little more affordable, their Lack Of
used as spawn-point, the
place you spawn; spawn-kill— Broadband
fragging a player as soon as
he spawns (usually considered
a mean thing to do), etc.
In India
Usage: The other day I was
Killing
Quake-ing on a local server
and this rail-whore just kept
People?
looking for places to camp
and snipe. All I did was find
Y
es, you read that
the BFG and then frag his correct. It’s an outside
@$$. Got a couple of spawn- The alleged Intel slide that was leaked on to the Net, and first reported
by Chinese site www.hkepc.com possibility, if a study by
kills in too! He quit soon after!
the UK-based Social Issues
Mark Cuban like Flickr and del.icio.us. The zenith of this social
http://snipurl.com/jan001 networking craze was probably Google buying
(http://www.blogmaverick.com/2006/12/12/googleno YouTube for $1.65 B.
mics-itunes-and-zune/) … RSS continues to inch towards the
mainstream—Yahoo integrated it into Y! Mail Beta,
Googlenomics , iTunes and Zune Microsoft is utilizing it more (e.g. integrated into IE7),
… Would it be worth it to Google to pay $575 m and Google came out with Google Base and the GData
Google, Web 2.0, and up per year to completely turn Apple upside down ? format (which is based on the RSS variant, ATOM).
iPhone. Boring To completely pre-empt their ability to sell iPods ? To While 2006 can’t be seen as the breakthrough year
because the same potentially introduce a new hardware device, or for RSS in the mainstream, we will probably see RSS
topics keep popping partner with someone who has one ? To sell bloom in 2007 as a result of the groundwork done in
up again and again— advertising around the music rather than the music ‘06 by the big Internet companies. Note that there
but some people’s itself ? Is their a traditional Google arb here of 70c have been recent murmurs that Yahoo is scaling back
takes can be per song vs 70c of advertising around the song ? RSS, but I think this is a short-term trend only…
Could it sell that much advertising online to justify
interesting
giving the music away ?... Dan Frakes
http://snipurl.com/jan005
Alex Iskold (http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/editors/2006/12
http://snipurl.com/jan002 /flop/index.php?lsrc=editorsblog)
(http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/2006_web_te
chnology_trends.php) The iPhone a flop? Let’s wait and see
Let’s assume, just for a moment, that Apple really is
2006 Web Technology Trends planning on releasing an “iPhone,” a combination of a
…Undoubtedly 2006 has been the year of the social mobile phone, portable media player, and, possibly, a
network. MySpace, YouTube, Facebook have been the PDA. Will it be a big hit? Hugely successful? Who
three outstanding success stories—but also knows. I personally think it’s unlikely such a product
impressive was Bebo (in the UK particularly) and would approach the popularity of the iPod. But I don’t
there was strong growth in existing web 2.0 networks think it would do nearly as poorly as Kanellos predicts.
Inbox
stop working! I use Nero Burning ROM. Ecstatic!
There Is A Way! What can be done to increase CD life? I am writing this letter
In the December issue, Biswadeep Misra P B Kakathkar with overwhelming Letters
had asked you about the code for Dear Mr Kakathkar, ecstasy. I am a poor tea of the
checking the total time on a Nokia The life of rewriteable CDs is usually stated estate worker, working in Month
phone. There is indeed a code to check as 1,000 cycles, though in reality, it usually one of the tea estates in
the total talk-time. Type in works out to about a hundred. We haven’t Munnar under the
*#92702689# and scroll down, and in tested the media you’ve mentioned, so we management of Tata Tea
the life timer selection, you will get the can’t speak about it with authority. Still, 15 Limited.
total talk-time. really is too low. Perhaps you’re getting My meagre wage scale has not
Sivi Nair counterfeited media. Another thing is, permitted me to purchase a computer
during the past 26 years of tenure of
remember to keep rewriteable CDs as
Yes, We’re Human! employment, and I haven’t even
scratch-free as possible—use a soft cloth to
First of all let me tell you—not that you viewed any of the CDs obtained along
clean them, cleaning in a straight line away with Digit! I just merrily read the
don’t know—Digit Rocks! I have been from the centre. Store them safely too! magazine, and dreaming of the
reading it for quite some time now. —Executive Editor contents of the CD since July 1998
The reason I had to write this mail is, I was my passion!
would like to draw your attention to the Export Quality! By God’s grace, I am the owner of
question in Check Your TQ, page 208, I live in Sri Lanka, and to my best a junkyard machine, and have
December 2006, which asked what belief Digit is not available here right experienced the treasure trove in
company had come up with its own now. Whenever one of our family every CD/DVD. It is amazing, and I
version of Firefox. The correct answer was members goes to India, my first take this opportunity to garland the
given up as Microsoft. request would be to purchase a copy of team behind every issue of Digit with
It was a prank… I can’t believe even your magazine. my tears of ecstasy! You all are really
you guys fell for that! Check out I found your tips section especially deserving, dear boys!
www.msfirefox.com and interesting in solving several problems. Jagdish K
www.msfirefox.net! The hardware comparisons are a
Anyway, keep up the good work… blazing hit! I’ve got a question. As a 17- Girlfriend Material?
Prashant year-old, advanced-level college student Digit… you are my best friend!
Dear Prashant, use my desktop PC for animation, I am a regular reader and
Thanks for writing in. We realised our error a audio, and graphic design. A friend subscriber to your magazine. Firstly,
while ago—unfortunately, we created the TQ recently advised me to upgrade my PC, congratulations to all of you for
page when we first spotted the “news.” We and I decided on a 3.0 GHz Pentium D completing five years successfully as
soon came to know it was a joke, but we the best tech magazine.
processor—and was advised an Intel
couldn’t do anything about it. Of course, we’re If someone were to ask me to
mainboard. Are Intel 945 boards a choose between a beautiful girlfriend
going to offer the standard excuse—we’re all good buy? I need support for 1 GB of or Digit, I’d reply—Digit! I just can’t
human! Hope you can pardon this boo-boo on DDR2 + DDR dual-channel, onboard live without it. I am doing Computer
our part! VGA, and FireWire. How about Science and Engineering, and you
— Executive Editor Gigabyte or MSI? I can spare 4 to 5K. people gives me lots of useful articles,
Why not include a collection of e- software, and tech information
Digit Under The Scanner books on topics like literature, through your magazine.
I absolutely must thank you for your technology, fiction, and other I would like to pray to God for you
marvellous gift in the form of the educational guides? Thanks in people who make us successful. Wish
December issue. The softcopy of 23 advance… the magazine rocks! Keep you all the best, and keep going the
issues of Digit and the Fast Track the good work! same way!
editions—it’s great. In fact, I had Varanga de Silva Durgesh Kshirsagar
started scanning all the Tips & Tricks Colombo, Sri Lanka
pages and other useful, informative Dear Varanga, Dear Jagdish and Durgesh,
pages and keep it as a softcopy on my Thanks very much for your kind remarks. I’m touched. Touched to see that our
hard disk! I went ahead, and thank Regarding e-books, well, you never know how magazine reaches out not only to the minds
God… now everything is on disk! the magazine will evolve—keep looking! of our readers, but in some cases, their
Vinod Kumar V K As for the motherboard, our resident hearts as well.
expert Agent 001 is the right person to ask, Jagdish, we’re all happy for you for
Coasters Galore but while we’re at it, I might as well go having finally procured a computer—and
I have been a subscriber to Digit for the ahead! Looking at your requirements, Intel we’re so glad we have been part of your
last three years. I have the following G965 boards will fit the bill, but they’ll be a happy experience. But Durgesh, we must
question to ask: What is the life of a bit expensive. Opt for any 945G chipset- advise you never to dump a girl in our favour!
rewritable CD in terms of rewriting? I use based board, in particular the GA-945GM-S2: Jokes apart, my thanks to both of you
Moser Baer Protection+ rewritable 10x CDs it was the Silver winner in the motherboard for the heartfelt compliments—they keep
for writing data CDs. After rewriting for shootout we carried in November ‘06 issue. us going.
about 15 times (at 10 x speed), these CDs —Executive Editor —Executive Editor
December’s Winner:
Crossword Kumar Vijay Win!
ACROSS Ernakulam, Kerala.
7. Small Java programme that runs on a web browser(6) Send in your entries to
8. Collection of data items arranged for processing by a TQ@thinkdigit.com on
programme (6)
9. Advanced Mobile Phone Service(abbr) (4)
or before January 20.
10. ‘Myst’ sequel’—best selling puzzle and exploration One lucky participant
computer game from Broderbund (5) will win Mastering
11. A two-player black and white game with perfect By Mark Minasi, Rhonda Layfield
information (5)
13. Language ‘in dots’ for the blind (7)
and Lisa Justice
16. Software package for mechanical engineering(7) Published by
17. ‘Spider and worm’ type of programme roaming on
the net (5)
20. Indian global IT service provider ‘-------Computer
Systems’ in Mumbai SEEPZ (5) Last Month’s Solution
21. Robert ------—invented the TCP/IP protocol (4)
22. A cellular operator named after a fruit (6)
23. To load a computer’s operating system (4,2)
DOWN
1. Trojan horse that can be used to send unsolicited e-mail
through the compromised computer (4,4)
2. Common Lisp Object System(abbr) (4) 14. ---- ---- optics- transmission of visible light signals over
3. To copy data from a CPU to memory (5) optical fiber cable for great distances (4,4)
4. A computer programme that interacts with a particular 15. Codename for version 10.3 of the Apple Macintosh
device or software (6) OS X (7)
5. ‘S’ in STM- a device that obtains images of atoms on the 18. Block structured, procedual language intended for
surface of materials (8) application and embedded system development (5)
6. ----Site-not paid for (4) 19. Serial-----—where a modem or printer is connected
12. Online------ selecting and buying merchandise via the on a PC (4)
Internet (8) 21. Thousands of Lines Of Code(abbr) (4)
E
befitting them, verbally 45nm in 18 months. But the very time Yahoo! releases any of it—and we’re hoping it’s
pooh-poohed the Intel execs talked about the its list of year’s most- not horrible.
competition. Intel “vowed to 18-month plan “as a figment searched-for items, we talk #7: Beyonce Knowles (1.2):
overwhelm AMD” with a of AMD’s imagination.” about it here. What’s worse, We aren’t too much into the
regular “cadence” of product “They are so dreadfully every time the list is released, R&B scene, so we’re not sure
releases that run on a “tick- behind,” said Intel senior vice it’s the same person on top. Even why she figures here.
tock” fashion: Intel will slap president Pat Gelsinger. (Pure, the headline is the same: “Oops #5: Paris Hilton (11.6): For
a new architecture upon the unadulterated scorn. Not she did it again.” So there you her on-camera antics, we
market (the tock), then good.) And here’s where it go—you know who we’re presume. Once a star...
follow up with a less hotted up: Gelsinger went on, referring to without our having #4: Jessica Simpson (6.5):
dramatic manufacturing “You’d have to be nuts” (to to spell it out. Seems to have released a few
process, core, voltage, and think AMD will come close to Here are the eight celebs interesting videos. Some people
cache shifts beating Intel to any who made it to the top-ten list, call her ugly.
(the tick). manufacturing milestones). with the millions of pages that #3: Shakira (2.2): You know a
“From our perspective, Salvo #3: “I was very mention them (in brackets). civilisation is on the decline
65nm is kind of old news,” pleased to read that a number #10: Lindsay Lohan (2.9): when the butt-shaking abilities
of analysts have The most influential person of of a woman drive the world to
downgraded AMD.” 2006 based on US newspaper seek her out.
To our surprise, column inches! Debate raged #1: You-know-who (9): You
there hasn’t been a over her substance abuse, and know a civilisation is on the
peep from the other her being a role model for decline when it’s nothing that
side yet. Perhaps young women. drives the world to seek
AMD execs are more #9: Pamela Anderson (7.1): information about someone.
graceful. (Or maybe We’ll bet it’s something to do Footnote: type in “britney
they just don’t want with the science of pneumatics. google” into Google and go to the
to highlight the #8: Chris Brown (1.3): For his first non-sponsored result. The
beating.) music. We haven’t listened to horror of it all will come forth.