Advanced Format Drives

Ever since hard drives were first developed and used over fifty years ago, the data held in them has been stored in the same manor. Up until the emergence of Advanced Format Drives, hard drives would store data in 512 or 520 byte sectors. A sector being the section of a hard drive disk track where chunks of data are stored. Recently a need has been addressed for the development of larger drives and increased data storage. Advanced format drives combine eight of the older 512 byte sectors into single, larger 4096 byte sectors.

On a traditional drive, after each sector of data was filled, there was additional data added for error correction, addressing, and other functions. By combining these smaller pockets of data into larger advanced format data sectors, the amount of additional data needed is significantly reduced thus making more room for actual storage.

 

What this means is that a traditional 500GB hard drive, if switched over to Advanced Formatting, will be expanded to roughly 550GB. Of course the hard drive will be shipped already formatted, so the amount of drive space that is advertised is the actual drive space that you will get. This new formatting technique will give manufacturers the ability to produce larger and larger drives for us as consumers in the future.
For the most part, the Advanced Format drives should be Plug-and-Play. However, in some cases they will require a driver to be installed. It all depends on the drive manufacturer and the operating system of the computer.

Online Tracking

As we navigate the Internet we create trends by viewing pages and inputting information. The patterns of websites and online services that we visit can say quite a bit about ourselves such as our interests, our age and gender, where we live, and most importantly, where and how we like to spend our money.

Advertising companies have created a way to track our online movements revealing all of this information. They then create profiles of us describing our interests. This is a form of behavioral targeting.

Using the gathered information, these third party companies will tailor ads that we see to coincide with the profile that they have built on us. Ever wonder why the ads in the side bars of your email are applied to you in some way? Depending on the location and demographics that are on file about us, we may even be given different prices for certain products.

The legalities of this type of tracking are still in dispute.  Not everyone may be bothered by this because it can be very convenient to see advertisements that apply to us. On the other hand, some people may view this as a violation of privacy. The good news is that there are ways in which we can view these third party websites as they track us. We can even block ourselves from being tracked.

There are many programs available to do this. For example, Firefox has several add-on programs for this purpose. One of these programs is called Collusion, which is very well designed and is an aesthetically pleasing addition to a web browser. As a user starts to browse web pages and as third party companies start to track their movements, Collusion will create a map showing who is doing the tracking along with a brief description of the company and at what point they were picked up. Collusion also offers the option to block this tracking. Regardless of whether or not we mind having our online lives tracked, there are resources available to put a stop to it if desired.

The Future of Laptops

One of the many recent computing trends has been the use of tablets. There have been many reasons for the tablet’s rise in popularity. They are highly mobile, light weight and can be integrated into our lives with relative ease. The boot up time of these computers is almost instantaneous, which means no staring at the loading screen while you wait to access email or other services. As convenient as these devices are, they don’t have many of the features that traditional lap tops do. Therefore they arguably pose little threat to the laptop industry and are in a class of their own.

In order to bring the power of a laptop computer into today’s market which demands mobility and speed, a different class of laptop has emerged called the Ultrabook. These machines are lightweight and durable thanks to the fact that they don’t use Hard Disk Drives (HDD) and other components that traditional laptops do. The majority of Ultrabooks utilize what are called Solid State Drives (SSD) that have no moving parts and are not only much smaller, but also last much longer. In addition, Ultra books use lower power processors that can boot up almost instantaneously, much like tablets.

One of the key differences between the Ultrabook and the laptop is the fact that almost no Ultrabooks have optical disk drives. The use of CD’s to transfer data or to install programs is becoming unnecessary to many users, as most of these can be accessed via the cloud. By doing away with the disk drive all together, Ultrabooks have even less moving parts to fail making it smaller and lighter in weight.  

With the ease of use, convenience and durability, the Ultrabook can easily become the future standard of laptops.

Is this Really 4G?

Most mobile phone carriers have been advertising themselves as having the latest 3G or LTE networks. Many service providers are even marketing their products as being “4G”. What exactly does this mean to us as the consumer and what even is 3G or 4G?

3G refers to the type of network in which that particular phone or service operates.  3G stands for 3^rd Generation. All of the hardware, standards, and technology in general that make up a 3^rd generation cell phone network are referred to collectively as 3G. What this means is that if a phone is 3G capable, it makes full use and takes advantage of all of these particular technologies. As various privately owned companies build devices and networks to communicate with each other, standards are applied that ensure that all of the technology is compatible. An example is the Wi-Fi or Bluetooth standards. If there were no standards in place, each manufacturer of laptop or mobile device could have their own unique frequency’s or protocols, and nothing would be compatible. Thanks to standards such as Wi-Fi, almost anyone with a wireless card, regardless of the brand, can walk into a coffee shop and get connected. Organizations such as the ITU or International Telecommunication Union create and implement these standards.

4G on the other hand, is referring to the 4^th Generation of wireless networks, but is a little more complicated. According to the ITU, one of the requirements for a service to be 4G is that it has to provide data speeds at a minimum of 100 Mbit/second, compared to the 3G’s minimum requirement of 3.8 Mbit/second. This is fast! However, despite being marketed as 4G and being significantly faster than 3G, today’s 4G services don’t come close to this speed. They will eventually, once 4^th Generation networks converge and become more established. 4G phones in today’s marketplace are considered to be 4G due to the fact that they use a more efficient method for transporting data than the previous 3G. This technology has the potential for extremely high speeds. As these mobile communication networks continue to expand, we as consumers should start to see this type of performance increase in the future.