Computer Storage Speed Evolving

We will see the creation of one of the first forms of exclusively computer storage. Herman Hollerith was interested in assisting the United States Government develop a more efficient way to process their census data, something which previously took several years to do. Hollerith developed a punch card system which could be read by a computer to process the data held on a single card.

The mechanism worked by pressing the punch card between two brass rods; as the punch card was fed into the machine, an electric current would be passed between the exposed holes in the paper, translating into a computational value. While punch cards are a world apart from modern storage, they qualify as the precursor all the same, especially considering that punch cards were the chosen form of computer storage for nearly a century.

David Paul Gregg's Optical Disc
The first optical disc was patented in 1958 by David Paul Gregg. The optical disc is one of the most enduring forms of data storage. The first optical disc couldn't hold more than a few megabytes of data. Optical media is available in several formats, including CD, DVD, and Blu-Ray. Optical media is unique in the mechanism of its data writing and reading abilities.

Optical media is placed onto a disc using either a high-powered laser or stamping machine which embeds data in the form of pits and lands on a very thin layer of reflective metallic material. This data is then read using a laser diode, which beams light onto the pits and lands, reading a binary code depending on the reflection of the light.

IBM's Hard Drive
The first functioning hard drive was the size of a large refrigerator and couldn't store more than four megabytes of data. Nowadays, you can store several terabytes of data on a drive no larger than a toaster. Hard drives work by writing data to a magnetically receptive disk, allowing for easy writing, retrieval, and overwriting. Magnetic hard drives have been adopted as the most common form of computer data storage.

Innovations
Optical and magnetic media have maintained popularity in recent decades, each seeing innovations and reinventions which allow for further use. A Plasmon Jukebox allows for automatic disc transfer, speeding up the process of data writes and reads for optical optimized data archive applications. A solid state hard drive removes the volatility of a traditional hard drive's moving components.

Tips for Choose The Best Laptops

Computers are a part of our lives that makes things easier, faster and more accessible. The cherry on top is that we can now take them anywhere with us - you guessed it, we're talking about laptops here. Laptops come in a wide variety of flavours, therefore finding the right one might be trickier than you imagine: you have to choose between notebooks, netbooks and ultrabooks; you have to pick the right screen size; you have to decide what brand to buy.

There are many variables, so, how do you make the right choice?
There are three main aspects to consider when searching for a laptop: performance, mobility and battery life. As a general rule, you will only get two out of three, so if you want a laptop that delivers solid performance and a decent battery life, you will end up with a machine that's not the most portable device out there; if you want maximum portability and performance, you will have to sacrifice battery life - it's a vicious circle, so you'll have to decide which factors are the most suited to your needs. Let's take a close look at the three main categories and see what's on offer.

Netbooks
These tiny machines are the most portable of them all, coming in sizes ranging from 7 inches to 11 inches. Due to their small screens they are obviously not the best pick if you need to work or watch a movie, but they are great tools for checking e-mails and performing light tasks while on the move. Their main advantage is their impressive battery life which can stretch up to 10 hours.

Notebooks
Notebooks are the "normal" laptops, the mobile equivalents of regular PCs. Their size ranges from 15 inches all the way up to 20 inches, the bigger ones being mostly used as desktop PC replacements. The advantage of notebooks over netbooks is that they offer increased performance, thus being suitable for a broader range of activities.

Another noticeable advantage over the other two categories is that notebooks offer some upgrade options, allowing you to expand the amount of RAM or replace the hard drive. Notebooks are the preferred choice for the typical casual user who wants a bit of everything.

Ultrabooks
Ultrabooks are a relatively new species that combines the best of notebooks and netbooks. Coming in sizes of 11 inches to 15 inches, ultrabooks are usually thinner than notebooks, while offering comparable performance.

Just like netbooks, ultrabooks usually come without an optical drive and have less connectivity options than notebooks. Ultrabooks impress with their mobility, being very thin and incorporating a similar battery life to netbooks; they also win in the aesthetics category due to their unibody design. On the downside, a unibody design offers limited to no upgrade possibilities.