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Posted - September 05 2008 : 08:32:43
There is no audio archive for today's show. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
Question: Richard in Jacksonville asks, “How do I find out how big my hard drive is?”
Answer: Before answering the question, we should talk about what a hard drive is. A hard drive is a computer component that has one or more platters spinning nowadays at between 5400 and 15,000 revolutions per minute. Before the space on your hard drive can be used, it has to undergo a couple of procedures: partitioning and formatting. Partitioning sets up one or more areas of the physical drive and when it's done, each partition looks like one drive to Windows. Formatting the partitions is like taking a blank sheet of paper and drawing lines on it that you'll use as guides when you write messages on the paper later. You know, so your writing will stay straight. Now, on to the question. If you want to know the size of a particular formatted drive, just open My Computer. In Vista this is called simply Computer. Click a drive and it's size will appear on the left side of the screen in XP. Vista gives you the information just by looking, along with a little graph of how full the drive is. That's often what you want, but that's just for formatted partitions. If the drive has only one partition, they're usually the same. If you have more than one partition, you can see the drive's total size only by looking at disk management. Right-click My Computer, and choose Manage. That brings up the Computer Management control panel. Under storage, click Disk Management. You can see it all from there. Sorry for the long answer.
Cool Site: jott.com – I was not sure why I'd need this when I first heard of it. Here's how it works, you call Jott, then tell it who you want to send a message to. After that, you tell it your message and Jott sends it as a text message and/or an email message. The email message has the audio of the Jott as an attachment so they can play your actual words in case Jott's transcription engine botches the transcription. This is much safer than trying to text and drive, and it allows you to send the same message to groups of people with a single phone call. You can send reminders to yourself that will appear as an email 15 minutes prior to the reminder time. If you have a Blackberry and don't like typing on its keyboard this service is definitely useful.
Cool Gadget: The New iPhone: It's only $199, if you are a new AT&T subscriber or if your contract has expired. If you are an AT&T subscriber in the middle of a contract, it's $399, and if you want a prepaid plan, it's $599. Now the way that works is that AT&T is subsidizing the phone, and it has to be activated in the store on a 2-year contract. The old iPhone was more expensive, but when you got it home you used iTunes to activate it. That's gone. It's gone because folks would resell them on eBay, or they would hack the iPhone and put it on a network other than AT&T, T-Mobile, I think. Anyway, now the phone will be activated in-store, period. Other differences you'll notice are that the data plan for it is 15 or 25 dollars higher per month (25 if you're a business), that data will arrive significantly faster if you are able to use the faster, 3G (third generation) network. If you are on the 2G (second generation) EDGE network, you won't notice a difference. The phone is both slightly thicker and slightly lighter, but not so much that you'd notice. The case is made of plastic rather than metal. While the overall effect remains to be seen, for phones without a telescoping antenna, a plastic case generally means better signal reception. This phone also includes WiFi for surfing the web, certainly, probably for synchronizing to iTunes, but I don't know if you can use the phone features over WiFi. If you could, you'd be able to make calls at free wireless hotspots without using your voice plan minutes. It is pretty cool. But most things from Apple are.
It's All “Geek” To Me: FireWire – A high-speed interface created by Apple for connecting devices to your computer. It's similar to USB that we talked about last week, but originally it was faster than USB. So, most video cameras have FireWire ports rather than USB ports. You'll also hear FireWire called IEEE1394 because it was accepted as a standard by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The two terms are synonymous, however.
Final Thought: Microsoft ignored over 212,000 signatures and discontinued Retail sales of Windows XP. Now we find out that none other than Intel Corporation has decided that it's not cost-effective to transition their 80,000 employees to Windows Vista. We'll have three different links to the story in the show notes at http://www.daconsult.com/forums.
Links
Apple Makes 3G iPhone Officially Official: http://www.gearlog.com/2008/06/apple_makes_3g_iphone_official.php
Apple's New Business Model is AT&T's Old Business Model: http://www.gearlog.com/2008/06/apples_new_business_model_is_a.php
Did Adding 3G Halve the iPhone's Battery Life?: http://www.gearlog.com/2008/06/did_adding_3g_halve_the_iphone.php
iPhone 3G Service Plans: Now, $10 More Than Before: http://www.gearlog.com/2008/06/iphone_3g_service_plans_now_10.php
"Firewire" Definition on TechTerms: http://www.techterms.com/definition/firewire
Inside Intel, It's XP: http://www.crn.com/software/208801316?cid=microsoftFeed
Et Tu, Intel? Chip Giant Won’t Embrace Microsoft’s Windows Vista: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/et-tu-intel/
It's Windows XP, not Vista, inside Intel: http://www.publicradio.org/columns/futuretense/2008/07/01.shtml |
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