New Hybrid Hatch from Toyota


What Santa Claus is bringing this year is a new Hybrid Hatch from Toyota after the grand success of the Prius, its called "Aqua". Its the most smartest looking hatch, which we all will agree, but its just not only that. Its also the most fuel efficient hatch and when measured gives upto 35 KMPL which is the highest mileage offered by any car till date. Toyota has the technology and the brains to come up with such a Hybrid engine and you may take a blind bet that this is the future of Cars.

You must be interested in knowing the price. If my guess is right, this car will be priced at just 11.5 Lacs INR and Toyota Motor Corporation plans to produce 12,000 units a year initially. This means that this car will have its bookings with a minimum waiting period of 8 months as its the case with the Maruti Swift. However, soon all hatchback manufacturers will be forced to turn their petrol engines into Hybrid with the force in competition and thanks to the new entrants like the Toyota Aqua.

The Aqua comes with a 1.5 Ltr Atkinson Cycle 4 cylinder engine and has an Electric motor that enhances the mileage as per the ride terrain. Its a long hatch, measures 3.9 meters in length, posh interiors, and elegant design. The overall build quality is of the highest standards and the ride quality is very luxurious and comfortable. Aqua along with the Hybrid technology, it also comes with a Exhaust-Gas Recirculation (EGR) system to keep the engine cool and work for optimum enhanced efficiency and a battery powered pump. Look forward for this grand opening and launch of this car officially in India this year and some more reviews. Please leave your comments

How to secure your PC in 5 Easy Steps

Stay protected from being a victim of Identity theft. Be sure phishing and Vishing which steal your web identity and personal data without your knowledge. Here are some tips which can help you protect the information on your PC in one Go.

Use Secure URL
Secure your ways of visiting Banking websites, make sure you are using the right URL. Many popular sites allow HTTPS connections. Most of the phishing, Trojans, Vishing applications enter your system through emails. In Gmail, on the top-right hand corner there is a gear that says “Always use https://” ensures that you select the option. If you are a regular user of Facebook, on the top right corner under your name choose Account Settings, then click on Security on the left hand pane, then select Edit, go to the Secure Browsing section and tick the box that says “Browse Facebook on a secure connection (https) when possible” and click Save Changes to activate the feature.

Firefox has an extension called HTTPS Everywhere, for Firefox what it does is, it encrypts all the communications with popular websites who support encryption over HTTPS offering better security and protection

Encrypt important and sensitive files stored in your PC Hard drive
It could be your financial information, PINs, Passwords, or even personal photographs, they need to be encrypted to disarm any virus or Trojans, spam emails to hack into it. MAC OS and Windows both offer many encryption methods. Windows 7 has the Knowledge Base MAC OS  offers the Help and Hot to guides. 
But this is just primary encryption. There are other free utilities for encryption like TrueCrypt and McAfee encryption tools.

Use a 128 Bit or a 64 BIT WEP Key protection for your Wi-Fi Connection.

If you are using a Wi-Fi connection frequently, then set up a 128 Bit encryption and if possible use a VPN service like the Security KISS VPN service. Its free and its reliable. There are many other free VPN service providers and also the ones like Juniper and Cisco who offer the same with an E-token and an dedicated Switch which is ideal for small offices.

Avoid Data Snooping and Keystroke records with a Firewall and an Antivirus Software
Its all a fun game to many hackers and computer criminals. When you are using a regular browser, with hardly any encryption and security and doing your banking or checking your email, its  the most vulnerable state your PC is in and is open to a threat to record your activity and use it for fraudulent purposes.
Use a full version Antivirus application and frequently run the scan. From your Firewall check the threat report and keep all the software up-to-date.  Read about Windows 7 Microsoft Hot to protect site. They also offer Free  program called Security Essentials  that helps you to ensure real-time Malware and Spam Protection

Disable Images in e-mail
 You will get an email like this in your inbox “Your friend “so and so” has sent you a message. Click here what he has to say about” and when you click on that link or the image you are into a serious threat. The moment you click on it, your IP location is tracked and a small program gets executed in your system which you may not even notice. You are then drawn to register, while you do, your email contacts are all copied, all the data it could be uploaded are communicated to the hacker server/database. One such program is Zendio. This is called data/email snooping. 
Tweak your email settings, opt to view HTML Email from trusted senders and read plain text from others. Such settings are available with Gmail, Rediff, yahoo, Hotmail and almost all email providers including applications like HP Open View and Outlook.
In Gmail click the settings icon in the top-right hand corner chose Mail settings and select “Ask before displaying external content”

Careful on the e-mail Attachments that you download

Phishing is what takes place when you download without trusting the source of the email. Most of the email providers scan for virus, but they fail to scan for a threat. So first save the file in a folder which is not in C Drive (where your windows is installed) and then run a scan first. Apply this process usually for Documents and mandatorily for files that end with .exe extension.
Note that when you are logged in as an Administrator the threat is more open as you have the privilages to alter a system function or a process. It would be ideal if you kept yourself a non administrator login account for windows. 

How to choose a Laptop to Buy?

Buying a new Laptop can sometimes be a very confusing task. Given the fact that in today’s market there are so many brands and each of them offering so many features and configurations, getting the right laptop could be evenly daunting for all. Here are some tips that can help you drill down to a decision and aid you in choosing the best laptop that fits your needs

There are a range of laptops featured to fit different requirements the users have. There are executive laptops that do the job of daily office use, then there are entertainment laptops, exclusive gaming laptops and some made for basic web surfing, MS office and Facebook. So first decide on which one actually fits you. Now you also have laptops dedicated for the Female group which are more colorful and some for young people which offer gaming and entertainment features also there are pale black ones for business users.

Entertainment Laptop:  This category of laptops holds the most high-end processor capabilities backed with some features like High Definition, Larger screens, Blue-ray disks, built-in woofers and surround speakers, extended battery life etc., If you are a person who loves watching movies on the laptop or into DJ, music, video editing etc., you may choose this category of laptops

Business Laptops: Here are the most powerful and reliable laptops in the entire category. They also have better warranty compared to the others as PC makers eye for corporate deals on these models and establish a long term Annual Maintenance relationships which are also available for individual users. They can run Auto-Cad like applications, SAP, SQL Server, Office Tools in a much sophisticated way with fewer burdens on the processor and RAM.

Gaming Laptops: The most sold segment in the Laptop market are the Gaming Laptops. Many games need a lot of resources to run and these machines offer the same. Features combination of entertainment and technology built into one and offers many extended fancies like external designs, better storage, battery life , high-end Graphic cards etc., If you are into gaming, choose this category of laptops.

Which Brand to go for?
I have a list of brands which by experience are my favourite
1. Dell (Best support)
2. Acer (Best Quality)
3. HP (Saturated Market)
4. Lenovo and Sony (costly)
5. Toshiba (Support problems)
6. Asus (Less known)
7. HCL, Wipro, LG, Samsung (small market)

Now comes the question of Which brand to choose what configurations I should eye, what are the accessories to be looked for and what are the customizable options.

Most of the laptops are Intel Processor  based laptops. Let’s look at Intel’s offerings,
Intel comes with 1^st and 2^nd Generation Processors. Processors also called as chipset by some manufacturers as they hold the entire BIOS (Basic Input Output System) Program. 
How much Processor will I need?
The following are the top few which you should look at
1^st  Gen Intel Core i3 – For Business Laptops and Basic browsing experience
2^nd Gen Intel Core i3 – Entertainment Laptops
2^nd Gen Intel Core i5 – Entertainment and Gaming
2^nd Gen Intel Core i7 – Mostly preferred for Gaming

What should be the RAM?
More RAM means more ease of processing. More RAM does not mean faster processing, because the processing capability is solely dependent on the processor.
Following are currently in the market
2 GB – Basic Requirement to run OS like windows 7, 8 smoothly and effeciently
3 GB – Good enough and preferred RAM requirement
4 GB – Can run many graphic apps
6 GB – Entertainment and Gaming
8 GB – Gaming Requirement
12 GB – Enhanced Gaming

How much should be the Hard drive ?
320 GB – Must have minimum space to enjoy trouble-free storage and avoid drive getting frequently full

500 GB – the more the merrier

640 GB – Recommended space is to have 640GB and can store a lot. Usually available in Entertainment laptops

750 GB – Love to have this much of storage space

1 TB & up – Go for it if you can afford it. Make sure you have atleast 3 partitions for better archiving and organizing

Solid State Drive – These are the new type of hard drives which never go bad unlike the regular issues we face on magnetic-spindle based hard drives. They are fixed bigger memory card like drives and usually they perform better than the regular hard drives. They are also called as SSD.

Graphics Card
Also called Graphical Processing Unit (GPU). Two types are in play here. One is a Dedicated Graphics card and secondly it’s an integrated card.
Integrated cards are for regular usage. They do not offer or support high end graphic requirements. On many cases Integrated Graphics share their memory with the System RAM. AMD chipsets come with HD enabled GPUs.  Nvidia Graphics and ATI Radeon are the leading brands, watchout for the higher series of these cards. Higher than the 300 series.

Screen Resolution
This is an important aspect and its upto you to choose.  Usually these are 15.4”, 17.3” or 19” and are physical diagonal dimensions. You get LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) and LED (Light Emitting Diode) and also new in the market is the 3D display. LCD has a life of certain hours less than LED. LCDs consume more power than the LEDs thereby reducing your battery backup time. HD is not an aspect of the LCD or LED but its more to do with the graphic chipset.

Battery
Batteries are often 6cell or a 9 cell or 12 cell batteries and because they are consumables they only have 1 year warranty irrespective of your laptop warranty. 12 Cell is recommended if you travel a lot. Else settle for the 9 cell batteries as its proven that batteries won’t last very long and at some point you will have to replace it.

Operating System
You may choose Window 7 or 8 (If already available). Never go for a pirated version which your friend offers to install. It may dampen your overall PC working experience as the windows updates won’t take place on time due to piracy. Ask for the original version.
Free operating systems like Red Had Linux, Suse, Ubuntu etc., can come in handy if you love doing VI scripts or programming.

Accessories
Memory Stick/card: You need to have a Memory stick of atleast 16 GB. Many laptops offer this for free. To transfer photos, small data, songs etc.,
Head Phone: To enjoy personalized music
External Hard drive: To store portable and private data
Travel or Auto Charger: For Car and travel purposes
Laptop Bag/Backpack: This should be given by the vendor for free else don’t buy that Laptop

Antivirus Software: This is a must for all Windows based laptops.

Warranty

Dell offers complete care warranty which means that even if you accidentally drop the laptop or any damage they will replace it with a brand new one with similar configuration. Nobody offers this warranty in the market currently. Purchase a 1 year extended warranty or 2 years because that’s when you will need  more support.

If you choose to pay a bit more go for Apple Laptops. They are quite fascinating but you will have to forego some of your favorite windows applications

Intel ‘s CEO says Windows 8 ‘one of the best things that ever happened to us’

Intel CE, Paul Otellini has said about Windows 8 “I think, it’s one of the best things that’s ever happened to our company” and is counting on the prospects of Microsoft’s Windows 8 which may have a lot to offer. That’s a very strong statement which could’ve brought a lot of smiles, speaking at a credit Suisse technology conference, Otellini clarified many worries and myths that were speculating around Intel. Various questions were asked around topics like ARM will hurt Intel, that the PC is toast and that the Chop giant can’t do mobile well.

He added “We are very excited about Windows 8. I think it’s one of the best things that’s ever happened to our Company. And it’s a very good operating system, not just for PCs, but we think also will allow tablets to really get a legitimacy into mainstream computing, particularly in enterprises that they don’t have today. A lot of the enterprise managers are worried about security, they’re worried about the difficulty affording their legacy applications over to an Android tablet or to an iPad.”

Microsoft is ensuring that the product is Seamless for Intel as they introduce Metro interface which offers all Intel based machines a single button offering everything essential for a user. It’s like you are just running one manifestation of the operating system with two different GUIs and it’s not Virtualization, it’s still one operating system with an additional interface.  So the x86 chipset of Intel in particular gets this unique advantage as Windows 8 is soon rolled out. The advantage here is the legacy of Intel and Windows that was every written, and all of the fact that all the drivers for USB, Mice, Printers, Monitors etc., are readily built in. For example- getting photos off the camera onto a tablet with just a push of a button.  And all this is done without the requirement of a driver being installed.

In current days we have to first install the driver, and then the Software suite for the PC to even read the content, but with Windows 8, the chipset still can read the content and allow the user to copy it without any driver being installed with an additional GUI button which is a huge advantage Intel has as Windows 8 products start launching.

When Otellini was asked about PC market going stale, he argued that the industry is fixing that problem. He was of the feeling that PC is far from going dead. In countries like China, Brazil and India which are heavily populated where an emerging middle class is buying PCs. He added “One of the things that we have to do though as an industry and as a Company is to make sure that the PC remains vibrant. I think it’s gotten a little stale, to some extent. There was a rush to the bottom, in terms of lowering the costs and taking features out and making the PC a little bit more boring than their counterparts in consumer electronics, for example, the iPad kinds of devices. So Intel is set out to redefine the PC again and we’ve done this several times in the past in our history. This one is very interesting.”

He hinted about Intel coming up with a new product offering that will shift the entire market. He said “It’s an initiative that we call, Ultrabook. This is about thinner, sleeker, faster, more responsive PCs, longer battery life, more secure, but also at a mainstream price point. The Apple MacBook Air has been out for several years now, but it’s a high — it’s a premium priced device.”

CES will be about mobile for Intel, which will deliver high performance at lower power. Otellini said:

All the major vendors are now, silicon vendors are moving to a model where you develop these Form Factor Reference Designs, where you basically lock down the components and validate them on networks, on the 3G, 4G networks that are out there such that they can go — our customers can go through IOT testing very quickly to get on — into the market.  And you’ll see a number of Intel customers using the guts of this phone to go into the market in the first half of next year, and we’ll have more announcements on that at CES. But what I’ve done here is, we’ve measured this phone against the other top-five-selling — high-selling smart phones that are out there today. And on the top chart, this is power, lower is better, right, and so standby 3G, we’re not the best, but we’re pretty darn close. For audio playback, we are the second best and well ahead of the pack. And on 720p video playback, again better than most and almost the best-in-class. 

No need to touch this mobile phone to operate it. New Gesture Control Phone from Micromax

If you haven’t seen more of Micromax over the past few days it could mean two reasons. First reason could be that everyone is busy checking out new Tabs and smart phones like the N700s or the Samsung Note,  or secondly Micromax is upto something with so much of a hush hush. So after the Akshay Kumar showcasing how to be hands-free with a Bluetooth at the back of a cellphone and phones like Bling and X78, we have another innovation as they feel that every phone should have a specific target in mind and this time the Techie youth is being targeted who wants a all in one Smartphone.

The all new Micromax Superphone A85 with Gesture Control

Micromax, silently has rolled out its first high-end smartphone, Superphone A85 in India. Its called a Superphone,  because as we releate to their their tagline “Nothing like Anything” A85 has got Gesture Control System. It means that you don’t need to even touch your phone to control it. For example, with just hand movements in front of the screen can change the song that its playing or even scroll down for you, even select your favorite contacts with just a hand gesture of yours. Well that’s new and yes it’s amazing.

  Micromax was facing a challenge in terms of durability of their phones, thanks to their Chinese manufacturers. However, this time they have turned into the best of breed electronics for this Superfone. This phone features a 1Ghz Dual-Core Processor from Nvidia, as they are the best in the graphics world. Powered by a 512 MB RAM this phone offers 8 GB internal storage, 5.0 MP rear camera and a VGA front-facing camera for video calling.

More Features

It’s a 3.8-inch 480x800 pixel capacitive display and has Gorilla glass protecting for any scratches that may develop upon usage and it runs the Android 2.2 Froyo but can be upgraded to Ginger bread. The 5.0 MP camera also offers 7.2X zoom HD Video Recording 720p – 1080p. Superfone has every feature in the book, including Wi-Fi and Mi-Fi. The Internal Memory can be expanded upto 32 GB.

To look at this phone is sleek, comes with a very slim packaging as well and looks like cheap plastics have been given away for once on this phone as Micromax tries their best to re-enter the market with a bang! If you think that these features are not enough, stay tuned to be excited with features like Accelerator Sensor and Gravity Sensors.  

If you are a gaming enthusiast, A85 offers console quality gaming and why not, with Google Android platform one can download more than 2 lakh applications. Micromax wants to grow by 70% rate year on year from 2011 and they’ve got the best business brains working for sure on this one. One can now expect more advanced devices in future with more technologies getting integrated in the most used electronic device in the world, a Cell phone.

At the release of A85, Mr. Rahul Sharma, Executive Director of Micromax Informatics Ltd, said that “The Indian consumers have a great appetite for newer technology adoption and this inspired us come up with a product which is leap ahead of the current generation of smartphones. We think that the new SUPERFONE category of phones will help the existing feature phone users to the latest technology innovation (Gesture Control) from Micromax.”

Superfone A85 is available at an attractive price of INR 19900/-

Future of Cloud Computing

   In recent years, Cloud Computing environments have been gaining popularity. With powerful hosted solutions and reduction to carbon footprints coming into play, it is true that Cloud computing will be the biggest IT market.

         As per the IBM Global CIO Study 2009, Cloud computing was cited as the most important visionary initiatives by more than one-third of CIOs (Chief Information Officer) of various IT companies. The diversified inherent benefits of a cloud environment make it very attractive to all businesses looking to speed service delivery and increase IT efficiencies while supporting information management, service management and service-oriented architecture (SOA) initiatives while they add more bandwidth to DRP (Disaster Recovery Planning), Power saving benefits and Virtualization.

    Cloud computing can be a user experience and also a business model. It is an emerging style of computing in which applications, data and IT sources are provided to users as services delivered over the network. This enables self-services, adds to automation, economies of scale and flexible sourcing options. One can imagine reduced data center equipment and maintenance costs, it encourages mobility and redundancy of systems.

    As per IBMs survey, the popularity of cloud computing and its potential to transform service delivery has led a growing number of organizations to implement cloud computing for one or more workloads, while many others are actively considering it. It is the idea behind the famous tagline of IBM "Build a Smarter Planet". In the line of IT, many companies across the USA, Canada, France, Italy, German, the UK, Japan, China and India, most of these companies have already adopted to Cloud computing.

Many hardware platforms today hosting many servers and systems will soon be wiped in half only to be replaced by a Cloud which is also called Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering which are are still fairly nascent among most users, it also indicated a higher level of awareness and pragmatism in confronting challenges and drawbacks, such as security, complexity and compliance, perhaps because of the lessons learned already in deploying virtualization at all layers of the stack as per Jay Lyman, Senior Analyst, The 451 Group

In today’s business, scalability, flexibility, cost efficiency and redundancy are seen as the primary drivers for cloud usage, while agility and innovation are quickly emerging as key factor for adoption. Many IT organizations view cloud computing as an effective means to implement new applications with ease while they keep pace with the business requirements. Cloud computing is the future and it will surely be a game changer in the current market.