Useful Stuff About Traveling » Computers

The Apple MacBook Air

Laura — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 23:26:31 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

The Apple MacBook Air brings the power and performance you need anywhere you need it.

Features

Storage

Instead of the usual heavy power hungry hard drive, the MacBook Air comes with a flash SSD, or solid state drive. This makes reading from the drive lightning fast, the OS will boot up instantaneously without annoying wait times. Since SSD drives are so small and lightweight, the MacBook is extremely thin and lightweight.

Graphics

The NVidia GeForce 320m graphics card comes standard with the MacBook Air, bringing you the best gaming experience possible, along with unparalleled video editing capability no matter where you are. With the included iMovie and iPhoto, you can make your media faster than ever.

Full size keyboard

The keyboard uses the Chiclet design (like the gum candy, nice beveled squares for ergonomics). If you’ve ever used one of these keyboards, you probably know that they don’t last very long, so I recommend sending this in to Fimark for laser marking, increasing the durability of your MacBook.

Processing Power

The Intel Core 2 Duo is optimized for the best multitasking capabilities you can get on a Mac; play a game, edit a video, and watch a movie all at once if you want, this laptop can handle it all. 1.4GHz processor with 800MHz bus and a seizable L2 cache, so you can copy and paste large files into memory without bogging down your machine.

Intuitive Glass Multi-Touch Track pad

This track pad gives you the same capability of an iPhone or iPod Touch’s touch screen, giving you the ability to pinch, rotate, swipe, three finger and four finger tap, and dragging capabilities.

Face Time Webcam

Unlike any other kind of webcam, this is embedded into the thin frame; you can even make calls to other iPod and iPhone users with webcams with only a Wi-Fi connection.

Extended Battery Time

The MacBook Air promises up to five hours of wireless productivity and an additional 30 days of standby time, so you don’t have to worry about your computer dying while it’s in sleep or hibernation mode.

Apple 16 GB iPod touch

Extended Laptop Warranty

Laura — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 23:14:19 +0000

This really is useful stuff. Last weekend I went to a computer store and I took a look at the laptops available. My laptop has more than three years and never gave me one single problem but I know it won’t last forever so I want to be updated with new releases in case I need to buy one.

One of the features that are offered when buying a laptop is an extended laptop warranty. This warranty is optional and there is an extra amount that we have to pay when buying the laptop in order to take advantage of the warranty extension.

Having this computer for so long without problems makes me wonder if it is worth the money we have to pay for the extended laptop warranty. However, it’s always an option to be taken into consideration.

The Miracle of Internet

Laura — Fri, 14 May 2010 23:07:57 +0000

Save money and time. How?

Do you have an online connection? Yes? Than you have the world at your hands. You can access from your own computer without leaving your house most of the necessary products and services.

Social Security online, insurance online, banking online, most stores are online, so… you save money and time. No driving, no rushing from work to take care of things, no more dragging the kids with you when you have bank issues to take care.

The world is there, in your hands.

Download Video Games from Amazon

Laura — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 11:08:06 +0000

Kindle: Amazon’s New Wireless Reading

Video File Extensions explained

Laura — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 18:21:29 +0000

So you see .AVI, .WMV, .FLV file’s extensions and do you really know what they mean? Here is a description of the most common extensions:

.AVI – Audio/Video Interleave: This is the most common type of file for PC and can include almost all audio and video formats. The most common are DiVX and Xvid for video and MP3 and WAV for audio.

.MKV – Matroska (Matroska Video) - This type of open code file is being used very often mainly because, on the contrary of others, this file format supports multiple channels of audio and subtitles in only one file

.MPEG2 – Moving Picture Experts Group 2 – This is one of the most used type of files. It is the codification used in every DVD disks and also by station that broadcast with digital signal.

.TS – Transport Stream – This type of file is part of the standard MPEG2 and is used in TV station broadcasts.

.DIVX – This format was created by DiVX Inc., the company that created the original DiVX format also known as MP4 or MPEG 4. This was the first format to offer a good relation between compression and image quality.

.MOV – Standard video file from Macintosh, that can be read by Quicktime from Apple.

.WMV – Windows Media Video – This format was created by Microsoft to replace the .AVI that offers more capabilities, for instance compression capabilities as well as high definition signal us.

.H264 – This is the format adopted for the broadcast of high definition signal and also for Blu-ray. It preserves the image quality and at the same time a very good compression rate.

.VOB – Video Object – These files are present in every DVD Video disks. Inside them there are the Mpeg2 video, the audio and subtitles.

.FLV – Flash Video – Coded files to be used in web pages that use Adobe Flash technology. The most famous application of this files is You Tube and all the other sites that offer video in the Internet.

I’ll post about the audio file extensions soon.

7-Zip – Free software to compress and self-extract files

Laura — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 23:05:19 +0000

I’m glad there are free softwares to do the things we usually could only do with paid software.

If you need to compress or self-extract Zip files you usually use Windows, but what if you receive a RAR or a GZig file? Now you can manage those formats with a free software: 7-Zip. This software support a wide range of compression formats and you can also compress files in 5 different standard formats.

So it works, does the job and it’s free!! Why buy a software when we can have one for free.

SuperAntiSpyware – For me the best AntiSpyware

Laura — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 21:54:58 +0000

I know there are a lot of SUPERAntiSpyware software, I’ve tried some myself but my choice is SuperantiSpyware.

I wish I could remember which Trojan I had on my computer but unfortunately I don’t, but it was a bad one, one of those that no Anti-Virus I tried could eliminate. I searched for days on the internet for information about how I could remove the spyware, I tried several solutions but without any positive results. I ended up in a forum where there was a link to SuperAntispyware and I said to myself…let’s try it. And it worked.

One month ago I had a Malware and it was Superantispyware that removed it. I run it at least once every two weeks, I have my regular anti-virus but I know that if something real bad shows up on my computer I can count on the “bug program”. I call it “bug program because the icon on the taskbar is a yellowish bug.

SUPERAntiSpyware can be downloaded for free. I don’t find it necessary to purchase the whole version, for me the Free Edition has been enough and it’s free!

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Eraser – Get rid of your unwanted files for ever

Laura — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 12:19:12 +0000

Some days ago I wrote about how I recovered lost movies from my kid’s Christmas party and my happiness when using Recuva computer software. Well sometimes we really want to erase files for good for our hard drives especially when we are blogging and saving blogging files in the office computer while we were supposed to be working.

If you are sure that you want to erase all traces from some computer files you have good results with Eraser. The Eraser free computer software is a file destruction tool. Once installed in your computer you will have the eraser option available on the context menu of Windows Explorer and in the recycle bin menu.

Eraser Features are:

Works with Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP (32/64),Vista (32/64), Windows Server 2003 and DOS. It works with any drive including IDE, SCSI and RAID, and CD-RW’s.
Uses the Guttmann (Default), Pseudorandom Data and US DoD 5220-22.M methods.
Erases Files and Folders.
Erases Files/Folders that were only previously ‘deleted’.
Erases all hard drives using ‘Darik’s Boot and Nuke’ method.
Erases Index.dat on Reboot
Erases Encrypted Files and Drives.
Erases FreeSpace on 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP and DOS.
Erases contents of the Recycle Bin.
Erases Compressed Files and Drives.
Erases Network Files, Floppy Disks, CD-RW, DVD-RAM, DVD-RW.
Erases Windows Temporary Files.
Erases Internet Cookies.
Erases Paging (swap) file.
Erases Internet Cache.
Appears as an ‘Erase’ option on the Context Menu of Windows Explorer and Recycle Bin.
Comes with an Eraser Scheduler that allows you to create user-defined tasks.
Defeats File Recovery software applications Hardware tools.
Supports FAT32 and NTFS Files Systems.
Eraser is easy to use and comes with a dedicated support network.

Be careful, remember that using Eraser your files will be erased forever, you can’t recover them even with Recuva program.

Eraser software is FREE.

Recover your erased files with Recuva free software

Laura — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 20:26:38 +0000

Last week I went to two parties, one of my daughter’s school and the other from daycare that both my kids attend. I used my new Nikon to take pictures and make some movies and I used Picasa to put everything on the computer. After the transference I deleted everything from the camera memory card and well, I was really shocked when I realized that some movies hadn’t been transfered.

On Christmas Eve my husband bought PC Guide magazine (portuguese version) and while I was checking the magazine I realized that it mentioned an easy recover program – Recuva - that was able to recover files from hard disks, digital cameras and MP3. I thought to myself: I’ve got nothing to lose so let’s try it!

I entered directly on the Recuva site, downloaded the free application and installed it. I inserted the memory card on the Laptop slot and ran the Recuva application. The first scan came out negative, no files had been found, I was disappointed. Than there was the option of Deep Scan that would take some minutes. Once again I thought: let’s do it!! And I did, after a few minutes of looking at an empty scan some .avi files appeared

and I instantly received my Christmas present: all the movies I had done. I was so thrilled.

I know there are other applications that can do this job but Recuva did it very well. Recuva is signed by Periform, it is very easy to use and fast in the process of locating erased files. You can select from the first menu the type of files you want to recover or you can select to recover every file. You then have the chance to visualize each file that the program detects and decide if that’s the one you want to recover.

Definitely this is an application I’m going to keep on my computer to be used when…I erase something by mistake.

Sidewinder X5 – The mouse for gamers

Laura — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 23:54:17 +0000

The Sidewinder X5 mouse will be widely requested by gamers. It has nine buttons, five of each completely programed through the program provided by Microsoft. Some buttons can be programed with movement macros that allows to save sequences of several movements, this way the gamer can do with one button what he would do with several buttons.

Available at www.microsoft.com

Microsoft Virtual Launch