Tag archive: format

Formatting your hard drive is very useful. It's good for clearing everything off a secondary drive or when installing a new copy of Windows. Formatting is also good for cleaning up storage issues, eliminating viruses and other hard-to-resolve problems.  Our How-To guide for formatting your hard drive will be broken down in three parts: Prep, Formatting and Installing XP, and Formatting a Secondary Hard Drive. Preparation 1. Formatting a… Read More

Face it – with well over 120 million units sold, no company even comes close to touching the extraordinary success that Apple has enjoyed with its iPod-branded portable media players. Between classic, nano, shuffle and touch models (not to mention nearly 35 million iPhones sold to date), the almighty iPod has become all but synonymous with MP3 players in just a few short years (and perhaps the first "Kleenex" or… Read More

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been testing three new home servers, two from HP and a potential revolutionary concept called a nano-plug server. This last one uses Marvell technology, comes from a company called CloudEngines, and it is called the Pogoplug. Let's talk about home servers today, why you may want one, and what makes these particular models stand out. What Is A Home Server? A home server is a device that… Read More

It's not often you see a product that is both cool, and designed to embarrass one of the technology suppliers that created it. One particular case makes both an interesting product and an interesting back story. Not only did one of the major parts suppliers abstain from its announcement, the company did its level best to try to stop the product altogether. I'm talking about the new Acer Aspire Revo, a revolutionary little… Read More

While the popular JPEG format unquestionably reigns as the standard for consumer-level digital photography, storing the so-called metadata that goes along with pictures, like the camera they were taken with, time, and camera settings, remains a wild west of different formats. The Metadata Working Group, a consortium formed by Adobe, Apple, Canon, Microsoft, Nokia and Sony, hopes to get that all straightened out in the future with a new… Read More

Now that Microsoft has succeeded in getting its OOXML format approved as an ISO standard, the company has announced it will offer support for Open Document Format (ODF) and the standardized PDF 1.5 format in Office 2007 Service Pack 2, due in first half of 2009. The mainstream suite of productivity applications will also gain support for the XML Paper Specification (XPS). Microsoft wants the world to know this is one way it's making… Read More

Microsoft's contested Open Office XML (OOXML) document format has received fast-track approval by the International Standards Organization (ISO), with 75 percent of eligible participants voting to fast-track the standard, and only 14 percent voting against it. ISO will now proceed to publish OOXML as an international standard alongside the competing Open Document Format (ODF). In theory, standardized documents format should offer a… Read More

Microsoft Corporation has taking its Open Office XML format back to the International Standards Organization (ISO) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in hopes of swaying some members to back it as an international document standard. The week-long talks won't involve any voting, but the Redmond software giant hopes it can convince members that OOXMl is the only realistic way towards a universal document format that… Read More

Late last year, Warner Bros. announced it was developed a hybrid disc format designed to end the format war between HD-DVD and Blu-ray. Named Total Hi-Def—or Total HD—the planned format would literally split the difference, offering HD DVD content on one side of the disc and Blu-ray on the other. Warner Bros. trotted out the format earlier this year at CES with a spate of retailers already saying they would carry Total HD once… Read More

A quick update on the high-definition disc format war: according to Home Media Research (a division of Home Media Magazine), Blu-ray titles outsold competing HD DVD titles by nearly two-to-one in the United States during the first nine months of 2007, although new exclusive HD DVD releases with integrated games and interactive features may change the story during the important fourth quarter of the year. According to Home Media Research,… Read More

A major explosion was set off today in the format war between Blu-ray and HD DVD: Paramount Home Entertainment and Dreamworks Animation have announced they're dropping the Blu-ray high-definition disc format and will issue new released exclusively on HD DVD. Both studios had originally announced support for the HD DVD format before deciding to hedge their bets and support both HD DVD and Blu-ray; now, the studios will exclusively… Read More

Disney music label Hollywood Records is looking to offset the industry-wide decline in traditional music CD sales by offering up a new CD format which packs discs with exclusive digital extras. Dubbed CDVU+ (CD View Plus), the discs will feature traditional music tracks, but replace the standard CD booklet and jewel case packaging with recyclable packaging on on-disc exclusive content, including images, song lyrics, video clips, and other… Read More

According to new market research from Home Media Magazine, Blu-ray discs significantly outsold titles in the rival HD DVD format during the first quarter of 2007—and Home Media Magazine says the contest wasn't even close, with some 70 percent of high-definition discs sold being in Blu-ray format. According to the figures, consumers purchased nearly 1.2 million high-definition discs in the first quarter of 2007; of those, 832,530… Read More

For years, the music industry has been adamant that they're only interested in selling digital music which can't be (easily) copied or shared amongst computer users. The argument goes that releasing copyable music would only cannibalize record sales as users opt for byte-perfect, pirated music rather than purchasing songs—or albums—for themselves. And that's why music from major labels is available for sale only… Read More

It is almost as though Microsoft looked at Apple’s Garage Band and said, hmmm, what a great idea, what if we applied it go games?   I mean how cool would it be to quickly and easily be able to create your own kick ass game, and turn around to sell it for money.   The “easily” part I’m sure will be relative, as we will likely see a great deal of junk result from this. However, so many great ideas are… Read More