Addy Wood

Archive for the ‘Laptop and PC’ Category

High technology security systems are now within reach of everyone, for homes or businesses, this breakthrough in software utilizes you existing PC or cell phones. Imagine monitoring your home or business from anywhere in the world via the internet or your cell phone.

With conventional alarm monitoring systems, you usually have to sign a long term contract, an expensive installation depending on your home or business, equipment costs of thousands and a monthly monitoring fee. Now all this and more is available for a mere fraction of traditional old technology systems.

Since most people already own or have access to a PC or laptop, why spend more on monitoring equipment when you already own the computer which when software is installed converts your system into a high tech monitoring system supporting as many cameras as needed, all displayed on your computer screen, anywhere in the world where you have internet access.

Just like with current traditional alarm companies, you can conveniently monitor your own home or business at no cost. You have all the options of traditional systems, all at no additional cost. With the aging population, and most families now dual income, how would you like the peace of mind of monitoring your elderly parents home, or set up your own nanny cam or childcare monitor. You can monitor anything anywhere all with one software program loaded on your computer.

A unique new feature is you have the option of using your existing USB camera many already own, or you can add any type of digital camera you want, black and white, full color, high resolution, night vision, motion detector, any brand camera will work, so you can add to your system as needed for complete monitoring at a small fraction of cost of traditional alarm monitoring systems.

New feature in police cars in recent years is a video camera, or dash cam as they are called. Only problem is, these are not able to be seen by central station if a situation arises. Yes, it can be used after the fact, but how many times could lives be saved if station saw what was happening in real time? Soon all police cars will be equipped with this new wireless system since most police cars already use a laptop computer, so this new technology can be installed in every police car at little to know additional costs as it can use existing dash cams. Conversions would take all of five minutes by loading new monitoring software.

This same technology could also easily installed in your own vehicles if you have young drivers in your family. How much safer would your children be behind the wheel if they new you were able to monitor how many passengers were in car, how fast they were driving, even where they were driving with GPS option, all installed with new and growing WIFI wireless networks. Low cost security monitoring is finally affordable for everyone.

Having a laptop is almost a necessity of life now. Many of us have all of our essential information and files in our laptops. If the laptop were to crash all of the photos, files, and other information would be lost. It would be heart breaking emotionally and could be financially damaging too. Prevent all of this worry by investing in the right laptop backup solution.

Photographs have gone digital. Most of us have eliminated the family photo album in favor of online files we can share with others. If your laptop crashed and you lost all of your pictures, how devastating would that be? Would you ever be able to get those pictures back? Having a PC backup solution will ease this worry. All your pictures can be recovered with a few clicks. Do not take the chance, back up these precious photographs.

If you work from your laptop, the need for PC backup solutions is essential. The ramifications of losing work and or work files could spell disaster. Disk and flash drives are easy to lose or damage thus; they are not reliable backups. Having an automatic PC backup plan could seriously save the day, should your laptop become inoperable. Think of how quickly you could be back up and running with a new PC. Laptop backup software is necessary for those who work from their laptop.

Ease of use is a key consideration, if it is not simple to use it will not get used. The system must be simple to setup and preferably automatic in its operation. Security is another high priority issue. The company should outline their security features. Encryption is necessary for any program. Companies are proud of their security processes, this will aid you researching this information.

The user will have to decide on a backup system that uses an online storage system, server based systems, one that uses disk or your PC to create the backup information. Online systems save valuable laptop hard drive resources. It is also the easiest to retrieve if you have to buy a new computer. Most online backup software completes the backup automatically, so you never forget. Most of the pricing for PC backup software is dependent on the amount of storage space needed. Some solutions offer a flat rate regardless of storage space needed. Storage space is particularly important, as is cost, but other features need to be considered too.

There is a myriad of PC backup software programs on the market. Most of them are reliable and can provide some of the services you need. However, some laptop backup solution software have more features and benefits than others. Look for a backup program with high capacity, solid security, and trustworthy reputation.

If you have a slow running laptop, there are many causes of this problem and you should fix it by yourself with possible solutions.Therefore, you can definitely improve your PC performance and speed up your laptop without having to buy a new one or waste money on upgrading and technical payment.

There are some problems which cause your PC to crash. You can know the tips about how to fix slow running laptop below.

#1. There are so many programs eating up the resources on your computer. Most of computer users just restart the laptop to make it run faster for a short time because RAM memory is being freed up with each reboot. Another way is to manage the program running on startup. Also, you can install the system optimizer to fix the problems.

#2. When you have uninstalled the applications, games and software from your computer, there are a lot of traces of entries left over in your Windows registry which is invalid. This will slow down your system running and cause you to get a slow running laptop. To fix this problem, you can clean up the corrupted Windows registry entries and get rid of Windows errors. The registry cleaner can enable you to fix the registry errors instantly.

#3. There might be virus and spyware on your laptop and make it frequently crash, or pop up error messages. Once this problem happens, you should download and install the best spyware scanner to remove virus and spyware immediately.

#4. So many applications are installed on your laptop can give you a slow running laptop. You need to check out all applications on your laptop and uninstall the unnecessary programs from your PC to free up your hard disk and RAM resources. Don’t forget to clean up the registry entries of the programs. Thus, you should have a registry scan so that you can make sure your program removal operation is complete and safe. And then, you can speed up your computer and get a good performance PC.

As a computer repair technician for the last twenty years I’ve been very adverse against Emachines. I have found them to be quite substandard in every respect. Although they have gotten better in the last few years. I might just have to change my opinion.

Emachines just released a new laptop and it’s quite simply a steal of a deal. Not a stripped down netbook, but a fully capable laptop in it’s own right. The new Emachine model eME625-5192 Notebook PC is the one I’ve had my hands on this past week. It comes standard with an AMD Athlon 64 1.6GHz processor, a fabulous 3GB of DDR2 RAM and a 250GB HDD, a dual layer DVD writer, with a quite clear 15.6″ WXGA screen and Windows Vista Basic. As I said this ain’t your momma’s stripped down laptop of yesteryear. These specs compare quite favorably to the low-mid end offerings from Dell/HP.

Being the techie that I am, I wanted to take the thing apart to see what makes it tick. Is it so cheap because they are using substandard parts?

Well, not really almost every component I found was a name brand component. I didn’t see any immediate areas of concern. Even has a six-cell battery when some of the comparables from Dell/HP had much smaller capacity 4 cell batteries.

And the best part is that the computer just runs pretty well. With the 3GB of memory when almost all of it’s competitors are running 2GB it just has that little bit of extra added oomph when multi-tasking that casual users might need.

Most likely the best part of the laptop is the price. If you have a Microcenter near you, you can pick up this very capable laptop for just $299. So, if you’re on a limited budget don’t bother with the $300 netbooks when you can get this laptop at such a deal. My only concern is that as prices start to drop down to under $300 for capable laptops, it’s going to make it that much more difficult to convince people that they should use my computer repair service instead of just replacing their computer.

Many Mobile Discos have made the change from a conventional CD or Vinyl based system to a software based one, usually running on either a full sized pc or a laptop. The fundamentals of both systems are largely the same, and so you shouldn’t simply be taken in by reading other DJs horror stories about how their laptop overheated during the first dance at a Wedding or how their full sized PCs power supply exploded halfway through a gig. There are pros and cons of using both systems, but largely whether to use a full size pc or a laptop comes down to personal choice, practicality, budget and space, and you’ll often find that DJ’s criticising the opposite machine, have never actually used the system that they are criticising!. If possible visit a DJ who already uses a system to that which you intend to use yourself, nothing can sell an idea better than actually seeing it in use!, for the record, I have watched Mobile DJ’s use both PC’s and Laptops to DJ from, and neither, in my opinion, was more reliable or better than the other, so it should only be personal choice, rather than rumour or scaremongering which makes the decision on that score!.

Is running a Mobile Disco from a PC or Laptop reliable?

Anybody who has ever encountered the windows blue screen of death, or worn out the Ctrl+alt+del keys on their keyboard will possibly dread the thought of using such a system as a platform to their DJ’ing!. In essence, a decent dedicated pc or laptop with a clean install, good quality hard drive and a reasonable amount of memory will out preform most typical home pc set ups which may be running several applications at a time, be infiltrated with virus or spyware traces, and have a hard drive and registry full of corrupt enteries and partly uninstalled files.

The key to running a successful software based DJ system, is to buy a dedicated pc / laptop for the task, and to only run the operating system and DJ Software on there, and never allow it to run other applications or even connect to the internet. This way the installation runs and remains clean and largely error free, will rarely have a corrupt file, and won’t get infiltrated or bogged down with several other applications. This advice is given by DJ’s who have been using software and PC’s for many years, and have found this method of DJ’ing to be just as reliable as conventional DJ’ing from CD’s.

The advantages of using a Laptop or Pc to DJ

The advantages of converting your material to music files and using a Pc or Laptop to DJ from are many. The first is the most obvious, gone are the days where you are carrying several heavy boxes of CD’s around with you, most DJ’s CD collections can easily be converted to MP3 and will fit onto a 80gb – 200gb hard drive!. By converting to Software Dj’ing you also rid yourself of that long search through several hundred CD compilations in order to find that elusive requested track that you just know that you have got somewhere!. With most DJ Software, you can type in part or all of the artistes name or song title and find it within seconds!. It really is possible to find and cue up a request within 5 seconds – something which just can’t be done easily or quickly with a CD or vinyl collection.

Other advantages of a software based DJ system, include the possibility to create playlists from frequently used tracks, and you could create playlists from all genres, for example a playlist for background music, one for dance music, one for the 70s and one for the end of the night slowies. Of course you can also group the tracks together and catalog them according to Genre which also makes finding tracks from particular era’s easier too. Some DJ Software will also allow you to group tracks together which have a similar BPM – a boon for DJ’s who mix.

Which DJ Software should I choose?

There are many different brands and types of DJ Software about, again it comes down to personal preference which type you choose. It is always a very good idea to check out reviews and discussions on DJ Forums and if possible to find a DJ who uses a system based on the software which is of interest to you, so you can actually see it in action, in a disco environment.

Some DJ Software comes with a free trial, which enables you to download and install the software on your system and try it for for free for a time limited period (usually 10 – 30 days). Depending on the cost of the software, there can be differing features. Some Dj Software will simply allow you to cue up and play music using 2 “players”, others will have more comprehensive features, such as being able to fade between tracks, alter the pitch and tempo controls in a similar manner to conventional CD and Vinyl turntables, some of the more expensive software will even allow you to mix, or add a USB controller which looks and functions like a twin cd controller!, some Software will even mix the tracks for you!.

Remember that a feature is only worthwhile if you have a use for it!. Carefully consider what features you need, and which will be the ones that you will have any use for. It would be pointless buying a Dj Software package which allows you to mix, if you are a mobile dj who rarely has the requirement to beat mix. Most Software in its basic form, also comes with the option to add and install plug ins which give you additional updates and features, so its worth starting with the basic packages and then adding new features if and when you require them!.

My advice at this stage, if you are new to, or considering Software Dj’ing is to download the free trials of the various software which is available, try them for the time limited period, and then buy the one which suits you, and which is the most comfortable to use.

Some dj software titles which are currently popular and well reviewed by Mobile DJ’s include OTSDJ, DSSDJ and PCDJ

What type of PC do I need to run my DJ Software package

When you have decided on a software package, it is then time to consider what pc or laptop to use it on. Contrary to rumour, you don’t need the latest brand new pc or laptop to successfully run DJ Software from, and neither do you need a huge CPU processor. Most DJ Software will happily run on a pentium 3 processor with 600mhz speed or higher, many of the newer 1.2ghz+ celerons will also flawlessly run DJ software with no problems and without breaking into a sweat. Try and buy as much memory as you can afford, ideally 512mb of memory or a minimum of 256mb for most applications.

How big should I be )

A decent sized hard drive is the next consideration. Remember the bigger the hard drive the more individual tracks that you can fit on there. An average music file ripped at 192kbps is around 5mb in size and so a 100gb hard drive should fit around 20,000 tracks on there. However if you increase the quality of the track in MP3 format, then the file size rises also, so a 320kpbs mp3 could be as large as 11mb in size and so the same 100gb capacity would be reduced to holding only around 9000 tracks. Don’t forget to factor in space for your operating software, drivers and DJ software when working out hard drive capacity!. You can of course expand your hard drive capacity by fitting external hard drives to USB ports, and these are also reliable. If possible try and use a system which runs USB2.0 or even firewire since these run at faster data speeds than conventional USB1.1 although many Dj’s report no issues with hard drives and soundcards run from older 1.1 systems.

Give me Sound!

Using a good quality soundcard is a must!, many laptops and motherboard based sound chips on full sized pc’s rarely do justice to sound quality or are designed with full time high quality audio playback in mind. Consider installing a pci sound card in your pc, or investing in a good quality USB external soundcard if you opt to use a laptop. Most 2 channel soundcards will suffice for DJ’ing in most mobile applications, where the audio is mixed between the players on the laptop and the single output is then fed through a pair of “L” and “R” connectors on the soundcard, and then into the mixer or amplifier.

However, if more creativity is required, or the software is to be used for mixing applications or the use of a crossfader between channels on a conventional mixer is likely to be utilised, then you need to buy a 5 channel soundcard. This allows the soundcard to be set up, in a manner which allows one pair of “L” and “R” outputs to be used for “Player 1″ on the soundcard and fed into an individual channel on the mixer, and the same for “Player 2″ – this allows each software player to have its own fader on the mixer – just like a conventional twin cd player.

What Quality?

Some Dj Software packages come complete with the means to “Rip” a cd. “Ripping” means placing the original Cd into the PC’s CDROM and the process of converting the original music on the CD to MP3 Data, which is then stored on the hard drive as an MP3 File. In the case of OTSDJ, the option is also there to convert to a file called OTS, this is a custom files regonised only by the OTSDJ software, however it sounds just as good as MP3 and is also a slightly smaller file size, meaning that more OTS files can be stored on a hard drive when compared to conventional MP3 files.

If you use a DJ software package which does use conventional MP3 files, then you will need to select the quality at which to “rip”. This figure is measured in “Kbps” and often ranges from 32kbps and 320kbps. Lower ranges are not recommended for professional use over a PA system since they can sound dull and even distorted. Ideally for professional use, the DJ should be looking at ripping their CD’s to Mp3 files at 192kbps or greater.

192kbps is considered reasonable quality, however 320kbps is near cd quality and may be prefered by some Dj’s – however on smaller audio systems the difference may be hard to detect. As the quality is increased, so does the file size, and a 320kbps file may be several mb larger than its 192kbps counterpart, it may also take longer to rip an entire CD at 320kbps than at lower rates.

For Dj Software which doesn’t have ripping capability, Musicmatch Jukebox may prove to be an alternative for this process,

Are there any disadvantages to being a Digital DJ?

Now the disadvantages!. Obviously the initial cost of buying a PC / Laptop, a good quality soundcard, large hard drive and the Dj Software itself is likely to total far more than buying a conventional CD Player or turntables. It also takes time to “rip” your cd collection to Mp3 and store them on your hard drive. In some jurisdictions it is also illegal to convert original material to MP3 format for digital use without a licence, and this can prove to be expensive, if the Dj is to work on the right side of the law. It is the possible licence requirement that we discuss next.

Do I need a licence to play music from a laptop?

At the time of writing this article, an annual licence is required in Canada and the UK in order to use a PC or laptop to DJ from. In the UK, a further licence and possible royalty payment is also required for the conversion process. Although no fees have yet been advertised (April 2006) these controversal laws are likely to make this form of DJ’ing unattractive when compared to more conventional, and “licence free” alternatives.

Finally, my tips for Software Djing

* Always buy and use a dedicated pc / laptop purely for Dj use, do not be tempted to use the family pc or run other applications on the machine you use to DJ from, and do not allow this machine to connect to the internet. On a pre-used machine, also start from scratch with a format and fresh install of the operating system.

* Use a good quality soundcard, even if you need to upgrade or buy an external USB one

* Always rip the music direct from an original CD at 192kbps quality or higher. 320kbps is advised for higher quality pa systems and is near cd quality. 192kbps is okay for smaller systems used by the Mobile DJ.

* Don’t be too concerned about buying the latest top of the range PC to run from. Most Dj Software will happily run from basic P3 600mhz machines, but do check out the minimum requirements on the software authors website.

* Read reviews on the various software packages available. Stick to the features that you will use, since you can always upgrade extras later. Take advantage of the free trials of DJ Software which are available and use the time to find the best software to suit you

* If you choose a full sized PC make sure that it is professionally flightcased – pc’s are not designed to be carried around.

* Select a high capacity 100gb – 200gb hard drive from a reputable manufacturer. Where practical and legal always back up your data

* Fit your machine with at least 256mb of memory, and ideally 512mb.

* Check out the legal aspect of converting original music to MP3 and whether a licence is required to operate such a system.

Dell, Hewlett Packard, Apple, or other laptop producers now are producing many kinds of laptops. There are plenty of low-performance laptops like Sony VAIO VGN-NR160. You can buy these laptops easily because their prices usually are not higher than $1,200. These big companies produce low-performance notebooks because they know most people in this world are demanding for new laptops but middle and low-class people do not have enough budgets to buy high-tech notebooks.

Although there are plenty of cheap notebooks, you still need to compare those laptops with new PCs. Like it or not, usually you can get better specification from a PC rather than from a laptop if your budget is limited. For example, what can you buy if you only have $600 in your pocket? Probably you won’t get more than 1 GB RAM memory from new notebook but PC can offer you better performance.

However, we must remember that the most important thing is your need. If you never go outside home, of course PC is a better option. If you often go elsewhere because your job forces you to do it, laptop is the first choice. Beside all of these, you must also consider how often you use laptop/PC every day. A PC can be used for plenty of hours every day but a laptop needs time to rest. You must also consider what kind of specification works for you.

If you are a gamer and your budget is not more than $1,500, why don’t you buy a PC instead of a new laptop? But if you have more and you often go to outside of your home, of course new Dell XPS or new HP Pavilion will be better for you. Everything is up to your need, your job, and your personality. So what is better, a laptop or a PC? It all depends on you. Just remember that PC actually can offer you more than a new laptop but you can’t bring your PC to outside of your room.