Types of Computer Hardware

Computer hardware is a physical part of a computer that executes within the hardware. It is unlike computer software or data that can be frequently changed, modified or erased on a computer. Computer hardware is not frequently changed and so is stored in hardware devices such as read only memory (ROM) where it is not readily changed.

Most computer hardware is embedded and so is not visible to normal users. Below are the different types of hardware's found in a computer.

Ø Motherboard: It is the central or primary circuit board making up a complex electronic system such as a computer. A motherboard is also known as a main board, logic board or system board.

Ø Central processing Unit: A CPU is the main component of a digital computer that interprets instructions and process data in computer programs.

Ø Random Access Memory: A RAM allows the stored data to be accessed in any order. RAM is considered as the main memory of the computer where the working area is used for displaying and manipulating data.

Ø Basic Input Output System: BIOS prepares the software programs to load, execute and control the computer.

Ø Power Supply: Power Supply supplies electrical energy to an output load or group of loads.

Ø Video Display Controller: It converts the logical representation of visual information into a signal that can be used as input for a display medium.

Ø Computer Bus: It is used to transfer data or power between computer components inside a computer or between computers.

Ø CD-ROM drive: It contains data accessible by a computer

Ø Floppy disk: It is a data storage device

Ø Zip Drive: It is a medium capacity removable disk storage system.

Ø Hard Disk: It is a non-volatile data storage system that stores data on a magnetic surface layered unto hard disk platter

10 Top Tips for Business Computer Safety

Well we have put together these helpful tips to help small business owners.

1. Firewall, you have probably heard about a firewall, most broadband routers have a small firewall built in. Make sure its enabled. Be sure to block traffic on port 3389. This is a common port used for hackers.
2. Windows Firewall, found in control panel on your computer, make sure this is enabled
3. Anti Virus, ensure you have a full edition of anti virus on your computers, you will need to pay for protection but its worth it. I would recommend Symantec for a small business
4. Anti Spam, ensure you have a good spam filter, you don\'t need to install software, this can be managed before the mail reaches your server or PC
5. Sending Email, if sending to more than 3 or 4 people, ensure you use BCC instead of TO, you have a responsibility to keep peoples email addresses secure. If unsure ask someone.
6. Passwords, always ensure you have a password on your computers, change this regularly and don\'t tell people what it is, use a mixture of uppercase and lowercase, include numbers and symbols. A good length is 8 characters.
7. Acceptable Use Policy, make sure your computer users all sign an acceptable use policy, this offers you added protection by employees agreeing to use equipment appropriately and for work use only.
8. Wireless Networking, if you have wireless networking in your office, make sure its secure, avoid WEP, as a minimum ensure you are using WPA-PSK encryption. Also, ensure the security key is kept secret, that way you avoid members of staff adding their mobiles to your network and using your internet connection.
9. Remote Access, if you want to access your system remotely ensure you use methods of encryption on the connection, a VPN creates a secure connection between you and your business network, use this method to transfer data when you can. Alternatively use remote desktop to a PC in your business network rather than directly to your business server.
10. Management & Support, if your not an IT expert then you should employ the services of someone who is. This can be on a formal Pay As You Go basis, so they have a basic understanding of your setup and needs, and you only pay for help and support when you need. If you have a server then you should certainly have a formal support contract in place. A good IT company will provide monitoring, management and support for a small monthly fee. Price would depend on your individual requirements. Organisations with formal agreements in place are better protected as systems are monitored and patch proactively. 

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/programming-articles/10-top-tips-for-business-computer-safety-5501799.html

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How to Choose Between an Inkjet

Printer and Laser Printers

By: Article Expert

The inkjet printer and laser printers are the two basic types of printers on the market today.

Both come in black and white and color versions. The quality of the output is very clear. They

can both product very nice black and white as well as color pages. However, there are some

differences that make an inkjet printer a better choice over the laser printers and vice versa. It

all depends on your needs.

Laser Printers

When looking for a printer you must take determine for what purpose you will be using it and

how often its used and how many pages you need to output. If you are going to print pictures

as well as a lot of pages, you may want to invest in both a laser printer and an inkjet printer. If

you want one device that has the best of both worlds buy an All-in-One type of printer. The

inkjet printer should be used for color photos and graphics while the laser printer used for

projects where a lot of document need to be printed.

The laser printers are the most popular and are designed to print a lot of documents quickly

and cost effectively. Laser printers are the printers you find in large office buildings,

government offices and other businesses where a lot of black and white documents need to be

printed. They are not meant to be used for printing high quality photographs even though they

are capable of printing images.

The ink used in laser printers is actually not liquid ink but a type of powder called ink toner that

reacts when hit with the heat a laser on a coated drum. The ink cartridge drum places the

charged ink powder onto the page through heat and pressure actually bonding the ink to the

paper. Most people think the ink is liquid and is being printing on top of the page like a pen

would write on pager. The text or image that appears has bonded and actually become part of

the paper.

InkJet Printer

If you are interested in printing photographs and images then the Inkjet printer is the better

choice. These printers use more ink and the result is that the image shines on the paper better

than when printing from laser printers. The inkjet printer goes through ink much faster due to

their high ink usage. They produce a very vibrant image for this fact. Because of these factors,

an inkjet printer makes is ideal for photograph printing but not as effective for printing text

documents that most businesses need in an office or government setting.

One surprising note about the inkjet printer is the fact that it was actually first created in the

late to middle 1800's. It was originally used for medical printing purposes. The technology

behind the inkjet printer is what most people would expect from a printer. It creates a

reproduction of a digital image as the printer deposits tiny drops of ink in a specific pattern

onto the paper. Similar to laser printers, the ink passes through an electrically charged device.

However in an inkjet printer, there is no drum. Instead it is called a plate and it is that

technology that causes the ink it to appear on the page in a seamless way.

The inkjet printer definitely uses more ink than other types of printers and therefore may cost

more to own and maintain in the long run. But for people who are avid photographers, an

inkjet printer is a must for their hobby.

(ArticlesBase SC #3108856)

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ - How to Choose Between an Inkjet Printer and Laser Printers

5 Ways to Protect Your Gmail Account

From Getting Hacked*****

Email Services are getting more and more essential day by day. And, more than that an Email

account could contain much precious information which one defiantly will not like to get read it

by a hacker. I am summerising the ways I know to protect your Email, especially "Gmail"

Account.

1. Always Check The URL before Logging in to Gmail

This is very important to check the URL(Universal Resource Locator) of the page you are

getting logged in. This is because, lot of peoples are trying to create an exact copy of Gmail`s

page and they upload it somewhere, and when you log through that page, They come to know

your passowrd.

Always login by typing www.gmail.com or the one you have an acc. with. DO NOT LOGIN

THOROUGH ANY LINK.(EXTERNAL)

2. Avoid checking Emails at Public Places

I cant write much about this, not because I dont know, but It will like introducing and

publishing those techniques. just keep in mind that, Dont login at the places where you have no

trust and control over that couputer.

3. Regularly Monitor Gmail Account Activity

Gmail has a very useful and neat feature to view user account activity. Through this, gmail

records the last login time and ip. If its diffrent than you suppose, you are strongly advised to

change your password.

Activity link can be found at bottom of usage in gmail. Many other email providers also have

this facility.

4. Do not Click on Suspicious Links

keep in your mind very well that,

"Gmail will never ask you to change your password or enter login credentials without any

reason. Hence, if you receive any email which claims to be from Google and wants you to

change your password, be rest assured someone is trying to fool you and hack your email

account."

Just dont click on any suspicious link you might have in your inbox.

5. Choose a Strong Alphanumeric password

Always remember the following tips regarding choosing passwords:

i)Choose both numbers and alphabets in your password. It would be even better if you include

symbols and special characters.

ii)Never use your phone number, parents name or credit card number as your email account

password.

iii)Choose a long password – probably more than 10 characters.

iv)Never write your password on paper or save it as a text document in your computer.

How to make a Websites

In todays day and age,where computer users are increasing by large numbers monthly,the website has developed as a means of self expression or as a launch point for business pursuits.
There are countless ways of learning how to make a website using such tools as the
WYSIWYG(What You See Is What You Get)HTML Editor.This is basically a point and click to create program.If you want a website fast,try it.
Good places for these are myspace.com or your internet service provider.They can provide you with a free website where you can really be creative with there (what you see is what you get editor)

HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language and was the standard language when the graphical user interface(GUI)was implemented
into the windows operating system.
There are other languages that can be used to make a website,such as Flash,xml,dhtml and a few others.In my opinion,the most flexible language and most easy to learn is html.
A great online source to learn html is html goodies(http://www.htmlgoodies.com).The online tutorials found here are second to none and range from basic to advanced.This is where I learned basic html and I recommend it to anyone who wants to learn the language.

Lets talk about the basic layout of your first page of your website.
Is this a personal website? Will it be a website showcasing products that you intend to sell?
If this is a personal website,You can start by having all your links on the left side of the page,your text content can be in the middle with images if you like.On the right side of the page can be more links and images.You will need to divide the page into 3 sections to accomplish this.It can be done with table commands or with the divison command.Please go to the html goodies(http://www.htmlgoodies.com)site for futher explanations of these and future terms in this article for the best clarification possible.

Now,lets say you want to make a website for your small business that your starting.For example,your going to be selling computer games.
You will want people to know about your website and this entails submitting your website to the major search engines and directories,such as google,yahoo.msn,altavista and others.
Here is a great list of directories,both paid and free.
(http://www.seocompany.ca/directory/web-directories.html)

It is most advantageous for new online business's to register a domain name.This is important for two reasons. First,with a .com domain,your business will look professional.Secondly,from a search engine prospective,a domain name with a .com suffix is more prudent.
You need to pick a domain name that is the most relevant to your business.For example,your selling computer games and accessories.
How about http://www.best-computer-games.com ? You can do a search for available domain names at http://www.namesearch.com
Relevancy is a big factor in how the search engines will rank your site,so keep this in mind when choosing a domain name.

You want your small business website to be informative,to the point,and to keep your viewers interested at all times they are on your website..Nothing turns off a website visitor more than the link to a page they click on(yours)to be slow loading into there web browser.

There are ways to speed up the loading process of a webpage into the web browser.If you have alot of images on your website,you should always denote the height and width of the image in the link.
An Example: after the second quotation mark in the word alt.The opening tag is < This goes right by the letter i in the word image. If I do that in this article,I will receive an error becuase there is no such file,its just an example to show you.
Doing this will make your web pages load very quickly into the site visitors web browser.Have a question about the alt""? Ok,I will explain this to you.Lets say your image is of a computer game.
If you would type inside of the quotes of the alt command:
alt="This is the best computer game" Now,when the page loads and someone puts there mouse over the image,what you typed in the alt command will be displayed as text.You can type whatever you want in the alt command,but if your looking for search engine relevancy,I would type in one of your keywords thats relative to the product that displays as the image.
As mentioned before,for further clarification of images,go to the html goodies site(http://www.htmlgoodies.com)for there image tutorial.

To keep the viewer staying on your website,you need to make sure all your links are operational and not dead links.Meaning,there is a page not found error(404) that displays when someone would click on one of your links from your main page.

Meta tags and Keywords are important so your site can receive the highest possible ranking and relevancy. To learn more about meta tags and keywords,go to html goodies(http://www.htmlgoodies.com)This is another topic all together that I wont go into in detail in this article.

I would just like to say that The WYSIWYG(What you see is what you get)html editors are good for the quick fix website,I dont get the gratification of building a website using that method. I code all my webpages by hand in windows notepad. This will take longer but I do receive more satisfaction designing my webpages this way.

There is a site that I recommend you visit. There are $0.99 video tutorials about website design tips and tricks.There are over 8 hours in video tutorials in all,plus other great memberships and programs.

Thank you all for reading and if you have any questions or seek advice,do not hesitate to comment on this article and I will respond to you providing you leave your email address.