With so many choices between external and internal DVD drives how can you tell that you are getting the best value and performance?

 

Today most new computers are shipping with multiple USB ports and SATA drive interfaces for harddrives and CD/DVD/Blu-Ray drives. You can generally assume that the industry makes these across the board changes in hardware options because its: cheaper, in demand by consumers, and technologically better-faster.  The days of IDE or PATA are probrably coming to an end soon. The reason you can find new IDE drives in the store right now is that they are inexpensive and for what most people require out of a drive they provide basically identical performance to an SATA interfaced drive. It seems that harddrive technology is slower to evolve than the interface technology of SATA and IDE. The ultimate bottleneck to harddrive and CD/DVD ROM speed is how fast the drive can find data on the magnetic platters. Currently there is no difference between SATA and IDE drives in this area other than the performance rating in RPM speed and seek time for any particular drive.

 

So what should you get? IDE or SATA? I would suggest that you get SATA for the simple fact of its technologies usable life compared with IDE. SATA will really only show speed benefits when running multiple drives on your system simultaneously (133 MB throughput of EIDE vs 150MB and up for SATA) If you are running a single harddrive in your system you wouldnt notice any real improvements.

 

Now what about external drives? You typically have the choice between USB and Firewire. USB being the industry leader - USB is far more affordable and available. But the issues of speed are the same here too because seek and read times are the important criteria. These criteria are inherent in the drive technology itself and not the interface technology of USB or Firewire. But Firewire in its most recent enhancements is still faster than USB but you wouldnt notice unless you had multiple drives plugged into the interface.

 

But what about external versus internal drives? Internal are cheaper because of them being  less popular and portable. External are easier for the typical user to install without outside help. Another thing to consider is that USB works very well with external harddrives and CD/DVD/Blu-Ray but problems were more common in its earlier incarnations however IDE or SATA have been more likely to work out of the box without trouble.

 

With the introduction of SSD (solid state drives) to the mainstream consumer we may see a better reason to choose SATA over IDE and Firewire over USB. The seek times of SSD are far superior to the magnetic platter harddrives we were used to. But time and price will be the determining factor there too.

It’s getting to the point where the functionality of our PC is being integrated more and more into a phone or PDA device. Thank God for this because now my Laptop is getting to be too much to lug around now. With internet access, email, messaging, address book, media and even productivity software like Excel docs being available on a hand held devices life can now get easier!

 

Here is a quick tutorial on synchronizing info between your PC and your Blackberry.

 

Blackberry offers some keen software that does the work for you: Blackberry Desktop Manager. Goto www.Blackberry.com to download the latest version of the software. At the time of this writing version 4.5 is the newest. After downloading (which will take awhile, this file is upwards of 200MB compressed) the self extracting program loads and you are asked to choose between Blackberry enterprise server or Blackberry internet service. Unless you are sure that your company uses a corporate Blackberry server, choose internet service.

 

Connect your Blackberry with a USB mini connector to the PC’s standard USB port. Its possible to allow the connection wirelessly using bluetooth, if your pc has a bluetooth adapter and the Blackberry has its bluetooth capability enabled and the desktop manager software is configured to use it (not shown in the tutorial).

 

When the program is installed and launched you will see the desktop manager screen: (This tutorial shows the the program as it runs in Windows XP)

 

 

Clicking the Backup and Restore icon will start the process of backing up data from the Blackberry. This saves all the devices user settings and apps.

 

 

Click yes to start, you will be asked for a destination for the backup file to be saved to.

 

 

You can select various sync options.

 

 

You can sync different applications depending on what the manager finds on your system.

 

For this example I am syncing Outlook to the Blackberry which allows my contacts in Outlook to match my Blackberry address book!

 

 

It’s also possible to use Yahoo’s web based calender to sync with the Blackberry calendar, in this setup you would need a yahoo account with the calendar application on your desktop and internet access. When you input info into your Yahoo calendar it will appear on your Blackberry calendar too!

 

 

 

Now whenever you connect the Blackberry to the computer via the mini usb cable and start the desktop Manager software, all the synchronizations will happen right away.

 

After syncing, select the Media Manager icon. When first running the application you can choose to have it monitor folders on your harddrive. You will see a summary screen (not shown here) that shows how many of different file types are available from your selected monitored files. The next screen after the summary screen will be this one:

 

 

This screen shows your computer files on top and the Blackberry files at the bottom. You can simply drag and drop files the normal way between each device. The TOOLS menu at the very type allows you to choose how files are imported into the computer. Keep in mind that Blackberries can have an optional add-on memory card for storing media. The browser will differentiate between the regular memory and the memory add-on from the blackberry. No you can easily transfer music, movies, pictures, or data files to and from the Blackberry and PC. Happy computing!

How to save disk space!If you find yourself running short on disk space on your main system drive - the drive that has the windows operating system on it. You have some options as how to regain space; you can either delete a bunch of unnecessary files or programs (old restore points, temp files etc.) Or you can compress the files or the entire drive thus regaining a bit of space. You can only do this if you have the NTFS file system (as opposed to FAT32 or some others.)

 

Often times users will take a single hard drive and partition it into two logical halves, half for the OS and the other for data or whatever. Once the OS half gets used up you can’t allocate more space for it without erasing the partition entirely. Unfortunately windows doesn’t natively allow you to repartition the system drive and maintain the data on it, you will have to invest in third party software to do that (Partition Magic $70).

 

To compress your files in Vista and XP simply:

 

Click windowskey + R
type explorer
Click OK

 

Click My Computer
Right Click the drive to be compressed
Click Properties

 

Check the Compress drive… box

 

 

The amount of disk space saved by compressing is dependent on what type of files are being compressed. Bitmap files may compress 80%, text files may compress 60% while PDF files may compress %10.

 

You can always use the disk cleanup tool to free up additional hard disk space:

 

Click Windows Key + R

Type cleanmgr.exe

Click OK

 

 

 

Hardware not working and you don’t have the drivers!

 

This problem can happen when you inherit a used computer, or you are installing used hardware that doesn’t have a driver disk. First check the Device manager. This is shown with windows XP, Vista is similar:

 

Hit the WindowsKey + R
Type devmgmt.msc
Click OK

 

Listed here are the devices connected to your pc. If you see a red (X) , yellow (!) This indicates that the device is disabled (X) or that it has limited functionality or bad or missing drivers (!):

 

Right clicking the problem device
Click properties you should see this sub menu:

 

 

If the device is disabled you can enable it now.

 

If the device is enabled but still not working and showing an exclamation point then you can choose to update the driver. Updating the driver can be automated, or you can point windows to the exact folder location of the driver files; typically an .INF file:

 

 

Sometimes windows can’t find the drivers automatically, in this case you need to manually tell it where to look. Assuming you have the drivers on a folder on the computer, windows will find the drivers in the folder you specify and complete the installation. What happens if you don’t have the drivers?

 

At this point your only recourse is to download the drivers from the manufacturers webpage. Sometimes windows can’t locate the drivers for an unknown device. If you don’t know what this device is or who made it then things get tricky. Oftentimes the device is not really a new device but special functionality of an existing device that requires additional drivers. But the way windows lists it you might think it’s an unidentified separate thing. For some devices windows can tell you what family of hardware it belongs in: network adapter, video adapter. PCI devices are given identifying numbers by windows that relate to its manufacturer and googleing this device ID may help you find the manufacturer:

 

Click Properties
Click Details
You can see the Device ID for this network card.

 

 

If you find that you are unable to identify non-functional equipment on your pc, you have a few choices; crack open the pc case and find unidentified components (the hard way), contact the pc or laptop manufacturer (easier), or use hardware snooping software like Driver Magician to discover the manufacturer (easy but costs money).

 

Also the files that you download from a manufacturers website can be in various packaging forms that require a specific install method. The .INF file is what windows install wizard will recognize, but if the file is an .EXE file it may be a small program that when run by itself will install the driver without using the windows hardware wizard. So be sure to read the instructions for installing the drivers. Always avoid a computer fix by reading my blog!