Blog posts by Craig Kruger
Click here to view author profile
An introduction to Solid State Drives
Posted: December 12th, 2010 by Craig Kruger
Many higher-end machines are being offered with Solid State Drives these days but the majority of end users aren’t familiar with this technology. So what are Solid State Drives and why are they better than traditional hard drives?
Solid State drives (SSDs) are high-performance plug-and-play storage devices that contains no moving parts. Whereas traditional Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) have arms that move from side to side and platters that spin, SSDs contain no moving parts at all. This gives SSDs a number of benefits over traditional HDDs.
Firstly, SSDs are a lot more reliable and can withstand a lot more shock and vibration than HDDs, with little or no damage or data loss. Secondly, SSDs are considerably faster than HHDs – anything up to 100 times faster, in fact! The typical access time for a SSD is around 35-100 micro-seconds whereas a typical HDD has an access time of 5000-10000 micro-seconds. Thirdly, SSDs use a fraction of the amount of power that HDDs do.
Lastly, whereas HDDs generate a lot of heat due to friction, SSDs generate a lot less heat . This does away with the need for extra cooling fans and is a huge advantage when it comes to laptops and portable devices that need to reduce power consumption for a better battery life.
So with all of these benefits, why are well not all running SSDs on our machines yet? The biggest reason is price; SDDs are more expensive than HDDs at this point in time. Of course, the gap will close but for the time being SSDs are mainly used on the higher-end machines.
Some Interesting IT Facts
Posted: November 15th, 2010 by Craig Kruger
Here are a few interesting facts about IT and the Internet!
- Approximately 6,000 new computer viruses are released every month
- The first computer mouse was made of wood by inventor Doug Engelbart in 1964.
- Hewlett Packard was first started in a garage at Palo Alto in the year 1939.
- Approximately 80 percent of all pictures on the Internet are of naked women.
- There are approximately five porn pages for every ‘normal’ web-page on the Internet.
- The first hard drive was introduced by Seagate in 1979 and held a capacity of 5MB of data.
- Since Tetris was launched in 1982, over 40 million copies of the game have been sold worldwide, earning the creator roughly $800 million in revenues.
- The most expensive game ever developed was “ShenMue” for Sega Dreamcast, with production costs exceeding $70 million.
- It is estimated that there will be approximately 17 billion devices connected to the Internet by the year 2012.
- It only took 4 years for the World Wide Web to reach 50 million users. By comparison, it took the radio 38 years and the television 13 years to do so.
- Approximately 70% of cyber criminals who write viruses work under contract for organized crime syndicates.
Features of Microsoft Office 2010
Posted: October 1st, 2010 by Craig Kruger
Microsoft Office 2010 was officially launched in May this year and it is starting to gain traction in the market, with a growing number of users enjoying the features of this latest version of Office. For many users however, the benefits of this new version of Office are unclear.
Below are some of the highlights of Office 2010:
- Enhanced group productivity with co-authoring, which allows you to edit the same file at the same time as other users (requires SharePoint Foundation 2010 or a free Windows Live ID)
- Keep to schedules with Microsoft Office Web Apps by taking your Office 2010 to the Web; this allows you to save and access your files online (requires SharePoint Foundation 2010 or free Windows Live ID)
- Powerful communication with the new PowerPoint Broadcast Slide Show feature which allows you to present from the comfort of your office to a remote audience, who are able to view your presentation live using their web browser (requires SharePoint Foundation 2010 or a free Windows Live ID)
- Powerful data analysis with Excel 2010s new Sparkline feature, which allows you to create small charts within your worksheet cells
- Streamline Outlook tasks using the new Quick Steps feature, which allows you to perform multiple tasks such as reply and delete with just one click.
© Copyright 2012 CyberLogic
Do you like what you see on this page? Share it with your friends!
Tweet