Advantages and Disadvantages of Tablet

There are chances that you must have heard of the term ‘Tablet’ and it had nothing to do with all the multi vitamin tablets your doctor might have prescribed!. As we entered 2010, it was thought that Netbooks are the rulers of the market, but with the advent of “Tablets” the battle appears to be lost already. After the launch of Apple iPad in April 2010, the market has been flooded with similar devices and their growth and demand has been virtually unrestrained. With ‘Tablets’ becoming the talk of the town, we try and get our basics right about it.

What it is?

It is a device which in size is larger than a mobile or a personal digital assistant and is smaller than an actual laptop or desktop. This reduction in size is achieved by the merging of the screen and the keyboard of a traditional laptop or desktop with of help of a flat touch screen, operated by touching the screen. The input device used can also be in the form a digital pen. The term ‘tablet’ can also be applied to a notebook computer which has both, a virtual and a physical keyboard.

Advantages

• It has a more natural user interface than the traditional mouse driven interface.
• Can be used in environments where using a keyboard is not feasible, example being able to use ‘tablets’ with single hand.
• Light weight makes it portable and user friendly. It is most convenient for someone who does not have to do any computationally intensive work on his computer.
• User experiences suggest that many users are more satisfied and comfortable with a digital pen interface than a mouse and keyboard interface.
• This gives you a better experience when you are dealing with drawings and mathematical notations.
• Being more natural, you can work more intuitively when picture editing or painting.

Disadvantages

• The ‘tablet’ pc’s are highly priced as compared to traditional computers, but prices are on the fall.
• The screen runs a higher risk of screen damage from misuse and impacts.
• The input speed is not the same as in computers with physical keyboards, as typing speed is considerably more than the handwriting speed or typing on a virtual keyboard.
• Not suited for computation intensive operations.
• Lacks enhanced video capabilities.
• Users have been used to physical keyboard for quite some time, they might not find it comfortable unless they become used to it.

As mentioned above, the various advantages and disadvantages can be subjective to the extent that a feature appealing to a user might turn off another user. As of now tablets have become the coolest things to have but only time will tell whether this cool remains hot in times to come.

Safety Practices for Online Transactions

The internet has made life extremely easy, savings us precious time and even money as we go about conducting our daily tasks from banking and shopping to making holiday plans and reservations. However, it has also made it easier for fraudsters and pranksters to get hold of your information and cause you some embarrassment, and maybe even drain your bank account of your hard earned money. So, how do you protect yourself from the dangers that the Internet is fraught with, yet make the best use and enjoy the benefits to the fullest? It’s not that difficult, and here is how you can do it.

Check the website

This is one of the easiest and the first security check that you need to do. It is a good thing to make this a regular habit. Do not follow any links from your email, instead search for the website using your favorite search engine, and click through the result to ensure that the website you have reached is a genuine one, and not a phishing site. Once you are on your website, and if intend to make any kind of transaction, make sure that the website is SSL protected.SSL provides you with sound privacy protection by encrypting the channel of communication between you and the website, so that anyone ‘sniffing’ the network cannot view the details of your transaction. To find out if your transaction is guarded by SSL, look for the picture of the unbroken key or closed lock in your browser window. Another quick way to see if SSL is guarding your transaction is to check the URL of the site you are visiting. It should change from “http” to “https” when processing secure transactions. If you are intending to make an online transaction for the first time on a particular website, then read the user reviews on the site, and also look them up. If you come across an offer or a deal which is too good to be true, then is probably is something you need to be even more cautious about.

Monitoring is the key to staying secure

With the option of creating multiple email accounts and even separate identities, it is easy for us to get carried away, and have several accounts. This can lead to a mess, with the user not really knowing where his important mails end up. It is a good idea to have a single account for all your online transactions. From creating a new account on a merchant website, to any mail that you receive on placing an order, you can easily track your mail, and ensuring that you are aware of any transaction that happens on your account.

You should also designate one credit card for your online transactions. If your bank (and most bank do) allows you to make a virtual credit card, then go ahead and make use of the facility. Virtual credit cards offer you complete security while shopping on the Internet, without revealing your actual credit or debit card number. You can set your own limit for the virtual credit cards that you generate, and you can use it on any merchant website that accepts regular credit cards.

These may seem simple, sensible and commonplace tips, but they are also the most overlooked ones. If you knew about them, and did not practice it, then it’s time to start now. If you did not know about them, then you do now. Go ahead, make your online transactions secure.

How To Optimize your Computer

Slow and steady wins the race, might be an adage which has survived the test of times, but not when it comes to Computers. With the advent of technology, the need for speed has been multiplied and we are pretty sure, we are not going to win this technological race with slow computers. Here, we give you few tips to spruce up the performance of your PC.

• Defragment your computer hard disk using various tools available.
• Remove all the junk software installed on your PC i.e. all those softwares which are no longer needed or have been self installed.
• A free program called Bootvis by Microsoft can be used to optimize Windows boot time.
• Apart from defragmentation the hard disk has to be cleaned by deleting temporary files, recycle bin etc.
• Many useless startup programs can be turned of using MSConfig utility, which can be accessed by typing msconfig in the run window.
• Windows Defender can be turned off if an anti-spyware program is already installed on your computer. Windows defender icon is generally present in the system tray on the right hand bottom of the screen.
• All the drivers of old devices, which are no longer in use, can be removed from the device manager.
• Your antivirus program should be such that it does not utilize all the resources of your computer.
• If you are somebody who does not care about how your computer looks, just turn off the visual effects using performance options. It goes a long way in making your computer fast.
• Replacing your hard drive with a faster one might also help the cause.
• Run the built-in Windows Disk Cleanup utility once in a while.
• Hard Drive partition should be such that it optimizes the performance.
• Technically savvy people can try overclocking their processors.
• Cleaning your computer fan and other hardware might tweak the performance of your computer.
• A reduced number of fonts to be loaded at start up can speed up your system.
• My Documents folder should be on a separate partition on the hard disk.
• Certain web accelerators also increase the speed of browsing by prefetching the sites to be visited. These are readily available on the internet.
• All the drivers, including those of the motherboard and the chipset should be updated with their latest versions.
• Learn various short cuts for various commonly used programs like MS Word, MS Excel and MS Outlook. They can be found in the help file of various programs.
• One of the simplest ways to increase the performance of your PC is to reformat it , make sure you have back up for all your data.
• If you have lots of files in a single folder, it can slow down Windows Explorer. It’s best to create various folders and spread out the files between the folders.
• Remove those extra toolbars from your internet browser which get installed as a part of promotion of some freeware you downloaded.