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Apple has announced that it has managed to squeeze out more juice out if its battery designed to power iPhone, which is launched next week in the United States. The new battery will give up to 8 hours of talktime as opposed to 5 hours originally touted by Steve Jobs at the Mac Expo earlier in January this year.

In addition Apple announced that top surface of the phone has been upgraded from plastic optical quality glass, making it more resistant to scratches.

The HD-DVD forum received a knock blow - both to its secret encyrption system and news that Blockbuster Video has decided to go with Blu-Ray, a rival high definition disc format.

Newscorp are in talks for a swap in equity in its social networking unit, MySpace with Yahoo in return for a 30% stake in the new enlarged company

The talks are still at a very early stage and there is some uncertainty given the departure of Terry Semel as Yahoo’s chief executive and Mr Jerry Yang as his replacement this week.

Google owned YouTube, the video-sharing website is launching nine local versions of its website as part of its global expansion strategy.
The local version of the site, mostly in Europe will be fully translated into their respective languages. Over time, YouTube will revamp the content to content for users inside each country.

CEO Chad Hurley and co-founder Steven Chen made the announcement at a press conference in the French capital, Paris

Hurley said ‘Video is universal and allows people around the world to communicate and exchange ideas. YouTube will now be more accessible and interesting to a worldwide audience’

Hurley and Chen founded the company in 2005 before being bought out by Google in late 2006. The company became a hit by attracting millions of visitors to watch video clips created by users themselves

However, YouTube has also earned the irk of Hollywood content players for alleged infringement of their content. YouTube has sought partnerships with media companies despite the threat of lawsuits to provide video for its sites

It has been reported that Microsoft has agreed to make changes to the search feature within Windows Vista to appease complaints from Google. The search engine rival had declared that its own desktop search tool did not work properly on Vista. Google claimed that this violated a 2001 consent decree that ended a government antitrust suit against Microsoft, that bars the software giant from taking steps to disavantage software made by rivals

Microsoft will allows users to select a default program to handle desktop search. The action satifies Justice Department and various states, ‘ that this agreement will resolve any issues the complaint may raise under the final judgments, provided that Microsoft implements it as promised,'’ they declared in a joint filing yesterday in Washington federal court.

The new version of Vista will be available by year-end, and will allow users to press a link in search results to change default desktop search application.

You may have heard a lot about Windows Vista and the wonders it truly possesses. Vista has some very remarkable breakthroughs and is considered to be one of the most well put together OS’s in a long time. However, the problem lies on whether your system can handle a Vista upgrade.

A lot of PC users have the issue of directly trying to upgrade their system from Windows XP directly to Windows Vista. Most PC Users who grab a copy of Vista want to place it in their DVD drive and run it quickly so they can enjoy the benefits of Vista. But it’s encouraged that you slow down before doing that. Your first step should be finding out whether your system is prepared to run Windows Vista or not.

In order to check to see if your system is compatible with Vista, you should visit the Microsoft Website and download the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor. This will perform a scan on your system to see if you can perform a Vista upgrade.

When running the Upgrade Advisor, you may notice the Advisor informing you that some programs aren’t compatible with Windows Vista and may need to be removed before you attempt an upgrade. It is very crucial that these programs be removed before upgrading to avoid any Operating System incompatibility issues.

Another thing that you need to keep in mind is that there are minimal PC requirements for both Windows Vista Home and Premium/Business/Ultimate Editions. These guidelines are as follows:

For Windows Vista Home Basic:

• 1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
• 512 MB of system memory
• 20 GB hard drive with at least 15 GB of available space
• Support for DirectX 9 graphics and 32 MB of graphics memory
• DVD-ROM drive
• Audio Output
• Internet access (fees may apply)

For Windows Vista Premium/Business/Ultimate:

• 1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
• 1 GB of system memory
• 40 GB hard drive with at least 15 GB of available space
• Support for DirectX 9 graphics with:
  
  • WDDM Driver
  • 128 MB of graphics memory (minimum)
  • Pixel Shader 2.0 in hardware
  • 32 bits per pixel
• DVD-ROM drive
• Audio Output
• Internet access (fees may apply)

If your PC does not have one of more of these requirements depending on the version of Vista you run, then it’s extremely important that you not run Vista until you have all the components needed.

A Recommendation 

Once you’re ready to switch over to Windows Vista, one of the best techniques to use rather than going from a straight XP to Vista Upgrade is to back up all of your files and do a clean install. From personal experience, an XP to Windows Vista upgrade can be a real pain and is extremely time consuming. By formatting your hard drive and running Vista from scratch, the installation process goes a lot smoother and a lot quicker.

Regardless how you install Vista, once the installation has been completed, you’ll truly be amazed of the benefits Vista possesses for your PC. There are some excellent advancements in PC Security, memory management, Vista’s GUI and much more! The tricky part is really just installing the new OS, but once your past that, the fun will really begin with using Windows Vista.

Article By: www.WinDocPro.com

In the first computers, CPUs were made of vacuum tubes and electric relays rather than microscopic transistors on the kinds of computer chips we use today. These early computers were absolutely enormous and needed an exhorbant deal of power compared to today’s microprocessor driven computers. The first general purpose electronic computer, the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer), was introduced in 1946 and filled a very large room. it consisted of about 18,000 vacuum tubes which were used to build ENIAC’s CPU and input/output circuits. Between 1946 and 1956 all computers had bulky processors that consumed massive amounts of energy and needed continual maintenance, because the vacuum tubes burned out frequently and had to be replaced.

The old technology however has taken a significant turn in both it’s abilities and size. Processors today no longer use these large kinds of tubes as did old style computers and are even in cases 20,000 times smaller than they use to be! Now that is an astounding figure when you consider computers used to take up entire rooms while at present they can take up a space the size of a package of cassette tape.

The CPUs used way back in the 1940s-1950s (although primitive according to today’s standards) this does not mean that these systems and circuits were of no significance. Without these early models of production, we would not have the technology we do today. Those processors and their developers were the very pioneers of the computer age as it is today. The same principles that were used on those same very systems have been condensed and shrunken down to not only small, but even micro-sized processing units which are capable of extraordinary calculations not per second, but per micro-second! This is of course why looking at older models and designs of processors would make them look crude.

So what does a CPU do in today’s computers? Well, they do many things at ones and very rarely at one time. CPUs in the computers we use at present perform tasks such as creating our DVD from a file we just downloaded from the internet, browsing the internet with our web browser, sending an e-mail, changing the background of our desktop and tons more. All these things are processed by the CPU and though we can perform many actions without apparent time delay or wait on our part, these processors are doing a lot more work than you might expect.

A typical process such as changing a background may only use 10-30% of a CPUs resources. Now if you decide that you want to delete some old files, change your desktop background and listen to music on your computer all at the same time, the processor is performing not only hundreds, but thousands of calculations per second! This probably seems a bit farfetched, but this is true to the fullest. CPUs can even make calculations as fast as 5,000 in a single half-second! Those are extremely fast systems obviously.

Inside processors now, there are hundreds of pins on the bottom side which connect the processor to the main computer board called the ‘motherboard’. These pins are attached to the inside circuits of a processor which allow data to be calculated in the processor’s core and sent back through the pins to the motherboard which are either displayed to us visually through a screen or sometimes hidden which we cannot see. Processors although they can do these wondrous things require one thing in order to keep them running which surely you can guess.

Cooling is essential to keep these devices operational. Without adequate cooling, these circuits inside the processor would eventually overheat because of these random calculations per second or nano-second. Like a vehicle they need to keep cool to maintain best operation at a certain temperature range. Without cooling they become sluggish, do unexpected things and in cases like an automobile engine, will eventually break down and burn out if they get too hot. CPUs have what are called heatsinks. On these heatsinks are usually fans which run as several thousand revolutions per minute. The ones we use today often are multi-rate adjusting fans which are controlled by the motherboard when it senses the CPU is getting too hot.

The Microsoft Windows NT File System is an optional file system for Windows NT, 2000 and XP operating systems. NTFS is a more advanced file system, compared to FAT32. It improves performance and is required in order to implement numerous security and administrative features in the operating system. For example, NTFS supports Active Directory domain names, provides file encryption, permissions can be set at the file level rather than by folder, and individual users can be assigned disk space quotas. NTFS is designed to log activity, recover on the fly from hard disk crashes and also supports the Unicode character set and allows file names up to 255 characters in length. Of course naming files up to 256 characters would seem a little ridiculous, but there are times when having files of this length are required.

FAT32 is the 32-bit version of the file allocation table system. In wide use on most PCs, FAT32 was introduced with the OEM (Original Electronics Manufacturer) Service Release 2 (OSR2) version of Windows 95 in 1996. It supports larger disk partitions, files sizes and has more safeguards than the earlier FAT16 (the 16-bit version of FAT). In the event of disk failure, it can relocate the root directory on the disk and use the backup copy of the FAT. FAT32 also reduces cluster waste.

Although there are tricks to get around it, in order to encourage users to migrate to the more advanced NTFS file system, Microsoft limited the user’s ability to format FAT32 partitions on Windows 2000/XP machines to 32 gigabytes (32Gb).

Although there is controversy of which particular file system is better than the other, NTFS seems to be the more advanced technology than the other. For some, staying with FAT32 seems to be the logical solution to avoid system resource consumption and wasteless features which consume computer memory and such. Others on the other hand believe NTFS to be the better choice because of its flexibility, security and other such things in sacrifice of system memory for these functions. Nobody can truly say which file system is better than the other because each has it’s up and down sides or pros and cons, but we can say however that with NTFS becoming the more popular choice among computer distributors and software manufacturers, NTFS will probably continue to improve and eventually completely overtake FAT32 world wide as systems become more advanced and grow in both ability and performance.

One major problem that faces these file systems is the gaming industry and old rekindlings of the past. Many game users truly love those old games they use to play on their FAT32 systems which seamlessly worked without any trouble. With the introduction of NTFS however, these games are steadily becoming completely obsolete and non-playable on the new file systems. Due to processors becoming too fast, file systems becoming more efficient, file table bit advancements and more, these people can no longer enjoy the games they once loved. This is an example of why many people today sometimes prefer to stick with the old FAT32 systems because they are somewhat on a wide scale, still supported by most games out there today.

So, all in all the technology advancements are not bad. It just means that you as the user of the operating system will have to make a choice and decide which file system is best suited for you day to day needs. Because the file systems are steadily improving and all however, it is inevitable that eventually the people using older Windows file systems will eventually have to make that migration to the new file system to keep up with today’s standards.

So you’re on the computer and you are surfing the web and everything is great. You can see pictures, watch some flash videos and such, but for some reason there is a little glitch when you watch certain ones with more detail. Also you play an older game with nice graphics and its frame rate is really good. Now you installed that new game and now your video is jerky as hell even though the game isn’t a lot more advanced than the other. Too some movies are sluggish and you can’t watch them like before.

Well sadly enough, it may be time to upgrade the video card if your system well beyond supports the ability to play videos and games with much ease. A lot of the time people consider a computer slow because video playback or quality is poor. This often is often a misunderstanding by the user of how a computer really works.

A computer although it may be extremely fast with today’s standards and all, having a good video card attached to the system is also very important alongside the other components on the computer’s motherboard. It’s kind of like putting new parts on an old vehicle. Sometimes they will work yeah, but they won’t always deliver the best performance which I’m sure you can understand why.

So how do you choose a video card? Is it really that hard? Well, yes and no. Choosing the right video card entirely depends on the type of computing you do and what the requirements for it are. If you game a lot and do a lot of graphical intense operations on the computer, then obviously the choice of purchasing a more powerful graphics card are acceptable. If however you do not game and do things which are graphic intensive then you need not upgrade a whole lot probably if you want to even do an upgrade.

So say you are a gamer for example who uses highly intensive action graphics that are very demanding of available video memory such as the famous title Call of Duty 1 & 2 or Need For Speed Carbon. Both of these games, although they’ll run with the minimal video support, having that minimal is not always such a good thing. Though the minimal requirements will operate the game, you often must sacrifice game texture quality, shadowing, frame rate and much more. So, if for example a game requires 64Mb of video memory and you want to buy it and need to upgrade your video from that, you may want to get a 128Mb video card. Though you want to do this and may believe it is the right choice, consider that it may not be a wise decision. In this particular situation and how games are becoming more graphical and 3D driven, the best choice would be to buy a 256Mb or 512Mb video card if your system will support one. Though it may cost a little extra, you will have a current card that will process the requirements of most software in general that you could want to run, including the latest games. You also will not have to sacrifice game quality because you were cheap and got the cheaper card.

As well, choosing a card is important by comparison to your current computer configuration. Before buying any kind of video hardware, be sure to review its pros and cons. Many people go out and buy the first thing they see without having a single clue whether it is compatible with their system or not and being unsatisfied or complaining that the card is a pile of crap when it really is not. Inspecting your hardware before you purchase it will greatly determine what will perform best with your computer hardware. In cases people buy video cards for these elaborate computer configurations which are all mounted on a motherboard which is cheap and not very efficient. If you require better video but are using a crappy motherboard your video may not even become better so determining what you have compared to what you want to get are important. If your hardware you already have is not very efficient, considering a main system board upgrade along with other components may be a closer step in the right direction.

So many times people hear the term ‘windows registry’ and are familiar with the term, but rarely understand it’s inner workings and it’s importance to the Windows operating system. The Windows registry is in a slang term referred to as the ‘backbone’ of Windows. This in essence is true, but also not the sole factor in the function of the operation of Windows itself. There are many processes (programs or services) which run that make the operating system possible and workable. The registry however we will focus on for this discussion.

The registry consists of a structure containing what are called keys and values. These keys and values control how programs and system software’s function, operate and allow the computer user to control many aspects of system manipulation, preference and even performance. So what are keys and values? Keys and values are similar to folders and files. Although they typically do not function with the same properties as them, registry keys contain values and those values contain data. This data within these key values can have many different settings or configurations to allow software to function correctly. Such examples of key value data could be folder path locations for software executables, batch files, command files, binary or hexadecimal values, dynamic link library files and much more. These types of data configurations in registry key values are of the utmost importance for software to operate and in a lot of cases, system critical dependant. Without these keys and values the system would not function, software would not work and it would be one big headache of system or program failure.

The reason the registry is referred to as ‘the backbone of windows’ is obvious and apparent. The registry is a complex set of variables and configurations which allow the system files and software to interact and function with each other to create a stable environment for the user to perform even the simplest of tasks. Take the Windows Calculator for instance. Though this program is very simple and not of high complexity, it relies on registry keys and values from other system critical components of the operating system and registry to function in turn allowing calculator to work with its own program files, registry keys and values.

As you can see the Windows registry is and can be a very complex set of operations and structure. Although it can be quite intimidating and complicated, familiarizing oneself with its inner workings and purpose can be a huge step in understanding, securing the system and maintaining its performance. Though these things can be done, it is extremely important to know what you are changing in the registry before making alterations. By doing such will minimize the possibility of damaging the operating system and making it entirely unrecoverable in some cases. Always make a backup of the registry before you take any action regardless of how insignificant you may think something may be. Even the simplest alteration can cause devastating result.

So how do you back up the registry? It is very simple and a fairly quick and painless process really.

To make a backup:

1.) Click on Start (on the taskbar).

2.) Then click on Run.

3.) In the run dialog box, type regedit and press the enter key.

4.) Regedit should appear now. From within the registry editor, click on My Computer. This will make it so the entire registry is backed up because all of the registry keys fall under the My Computer tree/folder structure.

5.) Next, click on Flile and select Export…

6.) You will be prompted to save the registry backup to a location on your hard disk. Select a location, type a name for the file in the ‘File Name’ text field and click save.

You have now created a full registry backup, woohoo!

Well what if I don’t want to back up the entire registry and only a portion of it or a key? To do so, follow the same instructions as above except right click on the registry key to choose Export…

Almost anything you may want to know about the windows registry can be found within the registry editor help. So, if you find yourself having difficulty understanding things, you can always look at the documentation to get a better idea of what something does.

Article By: www.WinDocPro.com