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These 5 Points Will Boost Your Knowledge Of Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing

With time computer technologies have always become better and better. One such greater technology services is the cloud computing. Today, you we will take you across a few aspects of cloud computing which we believe will help you to recollect its significance or if in case you are a newbie, this article will help you perceive what actually cloud computing is all about.

Here Are 5 Things You Should Know About Cloud Computing:

1.) Cloud = Internet
Cloud ComputingThe term ‘cloud’ in cloud computing refers to internet. And the basic concept of cloud computing is set forth to be the sharing of computer resources (say data, software, music, videos and so on) through a network connection. Actually this interpretation of cloud as internet is based on the cloud symbol used to represent internet is diagrams. As simple as that!

2.) Front End and Back End:  cloud computing The cloud computing system is divided into two main parts: front end and back end. The front end or the so called ‘client-section’ is where users see and utilize the resources. All the ‘client-section’ requires is appropriate applications to run these resources. At the back end is the hardware that processes and contain all these resources. There are additional duties on the back end to ensure security and privacy of resources of various clients. And the internet acts as a bridge between these two sections.

3.) The Boon:

The one significant aspect cloud computing could solve is the need for humungous hardware which could eat up a lot of money, space and time. Though initially this mostly favored just the Information Technology (IT) Companies in reducing hardware and software investments, but now it is a boon to all variety of consumers and businesses. So what exactly happens is you don’t have to actually house the 15GB of free usage space Gmail offers you on your hard disk but enjoy it with your Gmail Account. Also the fact that it is on the network, all that your computer needs is a suitable application (in this instance a web browser) to make use of what these web services offer you.

4.) All the other advantages:

The other advantages with cloud computing services include the Accessibility, the user gets where nothing much than getting connected to the internet does the job. Automatically Updated Software, keeping organizations away from large recurring costs. Storage Space, much larger than the local computers thereby allowing large scale information storage at low costs. Getting Better, with time due to the various bells and whistles cloud computing is offering, these services will only get better and cost less.

5.) Bottlenecks:

Well as it goes with everything else, these cloud computing services do have some bottlenecks. They include the Security Risk, as the basic ideology starts at entrusting one’s information into the hands of service providers. Reliability Factor, the track record and the promises the cloud computing service providers standby. Software Pre-intended Upgrades, while this could be a real pain for many organizations as an un-timely and un-intended software up gradation could spur a loss of productivity

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Is Your Wi-Fi Connection Slower Than Expected? This Is Why

wi-fi connection speeds

Whether you are in a coffee store, an airport or for that matter even in some universities chances are that you are surrounded by a wireless network. With even the governments getting into the act and making plans to develop digital cities, we could well expect wireless networks all over the place.

Even as of today there are many homes, offices and public places providing Wi-Fi services to consumers. (Learn more about what Wi-FI is here). But the real deal is hardly any of us experience the full potential of a Wi-Fi connection. Though it is our personal router, we only receive 50% of the actual Wi-Fi speeds. In this article we bring into limelight all such various factors which are making your Wi-Fi connection slower

These Factors Make Your Wi-Fi Connection Slower:

 

  • The Basic Phenomenon:

Unfortunately there is nothing we can do about it because physics does stand in your way. The basic phenomenon with which the Wi-Fi Connection works is what makes it slower than the conventional Ethernet. Wi-Fi connection alternates between sending and receiving data (technically called ‘half duplex system’). But this isn’t the case with Ethernet connection which can do both at a time (full duplex system). This naturally causes that little delay compared to other connection types.

 

  • Signal Traffic – The noise phenomenon:

You may agree or disagree but where ever we are, there is a whole lot of wave traffic around us. To access internet with your Wi-Fi connection, you make use of radio waves. So do mobile phones, radios and televisions, cordless phones, all those Bluetooth devices, and if there is an remote-controlled car or helicopter; in your house, in your neighbors’ house and almost every door in the entire community.

Among all these is your router which is striving to make sure everything works fine for you and obviously there is loss in signal strength. But the truth be told all of them interfere and are technically termed as noise to your Wi-Fi signal.

Apart from all this, if you really are trying to use the internet in parallel with 20 or 30 devices, there is no wonder your Wi-Fi connection appears slow in spite of the connected devices showing full signal.

 

  • Did you set the channel selector to ‘auto’ mode?

This is something you could be doing because no one told you its’ effect. But never the less it surely is a damaging factor to farther extents. Now that you let the channel selector be in auto simply to avoid the unnecessary headache of changing all the router settings, so is everyone else.

So what everyone is successfully doing is crowding that 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz channel instead of making your router pump signals at some other unique frequencies. At least from now on try making some changes for the good.

 

  • The Location of router:

It goes without saying that the closer your devices are to the router the best speeds you can manage to pull off. But the common misconception generally in homes is the router be placed very close to the computer. But if this is the case, your router most often than not is at one corner of your house and by any device trying to access it from another room or the balcony could face the beating.

We recommend the best location to install your Wi-Fi router is at the center of your homes. This ensures proper and good signal coverage over the entire length of your house and provides you much better results.

 

  • Those Wi-Fi signal extenders hardly work!

Don’t get us wrong, they do work and what they do is receive the signal and broadcast it, more like a repeater on an Ethernet line. But what we mean to convey is the broadcasted signal is almost half of the original signal and hence the speed capabilities fall by 50%. And in case these are installed in places where there is no proper signal reception the situation still gets a lot worse.

Simply something we can surely conclude is Wi-Fi is no replacement to the Ethernet Connection until a lot of problems are addressed. Strangely it requires a few modifications in laws of physics to have the dream Wi-Fi Connection speeds that are actually advertised.

 

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What does Wi-Fi Mean And How It Works?

What does Wi-Fi Mean

Wi-Fi for some time now has been providing unprecedented support to people across homes, businesses and public places. Globally, it is becoming a preferred mode of internet connection. And very soon chances are that you can access internet anywhere, anytime without tripping over wires. But how many of us really know about Wi-Fi? In this article we help you understand, what does Wi-Fi mean and how Wi-Fi actually helps you connect to the internet.

What Does Wi-Fi Mean?

Wi-Fi, commonly misunderstood as shorthand for wireless fidelity, is the IEEE 802.11 standard for wireless connections. Believe it or not, the name ‘Wi-Fi’ is picked randomly (check out the press release here) and has nothing to do with wireless fidelity. Products are ‘Wi-Fi CERTIFIED’ by the Wi-Fi Alliance based on the tests related to security and interoperability.

Any Wi-Fi CERTIFIED product is sure to have the abilities to connect to the internet and exchange data via the 2.4 GHz to 5 GHz band of radio waves without compromising security.

What Does Wi-Fi mean and How it works , What does Wi-Fi Mean , What does Wi-Fi Mean

 

The particular specification at which the Wi-Fi network operates is called ‘flavor’ of the network. But how does this Wi-­Fi work?

How Wi-Fi Works?

Like already mentioned, Wi-Fi makes use of radio waves just like T.Vs, radios and mobile phones to exchange information within a network. For this to be possible there is a need for Wi-Fi antennas. A Wi-Fi receiver antenna present in mobile phones and computers receives the radio waves that are transmitted by a Wi-Fi transmitter antenna present in routers, converts it into 1s and 0s with the help of network cards; this entire process also occurs in reverse direction from the computer back to the router. The Wi-Fi routers are in turn connected to the internet via a wired Ethernet Connection. It goes without saying that if there was no wired Ethernet connection, there is no Wi-Fi connection.

Generally the bottle-neck in this entire scheme of events is any computer within the range of the signals being transmitted by routers can access the internet and can also interfere with other devices connected via the same network. Such instances can be avoided by securing the Wi-Fi connection with safeguards like Virtual Private Network (VPN), Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), or the more recent Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) which protect the network using passwords.

 

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PC Guides

Understanding Few Basic Concepts About The GPU

Understanding Few Basic Concepts About The GPU

The Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) is more or less as powerful as the CPU. GPUs are usually housed by graphic cards, which are printed circuit boards similar to motherboards. Just like RAM and CPU are present on the motherboard, there is a graphics processor and RAM on the graphic card also. But what exactly is their use? Why does your computer need another processor? In this article we explore such facts and help you figure out what a GPU is.

Understanding Few Basic Concepts About The GPU

What Does The GPU Do and How?

A GPU takes care of all the graphics rendering on your computer. It interacts with your computer’s CPU, accepts all the binary data that is to be displayed and converts it into images which you can see. In a nutshell, studying about GPUs means understanding how these 1’s and 0’s are transformed into images.

This is possible because of the ability of the GPU to render images. Initially, wire framing (creation of the skeletal model of the object) is followed by GPUs in case of 3D images, and then rasterization of the particular shape is carried out. Here ‘rasterization’ means that the wireframe model is converted into dotted structures which appear as pixels.

GPU Working Bascis , Understanding Few Basic Concepts About The GPU wire frame model 2 , Understanding Few Basic Concepts About The GPU

 

In the above images the first one is the wire frame model and the second is the rasterized image. Once the image is made, it is stored temporarily in the RAM present alongside the GPU on the graphic cards. The image information stored in the RAM is again in form of 1’s and 0’s which signify data related to each and every pixel of the entire image. Then this information is supplied to the monitor through one of the connector technologies (like say, VGA).

Also See: Display Cables: VGA, DVI and HDMI Cables.

In the absence of a GPU, the CPU manages all the above mentioned process due to which there is a little lapse in performance. The other main difference is just like the CPU has some cores to process the workload serially, while the GPU has architecture which supports parallel workload processing. Simply the thing is, with a GPU the applications run much better and tasks are performed much faster due to which there are hundreds of applications of GPUs. Because of all these factors, a GPU is much better at what it does than the CPU. And a computer which has both of them together performs much better than a computer which only has a CPU. Nowadays, we find motherboards with integrated or dedicated graphic processors, and all that happens in them is the same.

Based on the quality of the graphic card employed, there are quite some differences. Particularly while running high-end applications or games, there are notable lags and pixilation if the GPU is not as fast enough as the application demands it to be.

For so long now, ATI and NVIDIA have been premier manufacturers producing best GPUs serving various purposes.

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PC Guides

Here Are Few Interesting Points About The USB Adapters

Here Are Few Interesting Points About The USB Adapters

The Wireless USB Adapters are devices which help you connect to the internet and other computer components, say, printers. And all they do is totally eliminate the need of wires. They also serve as alternative to the industry manufactured internal wireless adaptor failures in laptops.

Here Are Few Interesting Points About The USB Adapters

Image Courtesy By : GeniusComputer

How Do They Work?

The USB Adapters are manufactured to have both the receiver and transmitter antennas. Similar to wireless internet data cards, they collect signals from a source and help connect to the internet. Also a Wi-Fi USB Adaptor can transmit these signals back into the air thus increasing signal strength. The difference from wireless internet data cards rests in the fact that these radio frequency signals you receive using your USB adaptors are not provided by any carrier. But simply they act as a substitute to your inbuilt-network cards. And they are wireless.

So for you to understand much better let us consider an example, imagine an office which has top notch Wi-Fi router. Now all that this office needs is one USB Adapter for every computer and that’s it! All the employees can use the internet without the burden of thick LAN cables running around the office. Also since they are ‘USB’ Adaptors there will possibly be no compatibility issues as well.

The Various Benefits In Using USB Adapters:

You must have understood what an USB Adapter means by now. So here we list down few of the benefits these USB Adapters bring to you:

No Cables, No Mess:

If you believe in the ‘no cables, no mess’ rule, these USB Adapters offer you just that. It is one of the main benefits in using USB Adapters. They can connect your computer to the internet, and printers or any other devices to wireless networks. Because that they receive signals actively from wireless Wi-Fi routers, you can access internet anywhere on your laptops.

Simpler Installation:

You have lot of internal wireless adapter cards in the market, you could easily go for any one of them. But the thing is, installing them is a real pain. Install it wrong in your laptop and there may even be the risk of the card totally becoming dysfunctional. So for this you surely need expert assistance. Also what if the internal wireless adapter card you purchased isn’t fitting into the space that is available in your computer? What if there is no internal card manufactured to suit your computer? You really are in trouble.

But it isn’t the same with these USB Adapters. Simply plug in, install the drivers from the disc and that’s it, everything is ready. So because of the world of convince they offer you (either you use a desktop computer or a laptop) they are quite handy.

Multiple Devices Support:

Now that the Macs and Windows along will all other operating systems support USB technology, and also based on the fact that you can hardly find a computer without a USB port, the USB Adapters are usable across multiple devices.

Be it at office or at home, they can easily be used on various computers unlike the internal wireless adapter cards. Also they are quite portable that you can always carry them around with you, thus accessing internet on the go.

These are few of the many benefits the USB Adapters offer you, along with their inexpensiveness.

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PC Guides

Understanding the Various Aspects of Registry: Registry Root Keys

Understanding the Various Aspects of Registry: Registry Root Keys

The Windows Registry is the central database in your computer. It contains all the instructions and settings (related to hardware and software) your computer needs to perform any task. Frequently your computer accesses the registry. To help you gain more knowledge on the science of registry, in this article we discuss about the basic structure of the registry.

Once you open the Windows Registry you can see the entire registry organized into 5 folders (technically called ‘keys’). Each of these keys again contains sub keys and values (similar to files) within them. So the description of the five root keys of Windows Registry is mentioned below.

Registry Root Keys ,Registry Root Keys ,Understanding the Various Aspects of Registry: Registry Root Keys

The 5 Registry Root Keys of The Windows Registry:

1. HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT (HKCR)

The HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, abbreviated as HKCR is a registry root key, whose hive has all the information of the file name extensions and OLE (Object Linking and Embedding). There are thousands of keys within this hive. All of these are for sake of understanding classified into these classes:

  • Each key is a file name extension with the information about the default program with which files of that format are accessed. You can modify the program that is set as default here. But owing to all the complexity this process carries, we recommend not doing so. Also the OLE technology helps in linking and embedding objects and programs. But the complexity involved is definitely a bottleneck though.
  • The remaining keys in this hive are ProgID, CLSID and IID. These keys are related to technical aspects of programming and will be discussed later on.

2. HKEY_CURRENT_USER (HKCU)

This registry root key contains all the settings related to the user who is currently logged into the computer. Right from the appearance aspect to how the mouse pointer behaves, everything can be controlled via this hive. Usually in most of the Windows operating systems all these settings are available in the following keys:

  • Console Key
  • Control Panel Key
  • Environment Key
  • Network Key
  • Software Subtree

(Source: technet.microsoft.com)

3. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE (HKLM)

This is one of the most accessed registry hives. This registry root key contains all the information about the hardware and software of the system. It includes the bus system used, the hard drive technology, the operating system details and everything else about your computer.

This entire information is not a part of the hard drive but is stored in the system memory, mapping all the sub keys. There actually can be in depth discussion of the science of the HKLM but is out of scope of this article.

4. HKEY_USERS (HKU)

In this registry is the information on settings made by various users on the computers, many a time the values represented by the HKU and HKCU are similar. For better understanding, we can interpret it to be a superset of the HKEY_CURRENT_USER registry root keys.

5. HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIGURATION (HKCC)

The HKCC is the registry root key which contains information about the hardware which is currently used by the computer. It is most often empty and gets activated at boot time, during which it loads the ‘hardware profiles’ sub key of the HKLM.

These are the registry root keys being used in the Windows 8’s registry. Some other additional root keys like the HKEY_DYN_DATA (HKDD) used to be present in the earlier versions of Windows.

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PC Guides

Information About Interrupts: Software, Hardware and What Are Interrupt Handlers?

program interrupts
interrupt flow chart

Interrupts are one of the most powerful features in computers. Most of the modern computers including Macs have this feature installed within them. But expect people who have good computer background and dealt with subjects like computer organization, many of the common computer users may not be familiar with the term ‘interrupt’. But the thing is it brings to light one of the coolest of tasks your computer performs; and believe me this article is written in plain English and a very soft to understand language. So enjoy reading.

program interrupts
interrupt flow chart

What is interrupt?

An interrupt is a signal or, you can say a request generated by: a peripheral attached to the computer (or) a program within the computer; which is sent to the CPU seeking its attention. It truly goes by the actual dictionary meaning of the word ‘interrupt’ isn’t it? So once the CPU senses an interrupt it immediately stops whatever it is doing and responds to the event that caused the interrupt.

The code that the CPU is working on will be temporarily stored while the CPU attends the interrupt event. And once the interrupt handler (the operating system’s code for handling interrupts also called ISR) is done working on the interrupt event, the CPU resorts back to the previous programs it is working on almost automatically.

Various classes of interrupts

All the interrupts are classified into two main classes:

  • Hardware Interrupt
  • Software Interrupt

Hardware interrupt is triggered when there is any external device which wants to communicate to the computer to achieve certain purpose. For example say keyboard, or a printer.

Software interrupts are sort of pits the programmers have designed in which the control jumps from one set of code to another; these are primarily based on the predetermined instructions in the program. Usually these interrupts run codes which request some resource from the user to continue executing the earlier program.

What are Interrupt Service Routines?

The Interrupt Service Routines (ISR) also called as interrupt handlers are also code which the operating system uses to attend to software or hardware interrupts. Particularly, when there are overlapping interrupts, the interrupt handlers must work at a higher pace with greater precision.

But, What, Exactly Are Overlapping interrupts?

Often it happens that one or more I/O devices act at once. For instance, the movements of mouse immediately followed by a few keystrokes from the keyboard all may happen at same time.

If something like that happens, the interrupt handler chooses between the interrupts and based on their priority and runs that interrupt first. Later immediately after the ISR is done with the first interrupt it now handles the other interrupt.

Also if there is another interrupt while the ISR is busy handling an interrupt, there are two possible situations here:

  • The ISR stops dealing with the first interrupt and the later interrupt will be run first.
  • It may also happen that the ISR completes dealing with the first interrupt and then attends the second interrupt.

The event which occurs during this type of a situation depends on the architecture.

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PC Guides

These Points Help You Understand Webcams Better

These Points Help You Understand Webcams Better

With the increase in people’s attention towards social networking sites and other video chat services, webcams have had a greater role to play in the modern internet era. Right from filming silly stuff back home to much serious events like business meetings, these tiny devices are always at your reach. Though they don’t produce the same quality images like your digital cameras, they cost much less and help you broadcast online! In this article we look into understanding few basic things about Webcams.

These Points Help You Understand Webcams Better

What Webcams Do?

The entire process Webcams accomplish can be simplified into these three aspects:

  • Hardware: A Webcam connected to your computer through the USB port.
  • Software: The software which accepts images from the webcam time to time
  • Broadcasting: A server to store your images and broadcast them on the internet.

The hardware involved is similar to that present in digital cameras. The working mechanism involves a small lens which captures light in form of pixels and assigns strings of 1’s and 0’s uniquely to each pixel. Now the most important factor is the frame rate, which determines if this image is just a still image or a streaming video. It is recommended that your webcam has a frame rate of 30 frames per second (A frame is simply one static image).

But the main difference from a digital camera is, a web cam doesn’t have any memory card or such options. All it does is transmits this image information (in form of string of numbers) to the computer. The software then plays its part based on the resources it collects from the user. Generally, the quality of images produced from the webcam is much lower than the basic megapixel digital camera in the market. This is mainly to enable faster transmission of these images even across slow internet connections.

But can your digital cameras be used as webcams?

Actually it’s a ‘YES’ but with many complications. First of all there is no reason in the world you would want to use a digital camera after taking a look at these points:

  • Digital cameras are not made keeping computers in mind, so USB connectivity is a big question mark!
  • Though you have a proper USB connectivity, thing is that the batteries in the digital camera need not more than a 5 minutes charging, after which there is constant heating of your digital
  • With more resolution comes more problems, so if incase you somehow choose not to care of the above issues you will take a beating here. Simply the larger the image size the difficult it gets while streaming and eventually video chat will be a mess.
  • If you are so determined to have such high performing webcam installed to your computer, you can check out the list of few of the best webcams here in our website.

Conclusion:

Frame rate, Resolution, Form, Material with which webcam is made of are a few factors you should consider while purchasing a webcam. Also make sure you are very clear about what you actually need a webcam for and purchase a model as per your requirements.