Toner Cartridges

Toner cartridges are implements that ensure that your copier produces high quality work with a look of professionalism. While there are many copiers that you can use, supplementing them with toner cartridges just gives you an additional touch of glamor.

The cartridges are generally in filled in black paint which are just but perfect for those documents you want to appear in black and white only. But for this to happen, the cartridges have to be compatible with your copier. The best way in which to ensure compatibility of the two is to check the model numbers and the brand names as well. Be very careful with the selection because there are many fake products in the market nowadays and you may just end up with scrap for a toner cartridge. One way you could do this is to ask the experts or manufactures to help you identify a mark of originality that would possibly not be their on the counterfeit goods.

Once you are quite satisfied with the information at hand, go to a reputable toner cartridge store to place your order. as you do so, you will find that there is a wide range to select from. Select only the cartridges that you are sure you need and those that will suit you comfortably. Get the right model number and brand name as the one of your copier. Make a pre-run copy test before making any financial commitment as this is the only way to ensure that your cartridge is in good shape and is functioning normally.


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How Adding RAM Speeds Up Your Computer

When your computer runs slowly, technicians often advise you to add more RAM memory to speed it up. Not only does this normally work, but sometimes the increase in speed is quite dramatic, especially when loading large programs or graphics. So how does this all work?

Well, RAM, or Random Access memory, is a small plug in card of Integrated circuits, which people commonly call "chips." What this means is that this memory is solid state ie. No moving parts, and is thus extremely fast, able to do hundreds of millions of operations every second. Programs, pictures, documents, videos and so on are all stored in this fast memory while you have these various things open and are working on them.

Now if your RAM gets full, and can't fit all this stuff in, the computer starts using what it calls Virtual memory, which is actually just space on your hard drive that is set aside for this emergency. You can see it on your hard drive as a file called pagefile.sys - and it's usually huge, because it has to be at least the size of your RAM.

What the computer system does is, it swops stuff in your RAM that you're not actually using right at that moment, putting it onto your hard drive, and then swops what you want to use right then, from your Hard drive to your RAM.

But your hard drive is very slow in accessing data compared to your RAM. And this swopping can get very hectic if your RAM memory size is small. Sometimes when you are in a word processor and you click page down, the computer has to swop the one page of your document out of RAM to hard drive, then pull the next page off the hard drive into RAM. This takes time and gives the impression that your computer is slow. Every time the computer swops a "page" of memory between the RAM and the hard drive, it registers what is called a "page fault." You can view these numbers in your task manager program, under the tab "Performance."

If you think of your computer as a restaurant, and yourself as the customer, then the RAM would be your plate of food, and the hard drive would be the kitchen. If your plate was full but you wanted to add a roast chicken, then you send all your potatoes back to the kitchen, and the waiter brings the chicken back to you. Getting a bigger plate is like getting more RAM. (Either that, or you have to eat less!)

With programs and graphics getting bigger and bigger all the time as new and exciting features are continually added, quite a large RAM memory is necessary even in the most basic computer. 256 MegaBytes is about the absolute minimum you can get away with, 512MB is usable, but I would recommend putting at least 1 Gigabyte (1000MB) of RAM in yoyr PC for comfortable computing. Put in more if you do a lot of graphics, gaming or you're a NASA space shuttle programmer.

And finally, if you can't afford any more RAM, then you can reduce RAM swopping aka Page faults, by closing any programs that you don't need. Try and close any process that uses memory if you don't actually need it. This will give your computer more RAM space to actually do it's job in.

And start saving for RAM!


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About Sound Cards

A sound card also known as "audio card" or "audio adapter" is a peripheral device of a computer which handles the functions related to sound. The sound card is attached either to an ISA (Industry Standard Architecture) or PCA (Peripheral Component Interconnect) slot on the motherboard of the computer. The sound card receives input sound from an input device (e.g. Microphone), records the sound and performs some manipulations and delivers the resulting sound as output. It basically functions as digital-to-analog converter which converts the input digital signal to an analog format. The output devices include amplifiers, headphones or some external devices using standard interconnects (e.g. TRS connector, RCA connector). The sound cards are commonly used in multimedia applications like music composition, editing video or audio, presentation/education, and entertainment (games).

The major functions of sound cards are:

a] Synthesis (sound generation from digital signals)

b] MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface: a standard protocol which allows electronic devices communicate, control and synchronize each other. Simply we can say that MIDI allows exchange of system data)

c] Analog-to-Digital converter (e.g. converts the input analog sound signals from microphone to digital mode)

d] Digital-to-Analog converter (e.g. reconverts the digital signals to output analog signals)

The sound synthesis includes three methods. They are FM (Frequency Modulation) synthesis, Wavetable synthesis and Physical Modeling.

Before the invention of sound cards it was widely believed that computers are not designed to produce sound or music. The computers then, had an internal PC Speaker which could deliver only a beep sound, which was produced occasionally as alarm or warning. Eventually, computer programmers thought of giving beep as accompaniment for the games. Even then they could produce only beep sound for the game. Initially the sound cards was designed and marketed for IBM PC , based on specific audio applications such as music composition (AdLib Personal Music System, Creative Music System, IBM Music Feature Card) or on speech synthesis (Digispeech DS201, Covox Speech Thing, Street Electronics Echo).By 1988 game companies such as Sierra started switching towards adding sound effects in games.

In the beginning, sound cards for IBM PC were manufactured by AdLib. The card was based on Yamaha YM3812 sound chip, aka the OPL2.At the same time; Creative Labs also marketed a sound card called the Creative Music System. The Creative Labs introduced the Sound Blaster card which created a major twist in the IBM PC compatible sound card market. The Sound Blaster had an additional processor for recording and play back of digital audio in addition to the AdLib model.

As of now, in the commercial market, sound cards are available in a price range of $10 to costly models of $1000.

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