Category Archives: Computers

Mozilla Shares its Vision for Firefox 4

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Firefox is one of the most heartening of success stories of open source, up there with MySQL and Apache. It has managed to break Internet Explorer’s synonymy of Internet with Internet Explorer. So when Mozilla shares details of any new version, it is bound to be something exciting.

Of late, Firefox has fallen behind in speed with Google Chrome 6, Safari 4 and Opera 10.6 taking the lead. Being far ahead of IE8 is no consolation, and with IE9 posting slightly better scores in JavaScripts tests than Firefox 3.6, Mozilla has reason to worry. The good thing is that Mozilla is already working its way to the top.

firefox 4

Firefox 4

While one may argue that increasing the speed of the browser beyond a point doesn’t help, it is clearly what the future lies. Mozilla knows this and is already working on a new JavaScript Engine, JagerMonkey which takes the best features of Firefox’s TraceMonkey and WebKit’s Nitro Engine to create an uberfast JavaScript Engine.

Firefox 4 will also place an emphasis on reducing the chrome of the browser (The UI Elements) slimming down the browser to a more Google Chrome like look. Firefox 4 will have a completely new visual look, one which makes ample use of Windows Vista and 7′s Aero effects.

Firefox 4 will also have some amazing new features such as Application Tabs (which will work like Chrome pinned tabs), a new addon manager, integrated developer tools and better HTML5 support.

Those waiting for Firefox 3.7, there are both good news and bad. While Firefox 3.7 will be dropped in favor of Firefox 4 (Currently in Beta 1 stage), out-of-process plugins, one of the most awaited features of Firefox 3.7 will come with 3.6.8 due shortly. Out of Process plugins stabilize the browser, ensuring that it doesn’t crash even if a plugin crashes.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Microsoft Outlook Plays Friendly With Social Networks

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In partnership with MySpace and facebook, Microsoft has announced to get “more social” by including social networking information in their flagship business software – Microsoft Outlook 2010. Business Networking site LinkedIn is also offering a beta tool that will integrate the activity of a user into Micosoft Outlook 2010.

In November last year, Microsoft has announced the Outlook Social Connector for Outlook, a new Office 2010 feature that integrates the social networking feeds into Microsoft’s Outlook 2010 inbox.

Microsoft Outlook 2010 Social Connector

Microsoft Outlook 2010 Social Connector

Microsoft has recently released the social connector update that included the first third party feature from LinkedIn. This update will allow users to view status updates, photos and so on of their peers and collegues. Microsoft says that the same will be possible for Facebook and MySpace users. You’ll be able to directly update your status from Outlook 2010 and will also be able to perform other activities associated with social networking.

Although the Social Connector feature has been developed for Microsoft Outlook 2010, it will also work with Microsoft Outlook 2003 and Microsoft Outlook 2007. Expect this integration to be part of the package when Micosoft releases the Microsoft Office 2010 suite.

Popularity: 1% [?]

WD My Book Studio Edition II 4TB

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In April this year, we tested a large number of hard drives. In the category of external desktop drives, the 2 TB WD My Book Studio Edition II 4TB was pretty good. We now have with us the WD My Book Studio Edition II 4TB Hard Drive.

This is a huge drive mind you – it weighs around 2.63 kg, so it’s not ideal to carry very often. Four connectivity options are available – Firewire 800, Firewire 400, USB & eSATA.

WD My Book Studio Edition II 4TB

WD My Book Studio Edition II 4TB

The specialty of this drive is that it supports RAID-O & RAID-1. RAID-O makes the entire 4TB usable. We haven’t seen too many drives that require drives, but this one does for the RAID function. When you first connect it, you need to install the driver & then set the RAID configuration.

There was nothing spectacular with the test results. The read burst speed was higher with the RAID- I configuration with both connection interfaces – USB & firewire. With our file transfer tests, We found that average read and write speeds to be similar with both RAID configurations. the 1 GB Photoshop scratch test showed a big difference in file transfer. With RAID-O, the speed was twice as good as raid-1, as you would expect. With Firewire, the performance was around 10% better than with USB.

The 4TB WD My Book Studio Edition II only works with Windows vista due to capacity restrictions of previous Windows operating systems. Using RAID-O is recommended, but if your data is very important, RAID-1 is the way to go. At $649.99, it surely is a costly thing to buy, therefor, we’d suggest our readers to wait until the price drops.

Popularity: 6% [?]