Many of us are so used to working on a computer desktop that when it comes time to purchase a new computer, we don't consider other options. Today, computer notebooks - which were once called laptops - offer a number of advantages over a computer desktop. Here are just five reasons why you should take a second look at notebooks.
1. Mobility
You might be used to pulling up a chair to your computer, but it makes much more sense to pull your computer up to your chair. Laptops can certainly be used at your desk, but you also have the option of bringing them to the spot where you're most comfortable. Maybe you'd like to surf the Web in the evening out in the living room or catch up on your favorite blogs before bedtime. Notebooks with wireless connectivity can travel with you throughout your home, so you can check your email or do your Internet shopping anywhere.
Of course, notebooks also make sense for those who are on the go. Students can take laptops to class and to the library, while businesspeople can take them along while traveling. With WiFi so widely available, it even makes sense to have a notebook while on vacation. With the right notebook, it's easy to take photos with your digital camera, upload them, and email them to friends and family before you even get back home. Or you can use it to write a vacation blog and include those pictures from your digital camera.
2. Better Displays
The size and quality of computer notebook displays has improved so dramatically that there's little difference between laptops and a computer desktop. For example, you can get Apple's MacBook with a 13.3-inch LCD widescreen (1280 x 800 pixels), a 15.4-inch LCD widescreen (1440 x 900 pixels) or a 17-inch widescreen (1680 x 1050 pixels). Similarly, the Compaq Presario has a 15.4-inch display.
3. Lighter Weight
Just a few years ago, even the lightest notebook was a pain to lug around. Today, though, laptops are increasingly easy on the back. The MacBook is slightly over an inch thick and the Toshiba Portege weighs in at about four pounds. While that's still heavy compared to come of the new ultralight convertibles (Fujitsu's LifeBook U810 weighs only a pound and half), it's a significant improvement over the old seven-pound laptops.
4. Better Computing and Battery Power
Historically, two drawbacks of notebooks were their limited RAM, limited space on the hard drive, and short battery life. Times have changed, though, and laptops now have as much power under the hood as their computer desktop cousins. The MacBook, for example, has 1GB of memory (configurable up to 4 GB) and a hard drive that's configurable to 250GB. This means that your software will hum right along and you'll be able to zip through programs as quickly and as easily as you do on your desktop. Likewise, batteries in today's notebooks don't heat up and don't conk out.
5. More Features
In older laptops, the computer's size and weight limited the number and types of features available. Today, with smaller processors and other components, there's room to pack more features into notebooks. For example, the MacBook has a DVD player, built-in webcam, built-in wireless capability, two USB ports and a FireWire port, built-in microphone, and audio and digital input/output.
There are so many advantages to owning notebooks that, before you buy your next computer, it's worth your while to take one for a spin.
Showing posts with label digital camera. Show all posts
Showing posts with label digital camera. Show all posts
Friday, January 9, 2009
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
A Guide To Purchase A Digital Camera
Photographic camera became a desired consumer item since it became handheld many years ago. As it became digital with no need for film processing, digital camera became even more popular and it is now considered one of the most wanted optical/electronic consumer products.
However buying a digital camera may be a bit difficult due to the many brands and models being offered. After all there are so many features, one has to be sure of his needs in picking the right digital camera. The following tips might of some help:
1 - Price range: It is recommended that you establish a price range you are willing to pay for your new digital camera. Prices can start from bellow a hundred up to thousands of dollars.
2 - Features: Within the price range previously established, check the features available in digital cameras. Make sure it will meet your requirements for your personal or professional goals. You may find features such as zoom, automatic functions, special effects, black & white images, video recording capability and others.
3 - Battery life: Depending upon the places you go, charging the camera`s battery may not be possible. So make sure the battery life will last long enough during your outdoor activities. Also it may be a good idea to have some extra rechargeable batteries, so that that you won`t have to stop using the camera, while the original batteries are being charged.
4 - Memory Storage: Digital photographs are stored in the camera`s memory. Most cameras have built in memory, but it will accept memory card as well, to increase its storage capability. Depending upon the picture resolution, a user can take hundreds of shots, before it exceeds the memory storage.
5 - Image Resolution: Also known as pixel resolution, this is one of the most talked about features in digital cameras. Although 2.0 mega pixels will deliver good photos for any personal and emailing purposes, nowadays digital cameras with 8.0 and above mega pixels (million of pixels) have become a standard feature. The higher the mega pixel resolution, the better it will look the pictures in larger prints. For those thinking about image enlargement, high mega pixel resolution is a must.
6 - Lens: Beware that the zoom feature may be of two kinds: optical and digital. Optical zoom relies on the lens magnification and delivers a good, sharp and clear image. On the other hand, digital zoom is the magnifying of the digital image and produces a less sharp, grainy image. So make sure that the digital camera offers some optical zoom capability. Also look for lens auto focus and image stabilization features.
7 - LCD: LCD screen is a standard feature in every digital camera, and it works for framing the shot beforehand and viewing it afterwards. Look for LCD screen size 2 inches and above for better clear images.
8 - Online Stores: Whenever looking for the best deals in digital cameras, take a look at some trusted internet stores. Since prices are posted in web sites, people may find very easy to compare them, and get the best deals. Also take a look at some auction sites, for new and used digital cameras.
Digital camera has definitely become a very popular consumer product. The easy of taking shots and emailing to friends have really made this item an absolute must-have kind of product. I guess one could say that people found in digital cameras the perfect tool to preserve special moments by sharing digital photos with loved ones, around this ever growing wide world web.
Roberto Sedycias
IT Consultant for PoloMercantil
This article is under GNU FDL license and can be distributed without any previous authorization from the author. However the author´s name and all the URL´s (links) mentioned in the article and biography must be kept.
However buying a digital camera may be a bit difficult due to the many brands and models being offered. After all there are so many features, one has to be sure of his needs in picking the right digital camera. The following tips might of some help:
1 - Price range: It is recommended that you establish a price range you are willing to pay for your new digital camera. Prices can start from bellow a hundred up to thousands of dollars.
2 - Features: Within the price range previously established, check the features available in digital cameras. Make sure it will meet your requirements for your personal or professional goals. You may find features such as zoom, automatic functions, special effects, black & white images, video recording capability and others.
3 - Battery life: Depending upon the places you go, charging the camera`s battery may not be possible. So make sure the battery life will last long enough during your outdoor activities. Also it may be a good idea to have some extra rechargeable batteries, so that that you won`t have to stop using the camera, while the original batteries are being charged.
4 - Memory Storage: Digital photographs are stored in the camera`s memory. Most cameras have built in memory, but it will accept memory card as well, to increase its storage capability. Depending upon the picture resolution, a user can take hundreds of shots, before it exceeds the memory storage.
5 - Image Resolution: Also known as pixel resolution, this is one of the most talked about features in digital cameras. Although 2.0 mega pixels will deliver good photos for any personal and emailing purposes, nowadays digital cameras with 8.0 and above mega pixels (million of pixels) have become a standard feature. The higher the mega pixel resolution, the better it will look the pictures in larger prints. For those thinking about image enlargement, high mega pixel resolution is a must.
6 - Lens: Beware that the zoom feature may be of two kinds: optical and digital. Optical zoom relies on the lens magnification and delivers a good, sharp and clear image. On the other hand, digital zoom is the magnifying of the digital image and produces a less sharp, grainy image. So make sure that the digital camera offers some optical zoom capability. Also look for lens auto focus and image stabilization features.
7 - LCD: LCD screen is a standard feature in every digital camera, and it works for framing the shot beforehand and viewing it afterwards. Look for LCD screen size 2 inches and above for better clear images.
8 - Online Stores: Whenever looking for the best deals in digital cameras, take a look at some trusted internet stores. Since prices are posted in web sites, people may find very easy to compare them, and get the best deals. Also take a look at some auction sites, for new and used digital cameras.
Digital camera has definitely become a very popular consumer product. The easy of taking shots and emailing to friends have really made this item an absolute must-have kind of product. I guess one could say that people found in digital cameras the perfect tool to preserve special moments by sharing digital photos with loved ones, around this ever growing wide world web.
Roberto Sedycias
IT Consultant for PoloMercantil
This article is under GNU FDL license and can be distributed without any previous authorization from the author. However the author´s name and all the URL´s (links) mentioned in the article and biography must be kept.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
A Few Helpful Tips For Choosing A Digital Camera
Digital cameras are different from regular cameras because they have a computer built into them. This means that you can later transfer the images to your pc and play around with size and definition. Digital cameras have been around for a while now and the prices are just about on a par with the prices of a good regular camera.
If you are looking for a digital camera, there is plenty to choose from – with prices that should suit most budgets. Some digital cameras are better than others but it is a good idea to do your homework before handing over the money. If you don’t, you could end up with a camera that does not suit your needs.
What advertisers call the perfect camera may not be perfect for you. In addition to this, advertisers are trying to sell a product and what they call perfect today may not be tomorrow. You, on the other hand, want a camera that does what you need it to do and that will last for some time. Advertisers are not really concerned with people’s particular needs, just with popularizing a product.
Before you set out to buy a camera, it’s a good idea to have some understanding of the terms you might come across. For example, you may hear the retailer mention pixels and not know what they are. Pixels are the dots that make up the picture. Thousands of these dots are known as megapixels, the more megapixels you get, the sharper the picture you end up with.
Megapixels can also determine the price of a camera, the more you have, the more expensive the camera will be. A lot depends on what you want the camera for. If all you want to do is take family photos and email them to friends and relatives, a normal four megapixel camera should be just fine. If you want to use it professionally, you may need something with more pixels.
You might also want to consider size when buying a digital camera. Now days, you don’t have to buy large cameras – some are so small they will fit into a shirt pocket. However, size is also affected by price. It takes greater technological know-how to make a small camera than it does to make a regular sized one. Most people who take family photos do quite well with a regular one.
The information above should give you some idea of the general things to look for in a digital camera. Now it is up to you to decide which camera you think is the best for your particular needs.
Once you have thought about those aspects, you should have an idea of the kind of camera you want and it should enable you to look at the lists of digital cameras online or in the stores and short-list any suitable models.
You should then try to look and, if possible, handle the actual cameras, either in store or, better yet, if people you know already own them, you are likely to get better answers to any questions you may have.
Then try to find examples of any pictures taken to see the quality and whether it meets your expectations.
If you are looking for a digital camera, there is plenty to choose from – with prices that should suit most budgets. Some digital cameras are better than others but it is a good idea to do your homework before handing over the money. If you don’t, you could end up with a camera that does not suit your needs.
What advertisers call the perfect camera may not be perfect for you. In addition to this, advertisers are trying to sell a product and what they call perfect today may not be tomorrow. You, on the other hand, want a camera that does what you need it to do and that will last for some time. Advertisers are not really concerned with people’s particular needs, just with popularizing a product.
Before you set out to buy a camera, it’s a good idea to have some understanding of the terms you might come across. For example, you may hear the retailer mention pixels and not know what they are. Pixels are the dots that make up the picture. Thousands of these dots are known as megapixels, the more megapixels you get, the sharper the picture you end up with.
Megapixels can also determine the price of a camera, the more you have, the more expensive the camera will be. A lot depends on what you want the camera for. If all you want to do is take family photos and email them to friends and relatives, a normal four megapixel camera should be just fine. If you want to use it professionally, you may need something with more pixels.
You might also want to consider size when buying a digital camera. Now days, you don’t have to buy large cameras – some are so small they will fit into a shirt pocket. However, size is also affected by price. It takes greater technological know-how to make a small camera than it does to make a regular sized one. Most people who take family photos do quite well with a regular one.
The information above should give you some idea of the general things to look for in a digital camera. Now it is up to you to decide which camera you think is the best for your particular needs.
Once you have thought about those aspects, you should have an idea of the kind of camera you want and it should enable you to look at the lists of digital cameras online or in the stores and short-list any suitable models.
You should then try to look and, if possible, handle the actual cameras, either in store or, better yet, if people you know already own them, you are likely to get better answers to any questions you may have.
Then try to find examples of any pictures taken to see the quality and whether it meets your expectations.
5 Materials And Technologies That Just Might Eliminate Digital Camera Shutter Delay
Bob pushed the shutter release button and…NOTHING HAPPENED. The football passed into his son's hands and the actual photo he took was one of a cheerleader's pom-pom. Bob missed the touchdown too. He resisted an insane urge to slam the camera to the ground and jump on it.
This was his first digital camera, and Bob had just experienced an unpleasant surprise. He had used film cameras all his life, but when his Yashica went into the shop a friend loaned him a digital camera. He naively decided to take some action shots and discovered the most maddening "feature" of digital cameras – the shutter delay.
MADDENING AND FRUSTRATING
Articles on this subject have attributed shutter delay to:
1. The camera's focus system
2. The time it takes the camera to digitally process the image
3. Reaction time of the photographer
Numbers one and three are lag times that most people using digital cameras are accustomed to. Most have used a film camera and know it needs a few milliseconds to focus.
The no-brainer solution is to reduce the aperture of the lens to increase depth of field, or aim the camera at the object you wish to be in focus and depress the shutter button half way in order to "tell" the camera what to focus on, then move the camera to center the image and depress it the rest of the way.
As far as human reaction time, well, it hasn't really changed much for users of film cameras, and people experienced in taking action shots usually get what they want.
So let's look at number 2, the time it takes to process the picture.
TIME TO DO THE PROCESSING
Processing the picture (so the camera can be ready for the next one) comes in several steps to move it from the image sensor to flash card storage:
1. Color corrections. The camera has to examine each and every Charge Couple Device (CCD) element on the photo sensor. It adds green, blue, and red to achieve the right color balance. For a 3 mega pixel camera, the processor has to make 9 million calculations.
2. Sharpening. This boosts the contrast by detecting and sharpening edges.
3. Compression. This process converts the 12 to 14 bits of each CCD sensor to 16 bits by "padding" the information and compressing it to 8 bits. This compresses the file size to 9 megabytes.
These steps require a tremendous amount of computational time. No wonder Bob missed his shot!
CATCHING THE ACTION
There are two ways of capturing action:
1. The "consecutive mode". If the camera has this mode, you can take a series of rapid shots moving through the event. This requires a camera with a large ‘buffer" to hold photos for processing.
2. Anticipating shots by depressing and holding down the shutter release prior to the event. This requires an ability to predict the future, something most of us don't possess.
THE FUTURE OF FASTER SHOOTING
Obviously this would all be simplified if micro processing were faster. Even with large buffers, the speed in which data is transmitted to the processor is prohibited by the rate at which data is conveyed from the CCD. Micro processing speed is the next bottleneck.
Faster clock rates and data transfer speeds would reduce or even eliminate "shutter lag" time. There are several technologies in the wings that offer hope:
1. Nanotube and nanowire technologies. These are both the offspring of "nanotechnology", the ability to make tiny machines at the "nano" level, a billionth of a meter in size rather than a millionth of a meter (micrometer) and offer hope for a 500 GHz clock rate or more.
2. DNA Yes, you heard me right. Computing based on DNA strands in which information is stored and processed.
3. Other materials
• Gallium Arsenide with much a faster speed has been used for years for military purposes.
• Silicon-Germanium chips increase the transfer of light signals to silicon. These traditionally have worked best at ultra cold temperatures, but many computer simulations have shown that they may be made to approach 1000 GHz (1 THz) at room temperature.
• Indium-antimonide. Much faster than silicon
•Optical transistors. A glass material known as chalcogenide becomes a switch as its refracting properties are changed. No need to translate those photons into anything else.
• Coated Viruses. The latest research involves coating viruses with a conducting material. Much higher speeds at the molecular level can be obtained. This will give a new meaning to the term "computer virus".
4. Parallel Processing. As we've noticed lately with the war between Intel and AMD over the number of parallel processors crammed into a CPU, digital camera processing would benefit from parallel processors handling the focussing, sharpening and squeezing.
5. Improvement in instructional efficiency by reducing the lines of code would make the whole process more efficient.
HOLD ON AND WAIT FOR THE FUTURE
The REAL solution to this maddening shutter delay appears to be in the material the processor is constructed of, as well as advancements in the software.
But we've got awhile to wait for it. Although a few alternate materials have been around for awhile, everything else is still in the research and development phase. Even when it finally trickles out of the labs, it will probably make your future digital camera cost around $10000 - $15000.
Quite a price tag for the ability to take pictures as fast as a film camera! Still…
Except for the lag, the digital camera has it all over film cameras, once the photo is captured by the memory card. The new technology will be worth the wait.
Digital camera owners are known for their ability to wait…as they desperately punch the shutter release trying to grab the fleeting smile of their new baby, or the football that lands in his hands eighteen years later, when he scores the winning touchdown.
This was his first digital camera, and Bob had just experienced an unpleasant surprise. He had used film cameras all his life, but when his Yashica went into the shop a friend loaned him a digital camera. He naively decided to take some action shots and discovered the most maddening "feature" of digital cameras – the shutter delay.
MADDENING AND FRUSTRATING
Articles on this subject have attributed shutter delay to:
1. The camera's focus system
2. The time it takes the camera to digitally process the image
3. Reaction time of the photographer
Numbers one and three are lag times that most people using digital cameras are accustomed to. Most have used a film camera and know it needs a few milliseconds to focus.
The no-brainer solution is to reduce the aperture of the lens to increase depth of field, or aim the camera at the object you wish to be in focus and depress the shutter button half way in order to "tell" the camera what to focus on, then move the camera to center the image and depress it the rest of the way.
As far as human reaction time, well, it hasn't really changed much for users of film cameras, and people experienced in taking action shots usually get what they want.
So let's look at number 2, the time it takes to process the picture.
TIME TO DO THE PROCESSING
Processing the picture (so the camera can be ready for the next one) comes in several steps to move it from the image sensor to flash card storage:
1. Color corrections. The camera has to examine each and every Charge Couple Device (CCD) element on the photo sensor. It adds green, blue, and red to achieve the right color balance. For a 3 mega pixel camera, the processor has to make 9 million calculations.
2. Sharpening. This boosts the contrast by detecting and sharpening edges.
3. Compression. This process converts the 12 to 14 bits of each CCD sensor to 16 bits by "padding" the information and compressing it to 8 bits. This compresses the file size to 9 megabytes.
These steps require a tremendous amount of computational time. No wonder Bob missed his shot!
CATCHING THE ACTION
There are two ways of capturing action:
1. The "consecutive mode". If the camera has this mode, you can take a series of rapid shots moving through the event. This requires a camera with a large ‘buffer" to hold photos for processing.
2. Anticipating shots by depressing and holding down the shutter release prior to the event. This requires an ability to predict the future, something most of us don't possess.
THE FUTURE OF FASTER SHOOTING
Obviously this would all be simplified if micro processing were faster. Even with large buffers, the speed in which data is transmitted to the processor is prohibited by the rate at which data is conveyed from the CCD. Micro processing speed is the next bottleneck.
Faster clock rates and data transfer speeds would reduce or even eliminate "shutter lag" time. There are several technologies in the wings that offer hope:
1. Nanotube and nanowire technologies. These are both the offspring of "nanotechnology", the ability to make tiny machines at the "nano" level, a billionth of a meter in size rather than a millionth of a meter (micrometer) and offer hope for a 500 GHz clock rate or more.
2. DNA Yes, you heard me right. Computing based on DNA strands in which information is stored and processed.
3. Other materials
• Gallium Arsenide with much a faster speed has been used for years for military purposes.
• Silicon-Germanium chips increase the transfer of light signals to silicon. These traditionally have worked best at ultra cold temperatures, but many computer simulations have shown that they may be made to approach 1000 GHz (1 THz) at room temperature.
• Indium-antimonide. Much faster than silicon
•Optical transistors. A glass material known as chalcogenide becomes a switch as its refracting properties are changed. No need to translate those photons into anything else.
• Coated Viruses. The latest research involves coating viruses with a conducting material. Much higher speeds at the molecular level can be obtained. This will give a new meaning to the term "computer virus".
4. Parallel Processing. As we've noticed lately with the war between Intel and AMD over the number of parallel processors crammed into a CPU, digital camera processing would benefit from parallel processors handling the focussing, sharpening and squeezing.
5. Improvement in instructional efficiency by reducing the lines of code would make the whole process more efficient.
HOLD ON AND WAIT FOR THE FUTURE
The REAL solution to this maddening shutter delay appears to be in the material the processor is constructed of, as well as advancements in the software.
But we've got awhile to wait for it. Although a few alternate materials have been around for awhile, everything else is still in the research and development phase. Even when it finally trickles out of the labs, it will probably make your future digital camera cost around $10000 - $15000.
Quite a price tag for the ability to take pictures as fast as a film camera! Still…
Except for the lag, the digital camera has it all over film cameras, once the photo is captured by the memory card. The new technology will be worth the wait.
Digital camera owners are known for their ability to wait…as they desperately punch the shutter release trying to grab the fleeting smile of their new baby, or the football that lands in his hands eighteen years later, when he scores the winning touchdown.
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