Which is Better Among SSD and HDD?

When building a new computer, hard disk drives are often the most overlooked components. The most common parts upgraded are the processor, RAM and graphics card. But a fast disk drive can also significantly improve performance. Typical HDDs these days are basically stacks of large rotating discs (called platters) coated with a ferromagnetic material and magnetic heads separately attached to read and write data. Data is stored in sequential form, in magnetized bits over the platter. The data transfer rate depends on many factors like physical placing of relevant data bits, seek time and rotational speed of the platter. Most HDDs now run at about 7200RPM (revolutions per minute), high performance HDD’s run at 10000RPM and some server HDD’s run at 15000RPM. HDD’s started out in the 1950′s and were as large as 2 refrigerators! Also, their capacities were in a couple hundred MB’s. Fast forward to now and a HDD few inches across can hold terabytes! That’s quite an improvement in just about 50 years.

Conventional HDD’s are now quite inexpensive and you can find a pretty good branded 1TB HDD for around 100$ or slightly more. It makes sense to buy a large, high performance HDD for around 200$, but if you’re looking for the absolute fastest data transfer rates, you need to get yourself an SSD. SSD stands for Solid State Drive. They are the next generation of non-volatile storage and in a few years all PC’s will sport large SSD’s. However, as of now, SSD’s are still rather expensive and not very common.

Solid state drives, unlike hard disk drives, have no moving parts. While conventional HDD’s employ a platter and a movable read/write head, SSD’s are basically just a solid block of materials. There are 2 types of SSD’s, ones that use NAND type flash based memory and ones that are DRAM-based. Commercially available and useable SSD’s are all flash based. Similar to USB flash drives, SSD’s use semiconductors and microchips to read and write data. On the other hand, HDD’s use magnetism and motorized parts for the same. So in a broad sense, SSD’s are electrical devices and HDD’s are magnetic devices.

As mentioned earlier, HDD’s read and write data over a circular disk called a platter. What this means is that data is stored sequentially and fragments of data are accessible only when the platter and read/write head get aligned. In practice, there is always a slight delay before data can be accessed. It’s unidirectional and naturally slows down data access rates to the order of a few milliseconds. However, with SSD’s, data is stored and accessed randomly and does not need to “wait” before it can be written or read. This means that data access times are almost 4-5 times faster than HDD’s.

But all this comes for a price, SSD’s are quite expensive as of now. Even high end PC’s come with a 128GB or so SSD for Windows and important programs; and a conventional 1TB or so HDD for regular storage. This setup boosts performance for the OS and critical software while keeping the price in check. A branded 64GB SSD costs about 100$ and a 256GB SSD costs around 300$. Clearly it’s not practical if you need to store a huge collection of games, movies or music. As of now SSD’s are basically just used to store very important software.

But then again, with passing years SSD’s are sure to get cheaper and pretty soon they will be affordable. They really should be too, because they offer a very large number of advantages over the conventional HDD’s. Let’s have a look at the advantages:

1) Unlike HDD’s, they don’t need initialization time and offer instantaneous data access the second they’re started.
2) Data can be accessed much faster as there’s no need to “wait” for a read/write head. General transfer rate is around 4 times faster than HDD’s.
3) Since they don’t have any moving parts, they are very resistant to shock and vibrations and can withstand higher temperatures than HDD’s.
4) They are noiseless even under load.
5) SSD’s are lighter and smaller than HDD’s and consume far less power.
6) They aren’t affected by magnetic fields, whereas data in HDD’s could be damaged in fields.
7) Defragmentation done on HDD’s to reorder data fragments closer together for faster access becomes completely redundant in the case of SSD’s, data transfer rates remain the same at every point.

There are a few disadvantages as well:

1) Data cannot be overwritten as easily as on HDD’s, just like normal USB flash drives.
2) As of now SSD’s are very expensive and it might be a while before SSD’s with the capacities of todays HDD’s become affordable.
3) There are a limited amount of read/write cycles.
4) Not all SSD’s have the same fast read and write times, usually write time is higher.
5) High capacity SSD’s are not easy to find.

In conclusion, SSD’s are the future, but they’re still an emerging technology. It’s up to you if you want to be an early adopter, there sure are a lot of benefits. The only downside is, you might have to compromise on a few factors. What would you do? Drop us a line and let us know!

Simple Hack to Instantly Send your Gmail Attachments to Google Drive

Have you ever tried sending your gmail attachments to Google drive automatically ? If not, then try this simple hack.  I think everyone is familiar with new Google Drive which is one such amazing drive to store all your data in it. You can access your data from any part of the world if you upload some data into your Google Drive. With Google Drive, you are on the web, in your home, at the office and on the go. So wherever you are, your stuff is just there. You can share you data with your friends in any part of the world. Google Drive offers you 5 GB free drive to store all your data. Google Drive launched with one missing feature in it. Its the ability to save your Gmail attachments directly to your Google Drive account. Which means, when ever you have any attachment in your Gmail account, the attachments getting transferred to your Google Drive automatically.

This is not possible with the default Google Drive options, But still you can hack it with a small code give by Amit Agarwal who blogs at Labnol.org. Thanks to him for this amazing trick where your gmail attachments will automatically be saved to your Google Drive. So when ever you have any important attachment, you no need to save to your Desktop PC/Laptop or any other external device to keep it safe. You can actually save it in your free 5GB online Google Drive account. Imagine if you reading a Gmail message on your mobile accessing a mail. It had an attachment which has to be saved immediately. Well, this is really easy now, you have to just apply a Google Drive label to your message and it will appear in your Google Drive account. Google Drive will automatically synchronize with your desktop folders and save the attachments in your local disk in just few minutes. Later you can access the file either online or offline from any part of the world.

Image credit : Labnol.org

So, going into the details of this hack, you have to just create a small document in your Google Drive which can save all your attachments from Gmail account. You no need to install any extensions or addons. Just follow this simple technique which will work fine in the web and mobile version of Gmail. Including any of your Gmail apps that support labels.

Initializing and Running the Script to Send Gmail Attachments to Google Drive:

So, if you want to have a similar setup for your Gmail account and Google Drive, all you have to do is to follow these simple steps given below.

1) Login to your Google Account, and create a copy of this sheet in your Google Docs (Google Drive). As soon as your open that document, You will be asked to Make a new Copy of this document ? Click on Yes, make a copy. Then you can see a interface like below screenshot.

2) Now click on Initialize and grant the necessary permissions. You can check out the below screenshot.

3)  If you feel your account is not secured and don’t want to take a risk of someone’s else code, Here is the actual code used in the sheet. You usually wont share your Google credentials or data with anyone else. But for your satisfaction, we have just mentioned the source code of the above script.

4) Next go to the Gmail menu again and select Run. As shown the above screenshot with a red mark arrow. After running the script, close your Google sheet and you are done.

Gmail Attachments to Google Drive: Behind the Scene

Its very simple, The program works very logically, The Google sheet will monitor your Gmail mailbox in the background for every 2 minutes and as soon as it finds any message that has a label Google Drive, it will automatically save all the attachments int hat message to the Gmail folder on your actual Google Drive.

So, when all the above setup is ready, you have to just apply the label Google Drive to any of your email messages in Gmail. The attached files will be available in your drive (both online and offline) in the next few seconds. And if you get any errors like  “Service invoked too many times,”  just increase the trigger duration. You can open the same sheet in Google Docs, go to Tools –> Script Editor and then choose Resources –> Current Script Triggers. Now change the value of  minutes timer from “Every 5 minutes” to “Every 15 minutes”. If you would like to stop the script from running in the background, go to the same trigger screen and simple delete the “SendToGoogleDrive” time trigger.

HOW TO LABEL YOUR GMAIL MESSAGES:

1) Login to your Google Account and go to Gmail and go to your inbox. Click on any mail which have a attachments to save those attachments in your Google drive.

2) So. whenever you label your mails as Google Drive, the attachments(if any) will be automatically synchronized into your Google Drive account. Check out the below screenshot to check the file thememin (730 kb) in Google Drive (which you can see in the above screenshot).

With this simple hack, you can all your attachments into your drive automatically. Your attachments will be more secured and no need to upload them specifically. You can always leave a comment below if you any queries on this simple hack on how to add Gmail attachments to Google Drive automatically.

Laptops vs Netbooks vs Ultrabooks – What’s the main difference?

Portable computers are usually referred to as laptop computers or simply, laptops. In reality, there are many types of laptop computers. There’s basically the default laptops, which have slightly less capabilities than a full desktop PC, there’s the desktop replacement laptop, there’s ultrabooks and finally netbooks. In the strictest sense, classifications like these are usually done based on a set of conditions the portable computer in question fulfills.

Laptops, their average capabilities and price range is already well known. They are portable, quiet and have all components integrated. However, the sub categories of laptops are still not very well known. It’s quite important to known exactly what type of laptop to buy because there’s not much sense in buying a full featured laptop when all you need is to edit a few word document or browse the web, is there? So lets break down the types of laptop computers on offer so you can choose one exactly according to your requirements. The categories are:

Desktop Replacement laptops:

These laptops are exactly what their name suggest, they are desktop replacements. They are often also called gaming laptops or media center laptops. Desktop replacements are basically large, bulky laptops with everything you can find in a desktop computer. They have large screens, powerful graphics cards,  high storage capacities and basically all the bells and whistles. The only downside is, they don’t offer much in the way of battery backup. Then again, they’re not exactly meant to be taken around everywhere, they’re just a portable version of your desktop. With all this power in a portable package, needless to say, desktop replacements are rather expensive.

For example, the MSI GT783R offers a 2nd generation Core i7 processor, 6GB DDR3 RAM, GeForce GTX580M graphics card with 2GB VRAM, 1TB HDD and a Blu-Ray drive! Similarly, Dell, Razer and Alienware offer such high powered laptops with amazing performance. They retail for around 2000$ and above. So if you’re looking for the highest computing power in portable form and aren’t concerned with battery backup, then grab one of these!

Ultrabooks:

Ultrabooks are Intel architecture only superlight laptops that sport good performance while not compromising on battery life. These category of laptops usually don’t have much storage capacity or expansion slots. They usually sport only SSD’s or an SSD in tandem with a small regular HDD. To minimize power consumption, size and weight, power efficient processors and RAM modules are used that offer good, but not blazing fast performance like the desktop replacements. The term “ultrabook” was basically coined by Intel and all ultrabooks run on Intel processors. Intel has applied for a trademark and dictates certain minimum specification a laptop computer must have before it can be classified as an ultrabook. The first set of specifications were stated in October 2011 and the second and current set will be effective minimum from June 2012. The minimum specifications are:

Release date	October, 2011	June, 2012 (expected)
Processor	Sandy Bridge microarchitecture Intel Core models CULV (17 W TDP)	Ivy Bridge microarchitecture Intel Core models CULV (17 W TDP)
Height (maximum)	18 mm for 13.3″ and smaller displays 21 mm for 14.0″ and larger displays	18 mm for 13.3″ and smaller displays 21 mm for 14.0″ and larger displays 23 mm for convertible tablets
Battery life (minimum)	5 hours	5 hours
Resume from hibernation(maximum)	7 seconds from S4	7 seconds from S4
Storage	no requirements	80 MB/s transfer rate (minimum) 16 GB capacity (minimum)
Ports	no requirements	USB 3.0
Software and firmware	Intel Management Engine 7.1 (or higher) Intel Anti-Theft Technology Intel Identity Protection Technology	Intel Management Engine 8.0 (or higher) Intel Anti-Theft Technology Intel Identity Protection Technology

(Table courtesy Wikipedia)

Although the ultrabook classification is basically Intel’s, the Apple MacBook Air also comes under the ultrabook classification as it satisfies the specifications albeit running on Mac OS X. An example for an ultrabook is the Dell XPS 13, which has an Intel Core i5 processor running at 1.6GHz, 4GB DDR3 RAM, 128GB SSD and Intel integrated graphics. It weighs around 1.3kg, has a claimed battery backup of 8 hours and costs about 1000$. So if you want portability and battery life at the cost of a little less performance, then get yourself an ultrabook!

Netbooks:

The last and smallest versions of laptops are called netbooks. They are sometimes also called mini-laptops. Netbooks feature small screens, low powered processors and less storage capacity. They often also come without optical drives, with small keypads and weigh 1kg or less. However, netbooks have a long battery life and are frequently used in educational environments. Netbooks usually run on the Intel Atom platform or the AMD Fusion platform. Although most modern netbooks run on Windows 7 Starter, netbooks running on higher versions of Windows 7 are available as well.

One of the best and most popular netbook series is the Asus Eee PC series. The Asus Eee 1016P offers a single core Intel Atom N455 processor running at 1.6GHz, 2GB DDR2 RAM, Intel Integrated graphics, 250GB HDD and features a 10inch screen. It runs on Windows 7 Professional. Asus offers 500GB of cloud storage for customers of the Eee 1016P, so you effectively have 750GB of storage space, which should be quite enough for most people. It’s worth noting that the 1016P is a very basic model and the newer Eee 1215B features a AMD Fusion processor running at 1.6GHz, 2-4GB DDR3 RAM, 250-500GB HDD and an AMD Radeon 6 series graphics card with a 12inch screen and Windows 7. This fair bit of performance comes at a higher price, but still offers around 8 hours of battery life.

While the specs don’t seem like much, it does everything it’s meant to do, you can surf the web, watch movies, listen to music and do most things, just not very system intensive things like video editing, gaming or heavy multi-tasking. Then again, netbooks aren’t meant for system intensive tasks. The biggest draw is battery life, the Asus Eee 1016P claims a whopping 13 hours of battery life! Most netbooks have a battery life of around 8-10 hours. For people on the go who just need the basic functions of a computer but need more flexibility than a tablet, get yourself a netbook. They are also quite affordable at around 500-600$.

So these were the types of laptop computers available, what would you prefer?

Stop Youtube Video To Restart On Fullscreen

Youtube is very popular video database site. If you are a regular user of youtube, you would have observed some bugs from the youtube interface. It might be either the full screen error, Or Restarting the Videos, Flash Videos hanging always, Slow Streaming of videos even with a good connection and so on.. But for every problem, we gotta find a solution. Today i want to talk something which is really annoying with Youtube videos. This problem will make your youtube videos to restart when you click on full screen option. You can see that the video is really loading pretty fast, You can able to see it running fast while playing the video. But when you click on the full screen video, BANG. All the streaming which has been done before will be gone in seconds. Its really very annoying each and every time when you do this. You might also observed that this happens only some times with some videos.

The reason for this problem is that you are changing the screen resolution each and every time when you click on the full-screen. Confused? Okay let me explain you clearly. Whenever you are seeing some videos in youtube, you can observe a small icon left from full screen option. where it says 240p, 360p, 460p, 720p and 1024p. These are the screen resolutions of that video. Files upto 460p are FLV files, and Files from 720p are MP4 files. Each of these files are different in size and different in clarity. Ever since YouTube has changed its interface to a new one, we found some bugs which are being resolved as soon as possible. Now to over this annoying problem of restarting the video all you have to do is to make some some small changes in your youtube account settings. I hope you all are using Gmail account, which can also be accessible to other services like youtube without separate account. Now just login and follow my instructions given below.

1. First Login to your YouTube account.
2. Click on your name above which is your login id, and click on Account.
3. Go to Playback setup.
4. Now look for Video Playback Quality option.
5. You can find two options, and you can observe that the default option has been set as Always choose the best option for me based on my player size. and also Always play HD when switching to fullscreen (when available) is Checked.
6. Now select the I have a slow connection. Never play higher-quality video option and save changes.
7. That’s it.

Now you can stop youtube videos to restart whenever you click on a full screen option. Each and every time when you load a video, the default will be 360p resolution. Even after you have clicked on full screen, it will be 360p. Earlier it was a bit annoying, like for example if we have a video in 2 different formats, like one is 350p and other is 720p, then whenever you click a 360p video to watch in full screen option, it will be shifted from 350p to 720p resolution automatically. This make the video to load again from beginning and start annoying us. With this simple trick you can enjoy your streaming very easily and happily.

One more simple trick to make your flash youtube videos a bit faster is to change the Adobe Flash Player 10 Settings. All you have to do is to simply change a small setting. Just go to the video which you are streaming right now and right click on it to see a option called Settings. If you click on that you can see a small option called Enable Hardware Acceleration. Uncheck that option and continue with your video. You can find that video has been a bit faster than it was earlier before.

That’s for today.Please leave a comment if you are lost some where.

How to Use Your Own Custom Images as Emoticons in Facebook Chat

Well for most of us, facebook chat emoticons are just unavoidable while having conversations. But there is a different way out in the facebook chat system. We can actually use our own pictures to make facebook custom emoticons and use them in facebook chat. Mostly you can use this pictures while chatting with your friends. This article will briefly explain to you how you can make your own facebook custom emoticons. Not rocket science really, just a bit of understanding how facebook servers and engines work. Its really very simple to understand and try your own custom emoticons.

Making your Own Facebook Custom Emoticons:

Let us surf through basics and understand facebook better. Visit your friend’s (or your) profile and observe the address bar. It’s gonna look something like this www.facebook.com/issna.ibuk  (One of my friend’s actual profile, visit him just in-case you wanna troll him). Anyway, what you need to know here is that “sarthak.raj1″ is the profile ID. Copy this and paste it in your friends chat window to see how it displays your friend’s display picture.

Now that we know the profile ID, just place the id in between “[[" and "]]”  like this [[sarthak.raj1]]. And press enter.

Now the image automatically changes to the present display picture the profile ID is holding. Hope you understood how this actually works, now lets move forward and customize our very own image for chat. Now the bad thing is that, the picture is too small and isn’t actually clear, we need multiple pictures that cluster together to form a single picture. For this you’ll need to read on. My friend Sarthak was very kind to accept and allow me to use his profile picture in this article, now that we have his personal details, its time to troll him.

Here’s a picture of my friend that we are gonna use as a chat image.

Moving on, we are gonna need certain tools, let us split the picture into 2X4 format so that it will be easy for us to upload on facebook and use it as a chat image. In this post, I’m gonna use Photoshop CS 4 for cutting the picture into 4 X 2 format. And of course temporary facebook page to upload my files in parts.

We’ve made some guidelines and gonna cut off these into pieces and save them as different pictures. You can use this method as it is the simplest, if you do know Photoshop, We suggest you to use this method. Well if you don’t you can do it in paint too. So its up to you again. Now that the splitting the image into 8 different images is complete. Just upload them on the temporary facebook page we have created earlier. You can make your own page here in 3 steps.

Now here’s the tricky part. Take a look at the URL now : http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=217701121664596&set=a.217700784997963.35675.211768728924502&type=3&theater . Now we copy the Id’s of the all 8 pictures, in this case its 217701121664596, and create a sequence like..

[[XXXXXXX]] [XXXXXXXX]]
[[XXXXXXX]] [XXXXXXXX]]
[[XXXXXXX]] [XXXXXXXX]]
[[XXXXXXX]] [XXXXXXXX]]

Remember that we have uploaded 8 parts of these above pictures in our facebook page. You have to collect all these picture id’s from all 8 pictures and make them in the following sequence mentioned below.  Just paste all the codes of these pictures in order to make it look like a complete picture. Take a look at the pictures and album in facebook we made.

[[217701121664596]] [[217701158331259]]
[[217701188331256]] [[217701214997920]]
[[217701238331251]] [[217701268331248]]
[[217701291664579]] [[217701314997910]]

That’s it, just paste the whole code in your friend’s chat box and surprise them. If you have any queries on this article and need some help, we are always ready to help you. Just leave a comment or mail from the contact us page. We are eagerly waiting for your comments. Hope you will have fun with your own facebook custom emoticons.

Top Internet Security Suites to Protect your PC from Viruses 2012

Security suites are probably the most essential software you will need for you computers, no matter old or new. There are a host of security suites available at various price ranges and licenses, what matters is how good the suite is at protecting you from the different types of malware. A few suites might be strong at protection from a certain type of malware and not so strong with others. The trick is to find an all round suite that fits your budget as well as offers the best protection. Often, security suites come bundled with a PC optimization program, cloud storage and some other extras as well. Before we go through the most popular suites on offer, let’s recap on the different types of malware:

Viruses: Basically, any malicious computer program that replicates itself to harm a computer system is called a computer virus. It is the sub category of malware, it includes trojan horses, worms and rootkits. Contrary to popular belief, spyware and adware come under malware but not under viruses as they are not self replicating, nor do they actually infect files.

Trojan Horses: Named after the Trojan Horse in Greek mythology, Trojan horses or simply trojans are malicious programs that replicate themselves and steal information or harm the host computer system. They usually masquerade as helpful or harmless programs and begin to steal private data, delete files, log keystrokes or provide an opening for further malware to get installed. For example, trojans claim to detect hundreds of viruses and remove them while actually harming the computer.  The term trojan horse was adapted from the Trojan Horse in  Greek mythology where the Greek army hid in a hollow horse made of wood that was given as a gift to the City of Troy. Upon nightfall, the army burst out of the horse and conquered Troy. Similarly, the malicious code is hidden in an apparently helpful program and finally causes harm.

Computer worms: Worms are another type of malicious software that exploit a vulnerability in the computer system to cause harm. They usually corrupt or delete critical files, consume excess bandwidth and often put the computer under control of the worm author. Once infected, computer systems are used to send spam mails and perform many such unwanted functions. They also usually create a backdoor where security can be bypassed to further infect the system. These backdoors allow remote access to the infected system and files and are usually undetected. Furthermore, worms do not need to attach themselves to another program and can be spread individually over networks.

Rootkit: Rootkits are a type of malware that mask malicious processes and software in the infected systems to ensure privileged remote access. They are usually installed after a vulnerability has been found and detected so that the infected computer continues to be under the control of the malware author. Rootkit detection is quite difficult as they are designed to stay hidden from the very software used to detect them. But, behavior patterns or memory analysis can reveal the presence of one. Removal of rootkits is extremely difficult and sometimes even impossible, depending on the extent of infection. Nevertheless, modern security suites can remove a few classes of rootkits.

Spyware: As the name suggests, spyware are programs that spy on the users. They steal user logins and passwords, document sites visited, log keystrokes and even redirect browsers to unwanted sites. They can result identity theft and sensitive bank information can be compromised as well. While some spyware just document sites visited or the like, more dangerous spyware can steal very important information.

Adware: Adware as such are quite harmless, although they are annoying. They generate ads in the form of popups and interrupt other programs. Usually shareware come with such popup ads. However, adware can come bundles with spyware which can cause further complications. But adware as such is not that difficult to remove.

So now that we have a basic idea of the types of malware and what they can do, here’s the top security suites to protect against them:

AVG Internet Security 2012:

AVG always has been the go-to antivirus software as it provides very good protection for free. However, does the full security match up? Unfortunately not. The antivirus bundled up with the Internet Security is the exact same one you can get for free and no doubt, it is good. The other components like the firewall don’t quite match up though. The firewall displays vulnerabilities and anti-spam filter doesn’t block much spam. The phishing protection isn’t up to the mark either. But, the PC tuneup, online backup and AVG accelerator work well and speed up few areas of the PC. The core antivirus program that can be obtained for free and performs well in real world situations, but the rest of the suite isn’t all that. Overall system performance impact is small as well. This suite retails for 55$ for a single license.

Avira Internet Security 2012:

Similar to AVG, Avira also offers a free antivirus that is really quite good. Again, the same antivirus turns out to be one of the best components of this Internet Security suite. While it doesn’t offer much by way of extras, Avira performs well in malware detection and removal and has a robust firewall. Again, the phishing filter and anti-spam filter don’t perform particularly well. Furthermore, Avira is weak with rootkit detection and removal. On the bright side, the best feature, the antivirus,  is available for free and the suite as a whole doesn’t slow down system performance. Avira Internet Security costs 60$ for a single license.

Bitdefender Total Security 2012:

Bitdefender is one of the best suites available on the market. Along with essential components like antivirus, firewall and anti-spam, Bitdefender offers PC tuneup, Facebook protection, online backup and more. This suite offers fairly good malware protection, although not the best. The firewall is efficient, strong and silent as well. The extra features like PC tuneup and online backup perform well too. Phishing protection and anti-spam is decent and in general the suite offers good protection. However, it does slow down the system a bit and malware removal is good, but not great. Overall a good suite, retails at 80$ for 3 licenses.

Kaspersky Internet Security 2012:

One of the stalwarts in the security software game, Kaspersky’s new internet security suite offers a great firewall and antivirus. It’s malware protection is very good, but rest of the features don’t match up. The anti-spam and phishing protection miss a lot of threats and the suite in general does affect the overall system performance. Kaspersky Internet Security offers a unique feature called Safe Run that creates a separate, temporary desktop and registry isolated from the main desktop. This can be used to run files or install programs you don’t entirely trust. If any problems are seen, the temporary desktop can be wiped clean without any effect on your main desktop. Also, the UI is completely new for the 2012 edition and is a pleasant departure from previous iterations. Kaspersky Internet Security costs 80$ for 3 licenses.

McAfee Total Protection 2012:

McAfee Total Security offers a large number of features in it’s suite. It includes anti-spam, intruder detection, parental controls, file shredder and a lot more. Unlike most other suites, the add on features in McAfee Total Protection 2012 actually perform well. Intruder detection and anti-spam are very efficient and online backup is useful as well. But, the core malware detection/removal and firewall don’t perform nearly as good as the best in the business. Also, McAfee affects system performance adversely. So if you’re looking for a suite that offers a host of features, get this suite, but keep in mind malware detection and removal is better in other suites. McAfee Total Secuity 2012 costs 90$ for 3 licenses.

Norton Internet Security 2012:

One of the most well known names in the market, Norton Internet Security more than lives up to it’s name in it’s latest iteration. Unlike previous versions, specifically the ones leading upto and including the 2010 version, Norton Internet Security 2012 is fast, efficient and doesn’t affect system performance. It looks good, is easy to use and offers exceptional firewall, on access and virus protection and effectively removes threats. Even the anti-spam works very well. Although, SONAR (on access protection) can get a bit overzealous at times and block harmless programs that aren’t very widely used. Overall it’s one of the best suites to have, it costs 70$ for 3 licenses.

Webroot SecureAnywhere Complete:

Webroot isn’t one of those suites that strikes you when you’re thinking of security software, but this lesser known suite offers surprisingly good protection! It offers great malware detection/removal, is supported on Android devices and is very light on system resources. Webroot’s online backup and password protection is very good as well. As for the cons, it doesn’t include parental controls or anti-spam and the firewall is a tad bit weak. But, the core antivirus is excellent and the installation is less than 1MB! The complete suite occupies just 50MB of space. This excellent and light suite costs 80$ for 3 licenses.

ZoneAlarm Extreme Security 2012:

ZoneAlarm has traditionally been known to create excellent firewalls and this suite doesn’t disappoint with that regard. Extreme Security 2012 offers a great firewall, anti-spam & phishing protection and a few other extra features. The preinstall virus scan is a nice touch too. The bundled parental control, download manager and registry tune-up work well and you won’t be disappointed. A spiffy complete drive encryption can completely lock down data and prevent usage. But, the malware detection and removal could use some sprucing up and aren’t really in the league of the top competitors. General online protection is very good and so is on access protection. ZoneAlarm Extreme Security 2012 costs 80$ for 3 licenses.

So these were the top security suites, each have their pros and cons and sometimes offer completely different features. Question is, what would you prefer?

Linux Command Line Made Easy

Though the Graphical Interface in Linux now-a-days is getting better and better to become more and more mature, more of the flexibility in Linux over other Graphical Operating Systems is still more easily gained using Command-Line. Desktop users are generally annoyed or afraid (may be) of using command line for their purposes. But this article may help them to make Linux Command Line more easier.

Due to more flexibility offered by it, Command-Line, in Linux, is made available in different ways.

1. In Current generation Linux we have access to command line in various ways. we can either open command line console or open a command line terminal being in Graphical console it self. lets see how
2. In Linux there are different consoles running at different tty which can be accessed using Ctrl+Alt+F1………………..Ctrl+Alt+F12
3. On most Linux Distributions including Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, Redhat, Suse, etc. Graphical console is by default available on 7^th Console which means if we press Ctrl+Alt+F7 from any console we can get back to Default Graphical Console.

1. In above example we can see tty3 that is 3rd console which can be invoked by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F3. By default tty1 to tty6 are command-Line consoles. we can log into command line console with any username and password that we use at graphical login screen. We can login with different users on different consoles.
2. To access command-line from Graphical Console in any Gnome based Linux Distribution like Ubuntu, we can open Gnome Terminal from using menu which is generally available in Applications (Menu) → Accessories → Terminal. Or in any Linux Distribution we can press Alt+F2 to invoke Run Dialog box and type gnome-terminal and press enter to start command-line terminal in Graphical console.
3. Those Command-Line Terminals are also known as pseudo terminals and we can open more than 1 pseudo terminals at a time. Those terminals are named pts1, pts2 subsequently.

There are several commands that can be used in Linux for different purposes but before that lets see how using command line can be made easy so that any user can use command-line very easily. For many people command-line on Linux becomes very complicated, especially when they need to write long commands and repeat those commands them at some point of time. Below we will see some shortcuts and you might also come across some commands that you are not aware about but you need not worry about that as we will discuss many commands in the due course of time.

Here are some shortcuts available in Linux Command-Line :

Tab Key : is used for different purposes. Pressing it for 1 time or twice have two different purposes to serve.

• Tab key for completing the command
  • When we are typing any command we can just type starting letters of the command and press tab key to complete those commands. Now if there are more commands starting with same letters then pressing the Tab key twice we can get a list of all commands starting with the character that we have typed
  • See example as below : In below example I am trying to invoke firefox (web-browser) and I want to type firefox. But instead I will type fir and press tab key.
  
  
  
  • After pressing the Tab key you will see that firefox command is completed automatically.
• Tab key for Listing all available commands starting with same letters
  • In the same way If I press f and then the tab key it will not do any thing but if I press Tab key twice it will display all the commands starting with f. We can short list by typing more and more initial letters of the command.

History command - using previously used commands

• This command can be used to display last 1000 commands that we have issued till now.

• In the screen below we can see the out-put of history with several commands listed. All of those commands are starting with a number which is command no.

• These command nos. can be used to invoke specific command. Eg. if we invoke no. 1245 it will execute command ping google.com.

• To invoke any previously used command we can write it starting with ! (exclamation) mark. Eg. !1245 with execute command no. 1245 that is ping google.com.

Ctrl+r – Command-line shortcut

• Ctrl+r can be issued from command line this will help us to repeat any command that has been issued in past very easily.
• For using it at command line press Ctrl+R
• This will change your command prompt as below

• Then start typing the letters of any word in the command that was issued previously. The command will be displayed at the command prompt.
  Here I am finding a command where I used “del”

• The command displayed in above example is “route del default gw 192.168.5.1 which I previously used to delete default gateway.
• At this stage if we want to find other command containing same letters just press Ctrl+r again and it will take to commands issued even more previously.
  Like in example below you may notice the change in IP address. This command was given even more previously than the command that was first displayed.

Alias – Defining shortcuts for long commands

• Alias command can be used for creating shortcuts of long commands.
• In example below we can see that a shortcut with name “delgw” is to be created for a long command like “route del default gw 192.168.5.1”. Press enter and continue the creation.

• Now when I want to use a command “route del default gw 192.168.5.1” I can use delgw instead.
• This way every command that makes command-line complicated can have a defined alias.
• Note : Commands created with alias command are only for current session that means if you reboot your OS all those aliases created will be deleted.
  There is certainly a way out to make aliases permanent. We can add our commands to a file from where our system will execute all those alias commands whenever the system reboots.
• The file that can hold your alias command for permanent use is available at /home/<username>/.bashrc
• To edit this file we can issue following command
  • gedit /home/<username>/.bashrc
  • Note :
    • <username> here stands for current user with which you are logged in.
    • if you want to make permanent aliases for root user replace /home/<username> with /root. i.e. you will have to edit the file at /root/.bashrc
    • gedit is a text editor.
    • Between gedit and /home/<username>/.bashrc there should always be a space.
• Example below shows how to edit /home/enjay/.bashrc

• here enjay is the user in whose .bashrc I want to make permanent aliases

• alias delgw=’route del default gw 192.168.5.1′ is the line added at the end of the file
• Finally save the file and permanent alias will be activated at the next boot.

There are certainly other ways to make command-line easy especially for those who are new and afraid of Linux command-Line. If you have or find any more ideas to make command-line easy then you can suggest them in your comments.