Moses Dayan

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2010-03-05T21:54:00.001+05:30

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McAfee VirusScan Plus 2008's

2009-12-20T17:30:00.002+05:30

McAfee VirusScan Plus 2008's
interface strives to be novice-friendly, with cute green check marks and red crosses. Unfortunately, while the interface is novice-friendly, the program is not. Some advanced configurations are available only after drilling down two or three menus. During installation, McAfee asks for user input on an important settings question, but the small dialog box doesn't offer enough information to fully explain the ramifications of the settings.

Attempting to cover every security function, this suite handles more than viruses by adding a firewall, hard drive cleaner, disk defragmenter, and network security manager. By including everything and the kitchen sink, McAfee VirusScan Plus 2008 feels bloated and it used more memory than we would have liked. Help is convoluted, and there's a chasm between the novice and expert user. We simply found McAfee too complex for novice users and not as advanced-user-friendly as similar suites.

Download with below link

Code:

http://depositfiles.com/files/k0tginj99

Aryans - Ankhon Main Tera Hi Chehra Bollywood Hindi Pop Album songs

2009-06-08T07:21:00.001+05:30

Listen to Aryans Ankhon Main Tera Hi Chehra Bollywood Hindi Pop Album songs on Dhingana.com

2009-05-27T21:10:00.001+05:30

2009-05-27T21:00:00.001+05:30

How Bluetooth Works

There are lots of different ways that electronic devices can connect to one another. For example:
• Many desktop computer systems have a CPU unit connected to a mouse, a keyboard, a printer and so on.
• A personal digital assistant (PDA) will normally connect to the computer with a cable and a docking cradle.
• A TV will normally connect to a VCR and a cable box, with a remote control for all three components.
• A cordless phone connects to its base unit with radio waves, and it may have a headset that connects to the phone with a wire.
• In a stereo system, a CD player and other audio devices connect to the receiver, which connects to the speakers.
When you use computers, entertainment systems or telephones, the various pieces and parts of the systems make up a community of electronic devices. These devices communicate with each other using a variety of wires, cables, radio signals and infrared light beams, and an even greater variety of connectors, plugs and protocols.
The art of connecting things is becoming more and more complex every day. We sometimes feel as if we need a Ph.D. in electrical engineering just to set up the electronics in our homes! In this article, we will look at a completely different way to form the connections, called Bluetooth. Bluetooth is wireless and automatic, and has a number of interesting features that can simplify our daily lives.
The Problems
When any two devices need to talk to each other, they have to agree on a number of points before the conversation can begin. The first point of agreement is physical: Will they talk over wires, or through some form of wireless signals? If they use wires, how many are required -- one, two, eight, 25? Once the physical attributes are decided, several more questions arise:
• Information can be sent 1 bit at a time in a scheme called serial communications, or in groups of bits (usually 8 or 16 at a time) in a scheme called parallel communications. A desktop computer uses both serial and parallel communications to talk to different devices: Modems, mice and keyboards tend to talk through serial links, while printers tend to use parallel links.
• All of the parties in an electronic discussion need to know what the bits mean and whether the message they receive is the same message that was sent. In most cases, this means developing a language of commands and responses known as a protocol. Some types of products have a standard protocol used by virtually all companies so that the commands for one product will tend to have the same effect on another. Modems fall into this category. Other product types each speak their own language, which means that commands intended for one specific product will seem gibberish if received by another. Printers are like this, with multiple standards like PCL and PostScript
Companies that manufacture computers, entertainment systems and other electronic devices have realized that the incredible array of cables and connectors involved in their products makes it difficult for even expert technicians to correctly set up a complete system on the first try. Setting up computers and home entertainment systems becomes terrifically complicated when the person buying the equipment has to learn and remember all the details to connect all the parts. In order to make home electronics more user friendly, we need a better way for all the electronic parts of our modern life to talk to each other. That's where Bluetooth comes in.
Bluetooth Basics
Bluetooth is a standard developed by a group of electronics manufacturers that allows any sort of electronic equipment -- from computers and cell phones to keyboards and headphones -- to make its own connections, without wires, cables or any direct action from a user. Bluetooth is intended to be a standard that works at two levels:
• It provides agreement at the physical level -- Bluetooth is a radio-frequency standard.
• It also provides agreement at the next level up, where products have to agree on when bits are sent, how many will be sent at a time and how the parties in a conversation can be sure that the message received is the same as the message sent.

The companies belonging to the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, and there are more than 1,000 of them, want to let Bluetooth's radio communications take the place of wires for connecting peripherals, telephones and computers.
Other Wireless Connections
There are already a couple of ways to get around using wires. One is to carry information between components via beams of light in the infrared spectrum. Infrared refers to light waves of a lower frequency than human eyes can receive and interpret. Infrared is used in most television remote control systems, and with a standard called IrDA (Infrared Data Association) it's used to connect some computers with peripheral devices. For most of these computer and entertainment purposes, infrared is used in a digital mode -- the signal is pulsed on and off very quickly to send data from one point to another.
Infrared communications are fairly reliable and don't cost very much to build into a device, but there are a couple of drawbacks. First, infrared is a "line of sight" technology. For example, you have to point the remote control at the television or DVD player to make things happen. The second drawback is that infrared is almost always a "one to one" technology. You can send data between your desktop computer and your laptop computer, but not your laptop computer and your PDA at the same time.
These two qualities of infrared are actually advantageous in some regards. Because infrared transmitters and receivers have to be lined up with each other, interference between devices is uncommon. The one-to-one nature of infrared communications is useful in that you can make sure a message goes only to the intended recipient, even in a room full of infrared receivers.
The second alternative to wires, cable synchronizing, is a little more troublesome than infrared. If you have a Palm Pilot, a Windows CE device or a Pocket PC, you know about synchronizing data. In synchronizing, you attach the PDA to your computer (usually with a cable), press a button and make sure that the data on the PDA and the data on the computer match. It's a technique that makes the PDA a valuable tool for many people, but synchronizing the PDA with the computer and making sure you have the correct cable or cradle to connect the two can be a real hassle.
The Bluetooth Solution
Bluetooth is intended to get around the problems that come with both infrared and cable synchronizing systems. The hardware vendors, which include Siemens, Intel, Toshiba, Motorola and Ericsson, have developed a specification for a very small radio module to be built into computer, telephone and entertainment equipment. From the user's point of view, there are three important features to Bluetooth:
• It's wireless. When you travel, you don't have to worry about keeping track of a briefcase full of cables to attach all of your components, and you can design your office without wondering where all the wires will go.
• It's inexpensive.
• You don't have to think about it. Bluetooth doesn't require you to do anything special to make it work. The devices find one another and strike up a conversation without any user input at all.

Bluetooth Frequency
Bluetooth communicates on a frequency of 2.45 gigahertz, which has been set aside by international agreement for the use of industrial, scientific and medical devices (ISM).

A number of devices that you may already use take advantage of this same radio-frequency band. Baby monitors, garage-door openers and the newest generation of cordless phones all make use of frequencies in the ISM band. Making sure that Bluetooth and these other devices don't interfere with one another has been a crucial part of the design process.
Why is it called Bluetooth?
Harald Bluetooth was king of Denmark in the late 900s. He managed to unite Denmark and part of Norway into a single kingdom then introduced Christianity into Denmark. He left a large monument, the Jelling rune stone, in memory of his parents. He was killed in 986 during a battle with his son, Svend Forkbeard. Choosing this name for the standard indicates how important companies from the Baltic region (nations including Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland) are to the communications industry, even if it says little about the way the technology works.
Avoiding Interference: Low Power
One of the ways Bluetooth devices avoid interfering with other systems is by sending out very weak signals of 1 milliwatt. By comparison, the most powerful cell phones can transmit a signal of 3 watts. The low power limits the range of a Bluetooth device to about 10 meters, cutting the chances of interference between your computer system and your portable telephone or television. Even with the low power, the walls in your house won't stop a Bluetooth signal, making the standard useful for controlling several devices in different rooms.

With many different Bluetooth devices in a room, you might think they'd interfere with one another, but it's unlikely. On the next page, we'll see why.
Avoiding Interference: Hopping
It is unlikely that several devices will be on the same frequency at the same time, because Bluetooth uses a technique called spread-spectrum frequency hopping. In this technique, a device will use 79 individual, randomly chosen frequencies within a designated range, changing from one to another on a regular basis. In the case of Bluetooth, the transmitters change frequencies 1,600 times every second, meaning that more devices can make full use of a limited slice of the radio spectrum. Since every Bluetooth transmitter uses spread-spectrum transmitting automatically, it’s unlikely that two transmitters will be on the same frequency at the same time. This same technique minimizes the risk that portable phones or baby monitors will disrupt Bluetooth devices, since any interference on a particular frequency will last only a tiny fraction of a second.

When Bluetooth-capable devices come within range of one another, an electronic conversation takes place to determine whether they have data to share or whether one needs to control the other. The user doesn't have to press a button or give a command -- the electronic conversation happens automatically. Once the conversation has occurred, the devices -- whether they're part of a computer system or a stereo -- form a network. Bluetooth systems create a personal-area network (PAN), or piconet, that may fill a room or may encompass no more distance than that between the cell phone on a belt-clip and the headset on your head. Once a piconet is established, the members randomly hop frequencies in unison so they stay in touch with one another and avoid other piconets that may be operating in the same room.
Example: Networks
Let’s take a look at how the Bluetooth frequency hopping and personal-area network keep systems from becoming confused. Let’s say you’ve got a typical modern living room with the typical modern stuff inside. There’s an entertainment system with a stereo, a DVD player, a satellite TV receiver and a television; there's a cordless telephone and a personal computer. Each of these systems uses Bluetooth, and each forms its own piconet to talk between main unit and peripheral.
The cordless telephone has one Bluetooth transmitter in the base and another in the handset. The manufacturer has programmed each unit with an address that falls into a range of addresses it has established for a particular type of device. When the base is first turned on, it sends radio signals asking for a response from any units with an address in a particular range. Since the handset has an address in the range, it responds, and a tiny network is formed. Now, even if one of these devices should receive a signal from another system, it will ignore it since it’s not from within the network. The computer and entertainment system go through similar routines, establishing networks among addresses in ranges established by manufacturers. Once the networks are established, the systems begin talking among themselves. Each piconet hops randomly through the available frequencies, so all of the piconets are completely separated from one another.
Now the living room has three separate networks established, each one made up of devices that know the address of transmitters it should listen to and the address of receivers it should talk to. Since each network is changing the frequency of its operation thousands of times a second, it’s unlikely that any two networks will be on the same frequency at the same time. If it turns out that they are, then the resulting confusion will only cover a tiny fraction of a second, and software designed to correct for such errors weeds out the confusing information and gets on with the network’s business.
Example: Half/Full Duplex
Most of the time, a network or communications method either works in one direction at a time, called half-duplex communication, or in both directions simultaneously, called full-duplex communication. A speakerphone that lets you either listen or talk, but not both, is an example of half-duplex communication, while a regular telephone handset is a full-duplex device. Because Bluetooth is designed to work in a number of different circumstances, it can be either half-duplex or full-duplex.
The cordless telephone is an example of a use that will call for a full-duplex (two-way) link, and Bluetooth can send data at more than 64,000 bits per second in a full-duplex link -- a rate high enough to support several human voice conversations. If a particular use calls for a half-duplex link -- connecting to a computer printer, for example -- Bluetooth can transmit up to 721 kilobits per second (Kbps) in one direction, with 57.6 Kbps in the other. If the use calls for the same speed in both directions, a link with 432.6-Kbps capacity in each direction can be made.
Bluetooth Specs
Here are some specification details from the Bluetooth Web site
• The devices in a piconet share a common communication data channel. The channel has a total capacity of 1 megabit per second (Mbps). Headers and handshaking information consume about 20 percent of this capacity.
• In the United States and Europe, the frequency range is 2,400 to 2,483.5 MHz, with 79 1-MHz radio frequency (RF) channels. In practice, the range is 2,402 MHz to 2,480 MHz. In Japan, the frequency range is 2,472 to 2,497 MHz with 23 1-MHz RF channels.
• A data channel hops randomly 1,600 times per second between the 79 (or 23) RF channels.
• Each channel is divided into time slots 625 microseconds long.
• A piconet has a master and up to seven slaves. The master transmits in even time slots, slaves in odd time slots.
• Packets can be up to five time slots wide.
• Data in a packet can be up to 2,745 bits in length.
• There are currently two types of data transfer between devices: SCO (synchronous connection oriented) and ACL (asynchronous connectionless).
• In a piconet, there can be up to three SCO links of 64,000 bits per second each. To avoid timing and collision problems, the SCO links use reserved slots set up by the master.
• Masters can support up to three SCO links with one, two or three slaves.
• Slots not reserved for SCO links can be used for ACL links.
• One master and slave can have a single ACL link.
• ACL is either point-to-point (master to one slave) or broadcast to all the slaves.
• ACL slaves can only transmit when requested by the master.

2009-05-27T20:54:00.000+05:30

2009-05-27T20:47:00.002+05:30

How BIOS Works

One of the most common uses of Flash memory is for the basic input/output system of your computer, commonly known as the BIOS (pronounced "bye-ose"). On virtually every computer available, the BIOS makes sure all the other chips, hard drives, ports and CPU function together.
Every desktop and laptop computer in common use today contains a microprocessor as its central processing unit. The microprocessor is the hardware component. To get its work done, the microprocessor executes a set of instructions known as software (see How Microprocessors Work for details). You are probably very familiar with two different types of software:
• The operating system - The operating system provides a set of services for the applications running on your computer, and it also provides the fundamental user interface for your computer. Windows 98 and Linux are examples of operating systems. (See How Operating Systems Work for lots of details.)
• The applications - Applications are pieces of software that are programmed to perform specific tasks. On your computer right now you probably have a browser application, a word processing application, an e-mail application and so on. You can also buy new applications and install them.
It turns out that the BIOS is the third type of software your computer needs to operate successfully. In this article, you'll learn all about BIOS -- what it does, how to configure it and what to do if your BIOS needs updating.
What BIOS Does
The BIOS software has a number of different roles, but its most important role is to load the operating system. When you turn on your computer and the microprocessor tries to execute its first instruction, it has to get that instruction from somewhere. It cannot get it from the operating system because the operating system is located on a hard disk, and the microprocessor cannot get to it without some instructions that tell it how. The BIOS provides those instructions. Some of the other common tasks that the BIOS performs include:
• A power-on self-test (POST) for all of the different hardware components in the system to make sure everything is working properly
• Activating other BIOS chips on different cards installed in the computer - For example, SCSI and graphics cards often have their own BIOS chips.
• Providing a set of low-level routines that the operating system uses to interface to different hardware devices - It is these routines that give the BIOS its name. They manage things like the keyboard, the screen, and the serial and parallel ports, especially when the computer is booting.
• Managing a collection of settings for the hard disks, clock, etc.
The BIOS is special software that interfaces the major hardware components of your computer with the operating system. It is usually stored on a Flash memory chip on the motherboard, but sometimes the chip is another type of ROM.

BIOS uses Flash memory, a type of ROM.
When you turn on your computer, the BIOS does several things. This is its usual sequence:
1. Check the CMOS Setup for custom settings
2. Load the interrupt handlers and device drivers
3. Initialize registers and power management
4. Perform the power-on self-test (POST)
5. Display system settings
6. Determine which devices are bootable
7. Initiate the bootstrap sequence
The first thing the BIOS does is check the information stored in a tiny (64 bytes) amount of RAM located on a complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) chip. The CMOS Setup provides detailed information particular to your system and can be altered as your system changes. The BIOS uses this information to modify or supplement its default programming as needed. We will talk more about these settings later.
Interrupt handlers are small pieces of software that act as translators between the hardware components and the operating system. For example, when you press a key on your keyboard, the signal is sent to the keyboard interrupt handler, which tells the CPU what it is and passes it on to the operating system. The device drivers are other pieces of software that identify the base hardware components such as keyboard, mouse, hard drive and floppy drive. Since the BIOS is constantly intercepting signals to and from the hardware, it is usually copied, or shadowed, into RAM to run faster.
Booting the Computer
Whenever you turn on your computer, the first thing you see is the BIOS software doing its thing. On many machines, the BIOS displays text describing things like the amount of memory installed in your computer, the type of hard disk and so on. It turns out that, during this boot sequence, the BIOS is doing a remarkable amount of work to get your computer ready to run. This section briefly describes some of those activities for a typical PC.
After checking the CMOS Setup and loading the interrupt handlers, the BIOS determines whether the video card is operational. Most video cards have a miniature BIOS of their own that initializes the memory and graphics processor on the card. If they do not, there is usually video driver information on another ROM on the motherboard that the BIOS can load.
Next, the BIOS checks to see if this is a cold boot or a reboot. It does this by checking the value at memory address 0000:0472. A value of 1234h indicates a reboot, and the BIOS skips the rest of POST. Anything else is considered a cold boot.
If it is a cold boot, the BIOS verifies RAM by performing a read/write test of each memory address. It checks the PS/2 ports or USB ports for a keyboard and a mouse. It looks for a peripheral component interconnect (PCI) bus and, if it finds one, checks all the PCI cards. If the BIOS finds any errors during the POST, it will notify you by a series of beeps or a text message displayed on the screen. An error at this point is almost always a hardware problem.
The BIOS then displays some details about your system. This typically includes information about:
• The processor
• The floppy drive and hard drive
• Memory
• BIOS revision and date
• Display
Any special drivers, such as the ones for small computer system interface (SCSI) adapters, are loaded from the adapter, and the BIOS displays the information. The BIOS then looks at the sequence of storage devices identified as boot devices in the CMOS Setup. "Boot" is short for "bootstrap," as in the old phrase, "Lift yourself up by your bootstraps." Boot refers to the process of launching the operating system. The BIOS will try to initiate the boot sequence from the first device. If the BIOS does not find a device, it will try the next device in the list. If it does not find the proper files on a device, the startup process will halt. If you have ever left a floppy disk in the drive when you restarted your computer, you have probably seen this message. in the above picture

The BIOS has tried to boot the computer off of the floppy disk left in the drive. Since it did not find the correct system files, it could not continue. Of course, this is an easy fix. Simply pop out the disk and press a key to continue.
Configuring BIOS
In the previous list, you saw that the BIOS checks the CMOS Setup for custom settings. Here's what you do to change those settings.
To enter the CMOS Setup, you must press a certain key or combination of keys during the initial startup sequence. Most systems use "Esc," "Del," "F1," "F2," "Ctrl-Esc" or "Ctrl-Alt-Esc" to enter setup. There is usually a line of text at the bottom of the display that tells you "Press ___ to Enter Setup."
Once you have entered setup, you will see a set of text screens with a number of options. Some of these are standard, while others vary according to the BIOS manufacturer. Common options include:
• System Time/Date - Set the system time and date
• Boot Sequence - The order that BIOS will try to load the operating system
• Plug and Play - A standard for auto-detecting connected devices; should be set to "Yes" if your computer and operating system both support it
• Mouse/Keyboard - "Enable Num Lock," "Enable the Keyboard," "Auto-Detect Mouse"...
• Drive Configuration - Configure hard drives, CD-ROM and floppy drives
• Memory - Direct the BIOS to shadow to a specific memory address
• Security - Set a password for accessing the computer
• Power Management - Select whether to use power management, as well as set the amount of time for standby and suspend
• Exit - Save your changes, discard your changes or restore default settings

CMOS Setup
Be very careful when making changes to setup. Incorrect settings may keep your computer from booting. When you are finished with your changes, you should choose "Save Changes" and exit. The BIOS will then restart your computer so that the new settings take effect.
The BIOS uses CMOS technology to save any changes made to the computer's settings. With this technology, a small lithium or Ni-Cad battery can supply enough power to keep the data for years. In fact, some of the newer chips have a 10-year, tiny lithium battery built right into the CMOS chip!
Updating Your BIOS
Occasionally, a computer will need to have its BIOS updated. This is especially true of older machines. As new devices and standards arise, the BIOS needs to change in order to understand the new hardware. Since the BIOS is stored in some form of ROM, changing it is a bit harder than upgrading most other types of software.
To change the BIOS itself, you'll probably need a special program from the computer or BIOS manufacturer. Look at the BIOS revision and date information displayed on system startup or check with your computer manufacturer to find out what type of BIOS you have. Then go to the BIOS manufacturer's Web site to see if an upgrade is available. Download the upgrade and the utility program needed to install it. Sometimes the utility and update are combined in a single file to download. Copy the program, along with the BIOS update, onto a floppy disk. Restart your computer with the floppy disk in the drive, and the program erases the old BIOS and writes the new one. You can find a BIOS Wizard that will check your BIOS at BIOS Upgrades.
Major BIOS manufacturers include:
• American Megatrends Inc. (AMI)
• Phoenix Technologies
• ALi
• Winbond
As with changes to the CMOS Setup, be careful when upgrading your BIOS. Make sure you are upgrading to a version that is compatible with your computer system. Otherwise, you could corrupt the BIOS, which means you won't be able to boot your computer. If in doubt, check with your computer manufacturer to be sure you need to upgrade.

2009-05-21T00:02:00.000+05:30

2009-05-20T23:50:00.002+05:30

CHIPSETS

A chipset or "PCIset" is a group of microcircuits that orchestrate the flow of data to and from key components of a PC. This includes the CPU itself, the main memory, the secondary cache and any devices situated on the ISA and PCI buses. The chipset also controls data flow to and from hard disks, and other devices connected to the IDE channels. While new microprocessor technologies and speed improvements tend to receive all the attention, chipset innovations are, in fact, equally important.
Although there have always been other chipset manufacturers - such as SIS, VIA and Opti - for many years Intel's "Triton" chipsets were by far the most popular. Indeed, the introduction of the Intel Triton chipset caused something of a revolution in the motherboard market, with just about every manufacturer using it in preference to anything else. Much of this was down to the ability of the Triton to get the best out of both the Pentium processor and the PCI bus, together with its built-in master EIDE support, enhanced ISA bridge and ability to handle new memory technologies like EDO and SDRAM. However, the new PCI chipsets" potential performance improvements will only be realised when used in conjunction with BIOSes capable of taking full advantage of the new technologies on offer.
During the late 1990s things became far more competitive, with Acer Laboratories (ALI), SIS and VIA Technologies all developing chipsets designed to operate with Intel, AMD and Cyrix processors. 1998 was a particularly important year in chipset development, with what had become an unacceptable bottleneck - the PC's 66MHz system bus - to finally being overcome. Interestingly, it was not Intel but rival chipmakers that made the first move, pushing Socket 7 chipsets to 100MHz. Intel responded with its 440BX, one of many chipsets to use the ubiquitous Northbridge/Southbridge architecture. It was not long before Intel's hold on the chipset market loosened further still, and again, the company had no-one but itself to blame. In 1999, its single-minded commitment to Direct Rambus DRAM (DRDRAM) left it in the embarrassing position of not having a chipset that supported the 133MHz system bus speed its latest range of processors were capable of. This was another situation it's rivals were able to exploit, and in so doing gain market share.
The following charts the evolution of Intel chipsets over the years, from the time of it's first Triton chipset. During this time there have also been a number of special chipsets optimised for the Pentium Pro or designed for use with notebook PCs.
Triton 430FX
Introduced in early 1995, the 82430FX - to give it its full name - was Intel's first Triton chipset and conformed to the PCI 2.0 specification. It introduced support for EDO memory configurations of up to 128MB and for pipelined burst cache and synchronous cache technologies. However, it did not support a number of emerging technologies such as SDRAM and USB and was superseded in 1996 - little more than a year after its launch - by a pair of higher performance chipsets.
Triton 430VX
The Triton 430VX chipset conforms to the PCI 2.1 specification, and is designed to support Intel's Universal Serial Bus (USB) and Concurrent PCI standards. With the earlier 430FX, a bus master (on the ISA or PCI bus), such as a network card or disk controller, would lock the PCI bus whenever it transferred data in order to have a clear path to memory. This interrupted other processes, and was inefficient because the bus master would never make full use of the 100 MBps bandwidth of the PCI bus. With Concurrent PCI, the chipset can wrest control of the PCI bus from an idle bus master to give other processes access on a timeshare basis. Theoretically, this should allow for data transfer rates of up to 100 MBps, 15% more than the 430FX chipset, and smooth intensive PCI tasks such as video playback when bus masters are present.
The 430VX chipset was aimed fairly and squarely at the consumer market. It was intended to speed up multimedia and office applications, and it was optimised for 16-bit. Furthermore, it was designed to work with SDRAM, a special type of memory that's optimised for intensive multimedia processing. Although the performance gains are slight for this type of RAM over EDO RAM, the advantage is that it can operate efficiently from a single Dual In-line Memory Module (DIMM) and does not need to be paired.
The 430VX provided improved EDO memory timings which was supposed to allow cacheless systems to be built without compromising performance, at least compared to a PC with asynchronous cache. In practice, though, most manufacturers continued to provide at least some secondary cache, with most using synchronous cache to maximise performance.
Triton 430HX
The Triton 430HX chipset is geared towards business machines and was developed with networking, video conferencing and MPEG video playback in mind. It supports multiple processors, has been optimised for 32-bit operation and to work with large memory arrays (up to 512MB) and provides error control (ECC) facilities on the fly when 32-bit parity SIMMs are used. The 430HX does not support SDRAM.
The biggest difference between the HX and VX chipsets is the packaging. Where the VX consists of four separate chips, all built using the traditional plastic quad flat packaging, the HX chipset comprises just two chips, the 82439HX System Controller (SC), which manages the host and PCI buses, and the 82371SB PIIX3 for the ISA bus and all the ports.
The SC comes in a new ball grid array (BGA) packaging which reduces overall chip size and makes it easier to incorporate onto motherboard designs. It exerts the greatest influence on the machine's CPU performance, as it manages communications between the CPU and memory. The CPU has to be fed data from the secondary cache as quickly as possible, and if the necessary data isn"t already in the cache, the SC fetches it from main memory and loads it into the cache. The SC also ensures that data written into cache by the CPU is "flushed" back into main memory.
The PIIX3 chip manages the many processes involved in getting data into and out of RAM from the other devices in the PC. It provides two EIDE channels, both of which can accept two drives. IDE drives contain most of the controlling circuitry built into the hard disk itself, so the PIIX is mainly responsible for shifting data from the drives into RAM and back as quickly as possible. It also provides two 115,200bit/s buffered serial ports, an error correcting Enhanced Parallel Port, a PS/2 mouse port and a keyboard controller. The PIIX also supports additional connections that many motherboards have yet to adopt as the norm, such as a Universal Serial Bus connector and an infrared port.
Triton 430TX
The Triton 430TX includes all the features found on the earlier chipsets, including Concurrent PCI, USB support, aggressive EDO RAM timings and SDRAM support and is optimised for MMX processors and is designed to be used in both desktop and mobile computers.
The Triton 430TX also continues the high-integration two-chip BGA packaging first seen with the 430HX chipset, comprising the 82439TX System Controller (MTXC) and the 82371AB PCI ISA IDE Xcelerator (PIIX4). The former integrates the cache and main memory DRAM control functions and provides bus control to transfers between the CPU, cache, main memory, and the PCI Bus. The latter is a multi-function PCI device implementing a PCI-to-ISA bridge function, a PCI IDE function, a Universal Serial Bus host/hub function, and an Enhanced Power Management function.
The diagram below provides an overview of the overall architecture and shows the division of functionality between the System Controller and the Peripheral Bus Controller components - which are often referred to as "Northbridge" and "Southbridge" chipsets respectively.

The TX incorporates the Dynamic Power Management Architecture (DPMA) which reduces overall system power consumption and offers intelligent power-saving features like suspend to RAM and suspend to disk. The TX chipset also supports the new Ultra DMA disk protocol which enables a data throughput of 33 MBps from the hard disk drive to enhance performance in the most demanding applications.
440LX
The 440LX (by this time Intel had dropped the term "Triton") was the successor to the Pentium Pro 440FX chipset and was developed by Intel to consolidate on the critical success of the Pentium II processor launched a few months earlier. The most important feature of the 440LX is support for the Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP), a new, fast, dedicated bus designed to eliminate bottlenecks between the CPU, graphics controller and system memory, which will aid fast, high-quality 3D graphics.
Other improvements with the LX are more like housekeeping, bringing the Pentium II chipset up to the feature set of the 430TX by providing support for SDRAM and Ultra DMA IDE channels. The chipset includes the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI), allowing quick power down and up, remote start-up over a LAN for remote network management, plus temperature and fan speed sensors. The chipset also has better integration with the capabilities of the Pentium II, such as support for dynamic execution and processor pipelining.
440EX
The 440EX AGPset, based on the core technology of the 440LX AGPset, is designed for use with the Celeron family of processors. It is ACPI-compliant and extends support for a number of advanced features such as AGP, UltraDMA/33, USB and 66MHz SDRAM, to the "Basic PC" market segment.
440BX
The PC's system bus had been a bottleneck for too long. Manufacturers of alternative motherboard chipsets had made the first move, pushing Socket 7 chipsets beyond Intel's 66MHz. Intel's response came in April 1998, with the release of its 440BX chipset, which represented a major step in the Pentium II architecture. The principal advantage of the 440BX chipset is support for a 100MHz system bus and 100MHz SDRAM. The former 66MHz bus speed is supported, allowing the BX chipset to be used with older (233MHz-333MHz) Pentium IIs.
The 440BX chipset features Intel's Quad Port Acceleration (QPA) to improve bandwidth between the Pentium II processor, the Accelerated Graphics Port, 100-MHz SDRAM and the PCI bus. QPA combines enhanced bus arbitration, deeper buffers, open-page memory architecture and ECC memory control to improve system performance. Other features include support for dual processors, 2x AGP, and the Advanced Configuration Interface (ACPI).
440ZX
The 440ZX is designed for lower cost form factors without sacrificing the performance expected from an AGPset, enabling 100MHz performance in form factors like microATX. With footprint compatibility with the 440BX, the 440ZX is intended to allow OEMs to leverage BX design and validation investment to produce new systems to meet entry level market segment needs.
440GX
Released at the same time as the Pentium II Xeon processor in mid-1998, the 440GX chipset was an evolution of the 440BX AGPset intended for use with Xeon-based workstations and servers. Built around the core architecture of its 440BX predecessor, the 440GX includes support for both Slot 1 and Slot 2 implementations, a 2x AGP expansion slot, dual CPUs and a maximum of 2GB of memory.
Importantly, the chipset supports full speed backside bus operation, enabling the Pentium II Xeon's Level 2 cache to run at the same speed as the core of the CPU.

810 AGPset
Formerly codenamed "Whitney", the 810 AGPset finally reached the market in the summer of 1999. It is a three-chip solution comprising the 82810 Graphics Memory Controller Hub (GMCH), 82801 I/O Controller Hub (ICH) and 82802 Firmware Hub (FWH) for storing the system and video BIOS. A break from tradition is that these components don't communicate with each other over the PCI bus. Instead, they use a dedicated 8-bit 266 MBps proprietary bus, thereby taking load off the PCI subsystem. The SDRAM memory interface is also unusual in that it runs at 100MHz irrespective of the system bus speed. There's no ISA support, but it could be implemented if a vendor added an extra bridge chip.
At the time of its launch, there were two versions of the 810 - the 82810 and 81810-DC100. The former is 66MHz part with no graphics memory, while the latter is a 100MHz-capable chip with support for 4MB of on-board graphics memory. The Direct AGP graphics architecture uses 11MB of system memory for frame buffer, textures and Z-buffer if no display cache is implemented. This drops to 7MB if the display cache is implemented. The whole configuration is known as Direct Video Memory technology. Also incorporated in the chipset is an AC-97 CODEC, which allows software modem and audio functionality. Vendors can link this to an Audio Modem Riser (AMR) slot to facilitate future plug-in audio or modem upgrades.
In the autumn of 1999 a subsequent version of the chipset - the 810E - extended support processors with a 133 MHz system bus. The Intel 810E chipset features a unique internal gear arbitration, allowing it to run seamlessly with 66 MHz, 100 MHz and 133 MHz processor busses.
As the cost of processors come down, the marginal costs of the motherboard, graphics and sound subsystems becomes an increasingly important factor in vendors' efforts to hit ever-lower price points. However, high levels of integration can be a double-edged sword: it reduces vendors' bill-of-materials (BOM) costs, but also limits their capability for product differentiation. Many manufacturers defer their decisions on graphics and sound options to late in the production cycle in order to maintain a competitive marketing advantage. Given that other highly integrated solutions - such as Cyrix's Media GX - haven't fared particularly well in the past, the 810 AGPset represents a bold move on Intel's part and one that signals the company's determination to capture a greater share of the "value PC" market which had been effectively ceded to AMD and Cyrix over the prior couple of years.
820 chipset
Originally scheduled to be available concurrently with the Pentium III processor in the spring of 1999, Intel's much delayed 820 chipset was finally launched in November that year. Those delays - which had left Intel in the position not having a chipset that supported the 133MHz system bus speed their latest range of processors were capable of - were largely due to delays in the production of Direct Rambus DRAM (DRDRAM), a key component in Intel's 133MHz platform strategy.
Direct RDRAM memory provides a memory bandwidth capable of delivering 1.6 GBps of maximum theoretical memory bandwidth - twice the peak memory bandwidth of 100MHz SDRAM systems. Additionally, the 820's support for AGP 4x technology allows graphics controllers to access main memory at more than 1 GBps - twice that of previous AGP platforms. The net result is the significantly improved graphics and multimedia handling performance expected to be necessary to accommodate future advances in both software and hardware technology.
The 820 chipset employs the Accelerated Hub Architecture that is offered in all Intel 800 series chipsets - the first chipset architecture to move away from the traditional Northbridge /Southbridge design. It supports a bandwidth of 266 MBps and, with it's optimised arbitration rules which allow more functions to run concurrently, delivers significantly improved audio and video handling. The chipset's three primary components are:
• Memory Controller Hub
• I/O Controller Hub, and
• Firmware Hub.

The Memory Controller Hub provides a high-performance interface for the CPU, memory and AGP and supports up to 1GB of memory via a single channel of RDRAM using 64-, 128- and 256-Mbit technology. With an internal bus running at 1.6 GBps and an advanced buffering and queuing structure, the Memory Hub Controller balances system resources and enables concurrent processing in either single or dual processor configurations.
The I/O Controller Hub forms a direct connection from the PC's I/O devices to the main memory. This results in increased bandwidth and significantly reduced arbitration overhead, creating a faster path to main memory. To capitalise further on this faster path to main memory, the 820 chipset features an integrated AC97 controller in addition to an ATA66 drive controller, dual USB ports and PCI add-in cards.
The Firmware Hub stores system and video BIOS and includes a first for the PC platform - a hardware-based random number generator. The Intel RNG provides truly random numbers through the use of thermal noise - thereby enabling stronger encryption, digital signing and security protocols. This is expected to be of particular benefit to the emerging class of e-commerce applications.
The i820 hadn't long been on the market before Intel - recognising that the price of RDRAM was likely to remain high for sometime - designed and released an add-on chip, the 82805 Memory Translator Hub (MTH), which, when implemented on the motherboard, allowed the use of PC100 SDRAM. Sitting between the i820's Memory Controller Hub (MCH) and the RDRAM memory slots, the MTH chip translates the Rambus memory protocol that's used by RDRAM into the parallel protocol required by SDRAM, thereby allowing the i820 to use this much more price attractive memory.
Within a few months, a bug in the MTH component came to light. This was serious enough to cause Intel to recall all MTH-equipped i820-motherboards. Since it wasn't possible to replace the defective chip Intel took the extraordinary step of giving every owner of an MTH-equipped i820 motherboard a replacement non-MTH motherboard as well as RDRAM to replace the SDRAM that was used before!
815 chipset
The various problems that had so delayed the introduction of Direct Rambus DRAM (DRDRAM), finally resulted in Intel doing what it had been so reluctant to do for so long - release a chipset supporting PC133 SDRAM. In fact, in mid-2000, it announced two such chipsets - formerly codenamed "Solano" - the 815 Chipset and the 815E Chipset.
Both chipsets use Intel's Graphics and Memory Controller Hub (GMCH). This supports both PC133 and PC100 SDRAM and provides onboard graphics, with a 230MHz RAMDAC and limited 3D acceleration. This gives system integrators the option of using the on-board graphics - and system memory - for lower cost systems or upgrading via an external graphics card for either AGP 4x or AGP 2x graphics capabilities.
Additionally, and like the 820E Chipset before it, the 815E features a new I/O Controller Hub (ICH2) for greater system performance and flexibility. This provides an additional USB controller, a Local Area Network (LAN) Connect Interface, dual Ultra ATA /100 controllers and up to six-channel audio capabilities. Integrating a Fast Ethernet controller directly into the chipsets makes it easier for computer manufacturers and system integrators to implement cost-effective network connections into PCs. The ICH2's enhanced AC97 interface supports full surround-sound for Dolby Digital audio found on DVD and simultaneously supports a soft modem connection.
850 chipset
Designed in tandem with the Pentium 4 processor, Intel's 850 Chipset represents the next step in the evolution of the Intel Hub Architecture, the successor to the previous northbridge /southbridge technology first seen on the 810 Chipset. Comprising the 82850 Memory Controller Hub (MCH) and 82801BA I/O Controller Hub (ICH2), the new chipset's principal features are:
• a 400MHz system bus
• dual RDRAM memory channels, operating in lock step to deliver 3.2 GBps of memory bandwidth to the processor
• support for 1.5V AGP4x technology, allowing graphics controllers to access main memory at over 1 GBps - twice the speed of previous AGP platforms
• two USB controllers, doubling the bandwidth available for USB peripherals to 24 MBps over four ports
• dual Ultra ATA/100 controllers support the fastest IDE interface for transfers to storage devices.
To ensure maximum performance, the system bus is balanced with the dual RDRAM channels at 3.2 GBps, providing 3x the bandwidth of platforms based on Intel III processors and allowing better concurrency for media-rich applications and multitasking.
In the autumn of 2002, some 18 months after the i850 was first introduced, the i850E variant was released, extending the capabilities of the chipset to support Hyper-Threading, a 533MHz system bus and PC1066 memory, for Pentium 4 class processors.
i845 chipset
The fact that system builders were obliged to use expensive DRDRAM - by virtue of the absence of any Pentium 4 chipsets supporting conventional SDRAM - had been an issue ever since the Pentium 4's launch at the end of 2000. The situation changed during the course of 2001, with chipmakers SiS and VIA both releasing Pentium 4 chipsets with DDR SDRAM support. Although this was a move of which Intel disapproved, it did have the effect of boosting the appeal of the Pentium 4, whose sales hitherto had been disappointing.
In the summer of 2001 Intel eventually gave in to market pressures and released their 845 chipset - previously codenamed "Brookdale" - supporting Pentium 4 systems' use of PC133 SDRAM. Whilst the combination of i845 and PC133 SDRAM meant lower prices - given that the speed of the memory bus was about three times slower than that of the Pentium 4 system bus - it also meant significantly poorer performance than that of an i850/DRDRAM based system. The reason the i845 didn't support faster DDR SDRAM at this time was apparently because they were prevented from allowing this until the start of the following year by the terms of a contract they'd entered into with Rambus, the inventors of DRDRAM.
Sure enough, at the beginning of 2002 re-released of the i845 chipset. The new version - sometimes being referred to as i845D - differs from its predecessor only in respect of its memory controller, which now supports PC1600 and PC2100 SDRAM - sometimes referred to as DDR200 and DDR266 respectively - in addition to PC133 SDRAM. It had reportedly been Intel's original intention for the i845 chipset to support only DDR200 SDRAM - capable of providing a maximum bandwidth of 1600MBps. However, the boom in the use of DDR SDRAM - and the consequent dramatic fall in prices - caused a rethink and the subsequent decision to extend support to DDR266 (maximum bandwidth 2100MBps). The fact that the company was prepared to make this decision even though it was bound to adversely impact the market share of its i850 chipset appears to indicate that the company's apparent infatuation with DRDRAM is well and truly over.
The 400MHz system bus of the i845 solution enables up to 3.2GBps of memory bandwidth to Pentium 4 processor. Compare this with the up to 1 GBps of data transfer possible from PC133 SDRAM and it is clear why faster DDR SDRAM makes such a difference to overall system performance. Its 1.5V 4x AGP interface with provides over 1 GBps of graphics bandwidth. Other features of the i845 chipset include an 4x AGP interface, 133MBps to the PCI, support for four USB ports, six-channel audio, a generally unused LAN connect interface, dual ATA-100 controllers and CNR support.
The i845 is Intel's first chipset to use a Flip Chip BGA packaging for the chip itself. This improves heat conductivity between the Memory & Controller Hub (MCH) and its heatsink which is required for proper operation. It is also the first MCH built using a 0.18-micron process; earlier versions have been 0.25-micron. The smaller die allows another first - the incorporation of a Level 3-like write cache, significantly increasing the speed at which the CPU is able to write data. It is expected that the transition to 0.13-micron MCH/Northbridges will enable this idea to be further developed, to the point where chipsets include much larger, genuine Level 3 caches on the MCH itself. The i845 further capitalises on the performance advantage realised by its high-speed write cache by the provision of deep data buffers. These play an important role in assisting the CPU and write cache to sustain its high data throughput levels.
A number of newer versions of the i845 chipset were subsequently released, all supporting the USB 2.0 interface (which increases bandwidth up to 40 times over the previous USB 1.1 standard):
• The i845G chipset, incorporating a new generation of integrated graphics - dubbed Intel Extreme Graphics - and targeted at the high-volume business and consumer desktop market segments.
• The i845E chipset, which works with discrete graphics components
• The i845GL chipset, designed for Celeron processor-based PCs.
i845GE chipset
The i845GE chipset was designed and optimised to support Hyper-Threading, Intel's innovative technology that achieves significant performance gains by allowing a single processor to be treated as two logical processors. Whilst not the first i845 chipset to support HT technology, it was the first in which that support was actually implemented, being launched at the same time as the first Intel's first HT-enabled desktop CPU, the 3.06GHz Pentium 4 unveiled in late 2002.
As well as supporting a faster, 266MHz version of Intel's Extreme Graphics core, the i845GE also supports a system bus speed of either 400 or 533MHz, up to DDR333 main memory and offers maximum display (digital CRT or TV) flexibility through an AGP4x connector.
The i845PE and i845GV chipsets are lower-spec variants of the i845GE, the former having no integrated graphics and the latter limiting both the Intel Extreme Graphics core and main memory support to DDR266 SDRAM.
Intel E7205 chipset
At the end of 2002, Intel announced the launch of a dozen Intel Xeon processor family products, including new processors, chipsets and platforms for Intel-based servers and workstations. Amongst these was one single-processor chipset, the E7205, formerly codenamed Granite Bay.
For some time the most viable way of balancing the bandwidth between the Pentium 4 CPU and its memory subsystem had been to couple the i850E chipset with dual-channel RDRAM. However, given the price and availability issues surrounding high-density RDRAM modules, this was a far from ideal solution. Despite - as it's server/workstation class chipset nomenclature implies - not originally being intended for desktop use, the E7205 chipset was to provide an answer to this dilemma. With a specification which includes support for:
• Dual Channel DDR266 memory bus (4.2GBps memory bandwidth)
• 400/533MHz FSB support (3.2GBps - 4.2GBps FSB bandwidth)
• AGP 8x
• USB 2.0, and
• integrated LAN.
it didn't take long for the motherboard manufacturers to produce boards based on the new chipset.
The E7205's memory controller is fully synchronous, meaning that the memory in E7205-based motherboards is clocked at the rate equal to the FSB frequency. Consequently, only DDR200 SDRAM may be used with CPUs supporting a 400MHz FSB and only DDR266 SDRAM with processors supporting a 533MHz FSB. The E7205 does not support DDR333 SDRAM.
With the Pentium 4 family destined to make the transition to a 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus - at which time the CPU's bus bandwidth will increase to 6.4GBps - it appears reasonable to assume that the likely way for memory subsystems to have comparable bandwidth will be the continued use of dual-channel DDR SDRAM. To that extent, the E7205 can be viewed as a prototype of the Canterwood and Springdale chipsets slated to appear in 2003.
i875P chipset
Originally, Intel had planned to introduce a 800MHz FSB in the context of the Prescott, the upcoming 90nm Pentium 4 core. However, in the event this was brought forward to the spring of 2003. The rationale was to extend the Pentium 4's performance curve within the confines of their current 0.13-micron process, without having to increase clock speeds to unsustainable levels. The transition from 533MHz to 800MHz FSB was aided and abetted by an associated new chipset platform, the 875P chipset, formerly codenamed Canterwood.
A 64-bit 800MHz FSB provides 6.4GBps of bandwidth between the Memory Controller Hub (or Northbridge) and the CPU. In a move that appears to further reduce the strategic importance of DRDRAM in Intel's product planning, and that had been signalled by the earlier E7205 chipset, the memory subsystem the 875P uses to balance bandwidth between the Memory Controller Hub (MCH) and memory banks is dual channel DDR SDRAM, all of the DDR400, DDR333 and DD266 variants.
Currently, there are two different strategies being employed in dual-channel memory controllers, one in which where each memory bank has its own memory channel and an arbiter distributes the load between them and the other to actually create a wider memory channel, thereby "doubling up" on standard DDR's 64-bit data paths. The i875P employs the latter technique, with each pair of installed DIMMs acting as a 128-bit memory module, able to transfer twice as much data as a single-channel solution, without the need for an arbiter.
As a consequence, dual channel operation is dependent on a number of conditions being met, Intel specifying that motherboards should default to single-channel mode in the event of any of these being violated:
• DIMMs must be installed in pairs
• Both DIMMs must use the same density memory chips
• Both DIMMs must use the same DRAM bus width
• Both DIMMs must be either single-sided or dual-sided.
The 875P chipset also introduces two significant platform innovations:
• Intel Performance Acceleration Technology (PAT), and
• Communications Streaming Architecture (CSA).
PAT optimises memory access between the processor and system memory for platforms configured with both the new 800Mhz FSB and Dual-Channel DDR400 memory. CSA is a new communications architecture that creates a dedicated link from the Memory Controller Hub (MCH) to the network interface, thereby offloading network traffic from the PCI bus. Used in conjunction with the new Intel PRO/1000 CT Desktop Connection gigabit Ethernet controller, it is claimed that CSA doubles the networking bandwidth possible with traditional PCI bus-based solutions.
Additionally, the 875P chipset includes a high-performance AGP 8x graphics interface, integrated Hi-Speed USB 2.0, optional ECC is supported for users that demand memory data reliability and integrity and dual independent DMA audio engines, enabling a user to make a PC phone call whilst at the same time playing digital music streams. The chipset is also Intel's first to offer native Serial ATA (SATA), a special version designated by the "-R" suffix adding RAID - albeit only RAID 0 (data striping) - support.

i865 chipset
If the i875 chipset can be viewed as the logical successor to i850E, then it's mainstream variant, the i865 chipset - formerly codenamed Springdale - can be viewed as the logical successor to the i845 series of chipsets. Not only do the i875/i865 chipsets represent a huge technological leap compared to their predecessors, but the performance gap between the pair of recent chipsets is significantly less than it was between the i850E and i845 family.
There is a clear trend in PC hardware towards parallel processes, epitomised by Intel's Hyper-Threading technology. However, there are other examples of where performing several tasks at the same time is preferable to carrying out a single task quickly. Hence the increasing popularity of small RAID arrays and now the trend towards dual-channel memory subsystems.
Currently, there are two different strategies being employed in dual-channel memory controllers, one in which where each memory bank has its own memory channel and an arbiter distributes the load between them and the other to actually create a wider memory channel, thereby "doubling up" on standard DDR's 64-bit data paths. In common with the i875P chipset, the i865's Memory Controller Hub employs the latter, the same conditions for dual-channel operation also applying.
The i865 memory controller is the same as that used by the i875P chipset, supporting:
• Hyper Threading
• Dual 64-bit DDR memory channels
• Communication Streaming Architecture bus for gigabit Ethernet
and capable of being paired with either the ICH5 or ICH5R chip - which handles things like the 10/100 Ethernet interface, 6-channel AC97 audio interface, USB 2.0, the PCI bus, etc., to provide the following additional features:
• 8 USB 2.0 ports
• Dual independent Serial ATA ports
The ICH5R also provides software RAID for Serial ATA drives.
The upshot is that - unlike the i875P - i865 chipsets are available in three different versions:
• i865P: supports DDR266 and DDR333 memory only and doesn't support the 800MHz FSB.
• i865PE: as per i865P, plus 800MHz FSB and DDR400 memory support.

• i865G: as per i865PE, plus Intel's integrated graphics core.
While the i865G's graphics core is the same as was featured on the i845G chipset, its performance will be faster, due both to a faster memory subsystem and a higher working frequency of the graphics core itself.
The following table compares a number of major characteristics of the i865P chipset with a selection of Intel's other recent Hyper-Threading chipset offerings

i925X PCI Express chipset
In the summer of 2004 Intel introduced a new family of chipsets that they claimed brought the most profound changes in PC platform architecture in more than a decade. The relative positioning of the chipsets - codenamed Alderwood and Grantsdale - is similar to that of the Canterwood and Springdale chipsets which preceded it. The 925X PCI Express chipset is the higher-end of the two, boasting a number of specific performance enhancements and being designed to deliver the ultimate gaming experience when coupled with Pentium 4 Extreme Edition CPUs.
The new chipsets are designed for use with the latest Prescott-cored Pentium 4 CPUs, designated by the new numeric model naming scheme - initially the 560 at 3.6GHz, down to the 520 at 2.8GHz. They will therefore only be used in motherboards that support Intel's innovative LGA775 package, which facilitates a direct electrical connection between the chip module substrate and the motherboard which the company claims will provide the robust power and signal delivery needed for future performance headroom.
All the new chipsets support Hyper-Threading, an 800MHz FSB and dual-channel DDR2-533 memory and enable a broad spectrum of new platform capabilities:
• Intel High Definition Audio enables multistreaming, 7.1 surround sound and dynamic jack retasking in a groundbreaking PC audio solution that provides performance comparable to high-end consumer electronics (CE) equipment.
• Intel Matrix Storage Technology provides the performance benefits of RAID 0 for media-intensive applications and the added protection of RAID 1 for critical digital media files and data on just two drives.
• The I/O Controller Hub 6 (ICH6R version) supports four 1.5 GBps Serial ATA (SATA) ports with Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) capability, enabling Native Command Queuing for enhanced storage performance.
• Four PCI Express x1 high-speed expansion ports are ready for Gigabit Ethernet and future applications, including multiple TV tuners implemented in a single card.
• Intel Wireless Connect Technology enables users to create or expand a wireless network without external access point hardware. Intel Wireless Connect Technology requires a specific Intel 9XX Express Chipset and a separate Intel wireless LAN solution to operate.
Intel's new Flex memory system introduces some welcome flexibility, with dual-channel operation no longer being restricted to identical memory modules bought in matched pairs. Now the requirement is simply for the same amount of memory - whatever the configuration - in each of the two available banks.
Foremost amongst the innovations is the introduction of the PCI Express (PCX) bus technology. As digital video content becomes ever more important in today’s electronic universe, no single aspect of the personal computing platform requires as much performance increase as the graphics interface.
The new chipsets address this need in the shape of the revolutionary 16x PCI Express graphics interface, as its name implies, an aggregation of 16 lanes. This provides the increased bandwidth and scalability necessary to tackle the most demanding multimedia tasks, with up to four times the theoretical maximum bandwidth over previous generation AGP8X-based solutions - up to 4 GBps of peak bandwidth per direction and up to 8 GBps concurrent bandwidth.
AGP is unceremoniously consigned to history, the new chipsets providing no AGP interface at all. In time 1x PCX will replace the decade-old PCI standard.

i915 Express chipsets
Announced at the same time as the i925X Express", the i915 Express chipset family - codenamed Grantsdale and comprising the i915P and i915G chipsets - have the same features as it's sibling with the exception of some specific performance improvements.
The principal differences between the i915 and i925X chipsets are in graphics and memory support. The i915 supports traditional dual-channel DDR memory as well as the more expensive DDR2 variety. In addition, the i915G chipset includes an integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900, optimised for Microsoft DirectX 9 and capable of providing dual independent display capability with support for the latest 16:9 ratio monitors, in addition to conventional 4:3 displays.

The 3D graphics pipeline is broken up into four major stages, including geometry processing, setup (vertex processing), texture application and rasterisation. The Intel GMA 900 is optimised to use the Intel Pentium 4 processor for software-based geometry processing (such as transform and lighting) defined by Microsoft DirectX 9.
The Intel GMA 900 handles the remaining three stages, including converting vertices to pixels, applying textures to pixels, and rasterisation — the application of lighting and other effects to produce the final pixel value. From the rasterisation stage the Intel GMA 900 writes the final pixel value to the frame buffer for display. Intel GMA 900 includes two independent display pipelines that enable operation of dual displays.
The Intel GMA 900 utilises a shared memory architecture, its support for dual-channel DDR2/533-MHz memory ensuring the memory bandwidth so critically important for quality and performance.

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the inner view of a mouse
pic 2 how a touch screen works

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INPUT DEVICES

Keyboards
A computer keyboard is an array of switches, each of which sends the PC a unique signal when pressed. Two types of switch are commonly used: mechanical and rubber membrane. Mechanical switches are simply spring-loaded "push to make" types, so when pressed down they complete the circuit and then break it again when released. These are the type used in clicky keyboards with plenty of tactile feedback.
Membranes are composed of three sheets: the first has conductive tracks printed on it, the second is a separator with holes in it and the third is a conductive layer with bumps on it. A rubber mat over this gives the springy feel. When a key is pressed, it pushes the two conductive layers together to complete the circuit. On top is a plastic housing which includes sliders to keep the keys aligned.
An important factor for keys is their force displacement curve, which shows how much force is needed to depress a key, and how this force varies during the key's downward travel. Research shows most people prefer 80g to 100g, but games consoles may go to 120g or higher while other keys could be as low as 50g.
The keys are connected up as a matrix, and their row and column signals feed into the keyboard's own microcontroller chip. This is mounted on a circuit board inside the keyboard, and interprets the signals with its built-in firmware program. A particular key press might signal as row 3, column B, so the controller might decode this as an A and send the appropriate code for A back to the PC. These "scan codes" are defined as standard in the PC's BIOS, though the row and column definitions are specific only to that particular keyboard.
Increasingly, keyboard firmware is becoming more complex as manufacturers make their keyboards more sophisticated. It is not uncommon for a programmable keyboard, in which some keys have switchable multiple functions, to need 8KB of ROM to store its firmware. Most programmable functions are executed through a driver running on the PC.
A keyboard's microcontroller is also responsible for negotiating with the keyboard controller in the PC, both to report its presence and to allow software on the PC to do things like toggling the status light on the keyboard. The two controllers communicate asynchronously over the keyboard cable.
Many "ergonomic" keyboards work according to one principle; angling the two halves of the main keypad to allow the elbows to rest in a more natural position. Apple's Adjustable Keyboard has a wide, gently sloping wrist rest, and splits down the middle, enabling the user to find the most comfortable typing angle. It has a detachable numeric keypad so the user can position the mouse closer to the alphabetic keys. Cherry Electrical sells a similar split keyboard for the PC. The keyboard which sells in the largest volumes (and is one of the cheapest) is the Microsoft Natural Keyboard. This also separates the keys into two halves and its undulating design is claimed to accommodate the natural curves of the hand.

Mice
In the early 1980s the first PCs were equipped with the traditional user input device - a keyboard. By the end of the decade however, a mouse device had become an essential for PCs running the GUI-based Windows operating system.

The commonest mouse used today is opto-electronic. Its ball is steel for weight and rubber-coated for grip, and as it rotates it drives two rollers, one each for x and y displacement. A third spring-loaded roller holds the ball in place against the other two.
These rollers then turn two disks with radial slots cut in them. Each disk rotates between a photo-detector cell, and each cell contains two offset light emitting diodes (LEDs) and light sensors. As the disk turns, the sensors see the light appear to flash, showing movement, while the offset between the two light sensors shows the direction of movement.
Also inside the mouse are a switch for each button, and a microcontroller which interpret the signals from the sensors and the switches, using its firmware program to translate them into packets of data which are sent to the PC. Serial mice use voltages of 12V and an asynchronous protocol from Microsoft comprised of three bytes per packet to report x and y movement plus button presses. PS/2 mice use 5V and an IBM-developed communications protocol and interface.
1999 saw the introduction of the most radical mouse design advancement since its first appearance way back in 1968 in the shape of Microsoft's revolutionary IntelliMouse. Gone are the mouse ball and other moving parts inside the mouse used to track the mouse's mechanical movement, replaced by a tiny complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) optical sensor - the same chip used in digital cameras - and an on-board digital signal processor (DSP).
Called the IntelliEye, this infrared optical sensor emits a red glow beneath the mouse to capture high-resolution digital snapshots at the rate of 1,500 images per second which are compared by the DSP and translated changes into on-screen pointer movements. The technique, called image correlation processing, executes 18 million instructions per second (MIPS) and results in smoother, more precise pointer movement. The absence of moving parts means the mouse's traditional enemies - such as food crumbs, dust and grime - are all but completely avoided. The IntelliEye works on nearly any surface, such as wood, paper, and cloth - although it does have some difficulty with reflective surfaces, such as CD jewel cases, mirrors, and glass.

Touchscreens
A touchscreen is an intuitive computer input device that works by simply touching the display screen, either by a finger, or with a stylus, rather than typing on a keyboard or pointing with a mouse. Computers with touchscreens have a smaller footprint, and can be mounted in smaller spaces; they have fewer movable parts, and can be sealed. Touchscreens may be built in, or added on. Add-on touchscreens are external frames with a clear see-through touchscreen which mount onto the monitor bezel and have a controller built into their frame. Built-in touchscreens are internal, heavy-duty touchscreens mounted directly onto the CRT tube.
The touchscreen interface - whereby users navigate a computer system by touching icons or links on the screen itself - is the most simple, intuitive, and easiest to learn of all PC input devices and is fast is fast becoming the interface of choice for a wide variety of applications, such as:
• Public Information Systems: Information kiosks, tourism displays, and other electronic displays are used by many people that have little or no computing experience. The user-friendly touchscreen interface can be less intimidating and easier to use than other input devices, especially for novice users, making information accessible to the widest possible audience.
• Restaurant/POS Systems: Time is money, especially in a fast paced restaurant or retail environment. Because touchscreen systems are easy to use, overall training time for new employees can be reduced. And work can get done faster, because employees can simply touch the screen to perform tasks, rather than entering complex key strokes or commands.
• Customer Self-Service: In today's fast pace world, waiting in line is one of the things that has yet to speed up. Self-service touchscreen terminals can be used to improve customer service at busy stores, fast service restaurants, transportation hubs, and more. Customers can quickly place their own orders or check themselves in or out, saving them time, and decreasing wait times for other customers.
• Control / Automation Systems: The touchscreen interface is useful in systems ranging from industrial process control to home automation. By integrating the input device with the display, valuable workspace can be saved. And with a graphical interface, operators can monitor and control complex operations in real-time by simply touching the screen.
• Computer Based Training: Because the touchscreen interface is more user-friendly than other input devices, overall training time for computer novices, and therefore training expense, can be reduced. It can also help to make learning more fun and interactive, which can lead to a more beneficial training experience for both students and educators.
Any touchscreen system comprises the following three basic components;
• a touchscreen sensor panel, that sits above the display and which generates appropriate voltages according to where, precisely, it is touched
• a touchscreen controller, that processes the signals received from the sensor and translates these into touch event data which is passed to the PC's processor, usually via a serial or USB interface
• a software driver, provides an interface to the PC's operating system and which translates the touch event data into mouse events, essentially enabling the sensor panel to "emulate" a mouse.
The first touchscreen was created by adding a transparent surface to a touch-sensitive graphic digitizer, and sizing it to fit a computer monitor. Initially, the purpose was to increase the speed at which data could be entered into a computer. Subsequently, several types of touchscreen technologies have emerged, each with its own advantages and disadvantages that may, or may not, make it suitable for any given application:
Resistive touchscreens respond to the pressure of a finger, a fingernail, or a stylus. They typically comprise a glass or acrylic base that is coated with electrically conductive and resistive layers. The thin layers are separated by invisible separator dots. When operating, an electrical current is constantly flowing through the conductive material. In the absence of a touch, the separator dots prevent the conductive layer from making contact with the resistive layer. When pressure is applied to the screen the layers are pressed together, causing a change in the electrical current. This is detected by the touchscreen controller, which interprets it as a vertical/horizontal coordinate on the screen (x- and y-axes) and registers the appropriate touch event.
Resistive type touchscreens are generally the most affordable. Although clarity is less than with other touchscreen types, they're durable and able to withstand a variety of harsh environments. This makes them particularly suited for use in POS environments, restaurants, control/automation systems and medical applications.
Infrared touchscreens are based on light-beam interruption technology. Instead of placing a layer on the display surface, a frame surrounds it. The frame assembly is comprised of printed wiring boards on which the opto-electronics are mounted and is concealed behind an IR-transparent bezel. The bezel shields the opto-electronics from the operating environment while allowing the IR beams to pass through. The frame contains light sources - or light-emitting diodes - on one side, and light detectors - or photosensors - on the opposite side. The effect of this is to create an optical grid across the screen. When any object touches the screen, the invisible light beam is interrupted, causing a drop in the signal received by the photosensors. Based on which photosensors stop receiving the light signals, it is easy to isolate a screen coordinate.
Infrared touch systems are solid state technology and have no moving mechanical parts. As such, they have no physical sensor that can be abraded or worn out with heavy use over time. Furthermore, since they do not require an overlay - which can be broken - they are less vulnerable to vandalism and also extremely tolerant of shock and vibration.

Surface Acoustic Wave technology is one of the most advanced touchscreen types. SAW touchscreens work much like their infrared brethren except that sound waves, not light beams, are cast across the screen by transducers. Two sound waves, one emanating from the left of the screen and another from the top, move across the screen's surface. The waves continually bounce off reflectors located on all sides of the screen until they reach sensors located on the opposite side from where they originated.
When a finger touches the screen, the waves are absorbed and their rate of travel thus slowed. Since the receivers know how quickly the waves should arrive relative to when they were sent, the resulting delay allows them to determine the x- and y-coordinates of the point of contact and the appropriate touch event to be registered, Unlike other touch-screen technologies, the z-axis (depth) of the touch event can also be calculated; if the screen is touched with more than usual force, the water in the finger absorbs more of the wave's energy, thereby delaying it more.
Because the panel is all glass and there are no layers that can be worn, Surface Acoustic Wave touchscreens are highly durable and exhibit excellent clarity characteristics. The technology is recommended for public information kiosks, computer based training, or other high traffic indoor environments.
Capacitive touchscreens consist of a glass panel with a capacitive (charge storing) material coating its surface. Unlike resistive touchscreens, where any object can create a touch, they require contact with a bare finger or conductive stylus. When the screen is touched by an appropriate conductive object, current from each corner of the touchscreen is drawn to the point of contact. This causes oscillator circuits located at corners of the screen to vary in frequency depending on where the screen was touched. The resultant frequency changes are measured to determine the x- and y- co-ordinates of the touch event.
Capacitive type touchscreens are very durable, and have a high clarity. They are used in a wide range of applications, from restaurant and POS use to industrial controls and information kiosks.
The table below summarises the principal advantages/disadvantages of each of the described technologies

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pic1 crt monitot
pic2 inner geometry
pic3 dot trio ,aperturegrill, slotted mask respectively
pic4 buttons
pic5 the range of view

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CRT MONITORS

In an industry in which development is so rapid, it is somewhat surprising that the technology behind monitors and televisions is over a hundred years old. Whilst confusion surrounds the precise origins of the cathode-ray tube, or CRT, it's generally agreed that German scientist Karl Ferdinand Braun developed the first controllable CRT in 1897, when he added alternating voltages to the device to enable it to send controlled streams of electrons from one end of the tube to the other. However, it wasn't until the late 1940s that CRTs were used in the first television sets. Although the CRTs found in modern day monitors have undergone modifications to improve picture quality, they still follow the same basic principles.
The demise of the CRT monitor as a desktop PC peripheral had been long predicted, and not without good reason:
• they're heavy and bulky
• they're power hungry - typically 150W for a 17in monitor
• their high-voltage electric field, high- and low frequency magnetic fields and x-ray radiation have proven to be harmful to humans in the past
• the scanning technology they employ makes flickering unavoidable, causing eye strain and fatigue
• their susceptibility to electro-magnetic fields makes them vulnerable in military environments
• their surface is often either spherical or cylindrical, with the result that straight lines do not appear straight at the edges.
Whilst competing technologies - such as LCDs and PDPs had established themselves in specialist areas, there are several good reasons to explain why the CRT was able to maintain its dominance in the PC monitor market into the new millennium:
• phosphors have been developed over a long period of time, to the point where they offer excellent colour saturation at the very small particle size required by high-resolution displays
• the fact that phosphors emit light in all directions means that viewing angles of close to 180 degrees are possible
• since an electron current can be focused to a small spot, CRTs can deliver peak luminances as high as 1000 cd/m2 (or 1000 nits)
• CRTs use a simple and mature technology and can therefore be manufactured inexpensively in many industrialised countries
• whilst the gap is getting smaller all the time, they remain significantly cheaper than alternative display technologies.
However, by 2001 the writing was clearly on the wall and the CRT's long period of dominance appeared finally to be coming to an end. In the summer of that year Philips Electronics - the world's largest CRT manufacturer - had agreed to merge its business with that of rival LG Electronics, Apple had begun shipping all its systems with LCD monitors and Hitachi had closed its $500m-a-year CRT operation, proclaiming that "there are no prospects for growth of the monitor CRT market". Having peaked at a high of approaching $20 billion in 1999, revenues from CRT monitor sales were forecast to plunge to about half that figure by 2007.

Anatomy
Most CRT monitors have case depths about as deep as the screen is wide, begging the question "what is it that's inside a monitor that requires as much space as a PC's system case itself?"
A CRT is essentially an oddly-shaped, sealed glass bottle with no air inside. It begins with a slim neck and tapers outward until it forms a large base. The base is the monitor's "screen" and is coated on the inside with a matrix of thousands of tiny phosphor dots. Phosphors are chemicals which emit light when excited by a stream of electrons: different phosphors emit different coloured light. Each dot consists of three blobs of coloured phosphor: one red, one green, one blue. These groups of three phosphors make up what is known as a single pixel.

In the "bottle neck" of the CRT is the electron gun, which is composed of a cathode, heat source and focusing elements. Colour monitors have three separate electron guns, one for each phosphor colour. Images are created when electrons, fired from the electron guns, converge to strike their respective phosphor blobs.
Convergence is the ability of the three electron beams to come together at a single spot on the surface of the CRT. Precise convergence is necessary as CRT displays work on the principal of additive coloration, whereby combinations of different intensities of red green and blue phosphors create the illusion of millions of colours. When each of the primary colours are added in equal amounts they will form a white spot, while the absence of any colour creates a black spot. Misconvergence shows up as shadows which appear around text and graphic images.

The electron gun radiates electrons when the heater is hot enough to liberate electrons (negatively charged) from the cathode. In order for the electrons to reach the phosphor, they have first to pass through the monitor's focusing elements. While the radiated electron beam will be circular in the middle of the screen, it has a tendency to become elliptical as it spreads its outer areas, creating a distorted image in a process referred to as astigmatism. The focusing elements are set up in such a way as to initially focus the electron flow into a very thin beam and then - having corrected for astigmatism - in a specific direction. This is how the electron beam lights up a specific phosphor dot, the electrons being drawn toward the phosphor dots by a powerful, positively charged anode, located near the screen.
The deflection yoke around the neck of the CRT creates a magnetic field which controls the direction of the electron beams, guiding them to strike the proper position on the screen. This starts in the top left corner (as viewed from the front) and flashes on and off as it moves across the row, or "raster", from left to right. When it reaches the edge of the screen, it stops and moves down to the next line. Its motion from right to left is called horizontal retrace and is timed to coincide with the horizontal blanking interval so that the retrace lines will be invisible. The beam repeats this process until all lines on the screen are traced, at which point it moves from the bottom to the top of the screen - during the vertical retrace interval - ready to display the next screen image.
Since the surface of a CRT is not truly spherical, the beams which have to travel to the centre of the display are foreshortened, while those that travel to the corners of the display are comparatively longer. This means that the period of time beams are subjected to magnetic deflection varies, according to their direction. To compensate, CRT's have a deflection circuit which dynamically varies the deflection current depending on the position that the electron beam should strike the CRT surface.
Before the electron beam strikes the phosphor dots, it travels thorough a perforated sheet located directly in front of the phosphor. Originally known as a "shadow mask", these sheets are now available in a number of forms, designed to suit the various CRT tube technologies that have emerged over the years. They perform a number of important functions:
• they "mask" the electron beam, forming a smaller, more rounded point that can strike individual phosphor dots cleanly
• they filter out stray electrons, thereby minimising "overspill" and ensuring that only the intended phosphors are hit
• by guiding the electrons to the correct phosphor colours, they permit independent control of brightness of the monitor's three primary colours.

When the beam impinges on the front of the screen, the energetic electrons collide with the phosphors that correlate to the pixels of the image that's to be created on the screen. When this happens each is illuminated, to a greater or lesser extent, and light is emitted in the colour of the individual phosphor blobs. Their proximity causes the human eye to perceive the combination as a single coloured pixel.
Resolution and refresh rate
The most important aspect of a monitor is that it should give a stable display at the chosen resolution and colour palette. A screen that shimmers or flickers, particularly when most of the picture is showing white (as in Windows), can cause itchy or painful eyes, headaches and migraines. It is also important that the performance characteristics of a monitor be carefully matched with those of the graphics card driving it. It's no good having an extremely high performance graphics accelerator, capable of ultra high resolutions at high flicker-free refresh rates, if the monitor cannot lock onto the signal.
Resolution is the number of pixels the graphics card is describing the desktop with, expressed as a horizontal by vertical figure. Standard VGA resolution is 640x480 pixels. This was pretty much obsolete by the beginning of the new millennium, when the commonest CRT monitor resolutions were SVGA and XGA - 800x600 and 1024x768 pixels respectively.
Refresh rate, or vertical scanning frequency, is measured in Hertz (Hz) and represents the number of frames displayed on the screen per second. Too few, and the eye will notice the intervals in between and perceive a flickering display. It is generally accepted - including by standards bodies such as VESA - that a monitor requires a refresh rate of 75Hz or above for a flicker-free display. A computer's graphics circuitry creates a signal based on the Windows desktop resolution and refresh rate. This signal is known as the horizontal scanning frequency, (HSF) and is measured in KHz. A multi-scanning or "autoscan" monitor is capable of locking on to any signal which lies between a minimum and maximum HSF. If the signal falls out of the monitor's range, it will not be displayed.
Thus, the formula for calculating a CRT monitor's maximum refresh rate is:
VSF = HSF / number of horizontal lines x 0.95, where
VSF = vertical scanning frequency (refresh rate) and HSF = horizontal scanning frequency.
So, a monitor with a horizontal scanning frequency of 96kHz at a resolution of 1280x1024 would have a maximum refresh rate of:
VSF = 96,000 / 1024 x 0.95 = 89Hz.
If the same monitor were set to a resolution of 1600x1200, its maximum refresh rate would be:
VSF = 96,000 / 1200 x 0.95 = 76Hz.
Interlacing
Back in the 1930s, TV broadcast engineers had to design a transmission and reception system that satisfied a number of criteria:
• that functioned in harmony with the electricity supply system
• was economic with broadcast radio wave bandwidth
• could produce an acceptable image on the CRT displays of the time without undue flicker.
The mains electricity supply in Europe and the USA was 50Hz and 60Hz respectively and an acceptable image frame rate for portraying motion in cinemas had already been established at 24fps. At the time it was not practical to design a TV system that operated at either of the main electricity rates at the receiver end and, in any case, the large amount of broadcast bandwidth required would have been uneconomical. Rates of 25fps and 30fps would reduce the broadcast space needed to within acceptable bounds but updating images at those rates on a phosphor type CRT display would produce an unacceptable level of flickering.
The solution the engineers came up with was to split each TV frame into two parts, or "fields", each of which would contain half the scan lines from each frame. The first field - referred to as either the "top" or "odd" field - would contain all the odd numbered scan lines, while the "bottom" or "even" field would contain all the even numbered scan lines. The electron gun in the TV's CRT would scan through all the odd rows from top to bottom, then start again with the even rows, each pass taking 1/50th or 1/60th of a second in Europe or the USA respectively.
This interlaced scanning system proved to be an effective compromise. In Europe it amounted to an effective update frequency of 50Hz, reducing the perception of flicker to within acceptable bounds whilst at the same time using no more broadcast bandwidth than a 25fps (50 fields per second) system. The reason it works so well is due to a combination of the psycho-visual characteristics of the Human Visual System (HVS) and the properties of the phosphors used in a CRT display. Flicker perceptibility depends on many factors including image size, brightness, colour, viewing angle and background illumination and, in general, the HVS is far less sensitive to flickering detail than to large area flicker. The effect of this, in combination with the fact that phosphors continue to glow for a period of time after they have been excited by an electron beam, is what creates the illusion of the two fields of each TV frame merging together to create the appearance of complete frames.
There was a time when whether or not a PC's CRT monitor was interlaced was as important an aspect of its specification as its refresh rate. However, for a number of years now these displays have been designed for high resolution computer graphics and text and with shorter persistence phosphors, making operation in interlaced mode completely impractical. Moreover, by the new millennium display many alternative display technologies had emerged - LCD, PDP, LEP, DLP etc. - that were wholly incompatible with the concept of interlaced video signals.
Dot pitch
The maximum resolution of a monitor is dependent on more than just its highest scanning frequencies. Another factor is dot pitch, the physical distance between adjacent phosphor dots of the same colour on the inner surface of the CRT. Typically, this is between 0.22mm and 0.3mm. The smaller the number, the finer and better resolved the detail. However, trying to supply too many pixels to a monitor without a sufficient dot pitch to cope causes very fine details, such as the writing beneath icons, to appear blurred.
There's more than one way to group three blobs of coloured phosphor - indeed, there's no reason why they should even be circular blobs. A number of different schemes are currently in use, and care needs to be taken in comparing the dot pitch specification of the different types. With standard dot masks, the dot pitch is the centre-to-centre distance between two nearest-neighbour phosphor dots of the same colour, which is measured along a diagonal. The horizontal distance between the dots is 0.866 times the dot pitch. For masks which use stripes rather than dots, the pitch equals the horizontal distance between two same coloured strips. This means that the dot pitch on a standard shadow mask CRT should be multiplied by 0.866 before it is compared with the dot pitch of these other types of monitor.
Some monitor manufacturers publish a mask pitch instead of a dot pitch. However, since the mask is about 1/2in behind the phosphor surface of the screen, a 0.21mm mask pitch might actually translate into a 0.22mm phosphor dot pitch by the time the beam strikes the screen. Also, because CRT tubes are not completely flat, the electron beam tends to spread out into an oval shape as it reaches the edges of the tube. This has led to some manufacturers specifying two dot pitch measurements, one for the centre of the screen and one for the its outermost edges.
Overall, the difficulty in directly comparing the dot pitch values of different displays means that other factors - such as convergence, video bandwidth and focus - are often a better basis for comparing monitors than dot pitch.
Dot trio
The vast majority of computer monitors use circular blobs of phosphor and arrange them in triangular formation. These groups are known as "triads" and the arrangement is a dot trio design. The shadow mask is located directly behind the phosphor layer - each perforation corresponding with phosphor dot trios - and assists in masking unnecessary electrons, avoiding overspill and resultant blurring of the final picture.
Because the distance between the source and the destination of the electron stream towards the middle of the screen is smaller than at the edges, the corresponding area of the shadow mask get hotter. To prevent it from distorting - and redirecting the electrons incorrectly - manufacturers typically construct it from Invar, an alloy with a very low coefficient of expansion.

This is all very well, except that the shadow mask used to avoid overspill occupies a large percentage of the screen area. Where there are portions of mask, there's no phosphor to glow and less light means a duller image.
The brightness of an image matters most for full-motion video and with multimedia becoming an increasing important market consideration a number of improvements have been made to make dot-trio mask designs brighter. Most approaches to minimising glare involve filters that also affect brightness. The new schemes filter out the glare without affecting brightness as much.
Toshiba's Microfilter CRT places a separate filter over each phosphor dot and makes it possible to use a different colour filter for each colour dot. Filters over the red dots, for example, let red light shine through, but they also absorb other colours from ambient light shining on screen - colours that would otherwise reflect off as glare. The result is brighter, purer colours with less glare. Other companies are offering similar improvements. Panasonic's Crystal Vision CRTs use a technology called dye-encapsulated phosphor, which wraps each phosphor particle in its own filter and ViewSonic offers an equivalent capability as part of its new SuperClear screens.

Aperture Grill
In the 1960s, Sony developed an alternative tube technology known as Trinitron. It combined the three separate electron guns into one device: Sony refers to this as a Pan Focus gun. Most interesting of all, Trinitron tubes were made from sections of a cylinder, vertically flat and horizontally curved, as opposed to conventional tubes using sections of a sphere which are curved in both axes. Rather than grouping dots of red, green and blue phosphor in triads, Trinitron tubes lay their coloured phosphors down in uninterrupted vertical stripes.

Consequently, rather than use a solid perforated sheet, Trinitron tubes use masks which separate the entire stripes instead of each dot - and Sony calls this the "aperture grill". This replaces the shadow mask with a series of narrow alloy strips that run vertically across the inside of the tube. Their equivalent measure to a shadow mask's dot pitch is known as "stripe pitch". Rather than using conventional phosphor dot triplets, aperture grill-based tubes have phosphor lines with no horizontal breaks, and so rely on the accuracy of the electron beam to define the top and bottom edges of a pixel. Since less of the screen area is occupied by the mask and the phosphor is uninterrupted vertically, more of it can glow, resulting in a brighter, more vibrant display.
Aperture grill monitors also confer advantages with respect to the sharpness of an image's focus. Since more light can pass through an aperture grill than a shadow mask, it means that bright images can be displayed with less current. The more current needed to write an image to the screen, the thicker the electron beam becomes. The consequence of this is that the electron beam illuminates areas around the spot for which it is intended, causing the edges of the intended image to blur.
Because aperture grill strips are very narrow, there's a possibility that they might move, due to expansion or vibration. In an attempt to eliminate this, horizontal damper wires are fitted to increase stability. This reduces the chances of aperture grill misalignment, which can cause vertical streaking and blurring. The down side is that because the damper wires obstruct the flow of electrons to the phosphors, they are just visible upon close inspection. Trinitron tubes below 17in or so get away with one wire, while the larger model require two. A further down side is mechanical instability. A tap on the side of a Trinitron monitor can cause the image wobble noticeably for a moment. This is understandable given that the aperture grill's fine vertical wires are held steady in only one or two places, horizontally.
Mitsubishi followed Sony's lead with the design of its similar Diamondtron tube.

Slotted mask
Capitalising on the advantages of both the shadow mask and aperture grill approaches, NEC has developed a hybrid mask type which uses a slot-mask design borrowed from a TV monitor technology originated in the late 1970s by RCA and Thorn. Virtually all non-Trinitron TV sets use elliptically-shaped phosphors grouped vertically and separated by a slotted mask.
In order to allow a greater amount of electrons through the shadow mask, the standard round perforations are replaced with vertically-aligned slots. The design of the trios is also different, and features rectilinear phosphors that are arranged to make best use of the increased electron throughput.

The slotted mask design is mechanically stable due to the criss-cross of horizontal mask sections but exposes more phosphor than a conventional dot-trio design. The result is not quite as bright as with an aperture grill but much more stable and still brighter than dot-trio. It is unique to NEC, and the company capitalised on the design's improved stability in early 1996 when it fit the first ChromaClear monitors to come to market with speakers and microphones and claimed them to be "the new multimedia standard".
Enhanced Dot Pitch
Developed by Hitachi, EDP is the newest mask technology, coming to market in late 1997. This takes a slightly different approach, concentrating more on the phosphor implementation than the shadow mask or aperture grill.

On a typical shadow mask CRT, the phosphor trios are more or less arranged equilaterally, creating triangular groups that are distributed evenly across the inside surface of the tube. Hitachi has reduced the distance between the phosphor dots on the horizontal, creating a dot trio that's more akin to an isosceles triangle. To avoid leaving gaps between the trios, which might reduce the advantages of this arrangement, the dots themselves are elongated, so are oval rather than round.
The main advantage of the EDP design is most noticeable in the representation of fine vertical lines. In conventional CRTs, a line drawn from the top of the screen to the bottom will sometimes "zigzag" from one dot trio to the next group below, and then back to the one below that. Bringing adjacent horizontal dots closer together reduces this and has an effect on the clarity of all images.
Electron beam
If the electron beam is not lined up correctly with the shadow mask or aperture grille holes the beam is prevented from being passed through to the phosphors, thereby causing a reduction in pixel illumination. As the beam scans it may sometimes regain alignment and so succeed in passing through the mask/grille to reach the phosphors. The result is that the brightness rises and falls, producing a wavelike pattern on the screen, referred to as moiré. Moiré patterns are often most visible when a screen background is set to a pattern of dots, for example a grey screen background consisting of alternate black and white dots. The phenomenon is actually common in monitors with improved focus techniques as monitors with poor focus will have a wider electron beam and therefore have more chance of hitting the target phosphors instead of the mask/grille. In the past the only way to eliminate moiré effects was to defocus the beam, but now a number of monitor manufacturers have developed techniques to increase the beam size, without degrading the focus.

A large part of the efforts being directed at improving the CRT's image are aimed at creating a beam with less spread, so that the beam can address smaller individual dots on the screen more accurately - that is, without impinging on adjacent dots. This can be achieved by forcing the beam through smaller holes in the electron gun's grid assembly - but at the cost of decreasing the image's brightness. Of course, this can be countered by driving the cathode with a higher current so as to liberate more electrons. However, doing this causes the barium that is the source of the electrons to be consumed more quickly and so reduces the life of the cathode.
Sony's answer to this dilemma is SAGIC, or small aperture G1 with impregnated cathode. This comprises a cathode impregnated with tungsten and barium material whose shape and quantity has been varied so as to avoid the high current required for a denser electron beam consuming the cathode. This arrangement allows the first element in the grid - known as G1 - to be made with a much smaller aperture, thus reducing the diameter of the beam that passes through the rest of the CRT. By early 1999 the technology had helped Sony reduce its aperture grill pitch to 0.22mm - down from the 0.25mm of conventional Trinitron tubes - the tighter beam and narrower aperture grill working together to provide a noticeably sharper image.

In addition to dot size, control over dot shape is also essential, and the electron gun must correct errors that occur naturally due to the geometry of the tube for optimal performance. The problem arises because the angle at which the electron beam strikes the screen must necessarily vary across the screen's width and height. For dots in the centre of the screen, the beam comes straight through the electron gun and, undeflected by the yoke, strikes the phosphor at a perfect 90 degrees. However, as the beam scans closer to the edges of the screen, it strikes the phosphor at an angle, with the result that the area illuminated becomes increasingly elliptical as the angle changes. The effect is even worse in the corners - especially with screens which aren't perfectly flat - when the dot grows in both directions. If image quality isn't to suffer, it's essential that the monitor's electronics compensate for the problem.
By using additional components in the electron gun, it's possible to alter the shape of the beam itself in sync with the sweeping of the beam across the screen. In effect, the beam is made elliptical in the opposite direction so that the final dot shape on the screen remains circular.
Controls
Not so long ago, advanced controls were found only on high-end monitors. Now, even budget models boast a wealth of image correction controls. This is just as well since the image fed through to the monitor by the graphics card can be subject to a number of distortions. An image can sometimes be too far to one side or appear too high up on the screen or need to be made wider, or taller. These adjustments can be made using the horizontal or vertical sizing and positioning controls. The most common of the "geometric controls" is barrel or pincushion, which corrects the image from dipping in or bowing out at the edges. Trapezium correction can straighten sides which slope in together, or out from each other. Parallelogram corrections will prevent the image from leaning to one side, while some models even allow the entire image to be rotated.

Making more common appearances too, these days, are on-screen controls. These are superimposed graphics which appear on the screen (obscuring parts of the main image) usually indicating what is about to be adjusted. Its the same as TV sets superimposing, say, a volume bar whilst the sound is being adjusted. There's no standard for on-screen graphics, so consequently there's a huge range of icons, bars, colours and sizes in use. Some are much better than others. The whole point, however, is to render adjustments as intuitive, as quick and as easy as possible.
Design
By the beginning of 1998 15in monitors were gradually slipping to bargain-basement status, and the 17in size, an excellent choice for working at 1024x768 (XGA) resolution, was moving into the slot reserved for mainstream desktops. At the high end, a few 21in monitors were offering resolutions as high as 1800x1440.
In late 1997 a number of 19in monitors appeared on the market, with prices and physical sizes close to those of high-end 17in models, offering a cost-effective compromise for high resolution. A 19in CRT is a good choice for 1280x1024 (SXGA) - the minimum resolution needed for serious graphics or DTP, and the power user's minimum for business applications. It's also a practical minimum size for displaying at 1600x1200 (UXGA), although bigger monitors are preferable for that resolution.
One of the main problems with CRTs is their bulk. The larger the viewable area gets, the more the CRT's depth increases. The long-standing rule of thumb was that a monitor's depth matched its diagonal CRT size. CRT makers had been trying to reduce the depth by increasing the angle of deflection within the tube. However, the more the beam is deflected, the harder it is to maintain focus. Radical measures deployed included putting the deflection coils inside the glass CRT; they normally sit around the CRT's neck.
The result of this development effort is the so-called "short-neck" CRT. In early 1998 17in short-neck monitors measuring around 15in deep reached the market. The downside was that the new design had a tendency to degrade images, especially at a screen's corners and edges. This was addressed by improvements in the technology the following year with the introduction of tube designs employing a 100-degree deflection tube - in place of conventional 90-degree tubes - and narrower electron gun assemblies. The consequent increase in the beam deflection angle allowed the gun to be placed closer to the screen without the penalty of any image distortion. The result was a new rule of thumb that short-necked monitors should be about two inches shorter than their diagonal size.
The shape of a monitor's screen is another important factor. The three most common CRT shapes are spherical (a section of a sphere, used in the oldest and most inexpensive monitors), cylindrical (a section of a cylinder, used in aperture-grille CRTs), and flat square (a section of a sphere large enough to make the screen nearly flat).
Flat square tube (FST) is an industry standard term used since 1997 to describe shadow mask monitors that have minimal curvature (but still a curvature) of the monitor tube. They also have a larger display area - closer to the tube size - and nearly square corners. There's a design penalty for a flatter, squarer screen, as the less of a spherical section the screen surface is, the harder it is to control the geometry and focus of the displayed images. Modern monitors use microprocessors to apply techniques like dynamic focusing to compensate for the flatter screen.
FSTs require the use of a special alloy, Invar, for the shadow mask. The flatter screen means that the shortest beam path is in the centre of the screen. This is the point where the beam energy tends to concentrate, and consequently the shadow mask gets hotter here than at the corners and sides of the display. Uneven heating across the mask can make it expand and eventually warp and buckle. Any distortion in the mask means that its holes no longer register with the dot triplets on the screen and image quality will be reduced. Invar alloy is used in the best monitors as it has a low coefficient of expansion.
By 2000, monitors that used alternative mask technologies were available with completely flat screens. The principal advantages of a truly flat surface is that they have minimal glare and display images that have a more realistic appearance. However, these benefits are gained at the cost of accentuating the problem of the shape of the electron beam being elliptical at the point at which it strikes the screen at its edges. Furthermore, the use of perfectly flat glass gives rise to an optical illusion caused by the refraction of light, resulting in the image looking concave. As a result, many tube manufacturers employ a double layer glass surface, the inner surface of which introduces a curve that counters the concave appearance. The downside of this is that it reduces brightness - and sometimes contrast - and can give rise to warping at the screen's corners.
Sound facilities have become commonplace on many PCs, requiring additional loudspeakers and possibly a microphone too. The "multimedia monitor" avoids lots of separate boxes and cables by building in loudspeakers of some sort, maybe a microphone and in some cases a camera for video conferencing. At the back of these monitors are connections for a sound card. However, the quality of these additional components is often questionable, adding only a few pounds to the cost of manufacture. For high quality sound nothing beats decent external speakers which can also be properly magnetically shielded.
Another development which has become increasingly available since the launch of Microsoft's Windows 98, which brought with it the necessary driver software, is USB-compliant CRTs. The Universal Serial Bus applies to monitors in two ways. First, the monitor itself can use a USB connection to allow screen settings to be controlled with software. Second, a USB hub can be added to a monitor (normally in its base) for use as a convenient place to plug in USB devices such as keyboards and mice. The hub provides the connection to the PC.
Digital CRTs
Nearly 99 percent of all video displays sold in 1998 were connected using an analogue VGA interface, an ageing technology that represents the minimum standard for a PC display. In fact, today VGA represents an impediment to the adoption of new flat panel display technologies, largely because of the added cost for these systems to support the analogue interface. Another fundamental is the degradation of image quality that occurs when a digital signal is converted to analogue, and then back to digital before driving an analogue input LCD display.
The autumn of 1998 saw the formation of Digital Display Working Group (DDWG) - including computer industry leaders Intel, Compaq, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, NEC and Silicon Image - with the objective of delivering a robust, comprehensive and extensible specification of the interface between digital displays and high-performance PCs. In the spring of 1999 the DDWG approved the first version of the Digital Visual Interface (DVI) specification based on Silicon Image's PanelLink technology, using a Transition Minimised Differential Signaling (TMDS) digital signal protocol.
Whilst primarily of benefit to flat panel displays - which can now operate in an standardised all-digital environment without the need to perform an analogue-to-digital conversion on the signals from the graphics card driving the display device - the DVI specification potentially has ramifications for conventional CRT monitors too.
Most complaints of poor image quality on CRTs can be traced to incompatible graphics controllers on the motherboard or graphics card. In today's cost-driven market, marginal signal quality is not all that uncommon. The incorporation of DVI with a traditional analogue CRT monitor will allow monitors to be designed to receive digital signals, with the necessary digital-to-analogue conversion being carried out within the monitor itself. This will give manufacturers added control over final image quality, making differentiation based on image quality much more of a factor than it has been hitherto. However, the application of DVI with CRT monitors is not all plain sailing.

One of the drawbacks is that since it was originally designed for use with digital flat panels, DVI has a comparatively low bandwidth of 165MHz. This means that a working resolution of 1280x1024 could be supported at up to an 85Hz refresh rate. Although this isn't a problem for LCD monitors, it's a serious issue for CRT displays. The DVI specification supports a maximum resolution of 1600x1200 at a refresh rate of only 60Hz - totally unrealistic in a world of ever increasing graphics card performance and ever bigger and cheaper CRT monitors.
The solution is the provision of additional bandwidth overhead for horizontal and vertical retrace intervals - facilitated through the use of two TMDS links. With such an arrangement digital CRTs compliant with VESA's Generalised Timing Formula (GTF) would be capable of easily supporting resolutions exceeding 2.75 million pixels at an 85Hz refresh rate. However, implementation was to prove to be difficult, with noise, reflections, skew and drive limitations within DVI chips making it difficult to achieve the theoretical potential of a dual DVI link. In the event it was not until 2002 that the first dual-link DVI graphics cards began to emerge.
Another problem is that it's more expensive to digitally scale the refresh rate of a monitor than using a traditional analogue multisync design. This could lead to digital CRTs being more costly than their analogue counterparts. An alternative is for digital CRTs to have a fixed frequency and resolution like a LCD display and thereby eliminate the need for multisync technology.
DVI anticipates that in the future screen refresh functionality will become part of the display itself. New data will need to be sent to the display only when changes to the data need to be displayed. With a selective refresh interface, DVI can maintain the high refresh rates required to keep a CRT display ergonomically pleasing while avoiding an artificially high data rate between the graphics controller and the display. Of course, a monitor would have to employ frame buffer memory to enable this feature.
The first DVI-compliant controller designed specifically for implementation in digital CRT monitors came to market during 2001, and by the end of that year DVI had become firmly and the sales of flat panels had surged to such an extent that prices fell dramatically. However, it remained unclear as to how relevant DVI was going to be for conventional monitors, with some convinced that DVI was the future of CRT technology and others remaining sceptical.

LightFrame technology
CRT monitors and TVs have each been optimised for the applications they've been traditionally used for. The former excel at displaying close-up high-resolution content, such as text, while lower-resolution TV screens' larger dot pitch and higher light output make them more suitable for rendering low-resolution photography such as film, intended for viewing at a distance.
TVs can use an extremely high beam current to produce vivid images, and take advantage of a phenomenon called "pixel blooming", in which adjacent pixels illuminate one another, thereby achieving a higher level of brightness. Another TV technique is "peaking", which artificially sharpens a video signal's light/dark transitions.
The problem is that neither of these techniques is appropriate on high-resolution PC monitors, as they would result in a performance degradation in traditional computer applications - such as word processing and spreadsheets. Consequently, PC users have had to live with TV-quality applications often appearing flat, dull and lifeless when displayed on a CRT monitor. Of course, the rise of home video editing, DVD playback on the desktop and even video content on the Web means this deficiency has become increasingly unacceptable.
Philips' answer to the problem came in the shape of their unique and innovative LightFrame technology, first revealed in late 2000. In essence, LightFrame seeks to simulate the output performance of a TV screen on a PC monitor, theoretically delivering the best of both worlds.
It comprises a software application and an integrated circuit embedded in a monitor which work together to selectively raise brightness and sharpness. The software transmits co-ordinates of the selected screen area to the monitor by writing instructions on the last line of the video signal. These are translated by a proprietary integrated circuit in the monitor to boost sharpness and brightness in the selected area before being blanked out. Non-selected portions of the screen are unaffected by the process.
Extensive testing has confirmed that LightFrame does not adversely effect monitor life. Modern-day monitors have improved phosphors, designed for high light output. Though the peak brightness of a highlighted area is strongly increased, the average brightness - a determining factor for cathode deterioration - is not normally increased. In any case, LightFrame employs a special Automatic Beam Limited (ABL) circuit to keep a monitor's maximum average brightness within acceptable levels.
A year after the technology was first introduced, LightFrame 2 was launched, offering automatic detection and enhancement of applications that benefit from the technology. This was followed in the summer of 2002 by the announcement of LightFrame 3, boasting the ability to automatically enhance up to 16 images simultaneously in Microsoft's Internet Explorer and up to 8 when using photo-viewing applications. Interestingly, Philips intend to migrate LightFrame 3 to its LCD monitors too.
LightFrame works by identifying a rectangular screen area for highlighting. On occasions, certain backgrounds or borders prevent a photo or video from being detected automatically. In such cases it's necessary to highlight it manually. This is accomplished by dragging a rectangle to encompass the selected area, or, to select an entire window, by a single click of the mouse.

Safety standards
In the late 1980s concern over possible health issues related to monitor use led Swedac, the Swedish testing authority, to make recommendations concerning monitor ergonomics and emissions. The resulting standard was called MPR1. This was amended in 1990 to the internationally adopted MPR2 standard, which called for the reduction of electrostatic emissions with a conductive coating on the monitor screen.
In 1992 a further standard, entitled TCO, was introduced by the Swedish Confederation of Professional Employees. The emission levels in TCO92 were based on what monitor manufacturers thought was possible rather than on any particular safety level, while MPR2 had been based on what they could achieve without a significant cost increase. As well as setting stiffer levels for emission it required monitors to meet the international EN60950 standard for electrical and fire safety. Subsequent TCO standards were introduced in 1995 and again in 1999.
Apart from Sweden, the main impetus for safety standards has come from the US. In 1993, VESA initiated its DPMS standard, or Display Power Management Signalling. A DPMS compliant graphics card enables the monitor to achieve four states: on, standby, suspend and off, at user-defined periods. Suspend mode must draw less than 8W so the CRT, its heater and its electron gun are likely to be shut off. Standby takes the power consumption down to below about 25W, with the CRT heater usually left on for faster resuscitation.
VESA has also produced several standards for plug-and-play monitors. Known under the banner of DDC (Display Data Channel), they should in theory allow your system to figure out and select the ideal settings, but in practice this very much depends on the combination of hardware.
EPA Energy Star is a power saving standard, mandatory in the US and widely adopted in Europe, requiring a mains power saving mode drawing less than 30W. Energy Star was initiated in 1993 but really took hold in 1995 when the US Government, the world's largest PC purchaser, adopted a policy to buy only Energy Star compliant products.
Other relevant standards include:
• ISO 9241 part 3, the international standard for monitor ergonomics
• EN60950, the European standard for the electrical safety of IT equipment
• the German TUV/EG mark, which means a monitor has been tested to both standards, in addition to the German standard for basic ergonomics (ZH/618) and MPR2 emission levels.
TCO standards
In 1995, TCO modified the requirements for visual ergonomics and added a range of conditions to cover environmental issues, including the use of certain chemicals in manufacturing and the recycling of components. The most stringent standard so far, and the result of collaboration between the TCO (The Swedish Confederation of Professional Employees), Naturskyddsforeningen (The Swedish Society for Nature Conservation) and NUTEK (The National Board for Industry and Technical Development in Sweden), TCO95 became the first global environmental labelling scheme. It was more comprehensive than the German Blue Angel label and more exacting than the ISO international standards. The display, system unit and keyboard can be certified separately and the manufacturer's environmental policy is addressed at every stage from production to disposal. Over and above TCO92, the product may not contain cadmium or lead, the plastic housing must be of biodegradable material and free of brominated flame retardants and the production process must avoid use of CFCs (freons) and chlorinated solvents. The emission and power saving requirements remain unaltered although picture performance and luminance uniformity have been addressed.
TCO standards also require that screens be treated with conductive coatings to reduce the static charge on the monitor. Although static electricity generated on the front surface of a CRT has been alleged to be a factor in a number of health risks, it has not yet been confirmed.
TCP99 is the latest iteration of the standard. TCO99 doesn't change the emission levels from those in the previous versions, but it does alter the testing procedures to deal with certain loopholes. The new approval mainly concentrates on improving the visual ergonomics requirements. Improvements in visual ergonomics include better luminance uniformity and contrast. There is also a new requirement that screen colour temperature adjustment, when present, should be accurate.
To reduce eye fatigue caused by image flicker, the minimum required refresh rate is increased to 85Hz for displays of less than 20in, with 100MHz recommended, and to a minimum of 75Hz for 20in or greater. Although harder to control, there are measures to address the problem of screen contrast in the office environment. To help manufacturers achieve the right balance between anti-reflection treatment and the minimum amount of light reaching the user, a minimum diffuse reflectance level of 20% is specified.
More exacting attention is paid to power saving and environmental impact, with TCO99-certified monitors saving up to 50% more energy than TCO95 displays. There's a different requirement for monitors with USB hubs, which can suspend at 15W and restart in three seconds; non-USB monitors must suspend at 5W. Manufacturing requirements are more stringent too. No chlorinated solvents may be used and product vendors must provide corporate and domestic customers with a recycling path using a competent recycling body.
Ergonomics
Whilst the quality of the monitor and graphics card, and in particular, the refresh rate at which the combination can operate is of crucial importance in ensuring that users spending long hours in front of a CRT monitor can do so in as much comfort as possible, it is not the only factor that should be considered. Physical positioning is also important, and expert advice has recently been revised in this area. Previously it had been thought that the centre of the monitor should be at eye level. It is now believed that to reduce fatigue as much as possible, the top of the screen should be at eye level, with the screen between 0 and 30 degrees below the horizontal and tilted slightly upwards. However, seeking to achieve this arrangement with furniture designed in accordance with the previous rules is not that easy to achieve, however, without causing other problems with respect to seating position and, for example, the comfortable positioning of keyboard and mouse. It is also important to sit directly in front of the monitor rather than to one side, and to locate the screen so as to avoid reflections and glare from external light sources.

2009-05-20T22:05:00.003+05:30

*GRAPHIC FILE FORMAT*

BMP:This file format is meant for bitmap graphics.The file extension is .bmp files in all most every graphic application.
CDR:This is proprietary file format of Corel Draw,meant for graphics. The file extension is .cdr.
PSD: This is proprietary file format of Adobe Photoshop meant for bitmap graphics. PSD is derived from photoshop document.The file name extension is .psd.
AI: This is proprietary file format of Adobe Illustrator,meant for Vector graphics.The file name is .ai.You can open this file in Adobe Illstrator,Adobe Pagemaker,Adobe photoshop,Corel draw.
CGM:Derived from Computer Graphics Meta file.This is meant for vector graphics,as well as bitmap graphics.
DIB:The acronym denotes Device Independent Bitmap.It is revised edition of the BMP format,needless to say,it is mant for bitmap graphics.
EPS:Encapsulated Post Script is a comprahensive format meant for both vector graphics & bitmap.We utilize this format if the printer we use is a post script one.
GIF:Graphics Interchange Format is meant for bitamp graphics.It is developed by Compuserve,a very popular online service.It is the most popular format on websites.(.gif)
JPEG:Joint Photoshop Experts Group(.jpg).JPEG Compression results in file-size reduction and loss of quality.
TIFF:Tagged Image File Format,developed by Aldus & Micro –soft,if it is meant for bitmap graphics(.tif).
WMF:Windows Meta File format,by MicroSoft for both bitmap and vector graphics.(.wmf)
EMF:Enhanced Meta File format is nothing but the 32-bit version of the wmf format.
XML:Extensible Markup Language.(.xml)
PNG: Portable Network Graphics (PNG) format is used for lossless compression and for display of images on the web. PNG supports 24-bit images and produces background transparency. some web browsers do not support PNG images. PNG format supports RGB, Indexed Color, Grayscale, and Bitmap mode images without alpha channels.
PBM: The Portable Bit Map (PBM) file format, also known as Portable Bitmap Library and Portable Binary Map, supports monochrome bitmaps (1 bit per pixel). The format can be used for lossless data transfer because many applications support this format.
IFF : (Interchange File Format) It is a general-purpose data storage format that can associate and store multiple types of data. IFF is portable and has extensions that support still-picture, sound, music, video, and textual data.
PDF:( Portable Document Format)

Result Windows
Normal Shift + Alt + N
Dissolve Shift + Alt + I
Behind (Brush tool only) Shift + Alt + Q
Clear (Brush tool only) Shift + Alt + R
Darken Shift + Alt + K
Multiply Shift + Alt + M
Color Burn Shift + Alt + B
Linear Burn Shift + Alt + A
Lighten Shift + Alt + G
Screen Shift + Alt + S
Color Dodge SHIFT+ Alt + D
Linear Dodge Shift + Alt + W
Overlay Shift + Alt + O
Soft Light Shift + Alt + F
Hard Light Shift + Alt + H
Vivid Light Shift + Alt + V
Linear Light Shift + Alt + J
Pin Light Shift + Alt + Z
Hard Mix Shift + Alt + L
Difference Shift + Alt + E
Exclusion Shift + Alt + X
Hue Shift + Alt + U
Saturation Shift + Alt + T
Color Shift + Alt + C
Luminosity Shift + Alt + Y
Desaturate* Sponge tool + Shift + Alt + D
Saturate* Sponge tool + Shift + Alt + S
Dodge/burn shadows* Dodge tool/Burn tool + Shift + Alt + S
Dodge/burn midtones* Dodge tool/Burn tool + Shift + Alt + M
Dodge/burn highlights* Dodge tool/Burn tool + Shift + Alt + H

2009-05-20T21:48:00.003+05:30

SOUND CARDS

Sound is a relatively new capability for PCs because no-one really considered it when the PC was first designed. The original IBM-compatible PC was designed as a business tool, not as a multimedia machine, so it's hardly surprising that nobody thought of including a dedicated sound chip in its architecture. Computers, after all, were seen as calculating machines; the only kind of sound necessary was the beep that served as a warning signal. For years, the Apple Macintosh had built-in sound capabilities far beyond the realms of the early PC's beeps and clicks, and PC's with integrated sound are a recent phenomenon.
By the second half of the 1990s PCs had the processing power and storage capacity for them to be able to handle demanding multimedia applications. The sound card too underwent a significant acceleration in development in the late 1990s, fuelled by the introduction of AGP and the establishment of PCI-based sound cards. Greater competition between sound card manufacturers - together with the trend towards integrated sound - has led to ever lower prices. However, as the horizons for what can be done on a PC get higher and higher, there remain many who require top-quality sound. The result is that today's add-in sound cards don't only make games and multimedia applications sound great, but with the right software allow users to compose, edit and mix their own music, learn to play the instrument of their choice and record, edit and play digital audio from a variety of sources.
The physics of sound
Sound is produced when two or more objects collide, releasing a wave of energy which in turn forces changes in the surrounding air pressure. These changes in pressure are received by our eardrums, and our brain interprets them as sound. Sound waves move in all directions from the disturbance, like ripples produced when a stone is dropped into a pond.
When sound is recorded through a microphone, the changes in air pressure cause the microphone's diaphragm to move in a similar way to that of the eardrum. These minute movements are then converted into changes in voltage. Essentially, all sound cards produce sound in this way, only in reverse. They create, or play back, sound waves. The changes in voltage are then amplified, causing the loudspeaker to vibrate. These vibrations cause changes in air pressure which are further interpreted as sound.

The human brain is a very cunning processor which in terms of audio can pretty much determine the location and condition of a sound given just two ears and the ability to turn using our head and body. The sound source could be a car engine, a mouth, a musical instrument, slamming door, or even a glass breaking as it hits the door. The source itself radiates the sound in a variety of ways - most of the sound out of a person's mouth comes from where their face is pointing, whereas an engine radiates sound in pretty much all directions. Once the sound is radiated, the environment comes into play. The actual medium between source and listener greatly affects the sound, as anyone knows who has shouted on a windy day, or heard something underwater. Thus, the sound that is heard is a mixture of direct path sound and reflected sound. Reflected sound might reach our ears after bouncing off a wall or object, and the material of these obstacles absorbs certain frequencies, along with reducing the overall volume. This "first-order reflection" arrives not only sounding different from the direct source, but also slightly after it. Second-order reflections and so on take this effect further still. The quality and delay of the reflected sound reveals a great deal about the surrounding environment and its size.
Most humans can perceive precisely where first-order reflections are coming from, and some can distinguish second-order reflections too. However, as more and more reflections arrive at the ear, the brain tends to combine them into one late-order reflection echoing effect known as reverb. Using reverb properly is the first key to simulating different environments.
Components
The modern PC sound card contains several hardware systems relating to the production and capture of audio, the two main audio subsystems being for digital audio capture and replay and music synthesis along with some glue hardware. Historically, the replay and music synthesis subsystem has produced sound waves in one of two ways:
• through an internal FM synthesiser
• by playing a digitised, or sampled, sound.
The digital audio section of a sound card consists of a matched pair of 16-bit digital-to-analogue (DAC) and analogue-to-digital (ADC) converters and a programmable sample rate generator. The computer reads the sample data to or from the converters. The sample rate generator clocks the converters and is controlled by the PC. While it can be any frequency above 5kHz, it's usually a fraction of 44.1kHz.
Most cards use one or more Direct Memory Access (DMA) channels to read and write the digital audio data to and from the audio hardware. DMA-based cards that implement simultaneous recording and playback (or full duplex operation) use two channels, increasing the complexity of installation and the potential for DMA clashes with other hardware. Some cards also provide a direct digital output using an optical or coaxial S/PDIF connection.
A card's sound generator is based on a custom Digital Signal Processor (DSP) that replays the required musical notes by multiplexing reads from different areas of the wavetable memory at differing speeds to give the required pitches. The maximum number of notes available is related to the processing power available in the DSP and is referred to as the card's "polyphony".
DSPs use complex algorithms to create effects such as reverb, chorus and delay. Reverb gives the impression that the instruments are being played in large concert halls. Chorus is used to give the impression that many instruments are playing at once when in fact there's only one. Adding a stereo delay to a guitar part, for example, can "thicken" the texture and give it a spacious stereo presence.
Frequency Modulation
The first widespread technology to be used in sound cards was Frequency Modulation, or FM, which was developed in the early 1970s by Dr John Chowning of Stanford University. FM synthesisers produce sound by generating a pure sine wave, known as a carrier, and mix it with a second waveform, known as a modulator. When the two waveforms are close in frequency, a complex waveform is produced. By controlling both the carrier and the modulator its possible to create different timbres, or instruments.
Each FM voice requires a minimum of two signal generators, commonly referred to as "operators". Different FM synthesis implementations have varying degrees of control over the operator parameters. Sophisticated FM systems may use 4 or 6 operators per voice, and the operators may have adjustable envelopes which allow adjustment of the attack and decay rates of the signal.
Yamaha was the first company to research and invest in Chowning's theory, which led to the development of the legendary DX7 synthesiser. Yamaha soon realised that mixing a wider range of carriers and modulators made it possible to create more complex timbres, resulting in more realistic sounding instruments. Their OPL3 synthesiser hardware is the de facto standard for games cards, and uses parameters downloaded from the driver software to control cascaded FM oscillators to generate a crude analogue of acoustic and electronic musical instruments.
Although FM systems were implemented in the analogue domain on early synthesiser keyboards, more recent FM synthesis implementations are done digitally. FM synthesis techniques are very useful for creating expressive new synthesised sounds. However, if the goal of the synthesis system is to recreate the sound of some existing instrument, this can generally be done more accurately with digital sample-based techniques, such as WaveTable Synthesis.
WaveTable synthesis
WaveTable doesn't use carriers and modulators to create sound, but actual samples of real instruments. A sample is a digital representation of a waveform produced by an instrument. ISA-based cards generally store samples in ROM, although newer PCI products use the PC's main system RAM, in banks which are loaded when Windows starts up and can theoretically be modified to include new sounds.
Whereas one FM sound card will sound much the same as the next, WaveTable cards differ significantly in quality. The quality of the instruments is determined by several factors:
• the quality of the original recordings
• the frequency at which the samples were recorded
• the number of samples used to create each instrument
• the compression methods used to store the samples.
Most instrument samples are recorded in 16-bit 44.1kHz but many manufacturers compress the data so that more samples, or instruments, can be fit into small amounts of memory. There is a trade-off, however, since compression often results in loss of dynamic range or quality.
When an audio cassette is played back either too fast or too slow, its pitch is modified. The same is true of digital audio. Playing a sample back at a higher frequency than its original results in a higher pitched sound, allowing instruments to play over several octaves. But when certain timbres are played back too fast, they begin to sound weak and thin. This is also true when a sample is played too slow: it sounds dull and unrealistic. To overcome this, manufacturers split up the keyboard into several regions and apply the relatively pitched sample from the instrument to it. The more sample regions recorded results in a more realistic reproduction.
Every instrument produces subtly different timbres depending on how it is played. For example, when a piano is played softly, you don't hear the hammers hitting the strings. When it's played harder, not only does this become more apparent, but there are also changes in tone.
Many samples and variations have to be recorded for each instrument to recreate this range of sound accurately with a synthesiser. Inevitably, more samples require more memory. A typical sound card may contain up to 700 instrument samples within 4MB ROM. To accurately reproduce a piano sound alone, however, would require between 6MB and 10MB of data. This is why there is no comparison between the synthesised sound and the real thing.
Upgrading to WaveTable sound doesn't always mean having to buy a new sound card. Most 16-bit sound cards have a feature connector that can connect to a WaveTable daughterboard. The quality of the instruments such cards provide differs significantly, and is usually a function of how much ROM the card has. Most cards contain between 1MB and 4MB of samples, and offer a range of digital effects.
Connectivity
Since 1998, when the fashion was established by Creative Technology's highly successful SoundBlaster Live! card, many soundcards have enhanced connectivity via use an additional I/O card, which fills a 5.25in drive blanking plate and is connected to the main card using a short ribbon cable. In its original incarnation the card used a daughter card in addition to the "breakout" I/O card. In subsequent versions of the daughter card disappeared and the breakout card became a fully-fledged 5.25in drive bay device, which Creative referred to as the Live!Drive.

The Platinum 5.1 version of Creative's card - which first appeared towards the end of 2000 - sported the following jacks and connectors:
• Analogue/Digital Out jack: 6-channel or compressed Dolby AC-3 SPDIF output for connection to external digital devices or digital speaker systems; also supports centre and subwoofer analogue channels for connection to 5.1 analogue speaker systems
• Line In jack: Connects to an external device such as cassette, DAT or MiniDisc player
• Microphone In jack: Connects to an external microphone for voice input
• Line Out jack: Connects to powered speakers or an external amplifier for audio output; also supports headphones
• Rear Out jack: Connects to powered speakers or an external amplifier for audio output
• Joystick/MIDI connector: Connects to a joystick or a MIDI device; can be adapted to connect to both simultaneously
• CD/SPDIF connector: Connects to the SPDIF (digital audio) output, where available, on a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive
• AUX connector: Connects to internal audio sources such as TV tuner, MPEG or other similar cards
• CD Audio connector: Connects to the analogue audio output on a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM using a CD audio cable
• Telephone Answering Device connector: Provide a mono connection from a standard voice modem and transmits microphone signals to the modem
• Audio Extension (Digital I/O) connector: Connects to the Digital I/O card or Live! Drive
and the front panel of the Live!Drive IR device provided the following connectivity:
• RCA SPDIF In/Out jacks: Connects to digital audio devices such as DAT and MiniDisc recorders
• ¼" Headphones jack: Connects to a pair of high-quality headphones; speaker output is muted
• Headphone volume: Controls the headphones output volume
• ¼" Line In 2/Mic In 2 jack: Connects to a high-quality dynamic microphone or audio device such as an electric guitar, DAT or MiniDisc player
• Line In 2/Mic In 2 selector: Control the selection of either Line In2 or Mic In 2 and the microphone gain
• MIDI In/Out connectors: Connects to MIDI devices via a Mini DIN-to-Standard DIN cable
• Infrared Receiver: Allows control of the PC via a remote control
• RCA Auxiliary In jacks: Connects to consumer electronics equipment such as VCR, TV and CD player
• Optical SPDIF In/Out connectors: Connects to digital audio devices such as DAT and MiniDisc recorders.
Other sound card manufacturers were quick to adopt the idea of a separate I/O connector module. There were a number of variations on the theme. Some were housed in an internal drive bay like the Live!Drive, others were external units, some of which were designed to act as USB hubs.
Standards
As well as producing sound, sound cards double-up as CD-ROM interfaces, supporting the three proprietary interfaces for Sony, Mitsumi and Panasonic drives in addition to the increasingly popular SCSI and IDE/EIDE standards. They also have an audio connector for CD-audio output. The rationale for providing CD-support on sound cards is that it allows a PC to be upgraded to "multimedia" capability by the addition of a single expansion card.
The hardware configuration of the AdLib soundcard was the first standard of importance, but it has been Creative Labs' SoundBlaster cards that have led the way in the establishment of a much-needed standard for digital audio on PC. Creative maintained its lead by following its 8-bit product with a 16-bit family, the user friendly AWE32 fulfilling the wish lists of several years' worth of existing users. Selling this as an OEM kit for PC manufacturers helped bring prices down and specifications up. The AWE64, launched in late 1997 and offering 64-note polyphony from a single MIDI device, 32 controlled in hardware and 32 in software, is the current benchmark.
Most sound cards sold today should support the SoundBlaster and General MIDI standards and should be capable of recording and playing digital audio at 44.1kHz stereo. This is the resolution at which CD-Audio is recorded, which is why sound cards are often referred to as having "CD-quality" sound.
Surround sound for the movies is pre-recorded and delivered consistently to the ear, no matter what cinema or home it is replayed in. Just about the only thing Dolby cares about is how far away the rear speakers are from the front and from the listener. Beyond that it's the same linear delivery, without any interaction from the listener - the same as listening to music.
This is obviously no good for games, where the sound needs to interactively change with the on-screen action in real time. What now seems like a very long time ago, Creative Labs came up with its SoundBlaster mono audio standard for DOS games on PCs. As the standard matured, realism improved with stereo capabilities (SoundBlaster Pro), and quality leapt forward with CD resolution (SoundBlaster 16). When you started your game, you'd select the audio option that matched your sound card. Microsoft, however, changed the entire multimedia standards game with its DirectX standard in Windows 95. The idea was that DirectX offered a load of commands, also known as APIs, which did things like "make a sound on the left" or "draw a sphere in front". Games would then simply make DirectX calls and the hardware manufacturers would have to ensure their sound and graphics card drivers understood them. The audio portion of DirectX 1 and 2 was called DirectSound, and this offered basic stereo left and right panning effects. As with other DirectX components, this enabled software developers to write directly to any DirectX-compatible sound card with multiple audio streams, while utilising 3D audio effects. Each audio channel can be treated individually, supporting multiple sample rates and the ability to add software-based effects. DirectSound itself acts as a sound-mixing engine, using system RAM to hold the different audio streams in play for the few milliseconds they must wait before being mixed and sent on to the sound card. Under ideal conditions, DirectSound can mix and output the requested sounds in as little as 20 milliseconds.
DirectX 3 introduced DirectSound3D (DS3D) which offered a range of commands to place a sound anywhere in 3D space. This was known as positional audio, and required significant processing power. Sadly we had to wait for DirectX 5 before Microsoft allowed DS3D to be accelerated by third-party hardware, reducing the stress on the main system CPU. DirectX 6 saw the debut of DirectMusic, offering increased versatility in composing music for games and other applications.
DS3D positional audio is one of the features supported by the latest generation of PCI sound cards. Simply put, positional audio manipulates the characteristics of sounds to make them seem to come from a specific direction, such as from behind or from far to the left. DirectSound3D gives game developers a set of API commands they can use to position audio elements. Furthermore, as with much of DirectX, DirectSound3D is scaleable: if an application asks for positional effects and no hardware support for such effects are found, then DirectSound3D will provide the necessary software to offer the positional effect, using the CPU for processing.
DS3D may have supported positional audio, but it didn't offer much support for adding reverb, let alone considering individual reflections, to simulate different environments. Fortunately DS3D does support extensions to the API, and this need was soon met by a couple of new sound standards which have gained widespread support from games developers: Aureal's A3D technology and Creative Technology's Environmental Audio Extensions (EAX).
A3D
Originally developed in 1997 in collaboration NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) for use in flight simulators, Aureal's A3D technology has subsequently progressed through a number of versions.
ASD1 improved upon DS3D by providing hardware acceleration, a more advanced distance model allowing simulation of different atmospheric environments, such as thick fog or underwater and a resource manager that allows developers to take advantage of the number of 3D streams the sound card can handle and control use of Aureal's 3D sound algorithms.
The A3D2 version actually takes the geometry information of the room that is fed to the graphics card, and uses it to render realistic sonic reflections and occlusions. Using a technology called WaveTracing, A3D2 genuinely calculates up to 60 first-order reflections, which interact in real time with the environment, and then groups later-order reflections into overall reverb.
ASD3 takes the technology to the next level by adding a number of new features:
• Volumetric Sound Sources: When developers define an audio file to a sound source, the sound source must have a location so that it can be rendered in relation to the listener. This is usually done via a point source: the point where the source is. However, some sources will not "reside" in a single point; flowing water, wind, crowd cheers, etc. will actually stretch out or extend in various areas. To more accurately model these sources, ASD3 allows them to be defined as volumetric sound sources, thereby positioning them better.
• MP3 playback: Previously, audio streams for 3D audio have had to be WAV files. Now, MP3 files can be used, thereby both reducing their associated storage space and increasing their quality.
• Reverb: The sum of all late order reflections. Aureal's geometric reverb will work on Vortex2 (and later) cards, as well as automatically translating to EAX or I3DL2 if a sound card does not have the appropriate A3D support.
• Streaming Audio: Automatic support for streaming audio has been added, eliminating the complex layer of development normally required for client/server interactive entertainment applications that use existing audio solutions.
A3D2 was such a computationally complex system that Aureal developed a processor dedicated to the necessary number crunching. A3D3 requires even greater processing power, which is provided in the shape of an additional DSP to accelerate the new commands.
The fact that AD3 was considered by many to be the technically superior standard proved of little consequence when, after two years of litigation with Creative Technologies, Aureal filed for bankruptcy in April 2000 and was subsequently taken over by its erstwhile rival a few months later.
EAX
First introduced with its SoundBlaster Live! soundcards in 1998, Creative Technology's Environmental Audio Extensions (EAX) began as a simple way to add reverberation to DS3D. Reverb - the wash of echoes produced when sound waves bounce off walls in a room - helps us identify an environment. Gunshots in an airplane hangar sound very different than they do in a sewer pipe, for example, but DS3D ignores this fact.
EAX 1.0 was designed to provide developers with the ability to create a convincing sense of environment in entertainment titles and a realistic sense of distance between the player and audio events. The approach Creative took to achieve this was, computationally, significantly easier than the one Aureal had taken with A3D. This was simply to create predefined reverb effects for a variety of environments with different characteristics of reflections and reverberation, different room types and/or room size. EAX 1.0 provided 26 such reverb presets as an open set of extensions to Microsoft's DS3D. The API also allows for customising late reverberation parameters (decay time, damping, level) and automatic level management according to distance.
Released in 1999, EAX 2.0 enabled the creation of more compelling and realistic environments with tools that allow the simulation of the muffling effects of partitions between environments (such as walls) and obstacles within environments (such as furniture) - it being possible to apply these obstruction and occlusion features each individual audio source. In addition, EAX 2.0 also offers global early reflections - the echoes that immediately precede real-world reverb and provide a better perception of room size and sound-source location - and a tuneable air absorption model. 1999 also saw the announcement of EAX 3.0, which introduced the ability to "morph" between environments, allows developers to position and control clusters of early reflections, as well as one-shot reflections for ricochet effects and makes full use of technologies such as HRTF for synthesising positional audio on a single pair of speakers.
In late-2000 a number of EAX effects were incorporated into the DirectX Audio component - the functions of which were previously shared between the DirectSound and DirectMusic components - of the latest release of Microsoft's suite of multimedia APIs, DirectX 8.0. A few months later, Creative unveiled an API platform for games developers wanting to incorporate Dolby Digital content into their games. Earlier soundcards had allowed Dolby Digital to be passed directly through the card and decoded by an external decoder. However, with the "5.1" version of its successful SoundBlaster Live! sound card Creative supported decoding directly through one of their audio products for the first time, the card being able to output straight to six discrete analogue channels.

MIDI
The Musical Instrument Digital Interface, or MIDI, has been around since the early 1980s. It was developed to provide a standard way of interfacing music controllers such as keyboards to sound generators like synthesisers and drum machines. As such, it was originally designed to work via a serial connection and can be viewed in the same light as an ASCII RS-232 link - namely as a combination of an information transfer standard and an electrical signal protocol.

On the electrical side, MIDI is a half duplex 5MA current loop, which carries an 8-bit serial data stream at a bit rate of 31.25 kilobaud. The use of a current loop means that two devices "talking" via MIDI can be electrically isolated using opto-isolators, which is an important factor in ensuring the safe and noise-free operation of a system encompassing both audio and computer-based hardware. This is why a special cable is required to connect a sound card to an external sound generator or MIDI controller, as the opto-isolators and current buffers aren't included on most sound cards.
On the information side, MIDI is a language for describing musically important real-time events. It communicates over 16 channels (in much the same way that that it's possible to have seven SCSI devices in a chain), allowing up to 16 MIDI instruments to be played from just one interface. Since the majority of sound cards are multi-timbral, 16 instruments can be played simultaneously from just one device. Adding a second MIDI interface opens up another 16 MIDI channels. Some MIDI interfaces offer as many as 16 outputs, making it possible to access 256 at the same time.
MIDI doesn't actually transmit sound, just very simple messages which the receiving device responds to. Instruments are connected via standard 5-DIN plugs. When a key is pressed on, for example, a keyboard, it sends a Note On message down the MIDI cable instructing the receiving device to play a note. The message consists of three elements:
• a Status Byte
• a Note Number
• a Velocity Value.
The Status Byte contains information about the event type (in this case a Note On) and which channel it is to be sent on (1-16). The Note Number describes the key that was pressed, say middle C, and the Velocity Value indicates the force at which the key was struck. The receiving device will play this note until a Note Off message is received containing the same data.
Depending on what sound is being played, synthesisers will respond differently to velocity. A piano sound, for example, will get louder as the key is struck more firmly. Tonal qualities also change. Professional synthesisers often introduce extra timbres to imitate the sound of the hammers striking the strings.
Continuous Controllers (CCs) are used to control settings such as volume, effects levels and pan (the positioning of sound across a stereo field). Many MIDI devices make it possible to assign internal parameters to a CC: there are 128 to choose from. From those, the MMA (MIDI Manufacturers Association) developed a specification for synthesisers known as General MIDI.
The first MIDI application was to allow keyboard players to "layer" the sounds produced by several synthesisers. Today, though, it is used mainly for sequencing. - although it has also been adopted by theatrical lighting companies as a convenient way of controlling light shows and projection systems.
Essentially, a sequencer is a digital tape recorder which records and plays MIDI messages rather than audio signals. The first sequencers had very little memory, which limited the amount of information they could store: most were only capable of holding one or two thousand events. As sequencers became more advanced, so did MIDI implementations. Not content with just playing notes over MIDI, manufacturers developed ways to control individual sound parameters and onboard digital effects using Continuous Controllers. The majority of sequencers today are PC-based applications and have the facility to adjust these parameters using graphical sliders. Most have an extensive array of features for editing and fine-tuning performances, so its not necessary to be an expert keyboard player to produce good music.
MIDI hasn't just affected the way musicians and programmers work; it has also changed the way lighting and sound engineers work. Because almost any electronic device can be made to respond to MIDI in some way or other, the automation of mixing desks and lighting equipment has evolved and MIDI has been widely adopted by theatrical lighting companies as a convenient way of controlling light shows and projection systems. When used with a sequencer, every action from a recording desk can be recorded, edited, and synchronised to music or film. It also provides an economical means for multimedia authors to deliver high quality audio to the listener. The current alternative is to sample the music, but at around 10 MB/min a 40GB hard disk would soon become a necessity. MIDI data requires only a fraction of this.

General MIDI
In September of 1991 the MIDI Manufacturers Association (MMA) and the Japan MIDI Standards Committee (JMSC) created the beginning of a new era in MIDI technology, by adopting the "General MIDI System Level 1", referred to as GM or GM1. The specification is designed to provide a minimum level of performance compatibility among MIDI instruments, and has helped pave the way for MIDI in the growing consumer and multimedia markets.
The specification imposes a number of requirements on compliant sound generating devices (keyboard, sound module, sound card, IC, software program or other product), including that:
• A minimum of either 24 fully dynamically allocated voices are available simultaneously for both melodic and percussive sounds, or 16 dynamically allocated voices are available for melody plus 8 for percussion
• All 16 MIDI Channels are supported, each capable of playing a variable number of voices (polyphony) or a different instrument (sound/patch/timbre)
• A minimum of 16 simultaneous and different timbres playing various instruments are supported as well as a minimum of 128 preset instruments (MIDI program numbers) conforming to the GM1 Instrument Patch Map and 47 percussion sounds which conform to the GM1 Percussion Key Map.
When MIDI first evolved it allowed musicians to piece together musical arrangements using whatever MIDI instruments they had. But when it came to playing the files on other synthesisers, there was no guarantee that it would sound the same, because different instrument manufacturers may have assigned instruments to different program numbers: what might have been a piano on the original synthesiser may play back as a trumpet on another. General MIDI compliant modules now allow music to be produced and played back regardless of manufacturer or product.
DirectMusic
The establishment of the MIDI protocol in 1982 enabled independent composers to effectively control the entire recording process from home-based studios and contributed significantly to the "sound" of the 1980s - from sequenced industrial mixes to lush electronic soundtracks. Its contribution was marred by an imprecise timbral definition that can occur when MIDI files are played back on random sound cards. As the 1990s got underway, sampling technology became widespread and created two distinct directions for composers to follow. On one hand, it gave composers the ability to create richly layered digital recordings of acoustic and electronic instruments. On the other, it promoted a kind of creative thievery, where composers "borrowed" the licks and grooves of previously recorded artists to create new compositions.
Several formats that support sampling technology are available on the PC. The most common of these is the wave (WAV) format, which makes possible the high-bandwidth digital rendering of sound. A weakness of the wave file format has been the lack of a standard for the economical delivery of musical performances - and this is where DirectMusic comes in. Combining MIDI, support for hardware acceleration and software synthesis, and an integrated delivery system for custom samples, DirectMusic provides an economical means of delivering professional quality musical performances, addressing difficult timing issues with features such as buffered, time-stamped events and a global time reference.
One of the most powerful aspects of DirectMusic is its full implementation - as part of DirectX 6 - of the industry-ratified downloadable sounds (DLS) specification. In the past, it was impossible to get consistent playback with MIDI and performance quality varied depending on the sound card or playback device. DLS allows software developers to add sound samples to the General MIDI (GM) patch set of a wavetable synthesiser and has applicability both to the games developer and the musician. For example, it would allow the former to include a digital recording of a tyrannosaurus' roar and have it associated with a specific instrument number within a wavetable synthesiser. Within the music realm, it allows the creation of custom sounds based on actual recordings of instruments. More generally, a DLS sample can essentially hold any sound, including spoken dialogue.
DLS collections are based on wave files - which can contain a single note, a musical phrase, a sound effect, dialogue, or anything else - and allow the composer to specify the exact timbres desired. The result is that they will get precise timbral definition in their scores - and what users hear in their products is exactly what the composer created in their studio. Using DLS wave files can be imported into a collection and manipulated in the same way that MIDI controllers manipulate any synthesised sound source and because DirectMusic features the compression of wave files within DLS collections, their use is more viable than ever.
In addition, DirectMusic supports two methods of synthesis: hardware synthesis, in which the sound card uses MIDI events to create the audio heard through a PC's speakers, and software synthesis, in which the CPU itself creates the audio waveform. The DirectMusic software synthesiser acts like a sampler inside the user's PC. Thanks to the software synthesiser, most users will hear scores that are created entirely inside the CPU itself and played back much like a recording of a performance. However, in those cases where a sound card provides capabilities beyond the software synthesiser, DirectMusic can use the sound card instead. That way, DirectMusic provides the best of both worlds: the excellent fidelity of the wave format and the compactness, flexibility, and interactivity of MIDI.
DirectX 8's integration of DirectSound and DirectMusic into the DirectX Audio component paves the way for the processing of synthesised music fragments in the same way as normal audio tracks. The support of DLS2 (Downloadable Sounds Level 2) standard has made it possible to apply effects designed originally for synthesised (MIDI) music - such as reverb - onto standard sound files of WAV format. With DirectX 8, users can synthesise sound, mix it with normal audio tracks and then process the unified track within a common 3D audio interface.
Audio Scripting is another new feature introduced with DirectX 8. This gives the sound designer a great deal more control - independent of programming complexities - over how a game's sound accompaniment is processed and how the sound responds to interactive inputs which themselves depends on the precise conduct of the game.
Sampling and recording
When a sound card records analogue audio, it is converting the sound waveform into digital information and then copying this in real time onto the hard disk. Essentially, it is using the disk as a digital tapeless recorder. To hear what's been recorded, the sound card takes the digital information off the hard disk, converts it back into analogue, and then feeds it to loudspeakers, headphones or a conventional sound recorder.
The process of converting analogue to digital is known as digitising or sampling. With audio, the analogue waveform is chopped into a number of slices per second. At each slice, the amplitude is measured and rounded to the nearest available value. Clearly the more chops per second (sampling rate) and the finer the values assignable to the amplitude (dynamic range), the better the representation of the original.
CD digital employs a sampling rate of 44.1kHz and a 16-bit dynamic range. That is, 44,100 chops every second, each one describing the waveform amplitude at that moment in time with a 16-bit number; 16-bit itself offering 65,536 steps from which to choose. Of course, CD is a stereo system so that means two 16-bit words every 44,100th of a second. That works out at around 160 KBps, 10.5 MB/min or 630 MB/hour. The most common file format used to store digital audio on PCs is WAV.
All sound cards should offer up to 16-bit resolution and sampling rates of 44.1kHz or 48kHz, although they will also operate at lower quality settings for less demanding circumstances. Superior sound cards boast lower noise levels and higher-quality analogue-to-digital and digital-to-analogue converters.
Recording and editing audio uses a large amount of hard disk space, with ten minutes' CD quality requiring over 100MB. The faster the disk and I/O sub-system the better when working with such large files. Modern hard disks and PCI controllers are capable of sustaining a transfer of at least 4 MBps. Serious practitioners will want to ensure that there are no interruptions in the audio stream. Many hard disks pause, to thermally recalibrate, which can result in a short but undesirable pause. Some AV drives are specifically designed not to thermally recalibrate, thus eliminating this effect.
For those wanting nothing but the best, nothing can match the virtually loss-less quality a completely digital audio processing system can offer. However, since the digital-only market is small and specialised and with few competitors, this currently comes at a price. The principal components of an all-digital system are a sound card equipped with S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital InterFace) format Digital In and Digital Out sockets and software to transfer digital audio onto a hard disk. The CDGrab Professional utility is an example of the latter capable of copying digital information directly off a CD-ROM drive onto a hard disk in 16-bit stereo 44.1kHz WAV format.
PCI audio
PCI audio chips started to emerge during 1996 and are either integrated on the motherboard or on a card in a PCI expansion slot. By mid-1998 a trend towards PCI cards providing enhanced features for both gaming and music applications had become firmly established. As greater demands are made on audio processing, traditional cards fall short due to the physical constraints of the ISA bus. The problem is bandwidth. In quantitative terms, while ISA's theoretical maximum is a mere 8 MBps, the PCI bus can theoretically support data transfers as fast as 132 MBps. This limits audio to just 16 channels. Whilst this is enough for most games, for professional audio applications 32, or better still 64, channels are preferred. Some ISA cards implement proprietary technology to increase throughput, but it is in everyone's best interests that the industry move towards a standard.
PCI-based cards deliver greater performance, offering the performance required by advanced features like mixing multiple audio streams and processing 3D positional streams. Due to high overheads inherent with ISA technology, it is estimated that up to 20% of a CPU's capacity can be blocked when playing a 16-bit stereo sample at 44.1kHz. PCI significantly reduces the performance bottleneck, freeing up the CPU to focus on other tasks like 3D graphics, game logic, and game physics. Overall, PCI may be as much as 10 to 20 times as efficient as ISA for processing audio streams.
PCI support has been around since 1993, yet, despite the benefits it offers, it took a further 5 years for PCI audio to emerge in a serious way. There are a number of reasons for this:
• a dearth of applications that demand high-performance audio
• the technical difficulty of designing products that provide true Sound Blaster compatibility on the PCI bus and, until relatively recently
• the high cost of early PCI audio chips.
Now, however, PCI sound cards are often less expensive than their ISA counterparts. This results partly from the speed and elegance of the PCI bus. An ISA sound card that includes wavetable synthesis typically includes 1MB to 4MB of expensive ROM to hold its wavetable synthesiser's set of sample instrument sounds (often called a patch set or wave set). In contrast, many PCI cards eschew the ROM approach in favour of loading their patch sets into system RAM. The speed of the PCI bus enables this approach because it gives sound cards the ability to access the samples in system memory quickly.
An interesting feature of the new crop of PCI audio cards was their ability to provide real-mode DOS Sound Blaster compatibility for the huge number of DOS games still in existence. It's significantly more complicated to provide this compatibility with a PCI bus-based audio card than with a PCI audio chip integrated on the motherboard. They also allow multiple speaker connection; soon it'll be possible to add as many as eight speakers to a PC in a so-called 7.1 format (seven separate positional audio channels plus one subwoofer) - a capability provided by the "Environmental Audio" of the Sound Blaster Live! board which came to market in the summer of 1998.
While PCI audio was a huge advance, initially there was one serious problem that had be resolved to ensure that users didn't encounter unpleasant experiences with their PCI audio subsystems. The problem was actually caused by certain graphics subsystems, yet it could affect the playback quality of the PCI audio subsystem. Some graphics drivers continually performed retries of data transfers to the graphics chip - where the data is transferred through, and buffered by, the system's PCI chipset - during periods when the graphics chip was unable to accept data. Apparently, this behaviour enhanced graphics benchmark scores slightly, but it could also prevent other PCI bus devices from receiving their data through the chipset output buffers for a fairly lengthy period - long enough to cause an audible interruption of an audio stream.
Notwithstanding these problems, with Microsoft's PC 98 specification calling for new systems to stop using ISA boards by January 1999, it was evident that ISA's days were numbered.
USB sound
Swiss semiconductor company Micronas has developed a technology which could render the sound card obsolete on future multimedia PC systems. Its USB audio controller integrates a DSP, DAC, operation amplifier, and a USB controller into an external unit which contains everything required to balance a loudspeaker enclosure and connect speakers directly to a personal computer without the use of a sound card. In addition to cost reduction, the technology offers a number of end user benefits, such as the ability to alter speaker volume and balance on the unit itself and the ability for audio professionals to programme the unit via an Excel spreadsheet interface.
In early 2002 Creative Labs released another USB-based product, and one that continued the theme of maximising connectivity which had proved so popular with their Live!Drive concept. In essence an external version of the company's successful Audigy sound card, the Extigy's big advantage over a conventional PCI card was it's versatility, both in terms of connectivity and its ability to be used with any type of PC - desktop, notebook or laptop.
The Extigy boasts an array of input and output jacks that will allow connection to just about any audio device imaginable. Across the front panel there are three inputs:
• a digital optical in (Toslink)
• an 1/8in line in
• a microphone in with hardware-level control.
and two outputs:
• a digital optical out
• a line/headphones out with hardware-volume control.
The back panel houses three inputs:
• a USB jack
• a MIDI in
• an S/PDIF in.
and five outputs:
• a MIDI out
• an S/PDIF out
• three jacks for outputting Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound (front, rear, and centre/subwoofer).
There was some disappointment that Creative chose to support the somewhat ageing USB 1.1 interface in favour of a higher bandwidth alternative such as FireWire or USB 2.0. A consequence of that is that while it is ideal for recording from external sources and highly versatile in terms of the types of PC it can be used with, it's questionable whether it up to the job for amateur musicians wanting to use it to record multiple tracks of audio.
MP3
While of only indirect relevance to "sound cards", a place has to be found somewhere for a technology that took the PC world by storm in the first half of 1999 - and this seems to be the most appropriate.
Derived from the original MPEG standard, MP3 - an abbreviation of MPEG Audio Layer-3 - is one of three coding schemes (Layer 1, Layer 2 and Layer 3) for the compression of audio signals and uses an audio coding technique based on psychoacoustics - the study of how the human brain perceives sound - which has found that it simply can't process a lot of the information the ear picks up. MP3 removes these redundant and irrelevant parts of a sound signal.
The MP3 standard divides the frequency spectrum into 576 frequency bands and compresses each band independently. The human ear is good at hearing mid-range pitch noises, but no so good at high or low pitched noises. These can be heard - but not well enough for the details to be accurately distinguished. These bands can therefore be heavily compressed without any noticeable affect on overall sound quality using a technique known as perceptual coding. Where two sounds occur at the same time, MP3 records only the one that will actually be picked up by the ear. Similarly, a quiet sound immediately following a loud one can be removed, since this wouldn't be picked up anyway. Sounds are also compressed in stereo - if a sound is identical on both stereo channels, it's only stored once - but it appears on both channels when the MP3 file is decompressed and played.
Additionally, MP3 adds a modified Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) that implements a filter bank, increasing the frequency resolution 18 times higher than that of layer 2. The result in real terms is that MP3 allows compression of CD-quality audio files by a factor of 12 with little loss in quality. About one minute's worth of CD-quality audio can be compressed to about one megabyte of data - so a typical 4-minute CD track can be stored in a file of between 3.5MB and 5MB. An MP3 file - they use the file extension .mp3 - can also contain information about the file itself in a tag. The tag can contain things like the artist's name, a graphic (usually the CD cover art), a URL for further information, the song's lyrics, the genre, etc.
In the mid-1990s students at US college campuses began to use MP3 technology to trade recordings between themselves - and it quickly became part of everyday campus life. It was only slowly emerging into the mainstream - until the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) decided to sue Diamond Multimedia over its distribution of a Korean invention called the Rio in the autumn of 1998. This Sony Walkman-like device was essentially an MP3 storage device capable of playing up to an hour of MP3-coded music. The original suit failed to prevent the Rio coming to market and, following an appeal, the case was finally thrown out in June of 1999, - the court finding that the Rio did not qualify as a "digital audio recording device" and was therefore not subject to the restrictions of the US 1992 Audio Home Recording Act. What the ill-conceived lawsuit did succeed in doing was drawing national attention to MP3 which, almost overnight, metamorphosising it from an underground movement among Internet-savvy technophiles to a pop culture phenomenon.
Most MP3 files will have been produced from material originating on an audio CD. This is a two-stage process, the first involving the conversion of tracks from the CD-DA digital audio format to WAV format. This step is crucially important, and unavoidable. There are some programs that can produce an MP3 directly from CD audio, but they accomplish this by performing an audio extraction from the CD as the initial step in the process. The task is performed by specialised programs known as CD-Rippers. The CD-Ripper reads the tracks of an audio CD digitally and writes them to hard disk as WAV files. A 4-minute track occupies around 40-50MB in WAV format, so the conversion of an entire CD requires a large amount of hard disk space.
The second stage in the process is to convert the .wav files to .mp3 format. This step also involves the use of specialised software, and the programs that perform this task are known as MP3 Encoders. MP3 files can be produced using a variety of compression rates, allowing users to choose their optimal mix of quantity and quality. Typically, the following options are available:
• "CD quality" - compressed at 12:1 at rates of between 128 Kbit/s at the low end and up to 192 Kbit/s at the high end
• "Near-CD quality" - compressed at around 18:1, and
• "FM Radio Quality" (Real Audio), be compressed 70:1 at a rate of 64 Kbit/s.
The majority of the MP3 files available on the Internet are encoded at 44kHz and 128 Kbit/s - a bitrate which results in a good quality/size ratio MP3 file. Encoding at 192 Kbit/s will produce a superquality result - but at the cost of a considerably larger file size. Tracks recorded at 64 Kbit/s and below are sampled at 22kHz. The reverse process - converting MP3 files to CD audio tracks - also involves two discrete stages. The decoding of an MP3 file to a WAV file is performed by a specialised program known as an MP3 Decoder. Getting the WAV file to CD is a function of the various specialised applications that exist for creating CDRs or CD-RWs, such as Easy CD Creator or WinonCD.
Notwithstanding Diamond's success in the US courts, there are issues concerning the use of MP3 technology. Whilst the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) maintain that it is illegal to make copies of a CD/tape/record even if it is for your own use, this is "unenforceable" under UK law and in reality the practice is widespread. Downloading licensed MP3 files from the Internet is perfectly legal, but it is illegal to encode MP3s and trade them with others unless this is done with the express permission of the copyright holder of the music. There are many legal tracks in MP3 format available freely on the Internet that have the permission of their copyright holders - mostly by unknown artists looking for free publicity. However, it's generally accepted that the vast majority of MP3 music files are illegal - they are unlicensed recordings of copyrighted work - and though there are some major artists who have sought to promote their music over the Internet using MP3, this has invariably been met with opposition. Interestingly, shortly after its courtroom success, Diamond appeared to be making moves to pacify the record labels with the announcement that the new model will feature anti-piracy software to prevent unauthorised copying of MP3 files and be upgradeable, via the Internet, to play whatever standard was ultimately recommended by the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI).
One company that is unlikely to be making an MP3 player in the near future is Sony, the inventor of MiniDisc (MD), which has been the emerging digital audio recording standard of the late 1990s. The Rio is both lighter and smaller than most MD players, however, and has the additional advantage of containing no moving parts. This means that no matter how roughly handled, unlike CD or MD, the music won't skip a beat. The Rio also exerts less of a power drain than laser-based products, yielding a claimed 12 hours from a single alkaline battery.
The first Rio device came to market towards the end of 1998, bundled with conversion software capable of digitally extracting CD audio and creating 64-, 80-, or 128 Kbit/s MP3 files. The upper and lower rates equate to 33 minutes of FM quality and 66 minutes of CD quality capacity respectively, from the device's 32MB of internal memory. Storage capacity can be expanded, up to 64MB, via an add-in SmartMedia flash memory card. Mid-1999 - following the rejection of the RIAA's lawsuit and the acquisition of Diamond by graphics-chip manufacturer S3 - saw the Rio business spun-off to a newly formed RioPort division and the announcement of a new model providing double the on-board memory of the earlier model, expandable to 96MB. The incorporation of IBM's 340MB microdrive unit - 1in in size and weighing only 16-grams - into subsequent Rios boosted capacity to up to six hours of near-CD quality MP3 music.
In 2000 a number of players appeared - both portable and designed to complement home hi-fi systems - that handled both conventional CDs and recordable CDs containing MP3-encoded tracks. Whilst these may not have been "skip-free", this was more than compensated for by their massive, 10-hour capacity. If there had been any doubt about MP3's acceptance into the mainstream before, they were removed by the participation of consumer giants such as Philips Electronics in this marketplace.
MP3 may have been a phenomenon of the late 1990s, but it will almost certainly be eclipsed early in the new millennium. Since its development in 1995 a number of new formats have emerged - many of which give even better compression and comparable quality. AAC (Advanced Audio Compression), for example, can produce files that are 30% to 40% smaller than MP3 files, whilst retaining their level of quality.
SDMI
In late June 1999, representatives from the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) - comprising more than 100 companies from the music, consumer electronics and information technology industries - announced that they had reached a consensus on specifications for new portable music players. that they hope will limit digital music consumers to two options in the not too distant future:
• transferring tracks from CDs they've purchased themselves onto their players, or
• downloading the music off the Internet from its legitimate publisher - and paying for it.
The proposed Version 1.0 Specification provides for a two-phase system - Phase I and Phase II. Phase I commences with the adoption of the SDMI Specification and ends when Phase II begins. Phase II begins when a screening technology is available to identify pirated songs from "new music releases" and refuse playback.
During Phase I, SDMI compliant portable devices may accept music in all current formats, whether protected or unprotected. In late 1999 or early 2000, record companies are expected to start imprinting CD content with a so-called digital "watermark" that will secure music against illegal copying. Thus, in Phase II, consumers wishing to download new music releases that include new SDMI technology will be prompted to upgrade their Phase I device to Phase II in order to play or copy that music. As an incentive to upgrade - with music now secured against casual pirating - music companies may finally be ready to put their music libraries on-line.
The new proposals' impact on MP3 is far less than it might have been. The so-called Big 5 - Sony Music Entertainment, EMI Recorded Music, Universal Music Group, BMG Entertainment and Warner Music Group - had initially advocated making SDMI-compliant players incompatible with MP3 files. However, in the event they have agreed to a security scheme that is backwards-compatible with the "free" MP3 format and in both Phase I and Phase II, consumers will be able to rip songs from their CDs and download unprotected music, just as they do now.

SOUND CARD

2009-05-20T21:45:00.002+05:30

2009-05-20T21:29:00.008+05:30

HISTORY OF CD ROM
Normal music CDs and CD-ROMs are made from pre-pressed discs and encased in plastic. The actual data is stored through pits, or tiny indentations, on the silver surface of the internal disc. To read the disc, the drive shines a laser onto the CD-ROM's surface, and by interpreting the way in which the laser light is reflected from the disc it can tell whether the area under the laser is indented or not.
Thanks to sophisticated laser focusing and error detection routines, this process is pretty much ideal. However, there's no way the laser can change the indentations of the silver disc, which in turn means there's no way of writing new data to the disc once its been created. Thus, the technological developments to enable CD-ROMs to be written or rewritten to have necessitated changes to the disc media as well as to the read/write mechanisms in the associated CD-R and CD-RW drives.
At the start of 1997 it appeared likely that CD-R and CD-RW drives would be superseded by DVD technology almost before they had got off the ground. In the event, during that year DVD Forum members turned on each other triggering a DVD standards war and delaying product shipment. Consequently, the writable and rewritable CD formats were given a new lease of life.
For professional users, developers, small businesses, presenters, multimedia designers and home recording artists the recordable CD formats offer a range of powerful storage applications. Their big advantage over alternative removable storage technologies such as MO, LIMDOW and PD is that of CD media compatibility; CD-R and CD-RW drives can read nearly all the existing flavours of CD-ROMs and discs made by CD-R and CD-RW devices can be read on both (MultiRead-capable) CD-ROM drives and current and all future generations of DVD-ROM drive. A further advantage, itself a consequence of their wide compatibility, is the low cost of media; CD-RW media is cheap and CD-R media even cheaper. Their principal disadvantage is that there are limitations to their rewriteability; CD-R, of course, isn't rewritable at all and until recently CD-RW discs had to be reformatted to recover the space taken by "deleted" files when a disc becomes full, unlike the competing technologies which all offer true drag-and-drop functionality with no such limitation. Even now, however, CD-RW rewriteability is less than perfect, resulting in a reduction of a CD-RW disc's storage capacity
Formats
ISO 9660 is a data format designed by the International Standards Organisation in 1984. It's the accepted cross-platform protocol for filenames and directory structures. Filenames are restricted to uppercase letters, the digits "0" to "9" and the underscore character, "_". Nothing else is allowed. Directory names can be a maximum of only eight characters (with no extension) and can only be eight sub-directories deep. The standard can be ignored under Windows 95 - but older CD-ROM drives may not be able to handle the resulting "non-standard" discs.
Every CD has a table of contents (TOC) which carries track information. Orange Book solves the problems of writing CDs, where subsequent recording sessions on the same disc require their own update TOC. Part of the appeal of Kodak's Photo-CD format is that its not necessary to fill the disc with images on the first go: more images can be added at later until the disc is full. The information on a Photo-CD is Yellow Book CD-ROM format and consequently readable on any "multi-session compatible" drive.

However, the ISO 9660 file format used by CD and CD-R discs and the original disc or session-at-a-time standards didn't lend themselves to adding data in small increments. Writing multiple sessions to a disc results in about 13Mb of disc space being wasted for every session, and the original standard limits the number of tracks that can be put on a disc to 99. These limitations were subsequently addressed by the OSTA's (Optical Storage Technology Association) ISO 13346 Universal Disc Format (UDF) standard. This operating-system independent standard for storing data on optical media, including CD-R, CD-RW and DVD devices, uses a redesigned directory structure which allows a drive to be written to efficiently a file (or "packet") at a time.
CDs measure 12cm in diameter with a 15mm diameter centre hole. The audio or computer data is stored from radius 25mm (after the lead-in) to radius 58mm maximum where the lead-out starts. The Orange Book CD-R standard basically splits the CD into two areas: the System Use Area (SUA) and the Information Area. While the latter is a general storage space, the SUA acts much like the boot sector of a hard disk, taking up the first 4mm of the CD's surface. It tells the reader device what kind of information to expect and what format the data will be in, and is itself divided into two parts: the Power Calibration Area (PCA) and the Program Memory Area (PMA):
• On every disc, the PCA acts as a testing ground for a CD-recorder's laser. Every time a disc is inserted into a CD-R drive, the laser is fired at the surface of the PCA to judge the optimum power setting for burning the CD. Various things can influence this optimum setting - the recording speed, humidity, ambient temperature and the type of disc being used. Every time a disc is calibrated, a bit is set to "1" in a counting area, and only a maximum of 99 calibrations are allowed per disc.
• Meanwhile, in the PMA, data is stored to record up to 99 track numbers and their start and stop times (for music), or sector addresses for the start of data files on a data CD.
The Information Area, the area of the disc which contains data, is divided into three areas:
• The Lead-in contains digital silence in the main channel plus the Table of Contents (TOC) in the subcode Q-channel. It allows the laser pickup head to follow the pits and synchronise to the audio or computer data before the start of the program area. The length of the lead-in is determined by the need to store the Table of Contents for up to 99 tracks.
• The Program Area contains up to about 76 minutes of data divided into 99 tracks maximum. The actual bits and bytes on a CD are not stored as might be expected. On traditional media, eight bits form a byte, which in turn forms the standard unit of data. On a CD, a mathematical process called Eight To Fourteen Modulation (EFM) encodes each 8-bit symbol as 14 bits plus 3 merging bits. The EFM data is then used to define the pits on the disc. The merging bits ensure that pit and land lengths are not less than 3 and no more than 11 channel bits, thereby reducing the effect of jitter and other distortions. This is just the first step in a complex procedure involving error correction, merge bits, frames, sectors and logical segments which converts the peaks and troughs on the CD into machine-readable data.
• The Lead-out, containing digital silence or zero data. This defines the end of the CD program area.
In addition to the main data channel, a CD disc has 8 subcode channels, designated "P" to "W", interleaved with the main channel and available for use by CD audio and CD-ROM players. When the CD was first developed, the subcode was included as a means of placing control data on the disc, with use of the main channel being restricted to audio or CD-ROM data; the P-channel indicates the start and end of each track, the Q-channel contains the timecodes (minutes, seconds and frames), the TOC (in the lead-in), track type and catalogue number; and channels R to W are generally used for CD graphics. As the technology has evolved, the main channel has in fact been used for a number of other data types and the new DVD specification omits the CD subcode channels entirely.
CD-R
Write Once/Read Many storage (WORM) has been around since the late 1980s, and is a type of optical drive that can be written to and read from. When data is written to a WORM drive, physical marks are made on the media surface by a low-powered laser and since these marks are permanent, they cannot be erased, hence write once.

The characteristics of a recordable CD were specified in the Orange Book II standard in 1990 and Philips was first to market with a CD-R product in mid-1993. It uses the same technology as WORM, changing the reflectivity of the organic dye layer which replaces the sheet of reflective aluminium in a normal CD disc. In its early days, cyanine dye and its metal-stabilised derivatives were the de facto standard for CD-R media. Indeed, the Orange Book, Part II, referred to the recording characteristics of cyanine-based dyes in establishing CD-Recordable standards. Phthalocyanine dye is a newer dye that appears to be less sensitive to degradation from ordinary light such as ultraviolet (UV), fluorescence and sunshine. Azo dye has been used in other optical recording media and is now also being used in CD-R. These dyes are photosensitive organic compounds, similar to those used in making photographs. The media manufacturers use these different dyes in combination with dye thickness, reflectivity thickness and material and groove structure to fine tune their recording characteristics for a wide range of recording speeds, recording power and media longevity. To recreate some of the properties of the aluminium used in standard CDs and to protect the dye, a microscopic reflective layer - either a proprietary silvery alloy or 24-carat gold - is coated over the dye. The use of noble metal reflectors eliminates the risk of corrosion and oxidation. The CD-R media manufacturers have performed extensive media longevity studies using industry defined tests and mathematical modelling techniques, with results claiming longevity from 70 years to over 200 years. Typically, however, they will claim an estimated shelf life of between 5 and 10 years.
The colour of the CD-R disc is related to the colour of the specific dye that was used in the recording layer. This base dye colour is modified when the reflective coating (gold or silver) is added. Some of the dye-reflective coating combinations appear green, some appear blue and others appear yellow. For example, gold/green discs combine a gold reflective layer with a cyan-coloured dye, resulting in a gold appearance on the label side and a green appearance on the writing side. Taiyo Yuden produced the original cyanine dye-based gold/green CDs, which were used during the development of the Orange Book standard. Mitsui Toatsu Chemicals invented the process for gold/gold CDs. Silver/blue CD-Rs, manufactured with a process patented by Verbatim, first became widely available in 1996. Ricoh's silver/silver "Platinum" discs, based on "advanced phthalocyanine dye", appeared on the market in mid-1998.
The disc has a spiral track which is preformed during manufacture, onto which data is written during the recording process. This ensures that the recorder follows the same spiral pattern as a conventional CD, and has the same width of 0.6 microns and pitch of 1.6 microns as a conventional disc. Discs are written from the inside of the disc outward. The spiral track makes 22,188 revolutions around the CD, with roughly 600 track revolutions per millimetre.
Instead of mechanically pressing a CD with indentations, a CD-R writes data to a disc by using it's laser to physically burn pits into the organic dye. When heated beyond a critical temperature, the area "burned" becomes opaque (or absorptive) through a chemical reaction to the heat and subsequently reflects less light than areas that have not been heated by the laser. This system is designed to mimic the way light reflects cleanly off a "land" on a normal CD, but is scattered by a "pit", so a CD-R disc's data is represented by burned and non-burned areas, in a similar manner to how data on a normal CD is represented by its pits and lands. Consequently, a CD-R disc can generally be used in a normal CD player as if it were a normal CD.
However, CD-R is not strictly WORM. Whilst, like WORM, it is not possible to erase data - once a location on the CD-R disc has been written to, the colour change is permanent - CD-R allows multiple write sessions to different areas of the disc. The only problem here is that only multi-session compatible CD-ROM drives can read subsequent sessions; anything recorded after the first session will be invisible to older drives.
CD-Recorders have seen a dramatic drop in price and rise in specification since the mid-1990s. By mid-1998 drives were capable of writing at quad-speed and reading at twelve-speed (denoted as "4X/12X") and were bundled with much improved CD mastering software. By the end of 1999 CD-R drive performance had doubled to 8X/24X, by which time the trend was away from pure CD-R drives and towards their more versatile CD-RW counterparts. The faster the writing speed the more susceptible a CD-R writer is to buffer underruns - the most serious of all CD recording errors. To reduce the chances of underruns CD writers are generally fitted with caches which can range from between 256KB to 2MB in size. Faster devices also allow the write process to be slowed down to two-speed or even single speed. This is particularly useful in avoiding underruns when copying poor quality CD-ROMs.
By the end of the 1990s the cost of a CD-R drive had fallen sufficiently for CD-R to became viable as a mainstream storage or back-up device. Indeed, it offered a number of advantages over alternative technologies.
Originally, CD-Rs came in 63- or 74-minute formats holding up to 550MB or 650MB of data respectively. Even in their early days they represented a cheap bulk storage medium, at around 1p per megabyte. The ubiquity of CD-ROM drives made them an excellent medium for transferring large files between PCs. Unlike tape, CD-R is a random-access device, which makes it fast to get at archive material and discs are also more durable than tape cartridges and can't be wiped by coming into contact with, say a magnetic field. Finally, just about any form of data can be stored on a CD-ROM, it being possible to mix video, Photo-CD images, graphics, sound and conventional data on a single disc.
The CD-R format has not been free of compatibility issues however. Unlike ordinary CDs, the reflective surface of a CD-R (CD-Recordable) is made to exactly match the 780nm laser of an ordinary CD-ROM drive. Put a CD-R in a first generation DVD-ROM drive and it won't reflect enough 650nm light for the drive to read the data. Subsequent, dual-wavelength head devices solved this problem. Also, some CD-ROM drives' lasers, especially older ones, may not be calibrated to read recordable CDs.
However, CD-R's real disadvantage is that the writing process is permanent. The media can't be erased and written to again. Only by leaving a session "open" - that is, not recording on the entire CD and running the risk of it not playing on all players - can data be incrementally added to a disc. This, of course, is not the most ideal of backup solutions and wastes resources. Consequently, after months of research and development, Philips and Sony announced another standard of CD: the CD-Rewritable (CD-RW).
CD-RW
Just as CD-R appeared to be on the verge of becoming a consumer product, the launch of CD-Rewritable CD-ROM, or CD-RW, in mid-1997 posed a serious threat to its future and provided further competition to the various superfloppy alternatives.
The result of a collaboration between Hewlett-Packard, Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation, Philips, Ricoh and Sony, CD-RW allows a user to record over old redundant data or to delete individual files. Known as Orange Book III, CD-RW's specifications ensure compatibility within the family of CD products, as well as forward compatibility with DVD-ROM.

The technology behind CD-RW is optical phase-change, which in its own right is nothing radical. However, the technology used in CD-Rewritable does not incorporate any magnetic field like the phase-change technology used with MO technology. The media themselves are generally distinguishable from CD-R discs by their metallic grey colour and have the same basic structure as a CD-R disc but with significant detail differences. A CD-RW disc's phase-change medium consists of a polycarbonate substrate, moulded with a spiral groove for servo guidance, absolute time information and other data, on to which a stack (usually five layers) is deposited. The recording layer is sandwiched between dielectric layers that draw excess heat from the phase-change layer during the writing process. In place of the CD-R disc's dye-based recording layer, CD-RW commonly uses a crystalline compound made up of a mix of silver, indium, antimony and tellurium. This rather exotic mix has a very special property: when it's heated to one temperature and cooled it becomes crystalline, but if it's heated to a higher temperature, when it cools down again it becomes amorphous. The crystalline areas allow the metalised layer to reflect the laser better while the non-crystalline portion absorbs the laser beam, so it is not reflected.
In order to achieve these effects in the recording layer, the CD-Rewritable recorder use three different laser powers:
• the highest laser power, which is called "Write Power", creates a non-crystalline (absorptive) state on the recording layer
• the middle power, also known as "Erase Power", melts the recording layer and converts it to a reflective crystalline state
• the lowest power, which is "Read Power", does not alter the state of the recording layer, so it can be used for reading the data.
During writing, a focused "Write Power" laser beam selectively heats areas of the phase-change material above the melting temperature (500-700 oC), so all the atoms in this area can move rapidly in the liquid state. Then, if cooled sufficiently quickly, the random liquid state is "frozen-in" and the so-called amorphous state is obtained. The amorphous version of the material shrinks, leaving a pit where the laser dot was written, resulting in a recognisable CD surface. When an "Erase Power" laser beam heats the phase-change layer to below the melting temperature but above the crystallisation temperature (200 oC) for a sufficient time (at least longer than the minimum crystallisation time), the atoms revert back to an ordered state (i.e. the crystalline state). Writing takes place in a single pass of the focused laser beam; this is sometimes referred to as "direct overwriting" and the process can be repeated several thousand times per disc.
Once the data has been burned the amorphous areas reflect less light, enabling a "Read Power" laser beam to detect the difference between the lands and the pits on the disk. One compromise here is that the disc reflects less light than CD-ROMs or CD-Rs and consequently CD-RW discs can only be read on CD players that support the new MultiRead specification. Even DVD-ROM drives, which themselves use the UDF file format, need a dual-wavelength head to read CD-RW.
CD-RW drives are dual-function, offering both CD-R and CD-RW recording, so the user can choose which recordable media is going to be the best for a particular job. By mid-1998 devices were capable of reading at 6-speed, writing both CD-R and CD-RW media at 4-speed. By the end of that year read performance had been increased to 16-speed - a level of performance at which the need for a dedicated, fast CD-ROM drive for everyday access to disc-based data was debatable. By late 2000 the best drives were capable of writing CD-RW/CD-R media and of reading CD-ROMs at 10/12/32-speed. Six months later the top performing drives were rated at 10/24/40.
Although UDF allows users to drag and drop files to discs, CD-RW isn't quite as easy to use as a hard disk. Initially limitations in the UDF standard and associated driver software meant that when data was deleted from a CD-RW, those areas of the disc were merely marked for deletion and were not immediately accessible. A disc could be used until all its capacity was used, but then the entire disc had to be erased to reclaim its storage space using a "sequential erase" function. In hardware terms erasing a disk is accomplished by heating up the surface to a lower temperature, but for a longer time, which returns it to the crystalline state.
Evolution of the UDF standard and developments in associated driver software have improved things considerably, making CD-RW behave more like, but still not quite in identical fashion to, hard drives or floppy disks.
Mini media
8cm CD recordable and rewritable media - offering a capacity of 185MB - have been available for a number of years. Most tray-loading CD players are already designed to handle 8cm disks, via a recess in the tray that is exactly the right diameter to accommodate a "mini CD". Slot-loading CD drives - such as in-car players - some carousel multi-changers and laptop PC drives require use of a simple adapter to use the miniature format. Only PCs with vertical CD-ROM drives are unable to handle the format.
By 2000 the format was being used as a convenient means of storing digital music and images in some MP3 players and digital cameras, respectively. So confident were Nikon that the format would eventually replace the floppy disk that the company announced, in late 2000, that it had developed a process to produce media with an increased capacity of 300MB, whilst retaining record/replay compatibility with existing CD drives.

The mini CD format is also available in the so called "business card CD" variant. These are conventional CD-R media, re-fashioned so as to resemble business cards. This is achieved either by cutting off two sides of the disc only, or by trimming all four sides so as to create a truly rectangular shape. Their capacity varies from 20 to 60MB depending of how much of the disc has been cut off. The format is marketed as an affordable alternative to printed product brochures, more easily distributed and capable of presenting promotional material in a multimedia fashion, exploiting audio and video as well as text and images. Sometimes referred to as a Personal Compact Disk (PCD), it is can also be used as a means to provide secure access to private on-line membership or e-commerce services.
Digital audio media
"Digital Audio for Consumers" is a term used in connection with CD recorders that form a part of a home audio stereo system, connecting to amplifiers, tuners, cassette decks, CD players and the like through standard RCA jacks. Whilst their appearance is similar to any other hi-fi component, their function has more in common with that of a PC CD-R drive - the recording of audio onto CD recordable or rewritable media.
For this they use specifically designed audio-only CD media. Fundamentally these are no different from conventional recordable/rewritable CD media. However, between them the audio-only CD recorder and media implement a copy protection scheme known as SCMS, designed to limit unauthorised copies of "intellectual property" - music owned by recording companies or musicians.
Basically the aim of SCMS is to allow consumers to make a copy of an original, but not a copy of a copy. It achieves this by using a single bit to encode whether or not the material is protected, and whether or not the disc is an original. For originals which are subject to copyright protection, the copy bit is continuously "on", for originals that contain unprotected material the copy bit is continuously "off" and for an original which has itself been copied from a copyright-protected original, the copy bit is toggled every 5 frames between "on" and "off".
Originally the cost of audio-only media was significantly more than conventional media. Whilst the differential is no longer as great as it was, it will always exist as a consequence of licensing agreements under which the disc manufacturer pays a royalty the recording industry for each disc sold on the assumption that everything recorded to this type of media is pirated copyrighted material.
Professional versions of audio-only CD recorders, capable of using both audio-only and conventional media - and thereby of by-passing SCMS - are also available. These units offer a wider set of features and input/output connectors than their consumer counterparts and are a lot more expensive.
It is also important to note that the expression of CD-R/CD-RW disc capacity in terms of minutes rather than megabytes does not imply that the media are audio-only. Some manufacturers simply choose to express capacity as 74/80 minutes as an alternative to 650/700MB.
Double density media
The idea of a double density writable and rewritable CD media is not new. In the early 1990s a number of companies experimented with extending the White Book and Red Book standards to store large amounts of video. However, these technologies were quickly dismissed because of standards issues. When the DVD format was subsequently accepted it appeared that the prospect of high density CDs had disappeared.
Not so. With the battle between the competing DVD standards still unresolved by the start of the new millennium, a number of drive manufacturers revisited the idea of trying to extend the life of the CD. Sony - one of the co-inventors of the CD in the early 1980s - was one of these, and in mid-2000 the company announced the "Purple Book" standard, and its plans to adapt the ISO 9660 format to double the density of a standard CD, to 1.3GB. It's important to note that the new format is designed to store data only; there are no plans for a 140+ minute Red Book audio CD standard.
The new standard achieves the increase in capacity by means of a few simple modifications to the conventional CD format. The physical track pitch was narrowed from 1.6 to 1.1 micron and the minimum pit length shortened from 0.833 to 0.623 micron. In addition, a parameter in the error-correction scheme (CIRC) has been changed - to produce a new type of error correction which Sony refers to as CIRC7 - and the address format (ATIP) has been expanded. The format will also include a copy control scheme to meet the increasing demands for secure content protection.
Not only are the resulting double density media are much like existing CD-R and CD-RW media, but the drives that read them have not had to be changed much either. They use the same laser wavelength, but the scanning velocity has been slowed from 1.2 - 1.4ms to about 0.9ms to read the higher density discs.
Within a year of announcing the new format the first Sony product to handle the 1.3MB media - referred to as DD-R and DD-RW - had reached the market. Boasting an 8MB buffer memory for secure writing at high speeds, the Spressa CRX200E-A1 drive is capable of 12x (1,800KBps) recording for DD-R/CD-R, 8x (1,200KBps) re-writing of DD-RW/CD-RW media and a 32x (4,800KBps) reading speed. However, the new format is not without compatibility issues of its own. Whilst DD-R/DD-RW drives will be able to read and write CD-R and CD-RW discs, existing CD-ROM and CD-RW drives won't be able to play DD-R and DD-RW media.
UDF
The ISO 9660 standard, which has been applicable for CD-ROMs since their inception, has certain limitations which make it inappropriate for DVD, CD-RW and other new disc formats. The UDF (Universal Disc Format) ISO 13346 standard is designed to address these limitations. Specifically, packet writing isn't entirely compatible with the ISO 9660 logical file system since it needs to know exactly which files will be written during a session to generate the Path Tables and Primary Volume Descriptors, which point to the physical location of files on the disc. UDF allows files to be added to a CD-R or CD-RW disc incrementally, one file at a time, without significant wasted overhead, using a technique called packet writing. Under UDF, even when a file is overwritten, its virtual address remains the same. At the end of each packet-writing session, UDF writes a Virtual Allocation Table (VAT) to the disc that describes the physical locations of each file. Each newly created VAT includes data from the previous VAT, thereby letting UDF locate all the files that have ever written to the disc.
By mid-1998 two versions of UDF had evolved, with future versions planned. UDF 1.02 is the version used on DVD-ROM and DVD-Video discs. UDF 1.5 is a superset that adds support for CD-R and CD-RW. Windows 98 provides support for UDF 1.02. However, in the absence of operating system support for UDF 1.5, special UDF driver software is required to allow packet-writing to the recordable CD formats. Adaptec's DirectCD V2.0 was the first such software to support both packet-writing and the random erasing of individual files on CD-RW media. The DirectCD V2.0 software allows two kinds of packets can be written: fixed-length and variable-length. Fixed-length packets are more suitable for CD-RW in order to support random erase, because it would be daunting (and slow) to keep track of a large, constantly-changing file system if the packets were not written in fixed locations.
The UDF 1.5 solution is far from ideal however. Quite apart from the difficulties caused by lack of operating system support, there are other issues. The major drawback is that the fixed-length packets (of 32KB as per the UDF standard), take up a great deal of overhead space on the disc. The available capacity of a CD-RW disc formatted for writing in fixed-length packets is reduced to about 550MB. In practice, however, the capacity of a UDF-formatted disc is reduced still further as a consequence of DirectCD's built-in features to increase the longevity of CD-RW media.
Any particular spot on a CD-RW disc can be erased and rewritten about 1000 times (soon to be improved to 10,000). After that, that particular spot becomes unusable. However, DirectCD is designed to avoid the same physical location being repeatedly written to and erased, using a technique called "sparing". This significantly extends the life of a disc, but at the cost of an overhead which reduces effective storage capacity. Even if a particular location on a CD-RW disc does get "burned out", DirectCD can mark it "unusable" and work around it (much the way bad sectors are managed on a hard disk). Consequently, it is highly unlikely that a CD-RW disc will become worn out.
In addition to these issues of reduced capacity, not all CD-R or CD-RW drives support packet writing and it is only MultiRead CD-ROM drives - and only OSTA-endorsed MultiRead drives at that - that can read packet-written discs. To do so requires use of Adaptec's free UDF Reader software - which enables many MultiRead CD-ROM drives to read discs written in UDF 1.5 format. It is important to note that this software is required in addition to DirectCD - which is itself relevant to CD recorders only.

MultiRead
The recorded tracks on a CD-RW disc are read in the same way as regular CD tracks: by detecting transitions between low and high reflectance, and measuring the length of the periods between the transitions. The only difference is that the reflectance is lower than for regular CDs. This does, however, mean that CD-RW discs cannot be read by many older CD-ROM drives or CD players.
To outline the solution to this problem, it is helpful to consider the original CD reflectance specifications: 70% minimum for lands, 28% maximum for pits, that were introduced to allow the relatively insensitive photodiodes of the early 1980s to read the signal pattern reliably. But with today's photodiodes able to detect much smaller reflectance differences, these stringent specifications are no longer necessary.
The CD-RW disc has a reflectance of 15-25% for lands. The CD-Rewritable system, therefore, works at reflectances about one-third of those of the original CD specification. However, with modern photodiodes this presents no problem. All that is needed to reliably read the recorded pattern is extra amplification. The "MultiRead" specification drawn up by Philips and Hewlett Packard and approved by the Optical Storage Technology Association (OSTA) provides for the necessary adjustments, thus solving any compatibility issues.
Moreover, the maximum and minimum reflectances of a CD-RW disc meet the CD specification requirements for a minimum modulation of 60%. Looking to the future, the CD-RW phase-change technology is significantly independent of the recording/read-out laser wavelength. CD-RW discs can be read out by the 650 nm lasers used in DVD systems as well as by the present 780 nm lasers used in other CD drives. Clearly, this creates additional options for drive manufacturers.
BURN-Proof technology
"Buffer underrun" is one of the biggest problems encountered in CD recording. This can happen when attempting to burn a CD whilst performing other tasks, or when recording from a "slow" source to a "fast" target. Once the burning process starts, it is essential that the data to be recorded is available for writing to the CD all the way to the end. Buffer underrun occurs when the computer system fails to sustain the datastream to the CD-writer for the duration of the recording process. The result is that the recording fails and the media becomes unusable and unrecoverable. To reduce the possibility of buffer underrun, all modern CD-writers have a built-in data buffer which stores the incoming data so that the CD-writer is one step removed from a potentially too slow data source.
In the second half of 2000 CD-RW drives appeared using a drive level combination of hardware/firmware that made buffer underrun a thing of the past. Originated and patented by Sanyo, BURN-Proof technology (Buffer UndeRuN-Proof technology) works by constantly checking the status of the CD-writer's data buffer so that recording can be stopped at a specific location when an impending buffer-underrun condition is detected - typically when the buffer falls below a certain threshold of its maximum capacity - and resumed when the buffer has been sufficiently replenished after first repositioning the CD-writer's optical pickup to the appropriate sector.
Plextor uses Sanyo's technology in combination with its own "PoweRec" (Plextor Optimised Writing Error Reduction Control) methodology. With this, the recording process is periodically paused using BURN-Proof technology, to allow the write quality to be checked so as to determine whether or not it is good enough to allow the recording speed to be incrementally increased. Other drive manufactures either licence similar technology or have developed their own variants. Mitsumi and LG Electronics both use OAK Technology's "ExacLink" system, Yamaha do likewise but under the brand name "SafeBurn". Acer Communications refer to their technology as "Seamless Link" and Ricoh to theirs as "JustLink".
Disc capacities
CD-R's have a pre-formed spiral track, with each sector address hard-coded into the media itself. The capacity of the most widely available CD format is expressed either as 74 minutes or 650MB. Each second of playing time occupies 75 CD sectors, meaning a complete CD has a capacity of 74x60x75 = 333,000 sectors. The actual storage capacity of those 333,000 sectors depends on what's recorded on the CD, audio or data. This is because audio imposes less of an error correction overhead than data, the capacity of a sector being 2353 bytes for the former, compared with 2048 for the latter. Consequently, a 74-minute disc has a capacity of 783,216,000 bytes (746MB) for audio but only 681,984,000 bytes (650MB) for data.
In the late-1990s CD-R media began to emerge with more capacity than the 74-minute maximum allowed by the Red Book audio CD or Yellow Book CD-ROM standards. The additional capacity was achieved by reducing the track pitch and scanning velocity specification tolerances to a minimum. The margin of error between drive and media is reduced as a consequence which, in turn, leads to potential compatibility issues, especially with respect to older CD drives and players.
The first of these higher capacity formats had a play time of 80 minutes and 360,000 sectors instead of the usual 333,000. In terms of data capacity this meant 703MB compared with a standard 74-minute CD's 650MB. Not long into the new millennium even higher capacity CD media appeared in the shape of 90-minute and 99-minute formats, boasting capacities of around 791MB and 870MB respectively. It's interesting to note that since CD time stamps are encoded as a pair of binary-coded decimal digits, it won't be possible to push the capacity of a CD beyond 99 minutes!
It was easy to see the attraction of these high-capacity CD formats:
• the confusion surrounding rewritable DVD and its various competing formats, was severely hampering the technology's adoption
• CD-RW technology was by now ubiquitous, with even entry-level PCs being equipped with CD-RW drives
• CD-R and CD-RW media was unbelievably cheap compared with its DVD counterparts
• the huge popularity of the VCD and SVCD formats meant that CD capacity was never enough for many users in the far east and China.
The fashion for "CD overburning" is a further manifestation of consumers' desire to extract as much as they possibly can from CD-RW technology.
Overburning
The Red Book standard for an audio CD specifies a capacity of at least 74 minutes plus a silent " lead-out" area of approximately 90 seconds, used to indicate the end of a disc. Overburning, also known as oversizing, is basically writing more audio or data to CD than its official capacity by utilising the area reserved for the lead-out and perhaps even a few blocks beyond that. The extent to which this is possible depends on the CD recorder, burning software and media used. Not all CD-RW drives or CD recording software allow overburning, and results will be better with some disc brands than with others.
Overburning requires support the Disc-At-Once mode of writing and for the CD-writer to be capable of ignoring capacity information encoded in the blank media's ATIP and use instead the information provided by the CD recording application. Many CD-Writers will reject a Cue Sheet that contains track information which claims a capacity greater than that specified by the blank media itself. Those capable of overburning will simply ignore the latter and attempt to burn a disc up to the end of its pre-formed spiral track.
Burn-speed is critical when recording data to the outermost edge of a CD and most CD-writers that are able to overburn a CD can do so only at a low burn speed. Whilst most CD recording applications have been updated to allow overburning, the extent to which they accommodate the practice varies. Some are capable of accurately computing the maximum capacity of a given disc in a recording simulation mode. With others it may be necessary to make a trial recording to establish precisely how much can be successfully written to the media.
However, since the CDs produced by overburning are, by definition, non-standard, there's no guarantee that they'll be readable by all CD drives or players. Moreover, users need to be aware that the practice can potentially result in damage to either CD media or the CD-writer itself.
Mount Rainier
Though ubiquitous not long into the new millennium, drag&drop writing of data to CD-RW media was still not supported at the operating system level, relying on special packet-writing applications based on the UDF file system. Discs that are written in this way are not automatically readable by other CD-RW drives or CD-ROM drives, but require a special UDF-reader driver. If the reliance on proprietary software and the issues of incompatibility weren't enough, new CD-RW discs need to be formatted before they can be written to; a time-consuming process especially for older CD-RW drives.
The purpose of the proposals made by the Mount Rainier group - led by industry leaders Compaq, Microsoft, Philips Electronics and Sony - was to address these shortcomings and make the use of CD-RW media comparable to that of a hard or floppy disk. Finalised in the spring of 2001, the principal means by which the Mount Rainier specification sought to achieve these objectives was by enabling operating system support for the dragging and dropping of data to CD-RW media and by eliminating formatting delays.
The Mount Rainier specification has a number of key elements:
• Physical defect management by the drive: Most conventional CD-RW packet writing solutions use the defect management handling that comes as part of UDF 1.5. The problem with this is that it requires software to have knowledge of drive and media defect characteristics and capabilities. Mount Rainier-compliant drives support defect management at the hardware level, so that when an application attempts to write data to a "bad" sector, that sector can be "hidden" and an alternative sector used instead.
• Logical write-addressing at 2K: Conventional CD-RW uses a block size 64KB. Mount Rainier defines support for 2K logical addressing as a mandatory requirement, thereby bringing CD-RW drives into line with other data storage systems, which are generally based on 2K or 4K addressability.
• Background formatting: Mount Rainier eliminates both the delay and the need to use third party software associated with conventional CD-RW media formatting by performing this as a background task that's transparent to the user and that over within a minute. Also, media eject times have been brought into line with those of CD-ROM drives.
Less than a year after its successful implementation in CD-RW systems, the DVD+RW Alliance announced the availability of the final Mount Rainier specification for its rewritable DVD format.

DiscT@2 technology
After several years in development, it was in the summer of 2002 that Yamaha Electronics introduced its innovative DiscT@2 technology. This allows a CD-RW drive's laser to tattoo graphics and text onto the unused outer portion of a CD-R disc, thereby providing a far more professional looking disc labelling system than possible by use of stick-on labels or felt-tip markers.
In a normal recording, the recording application will supply a CD recorder with raw digital data, to which the recorder's hardware adds header and error correction information. This is then converted it to what is known as EFM patterns that represent the data to be written to disc. EFM produces pit and land lengths of between 3 and 11 channel bits. A combination of patterns - from "3T" to "11T" - is used for writing data to CD-R, with the result that the burned area of a disc is darker in appearance than the unused area.

DiscT@2 takes things a step further, going beyond the limitations imposed by normal EFM patterns. This allows for greater flexibility in the way the laser burns to CD-R, making possible the drawing of visible images.
At the time of its launch, Yamaha recorders featuring this new technology came with a version of Ahead Nero software designed to provide support for the DiscT@2 technology and to allow the tattooing of a disc to be performed immediately after completion of the data or audio recording process. The company's aim was for all other third-party CD recording software vendors to eventually support DiscT@2 technology through their CD recording applications.

2009-05-18T13:07:00.003+05:30

2009-05-18T12:58:00.004+05:30

Final Tally

INC TDP TRS Others
186 45 26 37

Sl. Constituency Winner Party
1 Ichapuram అగర్వ్వాల్ NARESH KUMAR INC
2 Sompeta G.SYAM SUNDER SIVAJI TDP
3 Tekkali APPAYYA DORA HANUMANTHU INC
4 Harishchandrapuram ATCHANNAIDU KINJARAPU TDP
5 Narasannapeta Dharmana Krishna Das INC
6 Patapatnam K Mohan Rao TDP
7 Kothuru (ST) GOMANGO JANNI MINATHI INC
8 Naguru (ST) Laxmana Murthy. K CPM
9 Parvathipuram Vijayaramaraju Satrucharla INC
10 Salur (ST) R.P. Bhanj Deo TDP
11 Bobbili V Sujay Krishna Rangarao INC
12 Therlam Jayaprakash Tentu TDP
13 Vunukuru KIMIDI KALA VENKATA RAO TDP
14 Palakonda (SC) KAMBALA JOGULU TDP
15 Amadalavalasa SATYAVATHI BODDEPALLI INC
16 Srikakulam D. PRASADA RAO INC
17 Etcherla (SC) Kondru Murali Mohan INC
18 Cheepurupalli BOTCHA SATYANARAYANA INC
19 Gajapathinagaram Aruna Padala TDP
20 Vizianagaram K. VEERABHADRA SWAMY IND
21 Sathivada Penumatsa Sambasiva Raju INC
22 Bhogapuram K. APPALA SWAMI INC
23 Bheemunipatnam SEETHARAMU KARRI INC
24 Visakhapatnam-I Dronamraju Satyanarayana INC
25 Visakhapatnam-II Rangaraju Saripalli INC
26 Pendurthi TIPPALA GURUMURTHI REDDY INC
27 Uttarapalli Mangapathi Rao Pudi INC
28 Srungavarapukota (ST) Dr. Kumba Ravi Babu INC
29 Paderu (ST) LAKE RAJA RAO BSP
30 Madugula Reddi DHARMASRI KARANAM INC
31 Chodavaram Ganta Srinivasarao TDP
32 Anakapalli Konathala Ramakrishna INC
33 Paravada BABJI GANDI INC
34 Elamanchili U.V. RAMANAMURTI RAJU INC
35 Payakaraopeta (SC) Chengala Venkatarao TDP
36 Narsipatnam AYYANNAPATRUDU CHINTHAKAYALA TDP
37 Chintapalli (ST) Goddeti Demudu CPI
38 Yellavaram (ST) CHINNAM BABU RAMESH TDP
39 Burugupudi Ch. Ravindra INC
40 Rajahmundry ROUTHU SURYAPRAKASA RAO INC
41 Kadiam JAKKAMPUDI RAMAMOHAN RAO INC
42 Jaggampeta Thota Narsimham INC
43 Peddapuram THOTA GOPALA KRISHNA INC
44 Prathipadu SUBBA RAO VARUPULA INC
45 Tuni Yanamala Ramakrishnudu TDP
46 Pithapuram P Dora Babu BJP
47 Sampara Anisetti Buliabbai Reddy INC
48 Kakinada Mukta Gopala Krishna INC
49 Tallarevu DOMMETI VENKATESWARLU INC
50 Anaparthy T. RAMA REDDY INC
51 Ramachandrapuram BOSU PILLI IND
52 Alamuru KRISHARJUNA CHOWDARY BIKKINA INC
53 Mummidivaram (SC) VISWARUPA PINIPE INC
54 Allavaram (SC) GOLLAPALLI SURYA RAO INC
55 Amalapuram CHITTABBAI KUDUPUDI IND
56 Kothapeta CHIRLA JAGGIREDDY INC
57 Nagaram (SC) RAJESHWARI DEVI PAMULA INC
58 Razole ALLURI KRISHNAM RAJU INC
59 Narasapur Kothapalli Subbaraidu TDP
60 Palacole Ch. Satyanarayana Murthy TDP
61 Achanta (SC) PEETHALA SUJATHA TDP
62 Bhimavaram GRANDHI SRINIVAS INC
63 Undi Pathapati Sarraju INC
64 Penugonda Pithani Satyanarayana INC
65 Tanuku CHITTURI BAPINEEDU INC
66 Attili Ch. Sri Ranganatharaju INC
67 Tadepalligudem KOTTU SATYANARAYANA INC
68 Ungutur VATTI VASANT KUMAR INC
69 Dendulur Maganti Venkateshwarulu INC
70 Eluru Alla Nani INC
71 Gopalpuram (SC) Maddala Sunitha INC
72 Kovvur PENDYALA VENKATA KRISHNA RAO TDP
73 Polavaram (ST) TELLAM BALA RAJU INC
74 Chintalapudi GHANTA MURALI RAMAKRISHNA INC
75 Jaggayyapet Udayabhanu Samineni INC
76 Nandigama Umamaheshwararao Devineni TDP
77 Vijayawada (East) Vangaveeti Radha Krishnan INC
78 Vijayawada (West) Shaik Nasarvali CPI
79 Kankipadu DEVINENI RAJASEKHAR INC
80 Mylavaram Chanumolu Venkatarao INC
81 Tiruvuru (SC) Koneru Ranga Rao INC
82 Nuzvid Venkata Pratap Apparao M INC
83 Gannavaram M Venkateshwara Rao Ind
84 Vuyyur PARDHASARATHY KOLUSU INC
85 Gudivada SRIVENKATESWARA RAO K TDP
86 Mudinepalli P.Venkateshwara Rao INC
87 Kaikalur Y RAJARAMACHANDAR INC
88 Malleswaram BURAGADDA VEDAVYAS INC
89 Bandar PERNI VENKATA RAMAIAH INC
90 Nidumolu (SC) Ramaiah Paturu CPM
91 Avanigadda Buddha Prasad Mandali INC
92 Kuchinapudi MOPIDEVI VENKATA RAMANA RAO INC
93 Repalle Devineni Mallikha Juna Rao INC
94 Vemur SATISH PAUL RAJ INC
95 Duggirala Gudibandi Venkata Reddy INC
96 Tenali NADENDLA MANOHAR INC
97 Ponnur Dhulipalla Narendra Kumar TDP
98 Bapatla GADE VENKATA REDDY INC
99 Prathipad Ravi Venkata Ramana INC
100 Guntur-I SHAIK SUBANI INC
101 Guntur-II TADISETTY VENKATA INC
102 Mangalagiri MURUGUDU HANUMANTHA RAO INC
103 Tadikonda (SC) Dokka Manikya Varaprasada Rao INC
104 Sattenapalli Yerram Venkayeshwara Reddy INC
105 Peddakurapadu Kanna Lakshmi Narayana INC
106 Gurzala Krishna Murthi Janga INC
107 Macherla Pinnelli Laxma Reddy INC
108 Vinukonda Makkena Mallikarjuna Rao INC
109 Narasaraopet KASU VENKATA KRISHNA REDDY INC
110 Chilakaluripet MARRI RAJA SEKHAR IND
111 Chirala Rosaiah Konijetti INC
112 Parchur Dr.Daggubati Venkateswara Rao INC
113 Martur GOTTIPATI RAVI KUMAR INC
114 Addanki KARANAM BALARAMAKRISHNA MURTHY TDP
115 Ongole Balineni Srinivasa Reddy INC
116 Santhanuthalapadu (SC) Dara Sambaiah INC
117 Kandukur MAHEEDHARA REDDY MANUGUNTA INC
118 Kanigiri ERIGINENI THIRUPATHI NAIDU INC
119 Kondepi POTHULA RAMA RAO INC
120 Cumbum UDUMULA SRINIVASULU REDDY INC
121 Darsi BUCHEPALLI SUBBAREDDY IND
122 Markapur Pedda Konda Reddy Kunduru INC
123 Giddalur Pagadaala Ramaiah INC
124 Udayagiri Mekapati Chandrasekhar Reddy INC
125 Kavali MAGUNTA PARVATHAMMA INC
126 Allur KATAMREDDY VISHNUVARDHAN REDDY INC
127 Kovur SREENIVASULU REDDY INC
128 Atmakur ERASU PRATAP REDDY INC
129 Rapur ANAM .RAMNARAYANA REDDY INC
130 Nellore ANAM VIVENKANANDA REDDY INC
131 Sarvepalli ADALA PRABHAKARA REDDY INC
132 Gudur (SC) PATRA PRAKASA RAO INC
133 Sulurpet (SC) Nelavala Subrahmanyam INC
134 Venkatagiri NEDURUMALLI RAJYA LAKSHMI INC
135 Sri Kalahasti S.C.V. NAIDU INC
136 Satyavedu (SC) K Narayana Swamy INC
137 Nagari Rajeshwari Devi Pamula INC
138 Puttur GALI MUDDHU KRISHNAMA NAIDU INC
139 Vepanjeri (SC) DR.GUMMADI KUTHUHALAMMA INC
140 Chittoor A S Manohar TDP
141 Palmaner (SC) L.LALITHA KUMARI TDP
142 Kuppam Chandrababu Naidu TDP
143 Punganur R Reddappa Reddy INC
144 Madanpalle DOMMALAPATI RAMESH TDP
145 Thamballapalle Kadapa Prabhakar Reddy INC
146 Vayalpad NALLARI KIRANKUMAR REDDY INC
147 Pileru P.RAMACHANDRA REDDY INC
148 Chandragiri ARUNAKUMARI GALLA INC
149 Tirupathi M.VENKATA RAMANA INC
150 Koduru (SC) Dr. G.Venkateswara Prasad INC
151 Rajampet Konduru Prabhavathamma INC
152 Rayachoty Palakondrayudu Sugavasi TDP
153 Lakkireddipalli Gadikota Mohan Reddy INC
154 Cuddapah Ahamadulla Mohammad Syed INC
155 Badvel Chinna Govinda Reddy Devasani INC
156 Mydukur DR.D.L.RAVINDRA REDDY INC
157 Proddatur N. VARADARAJULU REDDY INC
158 Jammalamadugu Adi Narayana Reddy Chadipirala INC
159 Kamalapuram GANDLURU VEERA SIVA REDDY TDP
160 Pulivendla RAJASEKHARA REDDY. Y.S INC
161 Kadiri JONNA RAMAIAH INC
162 Nallamada Kadapala Mohan Reddy INC
163 Gorantla PAMUDURTHY RAVINDRA REDDY INC
164 Hindupur RANGANAYAKULU.P TDP
165 Madakasira N.RAGHUVEERA REDDY INC
166 Penukonda PARITALA RAVINDRA TDP
167 Kalyandrug (SC) B.C GOVINDAPPA TDP
168 Rayadrug METTU GOVINDA REDDY TDP
169 Uravakonda PAYYAVULA KESHAV TDP
170 Gooty Neelavathi.N INC
171 Singanamala (SC) Sake Sailajanth INC
172 Anantapur B. NARAYANA REDDY INC
173 Dharmavaram Gonuguntla Jayalakshmamma TDP
174 Tadpatri J.C.DIVAKAR REDDY INC
175 Alur (SC) Katamreddy Vishnuvardhan Reddy INC
176 Adoni Y. SAI PRASAD REDDY INC
177 Yemmiganur Chennakesawa Reddy INC
178 Kodumur (SC) M SIKHAMANI INC
179 Kurnool ABDUL GAFOOR. M CPM
180 Pattikonda Giripogu Nagamma Ind
181 Dhone Kambalapadu Edigi Prabhakar TDP
182 Koilkuntla Challa Ramakrishna Reddy INC
183 Allagadda Gangulla Prathap Reddy INC
184 Panyam K.RAMBHUPAL REDDY INC
185 Nandikotkur Gowru Charitha INC
186 Nandyal SILPA MOHAN REDDY INC
187 Atmakur KOMMI LAXMAIAH NAIDU IND
188 Achampet (SC) Dr.VAMSHI KRISHNA INC
189 Nagarkurnool Dr. Nagam Janardhan Reddy TDP
190 Kalwakurthi Yadma Kista Reddy INC
191 Shadnagar (SC) Dr. P Shankar Rao INC
192 Jadcherla CHARLAKOLA LAXMA REDDY TRS
193 Mahbubnagar PULI VEERANNA IND
194 Wanaparthy Dr. G. CHINNA REDDY INC
195 Kollapur JUPALLY KRISHNA RAO IND
196 Alampur CHALLA VENKATRAMI REDDY IND
197 Gadwal D.K. ANJANEYULU IND
198 Amarchinta SALGUTI SWARNA SUDHAKAR INC
199 Makthal CHITEM NARSI REDDY INC
200 Kodangal Gurunath Reddy INC
201 Tandur Malkur Narayan Rao INC
202 Vikarabad (SC) A.Chendra Shekar TRS
203 Pargi Koppula Harishwar TDP
204 Chevella Patlolla Sabitha INC
205 Ibrahimpatnam (SC) Masku Narsimha CPM
206 Musheerabad Nayini Narsimha Reddy TRS
207 Himayatnagar G. Kishaan Reddy BJP
208 Sanathnagar Marri Shashidhar Reddy INC
209 Secunderabad T.Padma Rao TRS
210 Khairatabad P.Janardhana Reddy INC
211 Secunderabad Cantonment (SC) G.Sayanna TDP
212 Malakpet MALREDDY RANGA REDDY INC
213 Asafnagar D.Nagender TDP
214 Maharajgunj M.MUKESH INC
215 Karwan MD MUQTADA KHAN AIMIM
216 Yakutpurax MUMTAZ AHMED KHAN AIMIM
217 Chandrayangutta AKBARUDIN OWAISI AIMIM
218 Charminar Syed Ahmedpasha Quadhri MIM
219 Medchal Tulla Devender Goud TDP
220 Siddipeta K Chandra Sekhara Rao TRS
221 Dommat Solipeta Ramalinga Reddi TRS
222 Gajwel (SC) JETTY GEETHA INC
223 Narsapur Vakiti Sunitha Laxma Reddy INC
224 Sangareddy TURUPU JAYAPRAKASH REDDY TRS
225 Zahirabad Mahammad Fareeduddin INC
226 Narayankhed Suresh Kumar Shetkar INC
227 Medak Patlolla Shashidhar Reddy JP
228 Ramayampet PADMA DEVENDER REDDY.M TRS
229 Andole (SC) C.Damodar Rajanarsimha INC
230 Balkonda K.R.Suresh Reddy INC
231 Armoor SANTOSH REDDY SANIGARAM TRS
232 Kamareddy MOHAMMED ALI SHABBIR INC
233 Yellareddy EANUGU RAVINDER REDDY TRS
234 Jukkal (SC) Soudagar Gangaram INC
235 Banswada Bajireddy Goverdhan INC
236 Bodhan Sudarshan Reddy INC
237 Nizamabad Dharmapuri Srinivasa Rao INC
238 Dichpalli GANGA REDDY GADDAM TRS
239 Mudhole NARAYANA RAO TRS
240 Nirmal ALLOLA INDRAKARAN REDDY INC
241 Boath (ST) SOYAM BAPU RAO TRS
242 Adilabad CHILUKURI RAMCHANDAR REDDY INC
243 Khanapur (ST) Ajmeera Govind Naik TRS
244 Asifabad (SC) AMURAJULA SRIDEVI TDP
245 Luxettipet NADIPELLI DIWAKAR RAO INC
246 Sirpur KONAPPA INC
247 Chinnur (SC) DR.Dugyala Srinivasarao TRS
248 Manthani Duddilla Sridhar Babu INC
249 Peddapalli Geetla Mukunda Reddy TRS
250 Myadaram (SC) Koppula Eshwar TRS
251 Huzurabad CAPT.V.LAXMIKANTHA RAO TRS
252 Kamalapur ETALA RAJENDER TRS
253 Indurthi CHADA VENKATREDDY CPI
254 Karimnagar MENENI SATYANARAYANA RAO INC
255 Choppadandi SANA MARUTHI TDP
256 Jagtial T. JEEVAN REDDY INC
257 Buggaram JUVVADI RATHNAKAR RAO INC
258 Metpalli KOMOREDDI RAMLU JP
259 Sircilla CHENNAMANENY RAJESHWARA RAO TDP
260 Nerella (SC) LINGAIAH KASHIPETA TRS
261 Cheriyal PRATHAP REDDY KUMMURI TRS
262 Jangaon Ponnala Lakshmaiah INC
263 Chennur DR.DUGYALA SRINIVASA RAO TRS
264 Dornakal DHARAMSOTH REDYA NAIK INC
265 Mahbubabad Vem Narender Reddy TDP
266 Narsampet KAMMAMPATI LAXMA REDDY TRS
267 Wardhannapet ERRABELLI DAYAKAR RAO TDP
268 Ghanpur (SC) GUNDE VIJAYA RAMA RAO TRS
269 Warangal Baswaraju Saraiah INC
270 Hanamkonda Mandadi Satyanarayana Reddy TRS
271 Shyampet Konda Surekha INC
272 Parkal (SC) Bandari Shava Rani TRS
273 Mulug (ST) Podem Veeraiah INC
274 Bhadrachalam (ST) Sunnam Rajaiah CPM
275 Burgampahad (ST) VENKATESWARLU PAYAM CPI
276 Kothagudem Vanama Venkateswara Rao INC
277 Sathupalli JALAGAM VENKAT RAO INC
278 Madhira KATTA VENKATA NARASAIAH CPM
279 Palair (SC) Chandrasekhar Sambani INC
280 Khammam THAMMINENI VEERABHADRAM CPM
281 Shujatnagar RAMREDDY VENKATA REDDY INC
282 Yellandu (ST) Kankaiah Koram Ind
283 Tungaturthi RAMREDDY DAMODAR REDDY INC
284 Suryapet (SC) VEDAS VENKAIAH INC
285 Kodad Uttam Kumar Reddy Nalamada INC
286 Miryalguda JULAKANTI RANGA REDDY CPM
287 Chalakurthi Kunduru Jana Reddy INC
288 Nakrekal Nomula Narsimhaiah CPM
289 Nalgonda KOMATIREDDY VENKAT REDDY INC
290 Ramannapet Uppunuthula Purushotham Reddy INC
291 Alair (SC) Dr.Kududula Nagesh TRS
292 Bhongir Smt.Alimineti Uma Madhava Reddy TDP
293 Mungode Palla Venkat Reddy CPI
294 Deverkonda (ST) Ravindra Kumar Ramavath CPI

నోకియా 888

2009-05-18T12:53:00.001+05:30

*design concept

“Form follows you”
A personal mobile communication device which lets you be free and fun. It is light, simple and carefree. You can change its form according to your needs during the day.

*target

It is targeted to the young consumers who are likely to be active and take place in a lot of different activities.

*why this target ?

Because they move and change place too much. They do a lot of different things during the day. So that’s what my design offers : to adjust to the moment, the place and the function.

*technologies that are used

It uses liquid battery, speech recognition, flexible touch screen, touch sensitive body cover which lets it understand and adjust to the environment. It has a simple programmable body mechanism so that it changes forms in different situations.

*the functionality of design

You dont have to carry it in your pocket or on your wrist. You can carry it anywhere, in anyform. You can roll it, bend it, put on your clothes like a clip. It also makes some form changes that makes it more ergonomical: i.e. when you want to talk on the phone, the body form turns into the form of the good old telephone. You can personalize these forms and record them. So it fits you the best in the way that you have chosen. The functions that it has also create a feeling of electronical pet, as it senses your moves, understand what you want, respond you in the best way. It learns you, to fit you better.Also e-motions lets you send forms to the other 888 users. It could be the shape of a heart or a small dance. This way you can talk without words.

*how the user interacts

E-motions… It means electronical motions that 888 has. You can send and receive forms from / to friends. You can send a heart shape to your girlfriend, so her telephone turns into an icon of heart. Or you can send a dancing form to your friends to call them to the party tonight. This is the fun side of the product. If we look from the functionality side, 888 is quite flexible. You can put it into your pocket, roll it and make it smaller, or put on your wrist when you want to make a video call on the go. If you want to talk like a normal telephone, there you have your telephone shape. We go through a lot of places and situations in the daily life, so it seems like one form is not enough.

*what is unique ?

You can change the form of the body. Not just the color. And you can do the same by sending an e-motion to your friend.

*the inspiration

The idea is that “the perfect form” does not exist. “Form follows you”
We create the perfect form for each function.

2009-05-14T20:15:00.001+05:30

Does your name begin with: A?
U are not particularly romantic, but you are interested in action. You mean business. With you, what you see is what you get. You have no patience for flirting and can’t be bothered with someone who is trying to be coy, cute, demure, and subtly enticing. You are an up-front person. You often don’t get hints & you never pass any. Brains turn you on. You must feel that your partner is intellectually stimulating; otherwise you will find it difficult to sustain the relationship. You require loving, cuddling, wining, and dining to know that you’re being appreciated. Your mate’s physical attractiveness is important for you. You tend to be very practical, & not very emotional. Your choices are very good & can only lead to trouble. You are very self satisfied & egoistic.
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Does your name begin with: B?
You give off vibes of lazy sensuality. You enjoy being romanced, wined, and dined. You are very happy to receive gifts as an statement of the affection of your lover. You want to be pampered and know how to pamper your mate. You are private in your statement of endearments, and particular when it comes to love. You will hold off until everything meets with your approval. You can control your appetite & feelings. You require new sensations and experiences. You are willing to experiment.
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Does your name begin with: C?
You are a very social individual, and it is important to you to have a relationship. You require closeness and togetherness. You want the object of your affection to be socially acceptable and good-looking. You see your lover as a friend and companion. You are very sensual, needing someone to appreciate and almost worship you. When this cannot be achieved, you have the ability to hold out on affection until you receive this. You are an expert at controlling your desires and doing without.
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Does your name begin with: D?
Once you get it into your head that you want someone, you move full steam ahead in your suit. You do not give up your quest easily. You are nurturing and caring. If someone has a problem, this turns you on. You are highlypassionate, loyal, and intense in your involvement’s, sometimes possessiveand jealous. You are very sharp & talented often with sense of humour. When people bother to look deep inside they cannot resist what they see. You are stimulated by the eccentric and unusual, having a free and open attitude. You get jealous of other people and lose your temper.
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Does your name begin with: E?
Your greatest need is to talk. If your date is not a good listener, you have trouble relating. A person must be intellectually stimulating or you are not interested sexually. You need a friend for a lover and a companion. You hate disharmony and disruption, but you do enjoy a good argument once in a while-it seems to stir things up. You flirt a lot, for the challenge is more important. But once you give your heart away, you are uncompromisingly loyal. You will fall asleep with a good book. Sometimes, in fact, you prefer a good book to a lover.
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Does your name begin with: F?
You are idealistic and romantic, putting your lover on a pedestal. You look for the very best mate you can find. You are a flirt, yet once committed, you are very loyal. You are sensuous and privately passionate. Publicly, you can be showy, extravagant, and gallant. You are a born romantic.Dramatic love scenes are a favourite fantasy past time. You can be a very generous lover.
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Does your name begin with: G?
You are fastidious, seeking perfection within yourself and your lover. You respond to a lover who is your intellectual equal or superior, and one who can enhance your status. You are sensuous and know how to reach the peak of stimulation, because you work at it meticulously. You can be extremely active-never tiring out. Your duties and responsibilities take precedence over everything else. You may have difficulty getting emotionally close to people.
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Does your name begin with: H?
You seek a mate who can enhance your zest for life, fun & everything you seek for. You will be very generous to your lover once you have attained a commitment. You are very affectionate & very strong. Your gifts are actually an investment in your partner. Before the commitment, though, you tend to be very careful with your every move and equally cautious in your involvements often, as you believe that you have to look out for yourself. You are a sensual and patient lover. You will hold off till everything meets your full approval. You are a perfectionist, hard to satisfy and strong in your beliefs. Not influential, you always stand your ground. People can always count on you to stand by them in a crisis. You are a dreamer with a passion for life.
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Does your name begin with: I?
You have a great need to be loved, appreciated…even worshiped. You enjoy luxury, sensuality, and pleasures of the flesh. You like necking spend hours just touching feeling & exploring. You look for lovers who know what they are doing. You are not interested in an amateur, unless that amateur wants a tutor. You are fussy and exacting about having your desires satisfied. You are willing to experiment and try new modes of statement. You bore easily and thus require adventure and change. Your commitments don’t last very long & you often tend to stray. Loyalty is not one of your strong points. You are more sensual than sexual, but you are sometimes downright lustful.
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Does your name begin with: J?
You are blessed with a great deal of physical energy. When used for a good cause there is nothing to stop you, except maybe that they aren’t always used for the good. ( you could dance all night.) You respond to the thrill of the chase and the challenge of the mating game. You can carry on great romances in your head. At heart you are a roamer and need to set out on your own every so often. You will carry on long- distance relationships with ease. You are idealistic and need to believe in love. You have a need to be nurtured deep within.
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Does your name begin with: K?
You are secretive, self-contained, and shy. You are very sexy, sensual, and passionate, but you do not let on to this. Only in intimate privacy will this part of your nature reveal itself. When it gets down to the nitty-gritty, you are an expert. You know all the little tricks of the trade, can play any role or any game, and take your love life very seriously. You don’t fool around. You have the patience to wait for the right person to come along. You are very generous & giving, often selfless. You are kind-natured & sweet, which is found to be attractive by many. You are a good friend.
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Does your name begin with: L?
You can be very romantic, attached to the glamour of love. Having a partner is of paramount importance to you. You are free in your statement of love and are willing to take chances, try new sexual experiences and partners, provided it’s all in good taste. Brains turn you on.
You must feel that your partner is intellectually stimulating, otherwise you will find it difficult to sustain the relationship. You require loving, cuddling, wining, and dining to know that you’re being appreciated.
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Does your name begin with: M?
You may appear innocent, unassuming and shy; but we know that appearances can lie. When it comes to sex, you are no novice but something of a skilled technician. You can easily go to extremes, though, running the gamut from insatiability to boredom with the whole idea of love. You can be highly critical of your mate, seeking perfection in both of you. It is not easy to find someone who can meet your standards. You have difficulty expressing emotions and drawing close to lovers. You are often selfish, thinking you are always right no matter what. You never give in. Winning is your prime desire- at any cost. You often forget friends and family and you live for the moment.
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Does your name begin with: N?
You are emotional and intense. When involved in a relationship, you throw your entire being into it. Nothing stops you; there are no holds barred. You are all consuming and crave someone who is equally passionate and intense. You believe in total freedom. You are willing to try anything and everything. Your supply of energy is inexhaustible. You want to be pampered and know how to pamper your mate. You also enjoy mothering your mate. You often have the greatest love affairs all by yourself, in your head. You are very imaginative.
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Does your name begin with: O?
You are very interested in fun activities yet secretive and shy about your desires. You can re-channel much of your energy into making money and/or seeking we. You can easily have extended periods of celibacy. You are a passionate, compassionate lover, requiring the same qualities from your mate. Love is serious business; thus you demand intensity, diversity and is willing to try anything or anyone. Sometimes your passions turn to possessiveness, which must be kept in check.
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Does your name begin with: P?
You are very conscious of social proprieties. You wouldn’t think of doing anything that might harm your image or reputation. Appearances count. Therefore, you require a good-looking partner. You also require an intelligent partner. Oddly enough, you may view your partner as your enemy…a good fight stimulates those vibes. You are relatively free of hang-ups. You are willing to experiment and try new ways of doing things. You are very social and sensual; you enjoy flirting and need a good deal of physical gratification.
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Does your name begin with: Q?
You require constant activity and stimulation. You have tremendous physical energy. It is not easy for a partner to keep up with you. You are an enthusiastic lover and tend to be attracted to people because of their ethnic groups. You need romance, hearts and flowers, and conversation to turn you on and keep you going.
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Does your name begin with: R?
You are a no-nonsense, action-oriented individual. You need someone who can keep pace with you and who is your intellectual equal-the smarter the better. You are turned on more quickly by a great mind than by a great body. However, physical attractiveness is not very important to you. You have to be proved to be worthy for a partner. You have a need to prove yourself the best. You want feedback on your performance. You are open, stimulating & romantic.
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Does your name begin with: S?
For you, it is pleasure before business. You can be romantically idealistic to a fault and is capable of much sensuality. But you never loose control of your emotions. Once you make the commitment you stick like glue. You could get jealous and possessive. You tend to be very selfish often regarding yourself as the only human being on the planet. You like being the center of attention. You are very caring, sensitive, private & sometimes very passive. Turned on by soft lights, romantic thoughts. When it gets down to the nitty-gritty, you are an expert. You know all the little tricks of the trade, can play any role, or any game, and take your love life very seriously. You don’t fool around. You have the patience to wait for the right person to come along. You are very generous & giving, often selfless. You are kind nature & sweet, which is found to be attractive by many. You are a good friend.

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Does your name begin with: T?
You are very sensitive, private & sometimes very passive. You like someone who takes the lead. Music, soft lights & romantic thoughts turn you on. You fantasize & tend to fall in & out of love soon. When in love you are romantic, idealistic, mushy & extremely. You enjoy having your senses & your feelings stimulated, titillated & teased. You are a great flirt. You can make your relationships fit your dreams, all in your own head. Once you put your mind to something you manage to stand by it and see your dreams through. You aren’t very good at expressing your feelings. You like things your own way. You do not like change; you like to hold on to things. This may not always be good because if given an opportunity things may develop into great things. You work your way to the top. Attention must be given to what others say because even though you don’t want to hear it their advice may turn ! out to save your life.
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Does your name begin with: U?
You are enthusiastic & at you’re happiest when in love. When not in love you’re in love with love and always looking for someone to adore. You see romance as challenge. You are a roamer & needs adventure, excitement freedom. You enjoy giving gifts & looking good. You are willing to put others feelings above yours.
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Does your name begin with: V?
You are individualistic & you need freedom, space & excitement. You wait till you know someone well before committing yourself. Knowing someone means psyching her/him out. You feel a need to get into his/her head to see hat makes him tick. You are attracted to eccentric types. You believe that age is no barrier. You are good at responding to danger, fear & suspense.
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Does your name begin with: W?
You are very proud, determined & refuses to take no for an answer when it come to love. Your ego is at stake all the time. You are romantic, idealistic, often in love with love itself, not seeing your partner for who she or he really is. You feel deeply about love & tends to throw all of your self into a relationship. Nothing is too good for your lover. You likelaying love games.
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Does your name begin with: X?
You need constant stimulation because you get bored quickly. You can handle more than 1 relationship at a time with ease. You can’t shut off your mind. You can do 2 things at once. You are very talented.
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Does your name begin with: Y?
You are sensual & very independent. If you can’t have it your way, you will forget the whole thing. You want to control your relationships, which doesn’t work out too well. You respond to physical stimulation. However if you can make money you will give up the pleasures of the flesh for the moment. You have a need to prove yourself the best. You want feedback on your performance. You are open, stimulating & romantic.
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Does your name begin with: Z?
You are very romantic but show feels that to love means to suffer. You wind up serving your mate & attracting people who have unusual trouble. You see yourself as a lover’s savior.

2009-05-01T17:43:00.003+05:30

Aircel Postpaid Plans
Aircel is providing its customers all postpaid plans which are meant to suit the calling needs. With Aircel postpaid plan one can explore the world of unlimited possibilities. The features available for Aircel postpaid subscriber are as follows:
1.Colour SMS: helps get rid of black and white SMS.
2.Caller Ring Back Tunes(CRBT): helps provide latest ring tones making you get rid of old "Tring-Tring"type of tunes.
3.Aircel 55555 Services: Just dialing 55555 will help download lates ring tones, latest news,dedicate NEWS and daily horoscopes.
4.Aircel Subscription Service: gives latest News,Cricket updates,Jokes and many more.
5.Aircel Health Services: gives guidence for drug-free,side effect free cure for any familiy finding the help.
6.Aircel Railway Services: gives complete information regarding the time of arrival of train,availability of seats,all time-each way whenever needed.
7.Aircel Play Scrabble: will give you both fun and help improve one's vocabulary.
8.Aircel SMS CHAT/CRUSH:With the help of this service one can find likable and minded people and could enjoy some good times with them.
9.Aircel Search Your Favourite Ringtones: will help you find your most likable ringtones.
10.Aircel Voice Mail Box:At times when one is busy,answering a phone become really difficult,at such times Aircel's voice mail box will help solve all such problems.
11.Aircel often provides its customers with latest cricket updates from all around the world.
12.Aircel Top Ringtones/Item Ringtones:will help a individual to store the best ringtones on one's mobile phone.
13.Aircel better saving facilities helps you keep your contacts stored without losing a touch with your best friends.
14.Aircel often provides healthy living tips.
15.Aircel SIM Browser Services provides value added services and selective features on the mobile phone.
16.Aircel Dictionary is now ready to provide meaning for every word of whose one do not know the meaning.
17.Aircel also provides ringtones in the regional languages known to a person.
18.Aircel's jokes will make the most quitest to laugh over his stomach.
19.Aircel also provides Hollywood/English Ringtones whenever required.

All these amazing facilities would certainly be likened by an individual or the whole family.

2009-05-01T17:41:00.003+05:30

BSNL Postpaid Plans
Coverage, Cost and Clarity helps judge best the extent quality of any mobile service. BSNL, the best with all these 3C's - is available with BSNL postpaid mobile plans - Cellone. Activation charges of Rs.216/- and compulsory security deposits helps one get a Cellone connection. Instance a delay in connection availibility a registration fee of Rs.500/- is evenly charged which is adjusted along with the first bill.

For ISD Rs.3000/-, for STD Rs.2000/- and for local connection Rs.1000/- are charged initially as security deposits which can even be increased depending on call pattern or fault in payment.

At present Cellone is available with 3 plans : Plan-225, Plan-325 and Plan-525 all having same monthly rental of Rs.225, Rs.100 and Rs.300 are plan charges for the Plan-325 and Plan-525. The plan-325 is available with higher call charges and Plan-525 with lower call charges.

If you are already a BSNL subscriber, you will not have to deposit any security fee. If equipped with Plan-325 and 525 along with roaming facility,one will not have to deposit any security deposit or monthly rental. Some other free facilities like Voice Mail Recording and recieving , CLIP, call waiting and call holding will be available along with. Latest SMS alerts for the missed calls will also be available.

Billing
Billing is done monthly at selected departmental counters and banks or even through crossed cheques which can card in deep boxes with mobile no.,a/c no.,invoice no. and name of the subscriber on the back of the cheque.

2009-05-01T17:40:00.004+05:30

Reliance PostPaid Plan

Reliance postpaid plans designed for Your Calling Needs
Reliance Mobile postpaid plans are 'designed to fit' your calling needs. If you are looking for some great tariffs, we are sure to have one appropriate for you. You can choose your plan from a variety of affordable tariff plans. Gone are the days when you were bound by a particular handset and phone number. Now set yourself free with the new Get Started Kit from Reliance Mobile Guidelines for a Postpaid Get Started Kit

A postpaid Get Started Kit can be used with:
Any Reliance-ready handset, without a pre-allotted number.
Any second-hand, non-active Reliance handset.

A postpaid Get Started Kit cannot be used with:
Reliance prepaid or postpaid handsets with a pre-allotted number.
Any active Reliance postpaid handset.
Reliance handsets that are damaged or reported as lost .
Submit the application form to a Reliance representative, and remember that you will be able to use the phone only after your application is registered in the Reliance system.

Our network travels with you
Travelling is an integral part of life in today's world. When you are on the move, keep in touch with business associates, friends and your loved ones through Reliance Mobile's roaming service, which offers excellent coverage in and outside India. You can be sure to enjoy the best coverage, wherever you go.

National Roaming:
Stop costly roaming. Start National roaming all over the country, at zero rental with Reliance Mobile.

Reliance World Roaming:
Now roam across 200 countries and 350 GSM and CDMA networks with your Reliance number.

2009-05-01T17:38:00.003+05:30

Vodafone Postpaid Plans
If you are having a Vodafone Postpaid plan in your mobile sim card then also make a move to buy a special postpaid mobile handset with special postpaid mobile handset offers.Together these two will help you talk endlessly without caring about your bill.This facility is avialable with three plans like Group talk,174 plan having monthly rental of 174.New talk 150 plan having a monthly rental of 150 and another new talk 199 plan having a monthly rental 199.

Finance,Travel,mail,messiging and many more ;can be enjoyed by being a Airtel mobile subscriber.Vodafone is avialable with a wide variety of postpaid mobiles plans.One can choose the best suiting his needs and budget.

Even you can get the right postpaid talk plan by just sending a SMS:->BEST FIT to 111 (Toll Free).All information relating to your Vodafone Postpaid bill payment can be had through your nearest Vodafone store or simply by calling 111 (Toll free).A Vodafone Postpaid bill payment can even be made online by logging to My Vodafone anytime.

A payment can also be made at the nearest multiplex,mall or a vodafone store by cash, cheque or a credit card,payment can also be made by credit card.Postpaid payment can also be made by payment vouchers which are aviable in denominations of Rs100,Rs200,Rs500 and Rs1000.

With E-payment facility one can also pay postpaid bills through cash at various post office.Bill can often be paid by credit card by calling 111,(Toll free).By filling Direct Debit Form at nearest Vodafone store one can pay bill directly through pay bill account.

2009-05-01T17:37:00.003+05:30

Tata Indicom Postpaid Plans
The most apt and suitable postpaid mobile phone is now ready to offer both prepaid and postpaid mobile phone connections.It should be noted that Tata Indicom postpaid mobile plan STD charges are one of the lowest in India for distances falling under the circumfrence of around 500 kilometers with no additional airtime charges.Offering superior voice clarity, congestion free networks, high speed data access are the primere priorities of the company in around 1000 cities.

Its the first company of nation to introduce International roaming with a One World One Number T-SIM card;this T-SIM card will help to switch between CDMA and GSM networks without using a different SIM card.Tata Teleservices had a merger with CDMA and GSM network in about 178 countries. With Tata Indicom's Telecommunication services the whole world had turned one single home.

Thanks to Tata Indicom's "One World One Number" which empower's with many unique features:

1.One World One Number T-Sim Card: which helps to enjoy both CDMA and GSM services by selecting any one from both type networks.

2.One Number: will help reach anywhere in the world with the same Tata Indicom mobile number.

3.One Address Book: helps have a single address book throughout the world.

4.One Phone:The new Dual WORLDPHONE (GLOBALMOTO) has been introduced for the first time in India; which has the capability of working with both CDMA and GSM networks.It helps enjoy services which the company offers, no matter where-ever one goes.

5.One Caller Line Identity:Even being on roaming when one makes an outgoing call,the CLI will be displayed on the phone of the called party.

6.One Zone One Tariff: This facility helps provide easy to afford and safe tariffs for any call that one makes while roaming internationally in GSM countries.

7.One Bill:One can now find local and international roaming calls in the same monthly bill.

8.One Helpline:Single customer help number-9225510000 is capable of solving every kind of customer problem.Customer care is ready to help anywhere anytime 24*7 not just at the nearest customer care but also On-Line.

2009-05-01T17:33:00.002+05:30

Idea PostPaid Plans
The other terms designated for IDEA are SIMPLICITY & AFFORDABILITY.The customer center tariff are meant to best suit your pursuits and keep your packet heavy. With Idea one can enjoy "Rome like Home" type experience. Idea is the first telecom operator in INDIA with such facility. Idea has cut the call rates range on all made of communication from sms based to voice based ones,to provide best value for money. Features like latest ringtones download,the freshest joke,train arrival and departure time and also the aeroplane flight times all can be had with Idea. Other features like movie ticket booking,latest cricket score ,some importantstock informations,downloading games or chatting online can also be enjoyed through IDEA.If someone is interested in knowing the number of callers on the handset,then implementing caller line identification Presentation(CLIP) is the best option;which will help you accept/reject call according to your needs. At times due to technical problems CLIP donot function properly. Bill for CLIP is paid along with rental.

Call hold/Wait is a feature that help you make another call, while you are busy with one call, without letting it disconnected. Using Menu one can activate call waiting. For this facility one will be billed only for outgoing calls and no rental.

Like Airtel, Idea is also equipped with facility of call conference, with upto five people. Conference can be made from either cellular or Landline phones, including STD and ISD calls. To make a conference call while talking, someone first place the phone on hold mode than select one number you want to keep on conference, after than moving through menu, select conference. Repeating the steps, you can make one another person on conference.

With Idea cellular now, a call can be diverted to anyother phone whether it be of Idea, Airtel, BSNL. Calls can be diverted Unconditionally i.e. without ringing, a call will be diverted by default or a call can be diverted conditionally, under the given standards:-first when the cell is busy, Second when the call is not answerable, Third when the cell is either switched off or is in no coverage area.

Idea billing can be done by sending Short Message to a Bank ATM, or the postpaid payment can be done at any Grocery shop which is selling Idea Mobile phone along with their connection.

2009-05-01T17:30:00.001+05:30

Know about Airtel Postpaid Mobile Plans

Airtel
Airtel Postpaid Plans
With easy payment, good features, enough money and time for talk plans Airtel Postpaid is now aviable to let you enjoy the world endlessly. A Airtel subscriber often enjoys call management services,call waiting,call hold,call divert and call line identification presentation,type services. A call can be kept on conference simultaneously with the people,even when the other fire are using landline. For more details a call can be made to 121 at customer service.

GPRS services,while on roaming can be used to check internet and office mails from anywhere around the world.

SMS alert for missed call will detail the CLI and time for call,this facility can be activated by calling *135*2# voice mail will help you get a call message even when the mobile is switched off.This facility is avialable with no extra charge but one will have to pay just same as that for a phone call.

Features like easy billing,easy pament options,long distance calling credit limits,and strong network coverages can be achieved through a Airtel postpaid plan connection.

A lot of fabulous facilities can be enjoyed through Airtel e-bill. One can register free on 'My Airtel' section and can view monthly bills with their call details. You can differentiate between your personal and offical calls for the last three months. If you are not satisfied with your present mobile plan you can change it by calling our IVR at 121 and then leaving your request, the request can be sent through email 121@airtelindia.com by logging your on My Airtel section of the website or SMS the change to 121. Airtel payment can be done at any relationship center by either cash or credit card. Cheques can be laid in the drop boxes for making payments or payments can also be made by loging on to My Airtel section through credit card. By giving standard instructions to debit your credit card account you can make easy payment for your Airtel bills, and for that you have to just fill up the form(standing instruction form)and mail, tax it to Airtel or drop it to the nearest relationship counter.

To directly debit your bank account for your monthly Airtel bill you have to just fill an electronic clearing system(ECS) form and which is to be mailed,faxed to us or droped to our relationship centers.

With Airtel's pay while roaming you can make your payment from anywhere in the country. For that you have to just reach the nearest Airtel Relationship Center,and make the payment by cash or credit card.

What in case,if your mobile usage increases your credit card limits? Now the Airtel will inform you either with voice or non-voice message to make a intrime payment and to reduce account balance when its below your credit limit, An additional refundable deposit can be paid to enhance credit limit or through standing instructions to debit credit card or through ECS facility.Long distance STD/ISD calling facility are also avaiable on Airtel Phone. For more information you can dail '121' or send SMS to 121 or mail to 121@airtelindia.com.

2009-04-27T19:55:00.001+05:30

26. Further speedup broadband cable Internet connection
READ DISCLAIMER FIRST AND THEN FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS BELOW IF APPLICABLE:
A. in the "My Network Places" properties (right click on the desktop icon and choose properties), highlight the connection then at the menu bar choose "Advanced" then "Advanced Settings". Uncheck the two boxes in the lower half for the bindings for File and Printer sharing and Client for MS networks. Click OK
B. Continue as indicated below steps:
1. from the Windows XP CD in the support directory from the support cab, extract the file netcap.exe and place it in a directory on your hard drive or even in the root of your C:\ drive.
2. next, open up a command prompt window and change directories to where you put netcap.exe then type "netcap/?". It will list some commands that are available for netcap and a netmon driver will be installed. At the bottom you will see your adapters. You should see two of them if using a 3Com card. One will be for LAN and the other will be for WAN something or other.
3. Next type "netcap/Remove". This will remove the netmon driver.
4. Open up control panel / system / dev man and look at your network adapters. You should now see two of them and one will have a yellow ! on it. Right click on the one without the yellow ! and choose uninstall. YES! you are uninstalling your network adapter, continue with the uninstall. Do not restart yet.
5. Check your connection properties to make sure that no connection exists. If you get a wizard just cancel out of it.
6. Now restart the machine and go to your connection properties again and you should have a new connection called "Local area connection 2". highlight the connection then at the menu bar choose "Advanced" then "Advanced Settings". Uncheck the two boxes in the lower half for the bindings for File and Printer sharing and Client for MS networks. Click OK.
8. Choose connection properties and uncheck the "QOS" box
9. Restart the machine and enjoy the increased responsiveness of IE, faster page loading, and a connection speed boost
It seems that Windows XP installs two separate versions of the NIC card. One you do not normally see in any properties. Remember the "netcap/?" command above showing two different adapters? The LAN one is the one you see. The invisible one slows everything down and its like your running two separate cards together, sharing a connection among two cards. This method breaks This"bond" and allows the NIC to run unhindered.
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: This tweak assumes that you have let Windows XP create a connection on install for your cable modem/NIC combination and that your connection has tcp/ip - QoS - file and print sharing - and client for Microsoft networks ,only installed. It also assumes that winxp will detect your NIC and has in-box drivers for it. If it doesn't do not try This as This may not work.

27. Avoid download of file attachments that may have virus infections
Open Group Policy Editor by going to START - RUN and entering gpedit.msc. This one is easy.. Navigate to USER CONFIGURATION - ADMINISTRATIVE TEMPLATES - WINDOWS COMPONENTS - INTERNET EXPLORER. For This on right hand pane (most likely secondly last line at bottom) you should see an item Configure Outlook Express. Double Click on it and enable it and mark check box that says "Block attachments that may contain virus". OK out and close the global policy editor.

28. Heard of Atomic Clocks? or NIST ? Here is a tip on accurately setting your computer clock
Till yesterday I was using a separate third party utility to synchronize my computer clock precisely. I am not a timely person in all other aspects of life (not a good thing but have to be truthful !) to worry about time that too at atomic level but as it is with many things, it sounds like good a good idea to do it anyway! Thanks to National Institute of Standards and Technology, It has become much easier to do that via Internet. And there is no need for third party tool if you have bought WINDOWS XP Operating System. Just click on the time (right side of your START bar or panel) and click on INTERNET TIME tab. Select the time.nist.gov and click update now. Your are all set. Wait a minute your computer clock is still not that advanced. So you many need to synchronize again and again. But hey, we are in the computer world and who has time for This manual work. So I have a solution for you. OPEN registry editor ( I think you know how to open a registry.. click START-RUN and enter regedit) and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ ControlSet001 \ Services \ W32Time \ TimeProviders \ NtpClient. In right pane, you would see "SpecialPollInterval". Double click and set a decimal number (unit is seconds) to the frequency with which you want to have the automatic synchronization carried out.
Also you can add many more time servers directly into registry because by default all that you can see is two time servers in the drop down list. List of many other time servers is available at http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~mills/ntp/clock2.htm. To add any other time servers, get details about the server and then navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\DateTime\Servers] and adding them into the list.

29. Do you know there are two command shell environments in XP ? which one is better ?
In Microsoft Windows XP Pro ( I think this must be true for HOME Edition, but don't quote on me), There is not one but two different command shell environment. One is the old one COMMAND.COM and other one is CMD.EXE. Both would do the job but they do it somewhat differently at a lower level. Which one is better ? I have noticed that CMD.EXE is much better in executing your commands. And this is true. CMD.EXE is the new command shell environment. that is better by design.So if you want to try out even your very old DOS apps, try it first in CMD.EXE. There is a very good chance that it will work and will work better than in your old shell.

30. Ever wondered how come you get into those HTML error pages ? Want to customize them ?
Some times, I type a webpage address and instead of seeing the page, see an error message. Do you know that all these error messages are stored in a DLL file. That is correct ! All of this message are burned into SHDOCLC.DLL file. Here is the syntax to see all of these error messages . If you want to see server busy error message type in Internet address field, res://c:\Windows\System32\SHDOCLC.DLL/servbusy.htm Similarly If you want to try out any other error message simply replace servbusy.htm by that html file (just the names) Here are some complete examples html files that you can try .
http_400.htm, http_404.htm, http_406.htm, http_410.htm, http_500.htm, http_501.htm, http_gen.htm, servbusy.htm, syntax.htm, navcancl.htm, offcancl.htm, policyerror.htm, policylooking.htm, policynone.htm, policysyntaxerror.htm, privacypolicy.dlg, preview.dlg, printerr.htm, printnf.htm, printnof.htm, printunk.htm, wcee.htm, ietext.bmp, ietext256.bmp, world.bmp, world256.gif, ie.gif, ie256.gif, orgfav.dlg, about.dlg, analyze.dlg, bidifind.dlg, docppg.ppg, error.dlg, find.dlg, findic.dlg, ieerror.dlg, imageppg.ppg, orgfav.dlg, and pstemplate.dlg
If you need to customize these messages, write an error message that you want to see as displayed and store it somewhere on your harddisk, open registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and navigate to Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\AboutURLs and changing entries associated with various keys and provide complete path name to your own custom html file.

31. If you have a lot of RAM, do you really need swap file?
With RAM prices dropping so low ( I saw 256 MB SDRAM for $34 in COMPUSA on Jan 2nd,2002), more and more people are adding RAM to their computer. This is the best upgrade I would suggested to anyone. Well if you have 512MB or 768 MB or a whopping 1GB of RAM, you do not need a swap file (SWAP FILE is the concept of old dayw when RAM was too costly). Try this out. Go to My Computer and right click on properties and get into System Properties window. Go to Advanced tab and click on the Settings button for Performance group, click again on advanced tab and then click on change and choose NO SWAP FILE. I think you would see an improvement. If you don't like the change, follow the same steps and change SWAP FILE size to whatever you want (typically 1.5 * physical RAM). Also you can further gain by applying following changes in registry. Open Registry by going to START-RUN and typing REGEDIT. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management and look for DisablePagingExecutive. On my computer default value is 0. Set it to 1. This will stop paging act as well.

32. How to boost XP speed by by changing real time clock priority?
I read about this trick the other day over Internet. Open Registry by going to START-RUN and typing REGEDIT. Navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\PriorityControl]. If you see an entry by the name IRQ8Priority set it to a value "IRQ8Priority"=dword:00000001 if you don't then click on the right pane and add a new dword entry with given name.. IRQ8 is typically reserved for real time clock in most of the computers. Make sure thats the case (by going to device manager -> system devices -> system COMS/realtime clock -> properties -> resources tab , if it is set to another number try adding an entry with that number N as IRQNPriority) . Generally realtime clock priority boosting helps most but you are free to try others as well.

33. Reduce IO and increase turnaround which means faster computer !
I read about this trick the other day over Internet. Open Registry by going to START-RUN and typing REGEDIT. Navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\IoPageLockLimit. Depending upon how much RAM you have, you can increase your diskcache size by entering a higher value in IoPageLockLimit. Typically your computer won't come optimized for diskcache and you can set to a value which works best for you by trial and error.Rule of thumb is to have a ratio of 1 or 2 for every 64K chuck. But try out various different values as each case would be a little different

34. Correctly set your level 2 cache and improve performance !!
I read about this trick the other day over Internet. Open Registry by going to START-RUN and typing REGEDIT. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\SecondLevelDataCache. Based on the kind of CPU you have, this value should change. Here are some of the defaults. Intel Celeron - 128 , AMD Duron - 64. PII and Athalon: 512. Cyrix and AMD K6-3 256. Pentium IV-1024. Figure out what your CPU type is and what L2 cache it supports and set it accordingly. It is important to know what critics have to say about this tweak. Opinions vary and I have put following three articles that have been brought to my attention which may help you understand why it may not be effective in some situations:
Do not change the SecondLevelDataCache entry (from Microsoft technet article)
Some third-party sources have erroneously reported that modifying the SecondLevelDataCache registry entry in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \System \CurrentControlSet \Control \Session Manager\Memory Management can enhance system performance. The second level (L2) cache is recognized by the operating system and is fully utilized regardless of the setting of this parameter.
(from Microsoft knowledge base item Q183063)This is not related to the hardware; it is only useful for computers with direct-mapped L2 caches. Pentium II and later processors do not have direct- mapped L2 caches. SecondLevelDataCache can increase performance by approximately 2 percent in certain cases for older computers with ample memory (more than 64 MB) by scattering physical pages better in the address space so there are not so many L2 cache collisions. Setting SecondLevelDataCache to 256 KB rather than 2 MB (when the computer has a 2 MB L2 cache) would probably have about a 0.4 percent performance penalty.
(From an arstechnica article) One of the most infamous NT tweaks since the introduction of NT4 has got to be the "L2 cache" tweak, a lone registry entry which stipulates the amount of L2 cache (or secondary cache) that the OS will make use of. Well, as with many things in life, the effects of this tweak are not so black and white. If you're using a processor that implements a direct-mapped L2 cache design (like Pentium I's), then this registry adjustment is indeed for you. However, if you own any Intel processor post-PI, or any modern AMD processor (K6-2 and newer), then your processor is using a set-associative L2 cache design, and thus you need not specify your L2 cache size. Let me explain.
If you choose not to futz with the registry key in question, the OS will call on the HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) for retrieval of the L2 cache size when you boot your computer. If this happens to fail, a default value of 256KB is used for all logon sessions on that boot session. This is where the myth that NT can only use 256KB of L2 cache comes from. But it's false. See, the HAL is able to retrieve the processor (L2) cache from any processor using the set-associative cache design, it's only the relatively few processors out there with direct-mapped L2 caches that the HAL won't chat it up with. Thus, this tweak only applies to a select number of people anymore (like people with Pentium I procs between 166-233MHz, as lower rated procs had only 256KB cache).

35. Do you know you can have Virtual Desktops (like in Linux) with PowerToys ?
If you have powertoys installed on Windows XP Its available for free at Microsoft website, visit my downloads webpage address) It is very easy to enable Microsoft Virtual Desktop Feature. Simply right click on the Start Panel Bar also called TaskBar, Click on Tool Bar and select Desktop manager. You would see a set of 5 icons placed on the right portion of the TAskBar. Click on number 1 to 4 to go to any of the desktops. Now you have have four different Active Desktops.
IMPORTANT NOTE: You may see a little degradation in performance but for desktop work it is negligible.

36. How to login as administrator if you don't see it available ?
Unless and until you have run into issues and fixing XP (underwhich case you have to go to Safe Mode to login as Administrator), you can get to administrator screen by simply pressing CTRL+ALT+DELETE twice at the main screen.

37. How to avoid password entry at start up ?
Open Administrative tools in control panel and go to Local security policy.Select accounts and within that password policies. Set minimum password length to 0. This should be enough to stop password from being entered at startup.
I have received some criticism for asking users to set their password length to 0 and I agree to some of the potential security risks. Here is one better way to do it.

Go to START-RUN and enter "control userpasswords2" select the user the you would like to have auto logon set to and then uncheck "Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer". Ok out. Now you have to do one more thing. Go to START-RUN and enter "control userpasswords" and clicking on “Change the way users log on or off”, and unchecking both “Use the Welcome Screen” and “Use Fast User Switching”.
There is another way to get to the same screen. Try this to auto logon 1. At a command prompt, type: rundll32 netplwiz.dll,UsersRunDll 2. In the User Accounts dialog that appears, clear the "Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer" check box and click OK. 3. Enter the user name and password of the account you want to automatically log on.
Now Reboot and see it happen.
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: (Please make sure that you are doing this to user account and not administrator account. If you do this to administrator account or user accounts that have admin privileges and connect to Internet. and do not have a good firewall installed or enabled, your are exposing yourself to potential risks) XPTOOLS is not responsible for any such damage. *Also note that default user accounts created by XP are in admin group and have admin privileges so be careful.

38. How to stop new programs installed balloon from coming up?
Right click on START button and select properties. Click on Customize and go to Advanced tab and deselect check box saying "Highlight newly installed programs". This would help you stop this annoying feature from popping up every now and then.

39. How to improve on shutdown time ? Close apps automatically & quickly at shutdown
Open Registry by going to START-RUN and typing REGEDIT. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\CONTROL PANEL\DESKTOP and look for AutoEndTasks. On my computer default value is 0. Change it to 1. Thats all. Further more you can reduce the time it takes for Windows to issue kill directive to all active/hung applications. In doing this only constraint that you should make sure exists is that HungAppTimeout is greater than WaitToKillAppTimeout. Change the values of WaitToKillAppTimeout to say 3500 (since default value for HungAppTimeout 5000 and for WaitToKillAppTimeout is 20000)

40. Speedup boot up sequence by defragmenting all key boot files
Open Registry by going to START-RUN and typing REGEDIT. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction. In right hand panel look for Enable. Right click on it and set it 'Y' for enable. This is the way I have it set on my computer. This will help speedup boot time.

41. Create your own customized legal notice at Windows Startup
This tip won't make your computer any faster but may help personalize your computer experience. Open Registry by going to START-RUN and typing REGEDIT. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon. In right hand panel look for two fields by the name legalnoticecaption and legalnoticetext. Modify legalnoticecaption to what you want popup window caption should read and change legalnoticetext to customize whatever message you want.

42. One more way to fine tune Internet. Explorer load time
If you do this little trick, application load time may improve significantly. Right Click on shortcut to Internet. Explorer in taskbar ( If you do not see it right click on taskbar,click toolbar and select quicklaunch) , click on properties and under shortcut tab look for Target field. It should say some thing like "C:\Program Files\Internet. Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE". This is typical default. I am suggesting you to put " -nohome" without quotes at the end of this string with one space in between. It should read like this "C:\Program Files\Internet. Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE" -nohome. Doing this would help load the application quickly as time would not be wasted in connecting to home page again and again. This is good for normal use as well.

43. Customize Internet. Explorer Title bar
This tip won't make your computer any faster but may help personalize your computer experience. Open Registry by going to START-RUN and typing REGEDIT. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet. Explorer\Main. In right hand panel look for string "Window Title" and change its value to whatever custom text you want to see. That is it.

44. Are you a MP3 fan ? Add ability to rip MP3 songs in Windows Media Player 8
I am not that great a fan of MP3 but do appreciate its power. If you have a truckload of CDs that you would like to listen to but do not want to carry all of them at the same time, you can rip them into MP3. Yes it can be done technically and that too from Windows Media Player even though make sure you have legally on right side of fence, meaning you own the CD that you would rip MP3 from. That said here is the little tweak in registry. Open Registry by going to START-RUN and typing REGEDIT. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MediaPlayerSettings\MP3Encoding] and adding following entries
"LowRate"=dword:0000dac0
"MediumRate"=dword:0000fa00
"MediumHighRate"=dword:0001f400
"HighRate"=dword:0002ee00
which corresponds to 56, 64, 128 and 192 Kbps. Following table would help with other settings as well:
320 Kbps = dword:0004e200
256 Kbps = dword:0003e800
224 Kbps = dword:00036b00
160 Kbps = dword:00027100
112 Kbps = dword:0001b580

45. Enable write caching on disk and improve disk performance
I have enabled write caching on my disk and this does have helped improve disk performance to a significant degree. Now you may ask why ?. WriteCache is nothing else but implementation of concept of delayed write. As we all know I/O activities are generally slow and hence if they are synchronous can significantly reduce the system performance. Hence if system performance has to be improved we have to reduce I/O activities. Now practically we can not ask you to change your habits (meaning start typing like a superman or robot etc.) but we can have a solution. We can control the frequency of diskwrite by specifying regular intervals. All that needs to be written between the intervals would be writen in a write buffer which would be maintained in RAM. This write buffer would be written to the disk at regular intervals or whenever it gets full. This is a smart concept with one drawback. There is a chance that you may loose some data in case of critical power loss or system failure but this is not an issue for me and should not be to most of the users. Such things become an issue for Mission Critical Business Servers.
To enable write cache on your disk, go to DEVICE MANAGER. Then select hard disk in the disk drives and right click on it and select properties. Go to policies tab and select checkbox which say "Enable write caching on the disk". Close out everything and you are done.

46. MFT (Master File Table) manipulations to improve disk performance
MFT stands for Master File Table. Typically in Windows XP , if you are using NTFS ( I would recommend it if you don't) then by default,NTFS would reserve 12.5% of your free diskspace for MFT. MFT fragmentation could also cause a significant slow down. Let me discuss size first. Now if you have installed tons of different programs on your hard disk (or intend to do so), MFT utilization is going to be high. Under such situation, it may be beneficial to increase this percentage to say 25%. If you want to do this, here is the the trick. Open Registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem. In right pane, Add one more key by the name "NtfsMftZoneReservation" with the REG_DWORD value of 2. DWORD value of 1 is interpreted as 12.5% ,2 as 25% and so on.

47. Improve system performance by disabling DOS 8.3 naming convention
In tip number 46, I briefly mentioned MFT fragmentation. So what is the cause of fragmentation. Well most common cause is too much use. As with anything excessive use causes fragmentation. Activities of add/update/delete to a section of disk would invariable cause it to fragment. So there is no permanent solution as we can not avoid these acts. As such it is a good idea to use disk defragmenter regularly. Contiguous data which results from defragmenting disk, improves system performance considerably. But what I am suggesting you here would prolong intervals between defragmentations resulting in more time for your own productive work. OK! This tip is for those folks would never be using a DOS based program or don't care for connection from DOS based operating systems (example: old games and all things before windows 95). In Windows XP, two file names are created for each file one is the actual name and another one is 8.3 version of that file name for compatibility with DOS based programs. Now this work name in the name of compatibility takes quite a lot of system resources specifically CPU time and disk space.But this is not it, it also increases your MFT utilization and fragmentation. So the solution is to disable it. How to do this ? Open Registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem. In right pane, look for key by the name "NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation" and sets its value to 1. Thats it. You would see improvement in system performance for sure.

48. Customize logon prompt with your own words
This tip won't make your computer any faster but may help personalize your computer experience. Open Registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon]. In right pane, look for key by the name "LogonPrompt". Set its value to whatever text you want to see displayed at login screen.

49. Where does Window's ProductId get stored ?
There are two places at least where ProductId gets stored. To see the first place, open Registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion]. In right pane, look for key by the name "ProductId". This is your Windows Product Id. Alternatively you can navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion] and still find same field with the name ProductId.

50. Set the low level hook time-out and stop certain programs from crashing or becoming unstable
One of the things that you can do avoid some programs from becoming unstable is to set a low level hook timeout. There are a few programs which use this low level hook timeout. Setting a low value (in milliseconds) means that if the hooked program does not respond within timeout period, one that has set the hook would not become unstable or go in infinite wait but would kill itself saving windows resources and improving performance. Open Registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigate to [HKEY_CURRENT USER\Control Panel\Desktop] and look for "LowLevelHooksTimeout" in the right pane. Now set it to a small number in milliseconds for example a value of 3500 would mean 3.5 seconds.
51. Having problems with Outlook Express ? Does it ask for password everytime you connect ?
Even though this is not a problem for me but there is a chance that it could be a problem for you. Sometimes no matter what you do, Outlook Express forgets your password and asks you to enter it again each and every time you connect to your mail server.I have a solution that may work for you. Open Registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigate to HKEY_CURRRENT USER\Software\Microsoft and look for "Protected Storage System Provider". There is a good chance that you will see this folder. If you have it. Simply delete it. More than likely, you have solved your problem .

52. Tuning up MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) to speed up Internet access.
This is an old one. I had tried it on Window 2000 as well. Now let me tell you one important fact related with tuning. Value of MTU depends upon how fast a connection you have, what kind of activities you perform (ask yourself a question. Are your a mild, average or high end user of Internet ? To put it in other words, Do you download little or nothing, or are an average surfer or are Internet savvy individual and download everything from programs,apps,patches to watching Internet audio/video real-time content?) Depending upon who you are as a user and what kind of connection (modem,dsl,cable or in rare cases T1/T3), this tuning may have little to significant effect on your Internet experience. All right MTU stand for Maximum Transmission Unit. Value of MTU decides the size of Internet data packet. Bigger the size, more you can transfer. Analogy could be made with a bucket. If bucket is small, you can carry little but it would be no strain on your strength. Bigger the bucket, more you can carry but it strains your physical strength. (Well! Its not that simple but good enough to understand). Objective should be find a perfect balance which works for you. I think maximum that you can put is as value of MTU is 1500 (but could be higher for your specific network) and it may not make sense making it smaller than 68.
Again this is a registry tweak unless and until you have a tweaking utility that can do it for you.Open Registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces\ ID for Adapter. For this right click on right pane and add a key by the name MTU. For this key you can add a DWORD value from 68 to 1500 (or higher value is certain cases). If you put less than 68, it will default to 68. If you put a value higher than 1500 or your Network permitted max, it will default to permitted max.
The MTU (Maximum Transfer Unit) specifies the maximum transmission unit size of an interface, and is usually determined by negotiation at the link layer of the driver.
The upper level protocols normally optimize pack size for each medium.

Following table gives typical values of MTU in bytes:-
Network Type Windows XP
MTU (bytes) Windows NT / Windows 2000
MTU (bytes)
16 Mbps Token Ring 17914 17914
4 Mbits/Sec Token Ring 4464 4464
FDDI 4352 4352
Ethernet 1500 1500
IEEE 802.3/802.2 1492 1492
X.25 576 576
PPPoE (WAN Miniport) 1480 N/A

53. Enable automatic path MTU size detection and improve Internet throughput.
As stated on previous tip (Tip 52), MTP size plays an important role in deciding Internet speed. But its not so easy to determine the right value of MTU. For those of us who fall in this category and would prefer computer to find that for us, follow trick may work. I can not say with confidence whether this would work across all network but it should and there is no harm in trying it out. Now before I do that let me tell you what this action will do. Applying this trick, you would ask computer to automatically find out the maximum MTU size possible in the connection path to a host. This value could be different for different sites. I think this trick should pick the lowest common denominator across a particular path. Typically If MTU size is not optimized, this job has to be done by a router which would mean a significant waste of time (small chunks adds to a considerable loss if you imagine that there are billions of packets involved across the whole Internet) resulting in poor throughout and congestion on cyber lanes. All right this key is called EnablePMTUDiscovery.
Again this is a registry.Open Registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces\ ID for Adapter. For this right click on right pane and add a key by the name EnablePMTUDiscovery. For this key you can add a DWORD boolean value of 0 or 1 with 1 being TRUE (value that enables auto detection). Since we are trying this tweak, set to 1 and enable the TCP to attempt to discover the MTU size over the specific path to host. Microsoft has an interesting article on many similar tips http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q120642 and is titled TCP/IP and NBT Configuration Parameters for Windows (Q120642).

54. How to avoid autoplay of CD ? Way I like best.
Hey this time no registry trick even though there are ways in registry to do it. In earlier operating systems only those CD that had autorun.inf file in their root directory were able to execute on its own but with advent of WINDOWS XP it has become possible with just about anything. Well sometimes it is good but there are other times when you want to avoid this part of automation. What would I do. Simply press SHIFT key when you enter a CD in your CD drive. It won't Auto play. For those of you, who do want a registry hack. Here it is: Open Registry and navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\Explorer] and look for key "NoDriveTypeAutoRun" and set its value to 185 (decimal). This would stop autoplay.

55. Running into Internet connection problem ? clean TCP/IP stack may be your solution
One of things that has improved a lot is the Windows ability to detect and connect to Internet But I still get into situations where (specially with my NAT and consistent testing of new ideas and tricks) that I end up correcting the TCP/IP stack. I got another IBM computer day before yesterday and I got into trouble again. Well one quick command that you can try out to rebuild the TCPIP stack is by means of using netsh network command shell. This is mentioned on my list of tools page and I would be describing its capability in great detail whenever I get some free time. But for now try this command netsh int ip reset mynetsh.log . This would rebuild your TCP/IP stack and a log of activities would be created in mynetsh.log (by the way you can give any name to log file as long as you do give some name).

56. Are you using an computer that is accessed by more than one ? Secure your privacy by cleaning pagefile.
I read about this tweak a long time ago and even found out couple of ways of achieving the same results but wasn't sure of the importance. But you know what, there is reason for everything. Assume your are working on computer where you don't really own the computer or is shared with someone else. Do you want maintain privacy and avoid other know what you were doing etc. Then this tweak may be of interest to you. Go to Control panel Administrative tools, local security policy. Then goto local policies ---> security options.Then change the option for "Shutdown: Clear Virtual Memory Pagefile"

57. Gain temp access to Administrative privileges even if you are not logged in as administrator.
I must be telling you one thing. In most of the cases where Windows XP is installed on a personal computer, users generally have access to administrative account. But you know, it is not in your best interest to log on as administrator for all your computing needs. I must advise you to create a normal user account as well. But what if you are logged in as normal user and happen to download/install some software application that would need administrative privileges Here is the solution. Simply right click on the executable and select run as. You would see a window poping up. Here you can provide one of the userid/password that would have admin privileges That's all you need to run that program with administrative privileges

58. Another tweak to boost up network application performance. Change thread priority
I just read about this over the internet.You can change the priority of applications as soon as associated IO tasks are completed. Microsoft TCP/IP Stack component AFD.SYS allows you to do this. You can read all about it at http://rdweb.cns.vt.edu/public/notes/tcpip2000.pdf Again this is a registry tweak and works well with XP.Open Registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\AFD\Parameters] and set the following key values to the values shown.
"TransmitWorker"=dword:00000010
"PriorityBoost"=dword:0000000a

59. Make a habit of cleaning prefetch data once a month.
Prefetch is a new and very useful technique in Windows XP. However, after using XP some time, the prefetch directory can get full of junk and obsolete links in the Prefetch catalog, which can slow down your computer noticeably. I would suggest that You do this once a month: Go to C(system drive):/windows/prefetch, and delete everything and reboot. This may help speed up your computer.

60. How to determine a 16 bit application from a 32 bit application ?
Old 16 bit app are still useful and are in use by many. I think this is the result computer evolution. If You want to know whether a particular executable is a 16 bit or 32 bit application, here is a secret. Right-click the program’s executable file and Then choose Properties. If You see a Version tab, it’s a 32-bit program else its a 16-bit program. Alternately You can go into task manager and look for applications that have ntvdm.exe (virtual dos machine) in the name column of process tab. If there is one, it means its a 16 bit app.

61. Do You know how to add/delete entries in Control Panel ? Heard about CPL extension ?
If You open windows explorer and search for all *.cpl files, You would see at least as many entries in search as You have in your control panel.Yes ! .cpl stands for control panel. If You do not want to navigate to any of your favorite entries, You can create a shortcut to that entry's corresponding cpl file. Following lists control panel and cpl file names:
System Properties = sysdm.cpl
Network Connections = ncpa.cpl
ODBC Administrator = odbccp32.cpl
Display Properties = desk.cpl
Add or remove programs = appwiz.cpl
Internet Properties = Inetcpl.cpl
Game Controllers = joy.cpl
Phone and modem Options = telephon.cpl
Time and Date Properties = timedate.cpl
Region and Language Options = intl.cpl
Power Options = powercfg.cpl
Mouse Properties = main.cpl
Accessibility Options = access.cpl
Add Hardware Wizard = hdwwiz.cpl
Sound and Audio Devices = mmsys.cpl
User Accounts = nusrmgr.cpl
Speech Properties = sapi.cpl
Now if You want to add/delete any of these entries from panel You can do it through Registry or gpedit.msc or through tweakui if You have powertoys installed. It is preferable to use gpedit or TweakUi as its easier.
From TweakUi, You have to simply click on control panel , and select/deselect entries in right panel as per your choice.
From gpedit.msc (to run gpedit, goto START-RUN and type gpedit.msc) Navigate to User Configuration- Administrative Templates-Control Panel folder select and right click on Show only specified Control Panel Applets , click on enabled and Then click on the show. In this list You won't see anything if its your first time. Click on add and type the complete file name from above list. (This is a bit more complicated process specially if You are a new user of the tool)
And if You are a registry fan, You can do this my navigating to [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\] and adding a key field by the name "don't load" and one string value to each of the cpl file names. For example if You don't want to see accessibility options, add a string "access.cpl" on the right pane to the newly added key field "don't load". You can add as many strings You want.

62. Have a IDE drive ? Improve disk performance by changing to DMA access mode
If You are an average user, there is a good chance that your are using a IDE hard disk that supports DMA access. Even Windows XP fails to set the DMA mode correctly for the IDE device designated as the slaves on the primary IDE and secondary IDE channels. Most CD-ROMS are capable of supporting DMA mode, but the default in XP is still PIO. Setting it to DMA won't make your CD-ROM faster, but it will consume less CPU cycles. Follow instructions below:
1. Open the Device Manager and navigate to "IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers", expand it and double-click on "Primary IDE Channel"
2. Under the "Advanced Settings" tab, verify the "Device 1" setting. If transfer mode is set to PIO Then set it to "DMA if available". Repeat the step for the "Secondary IDE Channel" if You have devices attached to it. Reboot the sytem.

63. Working in command environment ? Avoid keystrokes - use TAB key
One of the features in Linux and certain UNIX shells is the ability to predict user keystroke. If You are typing a directory name or a filename and if it exists, using this feature would help You avoiding those extra keystrokes. Do You know WindowsXP command environment has this feature ? (Well it is available in Windows 2000 as well). To use this feature You have to use TAB key. (I would also show You how to change it to some other key even though there is no need of it). Assume You are in C:\ drive and want to type autoexec.bat and there is a file that exists by that name. Result are amazing if there is no ambiguity in filenames (meaning multiple files/directories with similar names/prefix). In such cases You can simply type first few characters and press the TAB key. You would really be amazed at this finding (Hey if not, You are really too smart and don't need this tip! )
Now if You want to change this power key to some other key here is howto: Open Registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigate to [HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Command Processor] and set CompletionChar" to ASCII number associated with the key char. for example, "CompletionChar"=dword:00000009

64. Customizing Windows Explorer Context menu (right click menu in windows explorer)
Ever wondered how does the right click menu (which is actually a context menu) work ? For example, when I right click in windows explorer, I see an option which says "open command window here". Do You know why I see this ? Well I see this because I have following entries in my registry.
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell\cmd]
@="Open Command Window Here"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell\cmd\command]
@="C:\WINDOWS\System32\cmd.exe /k cd "%1""
If You have never used a tweaking utility and have newly installed Windows XP, You would not see this option. You would have to navigate to [[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive] go and create two subkeys ("cmd" and within that "command" and would have to put the text "Open Command Window Here" without quotes in default string value of "cmd" key and the text "C:\WINDOWS\System32\cmd.exe /k CD"%1"" without quotes in default string value of command key). After this You need to REBOOT for these changes to take effect.

Trick is in adding similar entries for other applications as well even though its much harder to come with ideas about what to put in the context menu!!!! .

65. Low on disk space and do not use Windows XP Hibernate feature ?
With hardware prices going down every passing day You may not need this tip but if You are in a situation where You are really low on disk space even after using disk cleaner, one of the things You can do is to identify features of XP You don't use. It may very well be the hibernate feature. If You don't use it, simply disable it and get as much of hard disk space free as is your physical RAM size. To do that go to power options in control panel (fast route: goto START-RUN or win+R and type powercfg.cpl ) and click on hibernate tab and deselect "enable hibernation".

66. How to make autodisconnect work in Internet explorer ?
If You are having problem setting autodisconnect in Internet explorer 6 , here is a tip for You Open Registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters] and look for autodisconnect parameter. Change its value to whatever You want (in minutes).
Alternately You can try this from command prompt: net config server /autodisconnect:30 -to set the autodisconnect to 30 minutes. Microsoft have a detailed article dealing on this titled How Autodisconnect Works in Windows NT and Windows 2000 (Q138365)

67. Do You want Windows to unload dll immediately?
Folks, I read about this a long time ago and my preliminary findings are that it works on XP as well even though I can not say how beneficial this trick is (or how damaging !). Also there might be some potential problems with a a few apps. But I would still provide it to You There is a way in registry for You to tell Windows OS to unload DLL,immediately as soon as its use is over. Here is how to do that: . Open Registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer] and look for AlwaysUnloadDLL parameter. It may not be present by default. If not, add a key by the name AlwaysUnloadDLL and set it to value of 1.
This would inform OS to unload the DLL files from memory immediately. This has its advantages and disadvantages. It may also crash some Microsoft applications (like Access).

68. Lock known dll's list and make your computer a bit more safer
Folks, You may be wondering that I am talking about making your computer a bit more safer even though my very site was hacked on 1/14/2002. As it stands I have kept this site simple and I do not control the webhosting part. Anyway it is a good idea to keep your computer safe.Open Registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager] and look for ProtectionMode parameter. If its value is not 1 , set it to value of 1. On my computer default value is 1. Doing this will protect your list of known system dlls from being compromised. To see what is present in your known DLL list, navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\KnownDLLs] and look in the right pane. I have not yet tried this but You may even try adding some other DLLs that You feel important and should be protected. This could be risky as I have not yet tried this myself.
Microsoft has an old but informative article on it http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q218/4/73.asp

69. Improve computer performance by reducing EFS cache validation
Navigate to HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\NTFS\EFS\Parameters and set the parameter of EFSKCACHEPERIOD to a value between 2 and 30. default is 5. Value suggest the time in seconds the kernel will cache the session key for a user for a given file. The Kernel will not validate the user credentials during this cache period. This has the net effect of faster access to encrypted files that may be opened several times during a given time period.This is helpful in kernel and user mode of the EFS (encrypting file system) as it provides quicker access to frequently use components.
Similarly navigate to HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\EFS and set the value of KeyCacheValidationPeriod to a value in units of second from 1 minute to 1 day (60 to 86400).
Microsoft has an interesting article on this at Registry Keys Used to Tune EFS Caching (Q278256). Read it for complete details.

70. Customize your Start Menu setting and preferences
You can open group policy editor (gpedit.msc) and go to User Configuration \ Administrative Templates \ Start Menu and Taskbar and set a variety of preferences for your startmenu. Or if You want You can open registry editor and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer and enable/disable various parameters by changing 1 to 0 and viceversa. I am doing a cut/paste of list available at Microsoft site. Visit the site to get details on these registry values
Registry Value:"NoSimpleStartMenu"
Registry Value:"NoStartMenuPinnedList"
Registry Value:"NoStartMenuMFUprogramsList"
Registry Value:"NoStartMenuMorePrograms"
Registry Value:"NoCommonGroups"
Registry Value:"GreyMSIAds"
Registry Value:"NoWindowsUpdate"
Registry Value:"NoStartMenuMyMusic", "NoSMMyPictures","NoFavoritesMenu","NoRecentDocsMenu"
Registry Value:"DisableMyPicturesDirChange", "DisableMyMusicDirChange", "DisableFavoritesDirChange".
Registry Value:"NoSMMyDocs"
Registry Value:"DisablePersonalDirChange"
Registry Value:"NoRecentDocsMenu"
Registry Value:"MaxRecentDocs"
Registry Value:"ClearRecentDocsOnExit"
Registry Value:"NoFavoritesMenu"
Registry Value:"{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}" under
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\NonEnum.
Registry Value:"NoNetworkConnections"
Registry Value:"NoStartMenuNetworkPlaces"
Registry Value:"NoRecentDocsNetHood"
Registry Value:"NoSMHelp"
Registry Value:"NoFind"
Registry Value:"NoRun"
Registry Value:"MemCheckBoxInRunDlg"
Registry Value:"NoResolveSearch"
Registry Value:"NoResolveTrack"
Registry Value:"ForceStartMenuLogoff"
Registry Value:"StartMenuLogoff"
Registry Value:"NoClose"
Registry Value:"NoStartMenuEjectPC"
Registry Value:"NoChangeStartMenu"
Registry Value:"NoSetTaskbar"
Registry Value:"NoInstrumentation"
Registry Value:"NoUserNameInStartMenu"
I read about this on Microsoft Web Site. Here is the link Policy Settings for the Start Menu in Windows XP (Q292504)

71. How to Add a Control Panel Tool to a Category : Tips on customizing categories
Have You noticed the new view of control panel in XP. Well as its says,its a view and You can switch to a classic view anytime. But if You like the view but want to customize the categories, there is again a good article on How to do this : How to Add a Control Panel Tool to a Category (Q292463). You can get complete details by visiting the site but in brief a control Panel tool can be included in a particular category by adding a registry DWORD entry for the tool in the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Control Panel\Extended Properties\{305CA226-D286-468e-B848-2B2E8E697B74} 2
Value category ids are:
0x00000000 : Other Control Panel Options (any tool that does not specify a category ID is placed in this category)
0x00000001 : Appearance and Themes
0x00000002 : Printers and Other Hardware
0x00000003 : Network and Internet Connections
0x00000004 : Sounds, Speech, and Audio Devices
0x00000005 : Performance and Maintenance
0x00000006 : Date, Time, Language, and Regional Options
0x00000007 : Accessibility Options
0xFFFFFFFF : Do not put the tool in any category (for special tools such as Add/Remove Programs which only start directly)

72. Protect yourself from denial of service attacks: UPnP weakness in Windows XP
You might have heard of Denial of Service attacks . Recently this news covered media headlines. Microsoft has provided a fix for it. You can read complete details at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS01-059.asp But in brief few registry tweaks can save the day for You in unlikely case of You being the target .
1. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\UPnP Control Point and add "DownloadScope" key and put a value of 0 to 3. Here is the description of these values:
0 - on the same subnet
1 - same subnet or at a private address
2 - same subnet or at a private address or within 4 hops
3 - anywhere
2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SSDPSRV\Parameters and add key "TTL" and sets its value to max number of rounter hops allowed in the PnP device search on Internet .

73. How startup programs get loaded in Windows at boot time ? Run keys of Windows Registry
Run keys cause programs to automatically run every time computer/XP boots up . The Windows XP registry includes the following four Run keys:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce

Each of these keys has a series of values. The values allow multiple entries to exist without overwriting one another. The data value for a value is a command line. There are some special considerations for the third and fourth keys in the list, the RunOnce keys: By default, Run keys are ignored when the computer starts in Safe mode. Under the RunOnce keys, You can prefix a value name with an asterisk (*) to force the associated program to run even in Safe mode. You can prefix a RunOnce value name with an exclamation point (!) to defer deletion of the value until after the command runs. Without the exclamation point prefix, a RunOnce value is deleted before the command runs. As a result, if a RunOnce operation does not run properly, the associated program is not asked to run the next time You start the computer.
Again, this article is available at Microsoft site at A Definition of the Run Keys in the Windows XP Registry (Q314866)

74. Have You seen those annoying searches for broken shortcuts/links ? Need a remedy ?
This could be annoying ! Has been to me. Well there is are couple of ways to solve this problem. If You are comfortable with Registry manipulation, Open registry editor by going to START-RUN and entering regedit.exe. After this , Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer add a new key by the name "NoResolveTrack" (without quotes) and sets its value to 1.
This can be achieved by group policy editor as well. Open group policy editor by opening START-RUN and entering gpedit.msc. Navigate to User Configuration\AdministrativeTemplates\Start Menu and Taskbar group policy and selecting "Do not use the tracking-based method when resolving shell shortcuts"

75. Want to move a Windows XP Installation to Different Hardware. How to do that ?
In most of the scenarios (legal !), You would be doing one of the following acts:
A. Migrate a working Windows XP operating system and your installed programs to a different or more powerful computer in minimal downtime.
B. Replace a small system/boot disk drive with a larger system/boot disk drive.
C. Restore a Windows backup from a malfunctioning computer to a different computer for disaster recovery purposes
Windows Backup (Ntbackup.exe) can handle differences in hardware configuration information between computers and maintain critical registry entries that are unique to the computer to which You are migrating information. This capability means that You can migrate to new hardware by performing a full backup of the source computer and Then restoring the backup over a fresh installation of Windows XP on the destination computer.
Ntbackup.exe handles restore operations in the registry by first querying the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\BackupRestore\KeysNotToRestore
This registry key indicates to Ntbackup.exe that certain registry keys under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM key should not be overwritten when files are restored.
An entry that ends with a backslash (\) indicates that a key is protected and that any keys or values under that key should not be restored. If the entry ends with a backslash and an asterisk (\*), all subkeys are "merged." In this situation, "merged" means comparing the start values of the keys in the backup set with the start values that exist in the current registry, to determine the correct key to restore.
If the value of the key on the backup set has a lower start value, the backup key takes precedence. If the value of the key in the current registry has a lower start value, the current key takes precedence. This process ensures that all services and devices start correctly after a "system state" restoration, even on dissimilar hardware.
Complete details on this are available at Microsoft site at How to Move a Windows XP Installation to Different Hardware (Q314070)

76. Do you have a problem with your Video ? Always going in VGA MODE ?
This happens to everyone at some point of time or other and is most likely caused by some application or third party utility overwriting your drivers files (or if you do not have had a right video driver to begin with). To verify exactly what gets loaded, follow these steps. Open registry by going to START-RUN and entering regedit. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\hardware\DeviceMap\Video . In this value of Device\Video0 points to a registry key that has the location of the video driver that Windows is configured to load. for example: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\ videodriver \Device0 . Navigate to this key. Check value of "InstalledDisplayDrivers" . Its value indicates whether driver was loaded or not. If the setting shows another registry location, a third-party driver may be getting loaded. Check out Microsoft Knowledgebase article for more details: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q314854

77. Prevent a Program From Being Displayed in the Most Frequently Used Programs List
This is easy.Open registry by going to START-RUN and entering regedit. Navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Applications\ Program name.exe where Program name.exe is the name of the application that you do not want to be displayed in the Most Frequently Used Programs List. Add an empty string value named NoStartPage. That's it. Reboot your computer.
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Before doing anything with registry, It is very important that you take a backup of registry by exporting it. Remember even a minor mistake in registry could render your system unusable or will cause it to stop or crash. XPTOOLS is not responsible for any such damage that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of your applying these changes. Don't try it if you are not sure. Use at your own risk.

78. Having trouble with MSDOS program ? Tips on troubleshooting.
I read a good article on Troubleshooting MS-DOS-Based Programs in Windows (Q314106) at Microsoft knowledgebase website. One of the first thing to test when you are having problems with MS-DOS-based programs is the Windows Virtual DOS Machine (NTVDM) subsystem. Open START-RUN and enter command.com or cmd.exe. If you don't see a MSDOS windows coming up you of course have a problem. Check the Config.nt and Autoexec.nt files in the SystemRoot%\System32 folder for nonstandard settings.
Use a REM statement to remark out all entries except the following default entries:
Config.nt
---------
dos=high, umb
device=%SystemRoot%\System32\Himem.sys
files=20
Autoexec.nt
-----------
lh %SystemRoot%\System32\Mscdexnt.exe
lh %SystemRoot%\System32\Redir
lh %SystemRoot%\System32\Dosx
lh %SystemRoot%\System32\Nw16 (only if CSNW is installed)
lh %SystemRoot%\System32\Vwipxspx (only if CSNW is installed)

The registry entries that are associated with the NTVDM subsystem are: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment
This key stores the environment variables from the Config.sys and Autoexec.bat files for use in Windows.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\ VirtualDeviceDrivers
This key stores the device drivers that are used in an NTVDM session. Windows Setup creates these entries when a device driver is installed.
Read the article at Troubleshooting MS-DOS-Based Programs in Windows (Q314106) for complete details as I am simply repeating what's already available in the article.

79. Create your own popup menu in TASK BAR
This is not a registry tweak or anything big at all but may still be helpful to some. Remember what happens when you click on START button. You see a popup window coming up. You can create your own popup window other than START MENU in taskbar. Put down shortcuts to all applications that you want to see in your popup in a folder. Then you right click on taskbar->toolbars->new toolbar-> and select the new folder.

80. Change default directory of Windows Explorer
If you are one of those who are annoyed by Windows Explorer always opening my documents folder by default, here is a solution.In the properties of explorer or explorer shortcut which you access by left click you enter this in the end: /n,/e,c: After this , it look like : %SystemRoot%explorer.exe /n,/e,c: . You can change C: to anything you want !! .

81. How to alter behavior of System Restore Utility
There are three specific keys that control behavior of System Restore Utility. It has many values that can be altered and also have some that should not be altered under any circumstances. Microsoft Article The Registry Keys and Values for the System Restore Utility (Q295659) explains it all in detail this but in brief following three keys are important.
1. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Sr
2. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Srservice
3. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\SystemRestore
Only some sub-keys of third key can be modified without harming your computer. Read the Microsoft Article to know what can not be modified.Following keys can be modified (copied from Microsoft Article):
CompressionBurst
This value, listed in seconds, specifies the idle time compression: The amount of time to compress data after the computer reaches its idle time. A service can compress data for the amount of time that is specified in this value, and then stop. Then, at the next idle time compression, the computer can repeat the process.
DiskPercent
This value relates to the percentage of disk space that System Restore uses for its data store. The default value is 12 percent. The data store size is always calculated as "max(12 percent, DSMax)," regardless of the size of the hard disk. The maximum (max) size is what is specified in DSMax. For hard disk sizes that are less than 4 gigabytes (GB) in size, 12 percent is less than 400 megabytes (MB), so "max(12 percent, DSMax) equals 400 MB." For hard disk sizes that are greater than 4 GB, 12 percent is greater than 400 MB, so "max(12 percent, DSMax) equals 12 percent." This data store size is not a reserved disk space, and the data store size is used only on demand.
DSMax
This value specifies the maximum size for the System Restore data store. The default size of the data store is 400 MB. The data store size is always calculated as "max(12 percent, DSMax)," regardless of the size of the hard disk. The maximum (max) size is what is specified in DSMax. For hard disk sizes that are less than 4 GB, 12 percent is less than 400 MB, so "max(12 percent, DSMax) equals 400 MB." For hard disk sizes that are greater than 4 GB, 12 percent is greater than 400 MB, so "max(12 percent, DSMax) equals 12 percent." This data store size is not a reserved disk space, and the data store size is used only on demand.
DSMin
This value relates to the minimum amount of free disk space that System Restore needs so that it can function during the installation process. Also, this value relates to the minimum amount of free disk space that is needed for System Restore to reactivate and to resume the creation of restore points after System Restore has been disabled because of low disk space.
RestoreStatus
This value specifies if the last restore operation failed (0), succeeded (1), or had been interrupted (2).
RPGlobalInterval
This value specifies, in seconds, the amount of time that System Restore waits before it creates the automatic computer check points for elapsed time. The default value is 24 hours.
RPLifeInterval
This value specifies, in seconds, the restore points Time to Live (TTL). When a restore point reaches this time and it is still on the system, it gets deleted. The default value is (7776000), which will be 90 days.
RPSessionInterval
This value specifies, in seconds, the amount of time that System Restore waits before it creates the automatic computer check points for session time (the amount of time that the computer has been on). The default value is zero (0), which means that this feature is turned off.
ThawInterval
This value specifies, in seconds, the amount of time that System Restore waits before it activates itself from a disabled state (after the conditions for this process to occur have been met). If you start the System Restore user interface, System Restore is activated immediately.

82. Remove unnecessary Scheduled Tasks scan by Internet Explorer and make Internet Explorer Load faster
I read about this tip on internet at INFOWORLD. This tips is about a bug in Windows OS (was originally present in Windows 2000 and I do see it in Windows XP as well) that causes Internet explorer to search for Scheduled Tasks whenever your launch the Internet explorer as a user. Microsoft has it documented in a knowledgebase article. Anyway trick is to open registry and navigating to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Explorer\RemoteComputer\NameSpace and then looking for shared tasks ClassId key {D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF}. Simply delete it and get out of registry. No need to reboot. Launch Internet Explorer and see the difference. I noticed significant gains on my computer and I sure bet you will as well.

83. If you have a faster hard disk, keep your pagefile.sys
If you do not already know, pagefile.sys is your swap file. It makes common sense to put it on a hard disk that is fastest. So say if you have upgraded you machine and a newer and faster harddisk, change the pagefile location to that drive. Open registry and navigating to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager\ MemoryManagement and then looking for Paging files Change its drive location (on mine its says C:\pagefile.sys) to the one that is faster (say D:\pagefile.sys if D: denotes the faster drive).

84. Make Windows XP load frequently used programs in quickly accessible location
Windows XP is smart enough to analyze user behavior and adjust accordingly (somewhat !) Important example is MRU list. Periodically (default is 3 days I think), XP would do some file movements to keep most actively used programs in that part of the disk that are quickly accessible. (Believe me all parts of disk are not the same,some are quicker to access and some are not..its simple law of physics). Anyway if you want to do it at your will, go to START-RUN and enter Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks and start the reordering process.

85. Surfing the web ? Find related web sites easily and quickly
Gone are the days when you were forced to have a separate application (like Alexa) to get relevant and related information to a site being viewed. With Internet Explorer 6, you can have this functionality by default. All that you need to do is to follow steps listed below and you have unraveled the secret.
1. Right-click the toolbar at the top of the browser window, and then click Customize.
2. In the Customize Toolbar dialog box, click related under Available toolbar buttons, click Add, and then click Close. Now you would see a new icon appearing on your Internet explorer tool bar. Click on this and you would get all the relevant information on the site being visited.

86. How is the Icon color depth and Size information controlled ?
Icon color and Icon Size information is controlled by following entries in Registry. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics and look for two keys by the following name:
"Shell Icon BPP"
"Shell Icon Size"
Value of "Shell Icon BPP" determines bits per pixel (color depth) and value of "Shell Icon Size" determines icon size in pixels. You can determine number of colors that Icon have by raising 2 to the power of "Shell Icon BPP" value. If value is 16, total number of colors (or color depth) is 2^16 = 65536

87. Enable UDMA/66 mode on IDE Channels
Even if DMA is enabled on IDE channels, by default UDMA/66 mode is disabled. You can improved disc performance by enabling it. Open registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigating to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\ {4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0000]. In right pane look for a key by the name "EnableUDMA66". If it is there, set its value to 1 if it is not already set to 1. If not, add a dword entry by the name "EnableUDMA66" and set its value to 1.

88. Save electricity ! Specify the typical role for your computer.
Based on how you use your computer (meaning your computer) you might be wasting a lot of electricity if you leave it on with little or no activity for extended periods of time. Depending upon whether you rarely use the computer or you frequently use the computer or keep it always on, you can do a registry tweak to let the system know the typical role of your computer and help select the best approach to power savings. Navigate to [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\PowerCfg] and look for value of CurrentPowerPolicy. Following defaults are in use:
Enter 0 for Home/Office Desk.
Enter 1 for Portable/Laptop.
Enter 2 for Presentation.
Enter 3 for Always On.
Enter 4 for Minimal Power Management.
Enter 5 for Maximum Battery.

89. Private information about who is logged on your computer at a time.
XP stores certain information about you as and when you are logged on in following places in registry:
Logged on User: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Logon User Name]
Personal: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders\Personnal]
Default Document folder: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Volatile Environment\HOMEDRIVE]
.Net email account: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MessengerService\ListCache\.NET Messenger Service\IdentityName]
Number of Open programs: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SessionInformation\ProgramCount]

90. Does your computer forgets to power off after shutdown ?
If this is is the case, try this. It may help. Open registry by going to START-RUN and entering REGEDIT and Navigating to [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop] and look for value of PowerOffActive key. If it is set to 0, set it to 1 . This may not work in all cases (specially if your hardware does not support APMS protocol) but is worth a try in other cases.

91. Have you been asked to insert Window XP CD whenever you install a new software ?
If this is is the case, you may want to automate the process a bit. Assuming you have enough disk space (meaning at least 600 MB extra), you can copy all that you have in your Win XP CD's \i386\ directory to your harddisk and change its pointer in registry. Assume you copy everything that you have in \i386 directory to say C:\i386 where C: is your hard disk, you can automate this process and avoid being asked for inserting CD by changing following entry in registry. Open registry and navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion and look for the key called SourcePath. Change this key's value to your hard disk path. Thats all.

92. Optimize your XP Pro system by tweaking service manager ? Remove unnecessary services !
This is important. You don't know how many services are started by your service manager everytime you boot your system. There is a very strong likelihood that some of these services are never of any use to you and as such you never directly or indirectly use them. If so, why delay the boot time and also degrade the system performance for no reason ! Stop this services from starting automatically. Here is How-to ! Open service manager by going to START-RUN and entering services.msc. Now in the right pane, you would see a list of services some of them would be started and others don't. Also they could be set to any of three status of start mode. "Manual", "automatic" and "disabled". If you double Click on any of these you would see detailed info on each of these. You have an option of starting or stopping the services running on your computer. If you are typical desktop user like most of us, it might be safe to disable and stop following services. But still do understand it before you do it. Also some of those listed below may not be available for you as well.
1. Portable Media Serial Number
2. DHCP Client
3. Distributed Link Tracking Client (Most likely you're not connected to a Windows 2000 domain )
4. DNS Client ( Again you're not connecting to a specific DNS server on your local network most of times)
5. FTP Publishing Service ( If you don't want your system to act as an FTP server. I don't !)
6. IIS Admin Service ( You computer may not be a WWW server and as such no need for this service )
7. IPSEC Policy Agent ( disable it if you're not connected to a Windows 2000 domain )
8. Messenger ( same reason...you may not be connected to a Windows 2000 domain )
9. Remote Registry Service (Typically you don't remotely access the Registry of other systems )
10. RIP Service (If you are a typical home user, you don't need your system to act as a router)
11. Run As Service ( This can also go since most likely you don't use any applications that run as an alias )
12. World Wide Web Publishing Service ( If you are a not into web publishing business,You don't need this as well)

93. Improve speed of of file search in WINDOWS XP PRO operating system.
If you have not already noticed, you soon will. Default search for a file in Windows Explorer takes a long time to complete. Yes thats correct. I had to wait for some time before I could do that when I was creating the screen print of *.msc search on my computer (see the article on gpedit.msc in list of tools link). Anyway bottom line is default search would be slow in XP, In fact slower than even a Window 98 PC. But there is a reason for it and couple of ways to tweak it. First the reason: One of the reasons XP's default file search takes so long is it not only looks for file names in your directories, it processes compressed (.zip and .cab) files, looking for your filename inside of these zipped files! There are few ways to improve your search.
Disable ZIP and CAB search:
This tip was brought to my attention by James Heinrich.

To disable Compressed Folders for zip files:
regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll
For CAB files:
regsvr32 /u cabview.dll
All of a sudden it goes so much faster, and no need for indexing service,
or weird searching limitations.
Can always be re-enabled afterwards with the same command, minus the/u
Set index service on:
You can further improve the search bye turning the index service on ! Well it does not end here. You not only have to turn the index service on but also has to follow many do's and don'ts. Here are some of them.
1: Never search by putting criteria in the "All or part of the file name" box.
2. Enter your criteria in the "A word or phrase in the file" as described below - no matter what you want to achieve !
TO SEARCH FOR A FILE BY NAME:
Your search criteria must begin with:
@filename
or
#filename
followed by all or part of the filename you are looking for and you must put it in the "A word or phrase in the file: input area Wildcards * and/or ? are allowed:
TO SEARCH FOR A FILE BASED UPON A WORD OR PHRASE IN THE FILE:
Your search criteria must start with an exclamation mark
!yourcriteria
The exclamation mark forces use of the index. If the exclamation mark isn't used, Search Companion will begin a slow file-by-file physical search.

There is an interesting article devoted to search. Please visit http://www.xpsearch.info/xps1.htm and read all about it. It even has section on search tips.

94. Troubled by IE crashing unexpectedly for no reason? Launch it in its own process.
If you have seen it happening, you must hate it. You are working on something important (may be filling an application form, filing a tax return, view sensitive data what not or may be just reading an interesting site ) and out of no where an error is reported in iexplorer.exe and all instances of Internet explorer closes out. Isn't this painful ? Well sure it is , but what can you do (???) Well you can do some thing. Thats not the perfect solution but may be a good workaround till we achieve perfection. Open registry (by going to START-RUN and entering regedit) and navigate to [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer] and add a new string by the name "BrowseNewProcess" and set its value to "yes". That all. Doing this would open your Internet Explorer Browser in a separate process area of its own, and this would not shut down just because there was a problem with another instance of Internet Explorer. Hey this takes more memory but for those who can afford it offers a solution.

95. Don't want Num Lock to be switched on at boot time ? Shut it off.
This tip is not a performance tip but may be liked by those who like customization. If you are one of those who do not want NUMLOCK to be on at boot time, here is the trick. Open registry (by going to START-RUN and entering regedit) and navigate to [HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Keyboard] and look for a string key by the name "InitialKeyboardIndicators". If its not there , create it else change its value to
0 to set NUMLOCK off or 2 to set NUMLOCK on.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Before doing anything with registry, It is very important that you take a backup of registry by exporting it. Remember even a minor mistake in registry could render your system unusable or will cause it to stop or crash. XPTools is not responsible for any such damage that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of your applying these changes. Don't try it if you are not sure. Use at your own risk

96. Modify color selection of default theme.
Again this tip is not a performance tip but may be liked by those who like customization. Also it may be useful more once Microsoft provides more themes. Open registry (by going to START-RUN and entering regedit) and navigate to [HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ThemeManager] and locate the key "ColorName".
Right Click on it and select modify its value from "NormalColor" to "Metallic"
Click Ok, and exit regedit and restart your computer.

This tip does not do much on my computer but those who have Microsoft XP Plus Installed might see a difference. Please provide me your feedback on this tip.

97. Are you a high end gamer ! Accelerate your mouse.
I am not a serious gamer but there was a time when I was playing a chilly eating game at Guiness book of records. Even with my best efforts I was not able to eat more than 72 chillies where as record was for that of 90 in a minute. I was wondering how could that happen ? Same goes with 1 minute short chess games on line. I think an accelerating mouse and pointing device was what I was missing (apart from the gamer skills !) Well if you want to accelerate your mouse , here a tip I found on Internet There is a logic order in the 64-bit hexadecimal values in the registry trick I am suggesting to you folks. When trying different values, you should come up with a diagram which displays a curve, this is the unwanted acceleration. Adjusting the values that the curve becomes a straight line resolves the mouse-acceleration. Open registry (by going to START-RUN and entering regedit) and navigate to [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse] and set value of "SmoothMouseXCurve" and
"SmoothMouseYCurve" as follows:
"SmoothMouseXCurve"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,a0,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,
40,01,00,00,00,00,00,00,80,02,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,05,00,00,00,00,00

"SmoothMouseYCurve"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,66,a6,02,00,00,00,00,00,cd,4c, 05,00,00,00,00,00,a0,99,0a,00,00,00,00,00,38,33,15,00,00,00,00,00
Drop me a mail if you find it helpful as I myself have not tested it effectiveness.

98. Increasing number of connections per http server
Folks, HTTP Protocol limits number of maximum connections to a HTTP server to 2. Following table explains restrictions placed by various HTTP PROTOCOLS. This is the as per the RFC specifications.
1. HTTP 1.0 conforming server 4 simultaneous connections
2. HTTP 1.1 conforming server 2 simputaneous connections
Limitation caused by this is visible whenever your applications make calls like HttpSendRequest and InternetOpenURL which take longer to complete as they wait for previous connections to be freed up before their requests are sent. You can configure WinInet to exceed this limit by creating and setting the registry entries. Open registry (by going to START-RUN and entering regedit) and navigate to [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings] and look for values of "MaxConnectionsPerServer" and "MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server ". If you don't see then add two key by the names "MaxConnectionsPerServer" and "MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server " respectively. Default values are as
MaxConnectionsPerServer = 2
MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server = 4

Changes its value to a number you want. I read about this at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q183110

CAUTIONARY NOTE: By changing these settings you are causing WinInet to break the HTTP protocol specification for your application and any other WinInet applications running on your machine, including Internet Explorer. You should only do this if absolutely necessary and then you should avoid doing standard Web browsing while these settings are in effect

99. Load Outlook Express faster. Stop Outlook express logo screen from poping up
Not a big deal but would help you get there faster. Open registry (by going to START-RUN and entering regedit) and navigate to [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities\{** Identity ID **}\Software\Microsoft\Outlook Express\5.0] where Identity Id is your computer specific value (on my computer Identity Id is {9144D186-C4E5-462F-A269-E9F293F14A1D}) and look for value of "NoSplash ". If this is the first time, you may not see this key and if so add the DWORD key by the name "NoSplash ". Now sets its value to 1

100. Run your Windows Desktop in its own process environment
This may take a little more memory but would make your Desktop more stable. So this is more of a security tip. Security from other applications running on your desktop. Open registry (by going to START-RUN and entering regedit) and navigate to [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer] and look for value of "DesktopProcess". If this is the first time, you may not see this key and if so add the DWORD key by the name "DesktopProcess". Now sets its value to 1

2009-04-21T20:03:00.002+05:30

16. How to create a XP Bootable Disk?
Go to window explorer and right click on the floppy drive. Select checkbox for Create an MS-DOS startup disk and format the disk. This is all that is needed to create a MS-DOS startup disk in Windows XP

17. Being forced to reinstall but want to avoid reactivation?
Once you activate your copy of Windows XP operating system,A file gets created/updated in windows/system32 directory. It is called wpa.dbl file. I have noticed that if you need to reinstall, take a backup of this file and once you have reinstalled the OS, just copy it back to the same directory.
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: THIS IS ONLY FOR THOSE WHO HAVE INSTALLED A LEGAL COPY OF WINDOWS XP ON THEIR MACHINE AND HAVE ALREADY ACTIVATED THE SOFTWARE THROUGH MICROSOFT PLEASE UNDERSTAND THAT IF YOU INSTALL OPERATING SYSTEM ON ANOTHER MACHINE (MEANING MORE THAN ONE) YOU SHOULD HAVE A VALID LEGAL COPY AND LICENSE AND SHOULD ACTIVATE THAT COPY THROUGH MICROSOFT

18. Having problems with new install ? Like to restore your system quickly?
This can be achieved in couple of ways. Depending upon how you look at it, Quickest way may be to open command prompt and typing SFC /SCANNOW or you can go to START - ALL PROGRAMS - ACCESSORIES - SYSTEM TOOLS and click System Restore:
IMPORTANT NOTE: You would go back to previous fully functional operating system image and may loose all your changes that may have affected system files.

19. Having problem with slow boot time or is it taking long to resume ?
There are a variety of reasons why your windows XP system would boot slowly. Most of the times it this has to do with the startup applications. If you would like to speed up the bootup sequence, consider removing some of the startup applications that you do not need. Easiest way to remove startup apps is through System Configuration Utility (Go to START-RUN and enter MSCONFIG) and going to Startup tab and deselecting application(s) that you do not want to startup at boot time. If this works, great ! If not you can also look into SERVICES tab and possibly deselect WORKSTATION option and see if that helps.Want to know more about boot time and what Microsoft is doing about it ? Visit Microsoft web site on fast boot /fast resume at http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/platform/performance/fastboot/default.asp Go to Download section and you would see a software called Bootvis.exe. It is Microsoft Boot Performance trace visualization tool and has option to optimize your boot sequence. Read my step by step guide to using bootvis.EXE.
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you deselect WORKSTATION option from SERVICE tab and reboot, a warning message window may come the very next time which you can choose not be displayed by checking "do not show this message again" option.

20. What to do with "the system has recovered from a serious error......" error ?
Whenever Windows XP encounters a problem (that it thinks is serious even if you did not do anything unusual) it creates a dump file. Next time you reboot, you most likely see this error message. Clicking on more information shows error signature and other clumsy details. Typically minidump would be stored in \WINDOWS\MINIDUMP directory. It is not so easy to decipher this information. Best thing to do is to go to Windows Online Crash Analysis site at http://oca.microsoft.com and submit report ( or check status if you have already submitted the report). You may need to signon with Microsoft .Net Passport and if you don't have you may need to create one by supply some basic information about yourself..
Following are some of actions that you can take to avoid this error from cropping up.
Temporarily disabling error reporting:
Right-clock on my computer, select properties, advanced tab, error reporting button - turn on the "no error reporting" check box and turn off the "but notify me" option.
Disable Virtual Memory:
Right-click on my computer, select properties, advanced tab, performance settings, advanced tab, virtual memory "change" button. Note down the current VM settings (system managed or any customized size. Turn on the "no paging file" bullet, and press the set tab.
Delete the paging file:
Reboot. Verify that the option reads 0 kb for page file. Use folder options on control panel or explorer "tools" pulldown menu & go to "view" tab. Turn off check box to permit viewing of system files. Now explorer on the root of C drive (or what ever drive letter you page file was set to use), should show a pagefile.sys entry. Delete this. You will get a warning message about this being a system file. Since you have disabled virtual memory, this entry is not being used. Delete it. Go empty the trash bin to make sure this entry is cleared.
Re-enable Virtual Memory:
Right-click on my computer, select properties, advanced tab, performance settings, advanced tab, virtual memory "change" button , turn on the system-managed or customized paging file with the same settings as you noted down earlier. Be sure to press the set button. Reboot and verify that the paging file is active. Re-enable error reporting that was disabled earlier. Reboot to verify that the repetitive error message has indeed "left the building"
IMPORTANT NOTE: Microsoft support team should contact you as soon as possible!

21. Installed Windows XP on the same volume as old OS?
I did this very same thing on my computer the first time I tried to install Windows XP Pro. Installation was carried out from within the old Windows 2000 environment and it did go well. I had chosen fresh install and ( that was the intention as I had bought a copy of WINDOWS XP PRO FULL VERSION and wanted to wipe out the old install...I do not believe in UPGRADE Versions!). But when rebooted I saw multiple boot option and soon figured out that installation did not go as I had expected.....To clean it I had to go into boot.ini file and delete entry corresponding to Windows 2000. Also based on my experience of old directory structure, I had to manually delete those. I could easily remove the WINNT directory as it belonged to Windows 2000. Difficult task was the program files directory as it has old as well as new stuff mixed up. I used date and timestamp sorting to figure out what was old and not needed but you be very careful here.
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you remove a program file belonging to Windows by mistake, you may be heading for trouble !

22. NetMeeting does not open up quickly or not at all?
I did face this a couple of times when inviting someone for voice chat on MSN. If you have recently bought/installed the XP PRO on your PC (which had been the case with me) you may not have activated netmeeting. You would have to do that. Quickest would be to go to START-RUN and entering CONF and in the resultant screen, providing basic information about your self and your are done.

23. Reduce keystrokes by pressing CTRL key while entering in web addresses ?
If you just type CNN and press CTRL+ENTER, it is as good as entering www.cnn.com!
IMPORTANT NOTE: To best of my knowledge it only works for .com addresses!

24. Why sending a file does not work in MSN messenger if NAT is installed ?
I have three computers connected to Internet via one that has WINDOWS XP installed on it. NAT works great and I like that. Problem is if you are using MSN messenger, you can not send a file to someone because that is sort of like point to point ftp protocol and does not work with local addresses over Internet But you can get remote assistance and if you have any problems read this tip on Microsoft Expert Zone: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/tips/september/jackson1.asp.

25. DVD-RAM model supported in XP but not being recognized or being recognized as CD-ROM?
Open Regedit by going to START - RUN and type Regedit and hit enter. Then you should navigate to following entry in registry
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\ {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}. Highlight the {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} folder in the left pane, delete the following two keys in the right pane.
"UpperFilters"
"LowerFilter"
DELETE these two entries and restart your computer. If your DVD-RAM is supported by WINDOWS XP, this may work.

2009-04-21T20:02:00.002+05:30

15. How to remove recycle bin from your desktop ?
Open Regedit by going to START - RUN and type Regedit and hit enter. Then you should navigate to following entry in registry
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\
Desktop\NameSpace\{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E} and delete it. This action should remove recycle bin from your desktop.

2009-04-21T20:01:00.006+05:30

14. Heard of Microsoft Platform Support Reporting Tool?
Are you having a tough time with Microsoft Windows XP and feel like lost ! If this is the case and you are working with Microsoft Support team, Ask them about MPS reporting tool. This tool can create a LITE or FULL version of a CAB file that could be useful for Microsoft Support person or even you. Learn more about MPSRPT_XP.exe
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: I got this tool from Microsoft because I was facing serious problems with my DVD-RAM and even after working with Microsoft, I could not have it resolved. Finally I got this executable from Microsoft Support team requesting that I should give him the CAB file generated as a result of this tool.

2009-04-21T20:01:00.003+05:30

13. Change the default search engine in Internet explorer?
Default search engine of Microsoft Internet explorer is MSN. But there are better search engines available. I like yahoo.com and you may have your own preference. Recently I came across article that indicated how to change the default search engine through registry. Open registry editor by going to START-RUN and entering regedit and navigate to following three keys separately and change it as shown below:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main]
"Search Page"="http://www.google.com"
"Search Bar"="http://www.google.com/ie"
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchURL]
""="http://www.google.com/keyword/%s"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Search]
"SearchAssistant"="http://www.google.com/ie"
(This example is specific to google but there is a Microsoft article that I found on their support site which described show to do it for many other engines. Read all of it at: http://support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=KB;EN-US;q198279

2009-04-21T20:01:00.001+05:30

12. Want to enhance Network throughput? Try out this tip.
Network throughput depends on a variety of factors and as such you never no what could be the bottleneck. One of things that we can try out is the network redirector reserves.Open registry editor by going to START-RUN and entering regedit and navigate to key [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanWorkstation\Parameters]. One here, click on right pane and added following Dwords. Dwords are in hexadecimal (and value as shown below indicates that of 104, valid values are 0-255). Keep both values same. I think default is 15 or 20. This may help networkthrough put but there is no guarantee. Try it out.
"MaxCmds"=dword:00000068
"MaxThreads"=dword:00000068

2009-04-21T19:58:00.002+05:30

11. Start menu is slow in responding? Want to boost response time of start menu ?
Windows XP is touted as a new generation of OS Xperience. No doubt about that but this experience come at a cost. Resources. If your hardware configuration (read CPU,RAM) is not upto speed but still want to boost response time of start menu, here are a few tricks that might help. Open registry editor by going to START-RUN and entering regedit and navigate to key HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Control Panel \ Desktop \ MenuShowDelay . Change the value (default may be 400) to 5 or 50 or even 0. This should speed up. If you are not all that crazy for shadowy effects, you can further speed the things up by going to DISPLAY Properties Window and from there to appearance and over there clicking Advanced command button and check off Show menu shadow.

2009-04-21T19:57:00.001+05:30

10. Want to change font size of Internet Explorer content on the fly ?
Do you know that font size of many of the web sites can be changed as per your view pleasure. Yea ! You know about it but do not want to take those additional steps. I hear you ! Here is a tip. If you have a mouse that has scrolling button then fond changing is as easy as pressing CTRL key and rotating scrolling button either towards you (to increase) or away from you (to decrease). Try it out. It works for me.

2009-04-21T19:56:00.006+05:30

9. Have tendency to forget passwords ? Want a solution that will help you get back in business ?
Most of us have a common tendency of forgetting passwords. If you don't every forget anything, I envy you and this may not be of much use to you but for most of us, this may be a life saver. If you're running Windows XP Professional as a local user in a workgroup environment, you can create a password reset disk by following instruction as shown below:
Go to START-CONTROL PANEL-USER ACCOUNTS. Then click your account name and further on in RELATED TASKS, click PREVENT A FORGOT PASSOWRD. A wizard would come up, follow instructions and you have your password reset disk ready.
IMPORTANT NOTE: As it goes with things like password, make sure that you keep this disk at secure location else you risk tress passing with your user account.

2009-04-21T19:56:00.004+05:30

2009-04-21T19:56:00.002+05:30

7. How to verify XP software you bought is OEM/UPGRADE/RETAIL?
I am sure we all have noticed Microsoft product marketing strategy. Whenever they launch any new product line,there are various flavors of it available right from day one. Some are given adjectives like UPGRADE version or FULL, others RETAIL v/s OEM and then of-course we have various categories of the product like HOME, PRO , SERVER , ADVANCED SERVER etc etc. Well ever wondered what you bought is same as what was advertised ? How to tell the difference. Here comes the help. Look for a file called Setupp.ini that is present on your Windows XP CD and double click on it and browse its content. There is a field called PID=. This PID is what would tell us exactly what we have got.First 5 bytes of PID decide whether (it is OEM or RETAIL or is an UPGRADE ) and last three digits determine what kind of CD KEY will it accept. Here are some of the typical PID values:
Retail = 51882 335
Volume License = 51883 270
OEM = 82503 OEM

2009-04-21T19:55:00.002+05:30

8. Group Policy Editor: Extremely powerful tool in Microsoft XP Operating System.
Have you heard of group policy editor ? This is one of the most powerful tool that Microsoft XP comes bundled with that most of us don't even know about. I recently discovered it by accident. Learn more about it at Group Policy Editor section of this site but in brief it can be used to carry out powerful customizations and performance tuning of your system. Go to START-RUN and enter gpedit.msc