Taste of Technology

Is Nvidia better than ATI?

kksonakiya — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 09:20:00 +0000

Are yougoing to purchase a new graphics card? Who recommended you the card that youare finally going to buy, your friend or someone with concrete information ontechnology? Even after so much information and people to guide you through, areyou still confused? If your answer is yes, then add me to the list of people,who are going to confuse you a little more. J

I own twogaming system, both are high-end and the performance is top-notch. I have thembecause I like to play games and like to devour them (not just have fun) and Ilike to benchmark them to show off my systems.

They differfrom each other on the basis of configurations, not in values (like RAM size orspeed), but in companies. I would not be posting my configurations for thisarticle because I would be talking about graphics cards only.

So… I haveNvidia GTX+ 9800 1GB and ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB. Do I hear some sounds tellingme that I need an upgrade? Well, yeah! And I am going to upgrade thempretty soon, so stay tuned for that.

Now,performance of both cards is way better than what companies fit in stockcomputers. They are expensive and still don’t perform like assembledcomputers. You can get a pretty sweet deal in assembled computers thangoing for a branded one. I am not promoting or suggesting anything here, I amsaying what is true. If you don’t care about that ‘warranty’ thing, then youmight want to go for assembled computers with the help of a tech geek.

If you ask individuallythen I would say that 9800 performed a little (only 5 FPS) better then 4870 andboth cards were in high-range when I bought them. As for power consumption,Nvidia 9800 performed better than ATI 4870 and it was significant. When I playgames for like 12 hours straight, 4870 would choke on me and I had only oneoption, shut the thing down. Nvidia’s card was much cooler and efficient thanthat.

As forhotness and temperature, 4870 would become so hot that a wire got fried just bylying next to it and that is not funny. As of this moment, if you callme Nvidia nerd, then I might agree with that as well. It depends on experience friends,Nvidia worked better than ATI for me and that is why I love it. If ATI (nowAMD) works better for you, then you would love it as well, won’t you?

So let melist what I like about Nvidia and you can contradict with my experiencesanytime, alright?

· Theperformance is great even for a low budget card.

· Cardconsumes less power than ATI

· Runscooler.

· Makesless noise.

· Systemremains functioning even after several hours of gameplay.

· Gameslook amazing with Physx support.

· Videotranscoding is fast and improved with Nvidia CUDA.

· Overclockingis easy and does not fry the card.

· Coolingsolutions can be cheap because the card already performs pretty cool.

Tell meyour favorite in the comment section below.

Top Ten Most Rated Anime

kksonakiya — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 09:08:00 +0000

Top Ten Most Rated Anime – Dragon Ball Z

1.Dragon ball: – The one and only greatest Manga ever. It is based on theadventures of Goku, who collects seven mysterious balls to grant hiswishes and struggle to become strong enough to protect earth and his friendsfrom the outside threats. It would not be a mistake if I call this anime ‘a legend’;it is full of power and passion and guess what! There is always a way to levelup your powers!

2.Naruto Uzumaki – The anime is based on a character named Naruto Uzumaki, who isknuckle head ninja and whose ultimate goal is to become Hokage, so thateveryone in his village will stop disrespecting him. The villagers feared himand hated him for being alive as a demon fox that nearly destroyed theirvillage was sealed in him. So the anime contains sorrow, happiness, adventureand lots of humour.

3.Death Note: – If you watch Death Note alone in a dark room (essential setup forhorror animes), then it is going to freak you out. A death God named, Ryuk,dropped a supernatural notebook called the Death Note on the earth that grants its userthe ability to kill anyone (whose face they have seen), just by writingthe name of the victim on that notebook.

Thebest part of this anime is that, although this anime looks horrifying, itincludes mind boggling crime deduction scenarios. The anime is presented in twoseasons and it is plain worthless to watch just one season, however, trust me,if you watch season one; I challenge you to not to watch season 2!

4.Bleach: – The anime is about a 15 year old boy who can see spirits. Bleachfollows adventures of Ichigo Kurosaki, who becomes a grimreaper by absorbing all the power of Rukia (a grim reaper), gaining theabilities to protect humans from the bad ghost called Hollowsand guiding other spirits to the afterlife. However, it was revealed later thatgiving power to someone was illegal in soul society and hence Rukiawas sentenced to death. This can be guessed, that Ichigo tried to rescue herand is still protecting her after so long time.

5.Full metal alchemist: – This anime is a big scientific fiction beyond fromtoday. In a parallel world, humans have attained a scientific techniqueknown as alchemy. The story is about two Brothers, Edward and Alphonse Elric,who want to restore their bodies by the help of philosopher’s stone,after a disastrous attempt to bring their mother back to life through alchemy.

6.One piece: – A pirate king, Gold Roger, buried all his treasure in one pieceand challenged other pirates to find it and become ‘a pirate king’. This animeis about a boy, Lufy, who wants to become the next pirateking by finding One Piece. He accidentally got some magical power by eating acursed food and became a rubber boy, who can stretch himself to highest limitsof a rubber. So… it’s all about his adventures of finding the onepiece.

7.Code Geass: – An almighty Britannia overpowered Japanese forces and conqueredthe country in less than a month. However, some Japanese organizations werestill struggling with the Empire. Lelouch, son of Britannia’s Emperor, gainedthe power of Geass and vowed to destroy Britannia and seek revenge for his mother’sassassination.

Asit happens with superpowers every time, he gets tangled up within the power ofGeass and destroys what’s most precious to him, ‘his little sister’. Watch itto find out more about what I am talking here.

8.Inuyasha:- The story is about a time travelling middle school student KagomeHigurashi, who seeks to find all the fragment of the jewel offour souls and to keep them out of the hands of evil doers. He looks and actslike a dog though, but this anime has some funny and romantic moments aswell.

9.Karin (chibi vampire):- The anime is about an unusual vampire girl, who insteadof drinking blood from others must inject it into othersbecause she produces too much blood. Being unusual from the vampire family sheis considered as a freak in her own family. Since, she was unusual, she liveslife like a normal human being, going out in day-light, attending school andother things. However, things changed when a new classmate, Kenta Usui,arrives at his school.

10.Detective Conan: – Detective Conan follows the adventures of Shinichi Kudo, abrilliant minded 17 year old boy. Who witnessed a murder andgiven an untested poison to silence him but it turns him into the 7 year oldself and then he sets out to track the killer as a boy, the little DetectiveConan.

How to create eBooks with Adobe Acrobat?

kksonakiya — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 08:43:00 +0000

Creating eBooks with Adobe Acrobat

If you areone of those people who don’t like the amazing smell of a book (whether old ornew) and are afraid of the weight you have to carry every time, digital eBookReader could be just the thing you need.

There are alot of players in the market right now to suite your needs like AmazonKindle, Nook,iRiver, Sony Reader, Sony Reader Daily, etc. So, it is only natural to getconfused on which one to get and which one to forget.

I am notgoing to go any deeper into this. I am about to tell you how you can createyour own eBooks to read on your digital reader, whichever it may be. Pleasekeep in mind that this article is about a general format of eBooks which issupported by most eBook Readers.

So… if youhave selected a truly unique reader that does not support the format (ePub)then you should contact your retailer, cause he fooled you.

· Thereare several softwares that help you create eBooks from scratch within seconds.You just have to locate your file (word or txt) and the output file will be readerready.

· However,in case you do not have software or are afraid to download and install one,then you can always enjoy the free utility by Adobe to create wonderful eBooksfor your digital reader.

· VisitAcrobat.com and create a free account if do not have one already.

· Afteractivating your account via link from your email account, your Acrobat accountwould be ready to sign-in.

· Youhave to create new buzzword document by clicking on ‘+New’ button inleftmost area. This will open an online text editor and now, you will create aReader ready document.

How to create eBook with Acrbobat.com?

· Copyand paste the material if you have typed it in a word or notepad application.If you are creating this document via smartphone or pad or tablet. You can justgo ahead and type out your content.

· Youcan perform normal formatting in your content. Like bold, italic, underline,scratching, fonts, font size, font color, highlighting, left-center-right text,etc.

· Othercustomizations are adding pictures, comments, table, intends, etc.

· So…after you finish creating your content, you have to Export (notsave or save as) the file in ePub format. This format isrecognized by most eReaders like PDF. However, some devices support ePub betterthan PDF.

Create eBooks with Adobe Acrobat

· Youhave to select a destination while exporting the file, so have it on desktopfor a sometime, so that you don’t have to open several folders to reach for it.You can organize your files anytime.

· Transferthe file to your eReader and locate the file via device and open it. If youhave not made any errors, then your device will read the document as youexpected.

You can do the same with PDF files as well.However, you don’t need Adobe Acrobat to create PDFs. You should install Wordto PDF & XPS Add-in for Microsoft Office and while saving your content,head over to save as and select PDF format from the menu. Name it andselect a destination and you will to ready to enjoy hot off the press PDFfiles.

Thanks for going through this article and Ihope that pictures were enough to walk you through the process.

Nvidia GTX 550 Ti Temperature Problems and Solutions

kksonakiya — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 08:35:00 +0000

Nvidia GTX 550 Ti Temperature Issues and Solutions

GTX 550 Tiis a mid-range graphics card which is great (if not perfect) for some morethan average gaming. You can compare it directly with GTX+ 9800, which hasbeen a top-end graphics hardware of its time. However, that time is long gone,but for those gamers who bought it way back when they built their systems, thiscard (gtx 550 ti) offers a little improvement over their previous card. Sobefore you run off to buy a GTX 550 Ti, you might want to consider the specs and price details of GTX 550 Ti, to know if it is worth upgradingor not.

Problemsand Solutions

Nvidia GTX 550 Ti

· Thereare no serious problems regarding GTX 550 in particular, however, if you do nothave sufficient cooling (not some liquid cooled expensive hardware) in yoursystem, then you might want to consider taking a break once in a while.

· Thecard may hang or crash while playing a significantly resource utilizing game.These games include Crysis 2, Metro 2033, Need for Speed: Shift, Prototype,Left for Dead 2, Call of Duty Black Ops, etc. To sum up, open world games(released in 2010 and 2011, not a rule in particular) will utilize the card toits maximum level and card will hang or may not perform at its best and frameswill lag or stutter while playing.

· Toavoid such cases, you should optimize settings of your games according to restof the hardware as well. Do not crank up the settings to their maximum if theonly thing that you have nice is ‘graphics card’. Also, you should not play 12hrs straight. Your system needs only 15 minutes of rest to work at optimumlevels again. If you have enough cooling or cross-ventilation in your room,then the time would drop down to 10 minutes only. You should save your game(and every game has this feature) and shut down your computer (not Hibernate,we need every little file closed) and probably, grab a cup of Tea orCoffee.

· Mostof the problems regarding Temperature in GTX 550Ti are happening because ofimproper cooling or cross-ventilation in the room. You see, a gaming system isnot like your regular computer where everything is scaled down to work for24-hrs nonstop. A gaming computer is a high-end machine like expensive cars andgadgets and it requires care to work at its optimum level.

· Ifyou feel like you can’t stop your game or any work that is using your graphicscard continuously, then you can open the case of your CPU carefully and let theheat cool off naturally.

· Youcan make card’s fan run at 100% speed with the help of Nvidia control panel. Itis done in case of overclocking but, it will also help you when you play somehefty game.

· AsI said that GTX 550 Ti is a cool and low power consuming graphics card (followthe specs and price link), you will not face temperature problems a lot.However, if you do then try out some cooling solutions (even normal fansolutions would do the trick).

· Itshould be noted that all drivers must be up to date. It does not affecttemperature problems a lot but if your card is optimized for best performance(via drivers), it will not lag or stutter when you play games continuously.

This was alittle compilation on what happened with my graphics card and it may or may nothappen with yours. However, solutions are right there by you, you don’t have towaste your money on anything expensive.

Join.me Screen Sharing Service Review

kksonakiya — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 06:20:00 +0000

Join.me Service

What isit?

Join.meis a screen – share service and it is clear from that line that ‘it shares yourscreen’. To be clear here, Join.me is available for Windows and Mac basedsystem.

Now letme tell why it is better than other screen sharing services.

Interface

Join.medoes not have any interface other than a little bar that holds few options.They go like these:

Join.me Screen Sharing

Conference number.
Chat
Pause screen
Participants
Share Control Speed
Join.meworks like a charm but it does need some cleaning and optimization. It worksgreat on the ‘master machine’ but when you click on ‘Share Control’, theexperience is not the same on the other machines. This could be possiblybecause of the Internet connection and in that case, there is nothing to worryabout if you have a connection of 512 KBPS or more.

Clutter

There areno extra options or confusing settings or anything like that. You just have abar with the access code to connect other machines via Join.me website andbuttons to do what I mentioned in interface section.

However,if you do think that it’s still a lot of clutter, which is clearly not, andthen you can just press that little minimize button to have the screen all toyourself. On the other machines, you have a ‘maximize’ button to have the applicationshow your ‘master machine’s screen’ in full glory.

Join.me screen capture service

It doesnot affect the speed of data transmission; in fact, you would not feel a thing.Anyway, if you don’t to see the whole screen of your host or master machine,you can always select the ‘zoom’ setting from ‘fit to screen’ to ’50%’.

You canjust scroll to zoom in and out and that’s the sweetest thing that this littleapplication can offer.

Performance

How doyou get it working?

Well, youjust open Join.me and choose the option ‘Share’.This will allow you to download a little executable file, only 1.02 MB thatgoes by the name Join.me.exe. When you run that software, you will receive that’little’ interface and a code to let other machines connect to you and watchyour screen.

On theother machines, you open the website, Join.me and choose the option ‘join’ andthough you do not have to click anywhere, you do have to paste that codegenerated from the master machine.

You canemail the code to your customers or people you want to share your screen with.However, I must warn you ahead, that if your receivers do not have a niceInternet connection, then they might have to wait once a second for the screento update.

You canhave the other machines control yours by sharing control from your ‘littleinterface thingy’. It’s not all that fancy. The mouse doesn’t act normal fromother machines but it’s a nice thing when you want to have some other person dosomething for you.

Like yourparents share your screen with you and they need find something in theircomputer but they can’t. All you have to tell you is guide them through thisscreen share program and have them ‘share control’ with you. Rest is just aneasy deal, you get control of their mouse and you can search the file for them.

There arelots of other uses to this feature and I am sure that you’ll figure them out.

Conclusion

Join.meoffers and amazing service and it’s available for free. That’s the best part.Also, you can share every single device that can open Join.me and have youenter the code. Now, let me see, what are those devices? Hmm… Pretty mucheveryone!! iPhone, iPad, Samsung Tab, Xoom tablet, etc., whatever you feel likesharing screen of and from.

So, givethis service a try and you’ll figure out your needs. Also, there is a paid proversion with a 14-day trial period. But you can live with the free version aswell.

Ideas for Perfect Web Browser

kksonakiya — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 07:41:00 +0000

Ideas for Perfect Web Browser

I’ve been thinking about maintaining just one browserfor all of my online work and leisure activities but it is just not possible.In some areas I liked Mozilla Firefox 4 (3.6 in some cases too) and in others,I care for Internet Explorer 9 beta (ditched IE 8 long ago), Safari, Opera 10.1(right now I am sort of liking it) and Chrome (it’s fast but a bit boring too).

So, it wasn’t possible to ditch others and find aperfect browser, however, for the same I thought about what would be a perfectbrowser. Therefore, here are some views on the matter and since these are justmy views, you’re more than welcome to provide your likes and dislikes over thematter in the comment section below.

Read on then:

1. Configurable speed dial like Opera, but not limited toonly 25 sites. 25 sites may seem more than enough but for many webmasters it isnot. For small screens 25 sites might become a forced reason because anythingmore will become just a cramped up start-up screen.

However, for larger screens (and don’t deny thepossibilities here), 25 sites seem far less. In any case, this feature shouldbe configurable. Many webmaster like to work with several sites right from thevery start of the browser and this feature will save a lot of time.

Also, rather than saving the home screen (web screen)of a particular webpage, the icon should display the name of that webpage inbold letters for a quick glance (again, should be configurable with web-screentoo)

2. To enhance this feature further, voice recognition canbecome a cherry on the top.

3. As for interface, this ‘perfect browser’ should comewith a control panel that can detect the performance of the system and thenactivate the ‘perfect’ interface according to the processor, ram, graphicscard, etc.

This will make the boot-time even faster and will beaccepted by many systems happily depending on their prestige. I mean there is aheck lot of price difference between my Dell Inspiron 15r and Alienware Mx 14,so if this ‘browser’ can leverage that power, then it would be awesome.

4. Configuring CSS for WebPages depending on internetconnection – “Though the world is changing and freakishly awesome internetspeed is roaming around the globe”, many people will continue to use GPRS innear future as well.

This CSS idea came to me when I was working on my blogwith Airtel’s gprs connection, after writing my post, I hit ‘publish’. The nextthing I knew, all the CSS scripts were gone (except for some) from theWordpress’s interface and only blue lines with hyperlinked text were there.

I was wondering how clean everything was looking atthat time. Though I wasn’t able to drag and drop things, I could easily workwith my posts and other things that were not so much ‘flashy’ and did I mentionthat everything got really fast? Well… it certainly did?

That was some error of course, but for great webmasters out there, this thing is worth a thought.

5. App creation support – This one is more like ‘I can’tthink of anything else’. I am talking about creating an app for those sitesthat we visit seriously a lot and they are not like Facebook or Twitter whereyou can get app for Android, iPhone, Symbian, Blackberry pretty easily. I amtalking about individual preferences, like I like to visit my friend’s site wherehe puts some very nice poems. With this app feature I will be able to converthis site for my android phone with just a click (for others, it can be iPhone,iPad, Blackberry, Symbian, Windows Phone 7 etc.)

I’ll update this article (even if you don’t want metoo ^-^) with some more ideas later. So, please care to subscribe to my feed sothat you don’t miss the ‘update’.

Resident Evil: Afterlife Based on Resident Evil 5 Game

kksonakiya — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 05:51:00 +0000

Resident Evil: After Life

I had to play Resident Evil 5 (PC version) toget myself to believe that more than ‘some’ scenes of Resident Evil Afterlife(fourth installment in Resident Evil movie series) were from the game and I ampretty sure right now.

Here are those scenes and there connection withthe game:

· Thebig bad zombie monster in the movie with a badass axe-hammer was also at thevery start of the game. However, in the game we couldn’t kill no matter howmuch we fired on him, he always kept coming back. But in the movie, one shot ofa shotgun from Alice and his head exploded like a cracker.

· Also,those zombiesnow had their mouths just like thegame. The tongue or whatever, would split and try to eat, just like the gameyou know and don’t forget those dogs at the end of movie, when Alice hadfinally had the chance to meet Wesker. Their heads would also split, again,‘just like the game’.

· Thevillain of the movie, Wesker, was also the villain of the game and I don’tthink that this is just a coincidence that both were doing the same thing,‘testing the t-virus on normal people’.

· Thefight at the very end of the movie also gives huge clues to the fight in thegame where Chris and Sheva come crashing from the door and the fight beginswith Wesker’s eyes glowing and throwing his glasses towards Chris.

Resident Evil 5

· Tomy surprise everything in the fight (in movie) got so close to the game that Iforgot for one second that Alice was doing nothing else than standing. I alsobegan to think that if they had not named these two characters in the Afterlifemovie as Clair and Chrish, they would really want to name them as Sheva andChris (they could stick with ‘Chris’ though, they only had to remove the ‘h’from ‘Chrish’ in the movie).

· Thefight and escape scenes were not too good because they left me thinking manythings. One of them is how Alice’s ribs could survive after getting hit by thatbadass axe-hammer of that zombie thing.

After that, when Bennet takes offleaving everyone behind and Alice had no choice but to jump from that reallytall building, she did it without so much as an ‘ouch’. Trust me, with only‘bungee thing’ no human could survive that fall because when the movie started(a little after the fight at Umbrella with Alice’s clones), Wesker injectedAlice with the antidote or something to make her human and she acknowledged ittoo, “Thanks, for making me human”.

· Therewere other things as well that disappointed me a lot. Like this movie startedabruptly and ended without finishing anything. I still have a feeling thatWesker might be alive.

To be honest, I was desperatelywaiting for Resident Evil Afterlife. But now that I have seen it, I am nothappy at all. It was just 1 and a half hour and still couldn’t get to the end.I mean, if Wesker wasn’t controlling Umbrella Corp. then who was?

Scientist is dead, Wesker is dead, Iguess, all Alices are dead, there are more degenerate zombies than survivorsand only one Alice, and she is now an ordinary human too. What on earth isgoing to happen in Resident Evil 5: The Movie? I guess there is no point inguessing around, let’s just wait and watch!

Play YouTube Videos with Quisple Prestige 2.0 in Background as MP3 Songs

kksonakiya — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 05:42:00 +0000

Quisple Prestige 2.0 Review

Alright, here I am going to talk about a windowsutility that lets you play YouTube videos in background without the videoelement. Thus, you will only hear the sound, i.e. those video songs will serveas mp3 songs without any conversion.

So, now, the question arises, ‘Why on earth do youneed an application like this?’

First of all, when you want to hear songs that youdon’t have on your dear digital device, be it anything, you have to download itas free or purchase it online. Whatever are your preferences, you’ll still haveto open your web browser and look for your desired song.

What is the worst thing that happens when you open a webbrowser? Isn’t it obvious!! You get tangled in the web of World Wide Web. I amtalking about the natural habit of wandering in that sea of websites once youstart searching your ways through Google, Yahoo, Bing, or other big searchengines.

So, tell me, do you want to lose some precious timewhen you are creating some report. I know that concentration is necessary whiledoing work but there are people out there who claim to work more efficientlywhen their favorite tune is played in the background. And there are people whoalso claim that any new song can make them concentrate better.

I am no psychiatrist or something. But personally, Ifeel my productivity increase when I hear some sweet melodies. But can I getthem everywhere? Yeah! Pretty much. But there are areas where I can’t! And thisis where; you need to download videos from YouTube.

But what if you are not allowed to do that? Your onlychance is to search them online and play them there and enjoy them for themoment. Here comes that worst part that I mentioned above, means, forgettingthe real job and messing around the internet.

Quisple lets you enjoy your songs in the backgroundwithout the need of opening a web browser. You can then search your songs inits built-in search bar and see the results right there. Pick your song and getto your work again.

See, if you don’t open the web browser, then you won’tget to search millions of results for Linking Park: In the End and you will notbe able to waste precious time in going through those millions of sites hostingthose results.

Quisple omits the video element from your choices andlets you listen the song as if they were in mp3 only (means audio only).Because of this, you won’t feel the need to watch your song.

It is something that’s bound to happen once you play avideo song. Quisple is being improved as we speak and several features are beingadded.

You can try the basic version and update it when theylaunch it with some additional features. Give it a try and do come back to tellme about your experience.

PCHand YouTube Downloader Pro vs. Internet Download Manager (IDM) Review

kksonakiya — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 05:37:00 +0000

I’ve been using Internet Download Manager fordownloading YouTube videosfor the last 3 years.Since then, I never looked at any other software that was so dependable todownload videos from YouTube. IDM is not expensive software and by far thelightest and fastest download manager I ever came across. I have also used DAP(Download Accelerator Plus), but it didn’t satisfy me. It could not grabYouTube videos or sometimes links from Rapidshare and Megaupload. I have alsoused Orbit and it worked well for a while but I had to switch back to IDM.

Few months ago, when IDM suddenly gave up on showingthe ‘Download this video’ option for YouTube and other video hosting websitesin Mozilla Firefox 4 beta, I had to find other softwares and came across manyfree YouTube video downloading softwares, like YouTube Downloader, XilisoftDownload YouTube Video, etc. and other paid softwares like PCHand YouTubeDownloader Pro, Tube Sucker, etc. However, IDM got an update pretty soon thatfixed the problem and I began liking it once again.

So, let me tell you the benefits of having IDM overPCHand YouTube Download Pro for this review and I might talk about others latersomeday:

Price Point of View

First thing first, IDM isa value for money in comparison to PCHand YouTubeDownloader Pro. We can get IDM for $29.99 (or $24.95 if bought fromTonec Inc.) with all of its amazing capabilities, while for PCHand we have topay $19.99. Now, keep this in mind that with PCHand you only get a YouTubevideo downloader while with IDM you get a whole package. So, only $4.96 extrafor that complete package is totally worth it.

Download Size

IDM – 3.04 MB

PCHand – 2.02 MB

PCHand has definitely come up with the lightestYouTube downloader. So, I give a hand to it. Let’s move on to limitations withfree versions of both software.

Limitations of Free Version

IDM

You get a 30-day working software. For a whole monthwe can download absolutely anything and everything without having to worryabout number of downloads or size of files. It’s a really sweet deal. In30-days, one can download numerous files, be it video, audio or any other.There is no stopping or other limitations attached with the free version of IDMor let me rephrase it to ‘no strings attached’.

PCHand

You can only download 10 video files from YouTube.Whether you do it in few minutes or take days, it won’t matter.

So, what would you want? A 30-day working trialwithout any limitation on many times you download or a limitation of 10 filesonly! I am sure that you would want to stick with IDM. IDM has always beenfamous for accelerating the speed of your internet well than other softwaresout there. So, couple it with unlimited use and you’ve got a winner!

Features

IDM

IDM is truly a feature-rich software with respect toits size. You can schedule your downloads, limit the download and upload speed,manage queues, set a command when the download completes, batch downloads, etc.There is everything that you need to do with downloading files and when theyadded ‘Refresh download address’, downloading with IDM became bliss and I can’ttell you how many times this feature has saved my downloads from getting lost.

I would search for some file around the vast sea ofWeb and for some reason the server would reset the download address. So, thedownloading would stop and if I could not find the file, the bandwidth and thefile is lost. This little feature grabs the new address in seconds and updatesit and the download resumes.

It works really well when I download something fromMegaupload. Megaupload is pretty infamous for resetting the download addressafter some time so that people would buy its membership in order to gainunrestricted access. However, IDM worked over than thing too. I had to click on‘Refresh download address’ only and since many downloads were ‘resumable’,downloading continued from where it was left.

Anyway, long story short, this feature works prettywell with YouTube videos as well. Sometimes even YouTube resets the downloadaddress of many video files.

As for downloading various formats (like FLV, HQ MP4,HD MP4 and Full HD MP4) from YouTube, you only have to select the format inwhich you want to download the video. Once the video starts playing, IDM willupdate the download address with the ‘address of the format that you arecurrently playing’. So, it’s not a big thing to download other file formats(than FLV) as well.

PCHand

As you already know, PCHand YouTube Downloader Proworks only for YouTube files, you can’t do anything else other than downloadingvideos from YouTube. So, where does it stand for this one thing?

It does not pack any features, none! Seriously! It hasa simple interface with a field to put the URL of your video file, select theformat that you want to download (FLV, MP4, HQ, HD, Full HD), Save to field anda Progress bar. Yep! That’s it.

It’s really simple for a software that costs $19.99and it’s not worth it, because you won’t be able to control the download speed(in case you want to surf the web and the download is sucking up your speed),no scheduler, no after-download command and the ‘settings’ button includes onlytwo options, ‘Language’ and ‘Check for Updates’.

Personally, I believe that that’s a lot of money forpresenting such simple software with only one feature (downloading YouTubevideos) and it’s not even free! I would prefer Xilisoft Download YouTube Videoover PCHand YouTube Downloader Pro, at least it’s free!

However, it’s not as fast as IDM. Thus, we come to ourfinal heading, ‘Performance’.

Performance

IDM

I downloaded Feelthe Punch – Dilsukhnagar Arena – Award-Winning 3D Animation Short Film–13.47 MB in exactly 3 min 21 sec on a 512Kbps broadband connection fromYouTube.

PCHand

Same File – downloaded in exactly 3 min 41 sec on thesame connection.

Conclusion

I think that you already know what the conclusion forthis ‘little’ review is. IDM is a feature rich and light download manager thatactually accelerates all types of downloads, while PCHand YouTube DownloaderPro is a just a simple YouTube video downloader and nothing else.

Right now, I would not recommend purchasing PCHandYouTube Downloader Pro because it lacks many features that are seriouslyneeded. Especially ‘pause’ button, you get only ‘stop’ button and that’s justnot right.

So, I can definitely encourage you to get IDM rightaway or just download it for 30-days, I can assure you that you’ll miss itafter 30-days and will eventually purchase it.

Instapaper Review

kksonakiya — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 05:27:00 +0000

Instapaper Review

Here, I am going to review three great websitebookmarking service that are great for reading articles offline or online lateron. Bookmarking helps us to find our pages faster and taking reference becomeseasy in case we like to revisit the webpage. All our efforts and time onsearching and going through websites on search engines are saved just becauseof these nice bookmarking sites. You already know many top bookmarking siteslike Digg, Delicious, Technorati, etc. However, these sites work online and youhave to be connected to the internet if you want to use their services.

Instapaper and Readitlater are different fromthese online services. They save your WebPages for offline viewing and you cansearch for other files knowing that you’re WebPages are safely downloaded bythese sites for you. Kippt works online only. You don’t get to save your WebPagesfor offline reading, but the good thing about Kippt is that it doesn’t requireany details about the WebPages, like tags or categories or anything. We’ll talkabout how it a bit later.

So that was just a brief about what thesewebsites offer. Now let’s get to some details. Trust me, I am not going to bugyou with too much details, I am just going to point out some features and forthis article, we’ll talk about Instapaper only.

So, bear with me as I tell youthese things:

Instapaper

How do you get it working?

To work with Instapaper, you willhave to register on the site (follow the hyperlink). Registration is free andsuper easy. You have to give them your email address only. It seriously takesjust a second and you don’t have to check your email for confirmation rightaway. Instead, you can work with your WebPages right from the very moment.

They will provide you a bookmarkletthat you can stick on your bookmarking toolbar. Be sure to enable bookmarkingtoolbar on your choice of web browser because all the beta versions of new webbrowsers from Mozilla, Microsoft and Opera disable their bookmarking toolbarfor a faster boot time.

If yoursystem is already fast enough, then you don’t need to worry about enabling yourbookmarking toolbar (it won’t slow down your browser’s startup time).

Now that you have the bookmark, you can browsethe web like you normally do and when you come across that you would like toread but don’t have enough time. Simply click on Read Later (the bookmark goesby this name) and the webpage will be added to your Read Later list.

Now whenever you want to read your WebPages,just open your Instapaper account (you don’t need a password, at login inscreen, just type your email address and press Enter, you can set your passwordlater). Once there you can read your WebPages however you like. You maydownload it for offline reading (for printing on pager, Kindle compatibleformat, ePub format and iDevices (from Apple) ready, you can view your WebPageslike Text (without CSS script) with images and you can also send WebPages fromGoogle Reader with this Read Later bookmarklet to Instapaper’s server.

Compatibility

Since Instapaper offers abookmarklet, it is compatible with every browser (even beta versions) as longas you are fine with enabling bookmarking toolbar. However, you might want toknow that currently this bookmarklet works with iPhone devices too. So youmight want to head to Instapaper, click on Extras and scroll down to Instapaperfor iPhone and iPad. You can also send lengthy newsletters and emails to thismail address and add it to your Instapaper account: readlater.riss63wfkf@instapaper.com.

Conclusion

This service isvery nice and quick and it provides various options for reading our articlesoffline and on various devices too. Like kindle, iDevices, paper and ePubformat supporting eReaders like Sony Reader Daily. So, give it a try and see ifit’s up to your expectations.