Enhanced Pixels

Many people use Internet Explorer and never care to download and try any other web browser. Internet Explorer is definitely the most popular browser, but who said that it is the best? Only because it comes for free with your Windows? As a person who prefers Opera and Firefox, I find it inconvenient that some sites only work in Internet explorer. Of course, I have IE installed on my PC and if necessary, I open it, but I prefer not to do it. It would be just another browser open on my computer. Recently, I was wondering, how many people can name other browsers, like Opera, Firefox or Netscape? Probably not everybody, as only those, who live geeky lives, are more likely to be able to do it. However, I am glad that overall awareness of other browsers is growing, and that people are more and more open to other browsers as well. I predict that in the future, there will be many good browsers which we will be able to choose. Today the competition is still not so steep, but in the years to come, there will be more and more companies releasing competitive browsers. I encourage each one of you to try at least one other browser than IE, and see how you like it.

After your child or a teenager already has a PC which suits his needs, it is time to think what other accessories he might need on his PC. If you think about what to buy additionally, think of those:
• Surge protector. I have never had any of my computers run without a good surge protector. If a PC is left unprotected, you risk that it will be exposed to forces that can damage it seriously. This will be especially helpful if you live in a place where storms occur, because storms and lightning can seriously damage a computer. You will have to spend a lot of money repairing your PC if you do not invest in a good and reliable surge protector.
• Printer. This will be especially helpful to your child, if he or she will need to prepare a lot of papers for his class. Before you buy a printer, remember to check the prices of its cartridges. If you buy a printer which requires expensive cartridges, you might end up spending a lot more than you initially planned.
• Digital camera will be a nice addition too. Do not overlook this one. It will enable your child to stay in touch with other children.

These days, floppy disk drives are quite obsolete, and most computers do not have them. However, floppy disk drives can sometimes be useful, for example, in case of running a data erasing program on your HDD. If you have more than one PC, it may not make any sense to buy a floppy disk drive for each one, but instead, you might want to consider a USB floppy drive. This way you can connect it to any computer you want, and the USB floppy drives are usually more reliable compared to the regular ones. Having said that, I also feel that you should also be aware of the limitations of a floppy disk. First of all, it contains only 1.44MB of data, which means that one CD is an equivalent of around 500 floppy disks. Another problem is that floppy disks are not very durable or reliable.

Vista as an operating system has been released a long time ago, but the popularity of this operating system is not as huge as some suspected it would be. Some analysts claim, that this is due to the fact, that vista has so many editions, that consumers are getting disoriented. Vista offers a few versions, including Vista Starter, Vista Home Basic, Vista Home Premium, Vista Business and Vista Ultimate. Different versions often have different hardware requirements. For example, Windows Home Premium and Ultimate might not work smoothly on some computers. Since an average computer user cannot afford to buy an operating system, only to discover later that his computer does not have the recommended system requirements, it seems quite clear why there are some problems selling Vista to people.

Whereas for some of you this tip might be obvious, I believe that there are still many people who are beginners when it comes to computer. Those computer users will appreciate an easy step by step guide on how to get started. After all, each one of us used to be a beginner. To start Microsoft Word, go to your start menu at the bottom left corner of your screen. Here, locate the place where Programs or All Programs are. Click on it to obtain a submenu. Try to find Microsoft Word, and click on it to open it. I recommend that you make a shortcut to Word on your desktop to have access to it at any time. To make a shortcut, right click the Word icon, and select Create Shortcut. Then cut and paste this shortcut wherever you want. It is as easy as that.

Is playing games often associated with laughter? Measuring how often people are laughing while playing games would be an interesting study to conduct. There are many games which are filled with humor, but it seems that the majority of games are action oriented. Actually, most people, when they think of games, they might think of games filled with violence. However, it doesn’t mean all games are like this. For example, Sam&Max or Jack Keane are the examples of games, which are fun to play and filled with humor. Even the recent bestseller – Grand Theft Auto IV, contains many jokes and parodies of cultural symbols, even though the game generally is focused on action. Let’s hope that there will be more games in the futurewhich make us laugh.

Do you think that your credit card details are safe at the restaurants you visit? Even though in most cases your credit card details are safe, hackers have ways to hack into cash register terminals and steal credit and debit card numbers. Such details are often sold later on the Internet, and you can imagine what problems it might cause. This year, there was a situation like this, as two hackers managed to hack into 11 Dave & Buster’s cash register terminals. It has been said, that they captured data for about 5,000 credit and debit cards, which is a quite large number considering those were only two hackers. While I am not saying we should not visit restaurants, I think that we should look a little bit deeper into possible security vulnerabilities at such establishments.

An operating system is one of the most important parts of a computer. While technically it may not be a part of hardware, it is a software which is really necessary. Windows XP is still a very popular operating system, even thought Windows Vista was released some time ago. The question is: when will Windows XP disappear? It may not be easy to answer the question fully, but Microsoft has stated some time ago, that it will stop selling/ allowing to preinstall Windows XP in 2010. There is an exception to this rule, specifically when it comes to very cheap computers being sold in China and India. Such computers will still contain Windows XP to make it possible to keep the price as low as possible.

PowerPoint has many interesting features that can make your presentation very eye capturing and very enjoyable. For example, you can program your slides in such a way, that instead of one slide appearing after another, slides will be disappearing slowly from the screen, and new slides will be emerging in their stead. To change the regular, default transition in PowerPoint to visual transition, follow these steps:

1. Go to the slide that you want to modify in Normal View.
2. Choose Slide Show, then Slide Transition. A dialog window will appear.
3. Choose Effect and choose the effect that suits you: slow, medium or fast.
4. Go to Advanced options and make necessary changes there, like checking Automatically after and selecting the proper amount of time.
5. Select Apply (for a single slide) or Apply All (to all of your slides) to finish the process.

I assure you, that working with PowerPoint is a lot of fun, and that is especially true when you are going to be more and more proficient.

In today’s world, it seems we are surrounded by information and data on every step. Very often, it is difficult to spot which data is really important and worth one’s time. Identifying important trends and data might be the difference of success and failure in many cases, especially in case of many companies. Internet is a great source of information, but the problem is that people often don’t know where to find valuable information and they get buried in unimportant data. It would be hard to me to present you with a solution, but my advice is to have realistic expectations, and not to trust everything you find on webpages, which you do not have a reason to trust. Only then, you will truly benefit from the Internet as a great source of information and data.