High-Performance Computing On A Shoestring

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Don’t Touch That TV Screen! No, Really . . . I’m Serious . . . Don’t!

Ike Ridley

So you just bought a flat screen TV and no one told you anything about care and cleaning?

“What do you mean, care and cleaning?" some will say. “I grew up with a TV in the house, didn’t I? Everybody knows how to take care of a TV . . . right? You just dust it off every couple of months and don’t let the kids chew on the power cord. . . right?"

Well-l-l-l, there’s a little more to it than that when you own a Plasma, DLP or LCD flat screen TV. Some of it is common sense, but a lot what you need to know is unique to caring for the new television technology.

Special care must be taken when handling a flat screen TV, especially when touching or cleaning the display screen. Thin sheets of glass hold the Plasma cells on a flat screen TV, if they crack, the screen is ruined and cannot be repaired!

(If you’re not familiar with the differences between Plasma, LCD or DLP TVs, you should Google the "123 Guide To Plasma TV.com")

Bottom line: you need to know what you’re doing if you want to protect your expensive new TV from damage. You’re in luck . . . I’m about to tell you!

1) Avoid Touching The Screen!

Handle the TV only by the sides and bottom. Do your best not to touch the screen; don’t rub, scrub, tap, hit or touch it, since this could scratch, mar or permanently damage the screen. I actually want to encourage you not to touch the screen with your bare hands. (Good luck keeping the kids away from it!)

2) Keep Your Plasma TV Upright!

Whether you’re moving it, installing it, storing or displaying it, you should never lay your Plasma flat on it’s face, even if the directions tell you to. The plasma elements that make up the picture are sandwiched between two thin layers of glass. If these glass panels crack, your TV screen will be ruined. Large LCD and DLP display screens can be just as delicate.

3) Clean Your Flat Screen TV Correctly!

Even routine cleaning can present special challenges. You shouldn’t use dust cloths, chemical cleansers, soaps, sprays, alcohol or aerosols. Please don’t rub the screen, just dust it gently with absorbent cotton or chamois only. Clean the frame with a slightly moist sponge or cloth, don’t use chemicals or soaps. It’s best to unplug the TV before you begin cleaning.

4) Buy A Good Surge Protector!

Spring for a quality surge protector with a reset button and power switch. A phone line or ethernet surge protector for your modem and a coax surge protector for cable TV are great features to look for. If you can’t find these features on a power surge protector you can order them separately. A basic surge protector costs less than $10, and a really good one costs $30 - $50. There’s no excuse for not connecting every major appliance in your house to one. One lightning strike, one power surge and your $2,500 flat screen TV could be fried!

5) Don’t Let Your Big Screen TV Tip Over!

Most table stands are well designed, but be aware! When your teenager tries to imitate Kobe’s fantastic slam dunk or your toddler jumps up to slap Sponge Bob on the head, you don’t want a 150-pound big screen TV toppling over on them. Make sure your TV stand is sturdy, that it’s large enough to hold your TV (6-inches wider than the base) and is positioned against a wall, away from doorways and foot traffic.

6) Make Sure Your Wall Mount Is Properly Installed!

A correctly installed wall mount has little chance of allowing your TV to tip over; just one more reason to get a professional installation. If Harry Handyman from next door installs your Plasma and the mount comes off the wall, you could be facing substantial damage or injury. If you don’t know how to run wiring inside your wall, get a pro to do it.

7) Avoid Screen Burn-In!

Plasma displays have improved recently, but screen burn-in is still possible. Static images that don’t move or change, like video game scores, TV station logos, stock ticker displays and computer programs can burn images permanently into a Plasma screen. It may take weeks, months or years for the damage to become permanent, but it certainly can. LCD and DLP TVs cannot suffer burn-in.

With proper care, your big screen TV will give your family decades of brilliant service and lasting memories. Just tune in to Entourage and enjoy!

It's as easy as 1 2 3!

About The Author

Ike Ridley is the avid videophile and self-confessed “Movie Nut" who created the website 123 Guide To Plasma TV. To visit us, click the links or paste this URL into your web browser:
http://www.123-guide-to-plasma-tv.com/
Ike has moved to the Caribbean where he clicks away on his laptop under a palm tree.
Click Here for more information on big screen TVs in the 123 Guide To Plasma TV.com!

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Microsoft Office Training for Office 2007

by Christine Harrell

Revised interface The most obvious change in Office 2007 is the new ribbon interface. Menus are gone, replaced with toolbar-like "ribbons" that group command icons in categories such as "Insert" or "Review." Many have found these new ribbons to be more intuitive by putting any command just a couple of clicks away. Many of the commands have keyboard shortcuts displayed putting them even closer to the user.

Whether or not the ribbon interface is more efficient than the old menu interface, it still takes time for new users to find all of their commands. For example, an Excel user might be frustrated when not finding "Insert Cells" on the Insert menu, not realizing it's on the Home menu where the most common commands are stored.

Office 2007 supports keystrokes from older versions of windows. Using the previous example, a user might reflexively type Alt-I (to call up the old Insert menu) followed by R (for Insert Row). Excel 2007 will dutifully insert the row. This can make the transition easier, but it also leaves users depending on outdated commands.

Training in such a program helps your employees learn to navigate the new interface quickly. This not only improves their productivity, but also reduces their frustration and their resistance to using the new version of MS Office. Training gives them confidence and makes the transition to the new interface a snap.

New features New users often overlook features of applications because if they don't realize a feature exists, they don't know to look for it. They may not realize that the "Document Inspector" allows them to remove hidden metadata such as personal information that they may not want shared with the document's recipient. They may not know they can mark a document a final, automatically preventing anyone from making any future changes to it. They may not know about the countless other new features that make their jobs easier.

An MS Office course can educate your employees about all the new features in Office 2007. Employees will find new ways to use Office applications that were impossible before, such as the use of digital signatures to create paperless and secure contracts with Microsoft Word.

MS Office training is cost effective Each day of training can replace dozens of hours of lost productivity. Employees will be confident in their use of the new applications, navigating the revised interface with ease. They will discover features that make them more accurate and more productive. A small investment today will provide huge returns in the future. The best solution would be to get your employees started on some sort of MS training program. There are many online and offline classroom courses available.

About the Author

Author is a freelance copywriter. For more information on Microsoft Office training, visit http://www.MicrosoftTraining.net/.

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What Are The Benefits Of Mobile Dual-Core Processors?

By:Tim Childree

When browsing through different notebook computer models, you are guaranteed to encounter the "Intel Core 2 Duo" or the "AMD Turion 64 x2" labels. These labels indicate dual-core processing technology for mobile computing. Multi-core processing is the buzz-word of the day, but what does it mean for you?

Mobile Dual-Core Processors

Mobile dual-core processors refer to a processor system consisting of two independent processor cores combined in one integrated circuit (IC) or, as industry professionals say, in a single die. Basically, mobile dual-core processors place two central processing unit (CPU) cores in one processor. Dual-core processing was first applied to desktop computing and home console gaming, but it was quickly adapted for mobile computing. As expected, AMD and Intel both have numerous mobile dual-core processing options available.

Dual-core processors have a different architecture than twin- or double-core processors. Dual-core processors refer to a processing system where two processors are integrated in one IC die. On the other hand, twin-core processors refer to a processing system where two independent processors – each on its own die – are directly plugged into the motherboard.

Each of the processors in a dual-core processor has a built in cache (Level 1 cache) so each has its own potential for speedy and efficient recovery and processing of frequently used instructions. More than that, however, there is a Level 2 cache, in the same IC board, which the two processors share in Intel's Mobile Core 2 Duo chipsets (either 2 or 4 MB); In AMD's Turion 64 x2 chipsets, each of the two processor has a dedicated 512 kb cache per core. The L2 cache is the processor’s backup cache in case the L1 cache is not enough.

The Benefits of Mobile Dual-Core Processing

The foremost advantages of dual-core processors are speed and efficiency. Instruction processing and data retrieval are handled by two processors, so more processing speed can be achieved without overheating either processor. The fact that the two processors have their own easily accessible L1 cache also assures more speed. Furthermore, especially in the case of the Intel Core 2 Duo where the L2 cache is shared, full L2 cache memory can be quickly utilized by either one or both processors as the need arises.

In a nutshell, a notebook computer which has a dual-core processor is assured of fast and efficient processing performance with a greatly reduced risk of overheating. Multi-tasking is much improved. Dual-core processors also consume less power than twin-core processors.

One other benefit of dual-core processors in notebook computers is the possibility of lighter and smaller notebooks that can approximate desktop PC performance. Since two processors share one IC die, one can enjoy the benefits of dual-CPU processing without having to deal with extra bulk.

It is important to note that users of older programs will not see any benefit from their dual-core processors if they only run one program at a time. Older programs were not designed for dual-core processing, so they are only able to take advantage of a single core. A dual-core processor still gives considerable advantages in multi-tasking, however, as each core is able to handle a different program, speeding up multi-tasking considerably when compared to a single-core computer.

As time goes on, more and more software developers are developing their products with dual-core processors in mind, so users will see more and more benefit out of their dual-core processors in the near future.

This article may be republished freely as long as this copyright notice and box of resource links are included at the bottom.


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Outlook 2007 – Time to Understand The Real Performance Issues

by: Dennis Hill

The Top-Line:

The cycle of requiring faster processors and oodles of memory continues with Microsoft Office Professional 2007. Reports of Outlook 2007 exhibiting moderate to severe performance issues have been confirmed when working with large PST and OST files. PST files contain the email messages, contacts, calendar and tasks in previous versions of Outlook, so people who upgrade will retain this legacy in new implementations and inherit the performance problem.

Microsoft has made a patch available to validated users, which vastly improves speed. Nevertheless, minimum hardware configurations for users planning to implement Vista and Office 2007 should contain no less than 2GB of memory. Search for Microsoft Knowledge Base article 932086 from your favorite search engine or on the Microsoft webpage.

The Mid-Line:

As we blogged in January following the demonstration and public release of Vista and Office 2007, performance issues would be broad and severe. Most business computer users had completed migrations to 1GB of memory in 2006 on desktop and laptop systems, but as we noted then, demonstrators at nationwide Microsoft conferences experienced video skipping and other performance glitches using duo-core processors and as much as 3GB of memory.

The essential concern is this – Microsoft software developers have the best equipment, latest processors, and most memory on which to develop their operating systems and applications. While the days of efficient programming have long disappeared on the PC front, end-users who are less equipped experience a see-saw effect between Microsoft and hardware manufacturers (principally Intel Corp and AMD). The see-saw causes one to push the other while consumers are squeezed between them to purchase upgrades.

Even in the early days of raster graphics on mainframe and minicomputers, program coding had to be efficient since memory was a premium and most systems were time-shared among many users. The 32-bit VAX from Digital Equipment Corporation could support hundreds of users in memory as small as 16MB (yes, megabytes, not gigabytes). By comparison today’s microcomputers are thousands of times more powerful, but application software and operating systems are not designed to maximize hardware efficiency. Thus, as new software is introduced like Vista and Office 2007, users are forced to upgrade their hardware – eventually, if not immediately.

Problematically, business users today employ less than 40% of the features found in most application suites, like Microsoft Office. Even fewer dive into operating system features. As in decades past, productivity is found in the entry and retrieval of information for decision-making, but the early adopter obsesses on having the latest and greatest technical gizmo or program on the market regardless.

The Bottom-Line:

Some companies, like Sun Microsystems, offer competing operating systems to the Microsoft Windows environment, as well as alternatives to office application suites. The time may have arrived for companies to consider whether the cost sunk into operating system, application software and hardware upgrades truly offers a measurable return-on-investment, and if keeping up with the Jones is a sound business strategy year-after-year.

source:searchwarp.com

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