Here is a free way to snipe EBay auctions and grab a bargain desktop computer or laptop. Sniping is by definition the placing of a last minute bid on an online auction. This will increase your chance of winning the auction if you are the high bidder. It turns out that in most EBay auctions the winning bid is submitted in the last few minutes of the auction. Most savvy buyers use sniping software to place their bids.

Use Google search to find the Ezsniper and AuctionSniper sites. Once you are there register for free auction sniping via their servers. They will explain their programs for free snipes at each site. You will need to enter your EBay user name and password so they can bid for you. Sign up with EBay on their home page if you’re not already a member. It’s free and doesn’t take long. You are now ready to go bargain desktop computer hunting.

To sum it up, decide how much you want to spend by researching the desktop computer or laptop computer that meets your needs and budget. Stick with the amount you have decided on unless the computer being auctioned is a definite bargain. Make sure the seller has good reputation (feedback in the 98%+ range). Using the free auction snipes, enter the maximum amount you will pay for the computer and its EBay auction number. Let the auction sniper go to work! Don’t worry if you don’t win an auction. There will always be another computer or laptop auction. Take your time, and I know that eventually you’ll find a bargain. Good hunting and have some fun!

Please visit Desktop Computers Guide or Laptop Computers Guide for more informative articles and information on desktop and laptop computers.

Is your computer slow? Do you have problems with it freezing up completely? Do you sometimes get the dreaded “Blue Screen of Death”? That one can be especially troubling, as I’m sure you can attest to if you’ve ever had the misfortune of witnessing it. Thankfully, with the advent of Windows XP, and now Windows Vista, computer problems such as slow computers and crashing computers have been reduced dramatically. However, for many computer users they are still an expensive and vexing problem.

Do want to fix a slow computer? If these computer crashes happen to you on a regular basis you know how frustrating they ca be. In addition they can cost you vital time and money. If you’ve ever lost important work or research, you know that feeling all too well. If you’ve resorted to saving your work constantly, or backing up your computer hourly instead of daily or weekly in order to prevent lost data or wasted hours, you’re probably wondering what the cause of your troubles are. The natural reaction of many when faced with a slow computer or Windows system crashes is to curse the boys of Redmond, or Bill Gates himself, and dutifully start over again.

Most of these problems actually have a common cause. Weather you’re having problems with a computer that’s running much slower than it did when it was new, or going off into it’s own world every once in a while, the problems you are experiencing can probably be traced back to problems in your computer’s Windows registry. If you’ve never even heard of a Windows registry, don’t feel bad. Many normal computer users haven’t either. The registry is usually the province of computer repair technicians and software geeks.

The registry is where your PC stores the settings it uses to function. The registry is actually a large (probably too large) database of options, settings and preferences. The registry has different areas known by the geeks (don’t laugh, they are the only ones that can help you now!) as registry keys. They registry keys are actually divided even further, to make things easier to navigate. If you’ve ever seen error messages containing the term “HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT” or “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE”, that’s why.

The Windows registry is tied in to all your operating system software, applications and hardware components. As you can see, the capacity for the registry to create all kinds of havoc is huge. A few minor errors can bring your machine to a screeching halt. The problem is that many people’s computers don’t have a few minor errors; they have hundreds of both major and minor errors.

Where do these registry errors come from? Well the fact is that many people bring them on themselves in a way. Incorrectly loading or deleting software and applications, downloading files, connecting to p2p networks, changing network settings, and other daily computer operations can affect your computers registry. In addition, many people load up their computers with a myriad of applications. Some combinations can cause registry conflicts, especially with the number of different applications many people insist on using.

You know the result; a slow and unwieldy computer at best, and a PC that crashes with regularity at worst. Rather than bringing your productivity to a standstill, you should probably look at having your registry repaired. Thankfully, registry repair is possible. Most likely the vast majority of your computer’s problems will be relegated to the distant past by some tinkering with the registry keys. You’ve got some options for getting your registry repaired. You can go down to your local computer repair shop. If you’ve got a technician there you have a good relationship with, chances are he can fix things up for you in an afternoon. Hey, maybe you can even get that new video card you’ve been lusting after.

Another option is to run some registry repair software. This is basically what your computer repair tech will be doing. You’re lucky though. These days some pretty competent registry repair software is available to the average computer user. You don’t have to be a tech to use these packages. They are extremely easy to use. In most cases, you simply install the software, and press “start”. You’d probably have to be a computer tech to actually understand what the software does, but that doesn’t really matter, does it? As long as your computer is back to running fast and not crashing, you’ll probably be happy, right?

For how you can easily solve your slow computer problems, go to fix a slow computer and see how fast you can put a stop to your problems.

Organizations increasingly depend on their IT infrastructure to support mission-critical activities. IT personnel are held accountable for managing this infrastructure and data center performance measurement is a vital tool in maintaining high performance and delivery. From assessing and ensuring the availability of critical facilities, monitoring geographically dispersed environments, and improving the overall organizational bottom line, IT personnel require tools that allow them to measure performance and proactively identify and mitigate potential issues. Several industry-related publications and groups have noted the importance of data center metrics, and have named the need to measure data center performance as a key issue for 2006 and 2007. (1)

Recommended Data Center Performance Measurements and Solutions

Issue #1: Ability to Track and Assess Equipment Availability
For most organizations, the cost of server or network downtime is significant and internal customers expect network and system availability of “Five Nines” or 99.999% (2). On a daily basis, IT managers need to be able to assess availability/reliability of equipment and all external components that support operations, so that they can reduce downtime, identify and mitigate issues, and provide a secure environment for an organization’s mission-critical equipment. IT professionals also need an effective way to review historical trends to identify equipment or systems that need to be redesigned or replaced.

Meeting the Challenge: Environmental monitoring solutions provide real-time feedback about critical systems with continuous, proactive monitoring of all pertinent factors including temperature, amperage draw, humidity, dew point, and physical security. These solutions allow administrators to set thresholds for environmental conditions and send alerts securely via e-mail, text message, or SNMP if said thresholds are exceeded. In addition, environmental monitoring systems provide valuable historical reports, alert information, and logs that allow administrators to identify trends and adapt practices accordingly. This data can help with statistical analysis, modeling, and forecasting.

Centralized Environmental Monitoring Solution

Issue #2: Ability to Assess Availability/Reliability of Critical Facilities
When assigning critical resources, IT professionals need to determine the highest-priority sites and facilities. Several organizations have proposed systems to help administrators classify and rate their facilities. For example, the Uptime Institute applies a four-tier classification system based on factors such as fault tolerance, useable capacity, sustainability, and concurrent maintainability (3). As another approach, the Syska Hennessy Group provides a seven-level criticality classification system that aims to help data center managers evaluate facilities that are vital to the mission of their organizations and provides a framework to help assess potential data center vulnerabilities (4). After determining critical sites, administrators need to be able to implement appropriate management and control systems.

Meeting the Challenge: Enterprise management solutions, such as KVM over IP or service processor aggregation appliances, provide administrators with 24/7 access to servers, serial devices, remote power, and other equipment both locally and remotely. These solutions provide BIOS-level access to mission-critical equipment, reducing system and network downtime by enabling immediate access to failed resources and centralizing data center management. These solutions also provide visibility to daily operations and occurrences through comprehensive audit logging and reporting tools. Enterprise-level management tools provide redundant architecture, including primary failover access at both the hardware and software levels.

Issue #3: Ability to Measure Energy Consumption in the Data Center
Across almost every industry, rising data center power consumption and heat are major issues, particularly as organizations are incorporating blade servers and high-density server racks into their IT infrastructures. Many organizations are studying how power consumption can be reduced in the data center. For example, the EPA is studying ways to make computer servers and data centers more energy efficient, and is considering a possible Energy Star designation for servers and other data center equipment. (5) The Green Grid, a newly formed non-profit consortium of information technology companies, is proposing the use of Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and Datacenter Efficiency (DCE) metrics, which would enable IT personnel to estimate the energy efficiency of data centers, compare results against other data centers, and determine if energy efficiency improvements need to be made. As defined by the Green Grid, Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE)= Total Facility Power/ IT Equipment Power; Datacenter Efficiency (DCE)= IT Equipment Power/ Total Facility Power. (6)

Meeting the Challenge: Utilizing PUE and DCE information, IT personnel can begin to evaluate their own energy efficiency. Using these metrics, as well as application-specific data, data center managers should start to consider ways of reducing data center power consumption. Standalone data centers can also use the EPA Energy Star building performance rating tool, Portfolio Manager, to rate a facility’s energy performance in comparison to similar facilities (at the whole-building level). Some answers include transitioning to 208V or three-phase power provisioning. Higher voltage power reduces amperage requirements, allows equipment to operate more efficiently, and can reduce the amount of hardware required. IT personnel should conduct a thorough audit of equipment, determine if any servers can be consolidated or discarded, and clean up any clutter under the data center floor, such as cabling, that might be impeding air flow. The use of blanking panels and cable management accessories in the rack can also assist in these efforts.

References:
(1) Stansberry, Matt, “Top Ten Data Center Stories of 2006.”
http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid80_gci1232599,00.html; MacKinnon, Chris, “How Is Your Data Center Performing? A Metric To The Madness.”http://www.42U.com/quicklink.aspx?url=http://www.processor.com/editorial/article.asp?article=articles/p2826/09p26/09p26.asp&guid=&searchtype=&WordList=&bJumpTo=True; and “Optimizing Datacenter Performance and Building ROI: The TeamQuest Approach”, IDC/TeamQuest, http://www.42U.com/quicklink.aspx?url=http://www.teamquest.com/pdfs/whitepaper/idc-roi.pdf

(2) Brill, Kenneth; Pitt, Turner; and Seader, John. “Tier Classifications Define Site Infrastructure Performance,” Uptime Institute, http://www.42U.com/quicklink.aspx?url=http://www.upsite.com/file_downloads/PDF/Tier_Classification.pdf

(3) Brill, Kenneth; Pitt, Turner; and Seader, John. “Tier Classifications Define Site Infrastructure Performance,” Uptime Institute, http://www.42U.com/quicklink.aspx?url=http://www.upsite.com/file_downloads/PDF/Tier_Classification.pdf

(4) Burkhardt, Jerry and Dennis, Richard. “Assessing criticality levels in the data center”, Data Center Management Advisory Newsletter, http://www.42U.com/quicklink.aspx?url=http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid80_gci1218937,00.html

(5) “Enterprise Server and Data Center Energy Efficiency Initiatives” http://www.42U.com/quicklink.aspx?url=http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=products.pr_servers_datacenters

(6) “Green Grid Metrics: Describing Datacenter Power Efficiency”, http://www.42U.com/quicklink.aspx?url=http://www.thegreengrid.org/downloads/Green_Grid_Metrics_WP.pdf

This article was written by Lauren Nowenstein, Technical Writer, with guidance and input from DirectNET’s team of Solutions Sales Engineers. If you would like to send us feedback about this article, or have any questions, please write to us.

At some point you have been bogged down with a slow computer, one that doesnt quite respond like it used to. With the low costs of new computers, you have a difficult decision, should I upgrade or should I just replace.

There are all kinds of new computers out there, from the hottest PCs for the gamer in your house that might cost $6,000 or more, to the bargain PC that you can buy for around $300. Your wallet can determine how much you can spend on a new PC.

Most of the upgrades you will probably want to look at like an improved computer processor, some more memory, or a new graphics card can cost between $25 and $350.

New hardware comes out so quickly that what was cutting edge six months ago has had two successors since then. But, by keeping an eye on the hardware that you can purchase thats six months to a year old, you can save a ton of money with your upgrades without giving up too much power. Video cards in particular demand premium prices when they first come out, and then prices plummet once a new, improved model comes out.

Computer processors seem to follow these same guidelines, by buying an older processor you can usually buy a great processor for about a third of the price of the best one on the market. Usually in the $200-300 range finds the best deals on processors. What youll find is that you get almost as much power as the top of the line at a fraction of the price.

In almost all upgrades, I recommend buying more computer memory. For just a $100-200 you can usually significantly increase the memory in your computer and this typically is the most cost-effective upgrade you can make.

You can usually upgrade most computers at least once cost effectively. By adding just a little better hardware, you can extend the life of your computer a few years and improve your computer experience. Moving to a brand new computer can be quite a large change, with whole new sets of software to get used to which is why most people resist moving to a new computer.

But, eventually your options to upgrade become pretty slim. Now it depends on how you use the computer. But, if youre an average computer user, a few games here and there, lots of internet, and some office documents. Most of the time a computer can last you between 5-10 years with some key strategic upgrades

If however, you tend more towards the power user side of the equation, youre probably going to want a completely new system every three years or so. That seems to be right around when computer power doubles. For example a $1,000 computer three years ago, compared to a $1,000 computer today which has double the power.

If you decide to move towards a new computer, it’s become much easier with USB drives that can make easy backups of your important files. You can buy a 100GB USB drive for around $100, which is very handy to keep all of your important data.

I recommend going to www.pricewatch.com. You can get a feel for what type of upgrades you can afford, and then compare it to the costs of a brand new computer. Almost every computer upgrade you can imagine can be found there at a reasonable price.

Overall, the decision whether to upgrade or replace comes down to cost effectiveness if you can put in a small upgrade for under a few hundred bucks and it makes your computer last just a few short years longer, that is probably the right decision. But, over time it just doesnt make as much sense when even the mid to low priced systems are more effective than your current computer could ever be with all the upgrades. Good Luck with your decision.

For more information about computer repair, memory upgrades, and laptop repair visit his Jacksonville Computer Repair website. He provides quality, on site computer repairs throughout the Jacksonville, Florida area. http://www.JacksonvillePCRepair.com

Why get a large format scanner?

There are a couple of very good reasons starting with

1) Wanting to gain a global reach via e-mail and the Web for your design work or art
2) Would save money from being able to convert hand drawn plans to CAD format using vectorisation software
3) Would like to archive important large format documents
4) Want to get plan drawings into digital format for a specific project

Whatever the reason and there are many…the problem has always been affordability.

Thanks Goodness that has now changed with the advent of the new Australian Deskan 6.00, a mature 2nd generation scanner designs that puts in-house large format colour and mono scanning at your fingertips for about $6.00 per day.

The Deskan 6 Large Format Scanner finally is the answer to smaller business and individuals who need a high quality solution to get plans, maps, art and even fabric into the computer.

With a scanning resolution of up to 600 DPI and the capacity to scan in either 24 bit colour, greyscale or black and white from wide format documents even larger than “E” or “A0″ size, this rugged and reliable Australian innovation offers the same set of features found in traditional wide format roller scanners, but at a quarter of the normal price.

The only real compromise is scanning speed.

However, with the capacity of realistically scanning up to 90x E-size (A0) wide format colour documents at the industry standard resolution of 200 dpi and up to 150 similar size documents in black and white in an eight hour shift, it would only be the most demanding commercial imaging service providers and large government organisations who may find this compromise unsuitable.

Consider this. A standard wide format colour roller scanner of around $15,000 works out to a monthly lease repayment of approximately $600.00, an expense that can hardly be justified by most smaller organisations.

On the other hand, the Deskan 6 comes to only US$4500.00 which includes international shipping to the USA, Canada or the UK. This means you can enjoy all the benefits of an in-house wide format colour scanner for only $175 per month which works out to less than $6.00 per day.

If you cannot benefit from having a colour wide format scanner at $6.00 per day, you don’t need one.

Let’s have a closer look at some of the organisations that may benefit from investing in the Deskan 6 Large Format scanner.

Instead of relying on expensive courier services, Architects, landscapers and other artists are instantly empowered to serve a much wider geographic client base by being able to scan and e-mail their freehand drawings or art. What used to take days can now be on the client’s desktop for approval with in a matter of minutes.

Manufacturing and maintenance divisions can now provide key employees with controlled and instant online access to collections of plan drawings or other information contained in wide format documents. This reduces downtime and increases productivity to the extent of having become a no-brainer to organisations who wish to stay competitive.

Manufacturing engineers involved in reverse engineering of components now have a low cost and viable option for the scanning and vectorisation of 2.5d components.

Other individuals who may benefit include those who need to create CAD format stencils and templates for electronic embroidering, vinyl sign or laser component cutting, custom auto detailers and artists, fabric and carpet pattern designers, smaller photocopy shops and printing businesses etc.

For those who need more information and would like to see an online video presentation, please do not hesitate to check out this amazing new innovation.

With a solid involvement in computer hardware stemming from the early 80s, and specialising in the conversion of hardcopy to searchable electronic information for the last 13 years, I have always been motivated to bring the latest innovations to clients who could benefit from digital imaging.

As founder owner of numerous computer-based businesses, most of whom have been acquired by large listed organizations, I now offer various document imaging and consulting services from http://www.docsondisc.com/Deskan.html on the Australian Gold Coast, Australia’s corner of paradise.

The operating instructions booklet supplied with the UPS contain a few general guidelines and other guidelines that are UPS specific. The general guidelines cover certain points like; (a) Placement of the UPS.-The UPS should always be placed only in the upright position. There are two types of UPS, the tower type and the conventional rack type. For both these UPS the upright position has been indicated on the UPS or in the operating manual or instruction booklet. Placement of the UPS also covers locating the UPS. - The UPS should not be kept in an area where there is high humidity, or exposure to moisture, or in direct sunlight. (b) Covering the UPS.-The UPS should not be covered or kept in an enclosed area. There are certain places in the UPS which are either designed as cooling holes or heat dissipating vanes. These are meant for dissipating heat or cooling of the UPS. Hence it is all the more important that the UPS should not be covered in such places. (c) Operating load.-The UPS has been designed for a certain operating load like either 600 VA or 1KV UPS. It is advisable not to use / connect loads that are more than the specified rating on to that UPS. This may lead to short circuiting or the UPS may trip if it has been provided with a circuit breaker.

A very common general instruction that is given in almost all the booklets of UPS manufacturers is “Do not install in a thunderstorm”. The UPS is designed for indoor use only. Use it only to connect equipment for which it is designed not high capacity motors or other equipment.

Certain UPS are provided with additional sockets, which do not give out backup power but provide surge protection. These are specifically marked on the UPS. So when connecting main equipment like the CPU power, make sure that you connect the line of the CPU to the backup power and other non important equipment to the surge protection line which do not require back up power but at the same time it will be needing surge protection.

The battery that is located inside the UPS is of the maintenance free type; this it means that there is no necessity for periodical servicing of the battery. IF you happen to experience battery failure, you are left with no alternative other than replacing the battery. Replacement of the battery needs to be done by a qualified technician only. There are no spares that are provided inside the UPS that necessitate you to remove the back cover or dismantle the UPS.
When opening the back cover of the UPS for servicing or other specific operations like fault diagnosis, disconnect the UPS from the main lines after switching off the UPS. Do not wear rings, or handle other metallic objects in your hands when opening the back cover.

A new UPS should be charged for a minimum of twenty four hours or as stated in the operating instruction manual before put to operational use. Do not keep the UPS in a discharged state for long periods of time.

Following these guidelines ensures a long life and safe life for you and you’re UPS as you use it.

Submitted by www.gedigitalenergy.co.uk

Lee Smith is a technical writer for GE Digital Energy , provider of the best ninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) equipment offering the highest quality of UPS and related software products in the industry.

http://www.gedigitalenergy.co.uk/

It used to be said that humans were the most intelligent beings on Earth. I guess, to some degree, that’s probably still true. There aren’t a lot of other creatures that can find a way to travel vast distances, create a variable economy, and get rid of their waste (all at the same time).

All of humanity can marvel in our genius- we have solved problems that no one would have ever believed to be possible. We have explored the stars and created something from nothing. It’s safe to say that we’re pretty darn smart.

But there’s a problem: we created the computer, and the computer is now smarter than we are. Before you recoil in disgust, think for a second about why I’m saying this. Sit back, and try and remember everything that you did last week, the times that you did them, and everything that happened while you were doing them.

Can’t remember all of that? Your computer can, and it does so with ease. It also stores music, movies, and can even play nearly any game you want it to on command.

Do you remember all of the words to every single song in your music library? Can you recite them all?

So why am I asking you all of these relatively trivial questions? Well, to put it nicely, I’m showing you how your computer is more intelligent than you. The sad thing is that we created this device, and now we depend on it for nearly every calculation, problem, or miniscule task that we will need to solve.

The computer has also got us duped- even though its existence is a product of our design, our reliance is a result of its capability. In essence, we don’t own the computer. The computer owns us.

Don’t fret- I know a way that we can break our reliance on these machines!

1. First, you need to turn off your computer monitor. Once your monitor is off, turn off all of the lights in the room and leave. This will force the computer to enter hibernation mode after you’ve left it alone for a little while.

2. Go to your kitchen and make yourself a nice healthy salad with a grilled chicken breast. Give yourself some extra credit if you are able to do this without looking up recipes on the internet.

3. Walk, run, or bike to the nearest bookstore or library. Give yourself a hand if you get there without huffing and puffing. Once you’re at the bookstore or library, have a look around and see if there are any books that catch your attention.

4. Purchase or rent said book and make some time to read it. Don’t stop halfway through if it gets boring. Read the whole book, cover to cover.

Following those four steps will help you begin the gradual separation from your computer. Though your computer will always be able to store more information, you’ll never lose the upper hand: you can simply choose to stop using the darn thing.

Rayman L is a travel and technology enthusiast. He runs multiple web information sites based on travel, digital slrs and gadgets reviews. His latest site is http://www.techeazy.com

When it was determined that computers needed a good place to store the information they created, the tape drive was invented. This is a very old piece of computer technology, and as a result, you can imagine that it is not usually used for any but the most necessary of applications.

First of all, tape drives operate in the same way as a video tape does - it consists of a magnetic tape that is spooled out, written to, and then re-spooled. If you remember trying to cue a VHS or BETA tape to the correct part of a movie, then you can probably guess one of the biggest problems with using tape to back up important data that you may need to access quickly.

If you need to get back to a particular piece of data, then you have to run the entire tape up until that point to get it back. This is due to the fact that information is saved sequentially onto tape media. One benefit of tape media is that if you make the tape long enough, you theoretically have an unlimited amount of storage space. Therefore, huge corporate computer networks that have terabytes or more of information sometimes still use tape drives but they’re much faster than the old models some of your reading this may be accustomed to.

Tape drives also spool slowly in general, which is done to make sure that the tape is not damaged while it is being written to. If just one part of the tape is damaged, the entire backup is pointless and the tape often is simply disposed of.

As you can either imagine or guess, these types of data storage were not widely available for a very long period of time. While there were some old computers that used small tape drives to get programs or games into the computer, most personal computers did not have a lot of backup storage capacity until the floppy disk was invented and finally provided an alternative to the tape drive.

So what are the main problems with tape drives?

There are quite a few to be frank. Tape is a very fragile material and one of the main problems that tape drives have is the tape itself getting snagged, bent or even broken at any point on the tape itself. Once this happens you need to start the entire backup process again with a fresh tape or you’d have to splice the old tape together again (not recommended). The information stored on data tapes is in a magnetic format so exposing the type to any type of electro-magnet or x-ray device can wipe the entire tape clean.

For the home computer user there are lots of different backup options that are far superior to tape drives - not that any home user is still using a tape drive to backup information to surely? For example, you could get an external USB hard drive and put the data there. You can also save all of your information to CD-Rs or DVD-Rs instead and this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of data backup options for the modern computer user.

Are you still using a data tape drive to backup your computer data to? If so you should be looking at tape backup alternatives to preserve your data and your sanity! Find out what your backup options are @ BackupAdvice dot com.

With a computer printer sitting on most office desks - both at home and at the office - most users have come to understand the role of the printer toner. But, in most cases, the extent of our knowledge is limited to knowing when and how the printer toner cartridge must be changed. And change it we do, without having any real understanding of how it functions within our printer.

Printer toner contains the ink - whether in liquid or powder form - that allows our computer documents to come to life so that we may hold them in our hand. When we choose the print option from our computer, a signal is sent to the printer, and ink - of all necessary colors - is released onto our papers reproducing exactly the document we constructed on our computer.

Each printer comes equipped with compatible printer toner. Depending on the volume with which we print, the printer toner will have to be changed periodically or more frequently. In this case, we purchase replacement printer toner - which in many a case can be an expensive proposition.

Of course when replacing the printer toner most people turn to the printer manufacturer. The specific printer toner that is compatible with your printer comes with a product number that will help you easily and conveniently locate a replacement. While this can be a more pricey option then purchasing a generic alternative, you are sure to get the quality that your printer needs. Lower quality printer toner, while always less expensive, can seriously clog and damage your printer.

That is not to say, however, that you can not find quality printer toner at reasonable prices. There are generic brands that offer superior quality at a more affordable cost. The key is ensuring that you are dealing with a reputable company that will stand behind the products they sell.

Printer toner is an inevitable part of printer ownership. Take your time to learn what works and what prices you can find so that you affordably address your printer needs.

For easy to understand, in depth information about printer toner visit our ezGuide 2 Printer.

For many years the floppy disk dominated the data backup market for the home user as they offered affordable data storage. Ok using floppies was akward, slow and highly unreliable but at the time it was all we had. Then along came the Zip drive and the world of data backup changed overnight thanks to the creator of the Zip drive - Iomega. No longer were you restricted to a paltry 1.4MB of disk storage - now you could fit 100MB on one single Zip disk. Later this increased to, a then, massive 750MB of storage space which was completely unheard of at the time.

Zip drives worked in almost exactly the same way as a floppy disk except they were physically bigger and provided a much higher data transfer rate than home users had ever seen before in an “external” data storage device. The biggest problem with Zip drives is that although they were similar to floppy disks you still needed a separate Zip drive to read or write to these disks which in turn meant more expense for home users. Also there was a rival technology called the LS-120 or SuperDisk that found favour with many computer manufacturers (ironically enough the Zip drive long outlived the LS-120 in terms of popularity and usefulness) so the Zip drive faced an uphill struggle from it’s introduction to an eager computer market.

The Zip drive was/is available in a few different flavors. There were parallel, SCSI, USB and IDE Zip drives available on the market at one stage. This meant that regardles of what type of computer you had you’d be able to find a Zip drive with a compatible interface. This meant that both Mac and PC users tended to love the Zip drive although most Mac users tended to favor the Zips bigger SCSI brother - the Jaz drive… that however is the topic for another article for another day.

Alas for all their ingenuity the Zip drive has become all but obsolete. The current growth in hard drive storage capacities has meant that any storage device offering less than 10GB - 20GB of storage space is all but ignored as a useful backup device. Any computer user reading this who has ever owned a Zip drive will probably feel the same sense of nostalgia I felt when writing it. The Zip drive was incredibly revolutionary in it’s day and paved the way for a real boom in data backup technology for homes and small businesses. RIP Zip drive…. you shall be missed.

HREF="http://www.backupadvice.com/zipdrives.shtml">Iomega Zip drives provided a rugged and reliable form of data backup for many years. If you want to know what a zip drive is and how it works then pay a visit to HREF="http://www.backupadvice.com">http://www.backupadvice.com for more information on Zip drives and all kinds of backup devices.