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If you are considering buying a laptop, it's wise to choose properly, since, for most people, it is a significant investment. More importantly, your laptop is, in most cases, a vital tool for work. That simply means you could depend on it to quite an extent. If you are highly mobile, it possibly becomes the life-wire of your off-station computing which you can't really toy with. Against this backdrop, the choice of a laptop could be a key purchase decision which you want to get right. With the array of options out there, how do you choose what is best for your requirement and lifestyle? Use brand name? Or price? Size? Something else?

Tough call perhaps, but we have a brass tacks guide to show you what really counts when you buy a laptop.

In the course of the normal use of your PC or laptop, security precautions are not just important, they are critical. Primarily, care is required to secure valuable personal or confidential information you store on your system and also to protect the computer itself from viruses or other abuse. When your system gets linked to the internet, the stakes get higher and the security challenge is considerably accentuated. For many reasons, you must bother about online security. Why is this so, what are the critical security issues and what specific measures can you take to get sufficiently comfortable about your security online or offline? Well, to a large extent, you can achive the protection you need, if you put the right measures in place.

Email is at the heart of the internet. Emails tremendously ease communication, equally crashing the cost of the direct mail. For business, there is so much you can gain from the use of this tool which virtually knows no geographical boundaries and possesses awesome powers of instantaneity, multiplicity and cheapness. In private use, you also enjoy tremendous flexibility and convenience. That must be why growing numbers are getting to use one form of email service or another.

A simple process of creating folders for mails can bring a lot of value and save you much inconvenience. If you use Yahoo! Mail, let's work you through an easy folder-creating process that can richly enhance your email-handling process and get you more organised on this front.

The recent weeks have witnessed huge internet business acquisitions, with over $11.84 billion (see table) - that's over N1.48 trillion - changing hands in what clearly marks an unequivocal vote of confidence in the growing power of the internet as a business tool. The mega purchases saw big players like Microsoft, Google and Publicis staking huge sums to strengthen their grip of the online economy or repositioning to catch a chunk of unfolding market niches. When Google bought less than two years old online-video-sharing business Youtube, for $1.65 billion late 2006, it sounded outrageous. Now, the $6 billion that Microsoft has dolled out to acquire Madison Avenue's digital marketing company aQuantive should send your head into a spin. Or possibly get you thinking: if online business means this much, why isn't Africa waking up?

A. RFID stands for Radio Frequency Identification. It refers to a group of identification systems that use radio waves to provide automatic identification either of humans, animals or objects. Identification is via remote retrieval and decoding of information. Micro-chip based RFID technology uses a chip which is attached to an antenna (for effectiveness). That unit becomes an RFID transponder (called RFID tag), with the antenna providing transmission capability. The radio waves from the data device can be read by a remote reader which converts them to digital information. RFID is part of the automatic identification (auto ID) family which also includes bar codes, ID smart cards, some new tech biometrics like retinal or finger-print scans, etc.

Commercial Application: There is growing application of RFID for business and for widespread objectives. ePassports, using RFID, are now issued in various countries. RFID is also actively used in developed transportation systems for payment, as passes, etc. Product tracking is the turf of RFID: tracking of trucks and trailers, baggage movement for airlines, book-stock of a library, animal movements (say cattle), tracking of inventories of products, automotive tracking, etc. Access control for buildings too. RFID can be applied virtually for every use where remote tracking or retrieval of information is required. All that is required is to imbed or install the RFID tag and capture information on the item from the remote location using a reader.

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FEATURED TECH PRODUCT

High Definition TVs: Beyond the Wide Screen (What You Probably Don't Know).

If you already own a high definition TV - HDTV - there's a high chance you bought it for the big screen and, perhaps, the cowing effect on your neighbours and friends. It's possible that the technical value of HDTV played no part, especially if you didn't know much about it. If that's the case, you're already in, but it's still good to know. For those who are still budgeting and planning, may be this is coming at the right time: there are a few things you need to know about HDTV technology, before you log in your money. In this first leg of the series, let's get some basics about HDTVs.

Read it all here... »

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BYTES AND CHIPS
- Tit Bits On Technology

Digitalise it! Is Digital Info Delivery the Way of the Future?

It may not have caught up with us, but you are possibly aware that the world is quickly going digital in many respects. Think of reading this newsletter without having to shuffle pages and pages of documents. It's all click, click and you access what you want. And if you want to save it, it's done in one moment. Even if you don't save to your system drive, it stays in your Yahoo! box (or whichever mail-client you use). Want to keep only part, still no hassle because you don't need to photocopy it. Simply highlight, copy, paste and save. And arranging is so easy because you only need to create folders as you find necessary. With a good arrangement, retrieval is a click away, even in five years' time. Now, think of the newspapers you bought five years ago. What can you still find? Even if you're careful and preserved them, how do you track and retrieve a subject you're interested in today?

The huge advantages of digital media have given it such competive edge that it's gaining power and expanding it's sphere of influence so rapidly. A lot of information today is delivered digitally. No wonder USA online ad spending grew 38% to $17 billion in 2006. No wonder too a commentator recently predicted the demise of the print media in the USA. Not likely to happen too soon, I think, and still far from our shores, obviously. But given the flexibility and ease of online info delivery, who knows, it may one day catch up with us too.

That Laudable Campaign for ICE (In case of Emergency) Numbers

One of our readers forwarded a mail on a campaign to promote the use of emergency phone numbers by the populace. The idea is to help reach a designated person(s), most-likely the next of kin, should an indivudual be caught up in an accident or any emergency situation. It's said to have been initiated by some emergency agency worker who had experienced cases of accidents where victims, who possibly needed urgent intervention by relatives and who had mobile phones on them, could not easily get such help because nobody knew the right number to call from the contact list. Split moments that could save life - for instance, blood donation by kith and kin - would be lost. The proposed solution: store a number on your phone with the 'name' ICE (that's 'in case of emergency'), indicating who should be reached if you need help and can't make a call yourself, and obviously, not in a postion to give verbal directives.

We think it's a positive idea and have decided to back it. So, as you read this, get your ICE number stored right away in your phone. Perhaps, prefixing an existing name with 'ICE-' should equally do. You may be saving your own life!

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