You Owe Your PC to a Circuit Board Screwed onto a Piece of Plywood

It all Started with a simple integrated circuit board screwed onto a piece of plywood.

You owe your laptop or PC to a kit for flashing lights.

How was it that in our time the Personal Computer (P.C) and the laptop computer came about to be?

It all started with the invention of the transistor in 1949 by Bell Labs – the research arm of the "phone company". . The transistor was nothing more than a solid state electronic switch. The transistor or integrated circuit replaced the much larger vacuum tubes of the day. Vacuum tubes were large, hot and unreliable. Transistors performed essentially the same functions as tubes but were smaller , lighter , cooler and more reliable All said and done they were better ,smaller and more efficient than the vacuum tubes they replaced. . And transistors did not "burn out" like a vacuum tube.

Transistors allowed a trend of miniaturization that has led all the way to our present portable small laptop / notebook computers which can run on batteries. It is hard to visualize for us today that computers used to house large office buildings themselves – along with maintenance backup support staff and even their own air conditioners to remove the great amounts of heat the early, primitive computers produced.

In 1959 engineers at Texas Instruments figured out how to put more than one transistor on the same base and connect these transistors without wires. Thus the next step was born – the integrated circuit. The first integrated circuit consisted of only six transistors. Current computers have in the range of 100 million transistor equivalents.

In 1969 Intel introduced the 1 k memory chip. This was much larger than anything else produced at the time. Through coordination of Intel with a Japanese calculator manufacturer named Busicomp the next step was made where a generic multipurpose chip was devised. What made this step important was that no one chip could do a number of tasks. Previously each chip had a purpose that was burnt in. Now one integrated chip could do a number of different functions. One single integrated circuit chip was almost an entire computing device. The successor to this multi purpose integrated circuit or "CPU" was what went on to the basis of our whole generation and concept of personal computers/

In 1973 some of these microcomputer kits based on the initial 8080 Intel integrated chip were developed. In the hands of hobbyists these kits were put together and were nothing more than blinking lights. However the impetus was on. Many of these early hobbyists went on to become computer industry giants. With Intel introducing an even much more powerful microprocessor chip the computer industry was on its way.

A company MITS introduced the "Altair Computer Kit". The Altair was the impetus for fledgling software companies, such as Microsoft and Lotus, to write software programs for these early computers. Among the early innovators and producers of software in this field was Microsoft with its first version of Microsoft "Basic".

Along came the computer industry leader and stodgy monolith IBM to introduce the first "personal computer" in 1975. The model 1500 was beyond piddly compared to today's dollar store calculators and cost only $ 9,000.

Next came a smaller "upstart "Computer Company which came to be called Apple Computer. Apple computer introduced the Apple I computer in 1976 for the princely sum $ 695. Believe it or not original "Apple 1 computer" consisted of a main circuit board screwed into a piece of plywood. Talk about IBM having to hold its laughter The Apple I appeared to be such a home garage made amateur none professionally made product that the case and power supply were not even included. The buyer of the Apple I had to scrounge or source this himself. IBM thought the Apple I was nothing more than a foolish fad. A minor inconvenience that would soon go away and disappear. Yet department heads started buying these simple computers for uses in business departments. This was in spite of serious advice from IBM experts to corporations about the perils and shortcomings of these toy computers and outright threats by IBM salespeople to IT staff and heads.

The Apple I was followed in 1977 by the Apple II. The Apple II because of its enormous success set the standards for nearly all the important microcomputers to follow, including the IBM PC.

The very core of the early computer world – IBM "International Business Machines" – the master of the profitable mainframe computer industry had been awoken from its deep profitable slumber by a small upstart computer maker with a simple computer system that began its product cycle as an integrated circuit board screwed onto a piece of plywood.

Samsung E900 - More Than Just A Pretty Face

Fashion mobile phones have the worst reputation when it comes to functionalities and usability. Many aesthetically pleasing mobile phones disappear from the market without a trace because of being too fiddly for an average mobile phone user. Only a few mobile phones since the very starting of fashion phones have been able to sustain themselves with a longer shelf life. The Samsung E900 is one of the example where the functional aspect is not effected by its designing concepts and vice versa. The handset design that drew many comparison with one of its rival – the LG Chocolate especially because both the sliders features touch sensitive navigation pad.

Though the LG Chocolate looked a bit more stylish, the Samsung E900 has the advantage of an impressive feature list in its kitty. The Samsung E900 is fitted with a 2.0 mega pixel camera with digital zoom and integrated flash. The camera uses the handset's 2.0 inch. 262k colored TFT display as its viewfinder to capture great pictures. Distance and lighting condition hardly matters with the Samsung E900. The integrated camera is capable of recording videos as well.

A healthy 80 Mb user memory and external memory card support makes the Samsung E900 big enough for anything from your favourite tracks to listen to on the integrated music player to videos that could be viewed on any external screen via TV Output. The phone has a Document Viewer to view and even edit office documents in popular formats received as email attachments. The Samsung E900 is designed for those who seeks an extra edge from their mobile phones. With its Flight mode, you can work with your office documents and use other of the phone's functions while on a flight. This triband handset features Blue tooth and USB connectivity for quick sharing of information locally.

Nokia 95 - A Mobile, Multimedia Computer

Nokia, the innovators of many a models of mobile phones have perfectly mastered the art of wooing spectators with beautiful creations one after another. Mobile phones belonging to a vivid category of price, have made way from the house of Nokia to the store shelves and stayed within the hearts of users all across the globe. Now, with an intension to gift a mobile computer in the name of a mobile phone, Nokia comes up with a name N95 – a multimedia computer in the disguise of a mobile gadget. Sufficiently stylized and powered to tame demands of any life style.

A two-way slider embarks the list of awe-inspiring features that the phone incorporates. It is the first Nokia phone with supports for HSDPA (3.5G) and downloadable speed up to 3.6 Mbps. The Nokia N95 includes a stereo FM radio, visual radio, and a music player. The music player of the Nokia N95 phone supports MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+ , and WMA music file formats. Users can arrange music files and manage their music with an innovative music arrangement application.

A plethora of voice-based functioning like voice dialling, voice record and voice command include in the long list of features of this phone. A 5 megapixel camera, equipped with Carl Zeiss lens, add to the attraction of the phone and performs optimum role of high-resolution image capturing. A second camera with the phone helps user to take part in a video call. A Maps program with the GPS navigation control helps users to find maps of more than hundred countries. However, added to the glitz and glory of this phone it weighs only 120 gm.

For a Nokia N95 user, the phone with inbuilt 64 MB RAM, 160 MB of internal storage memory, Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR, uPnP, infrared, EDGE and SIP support, spells multitude functions. And with all these functions on offer, Nokia N95 is in noway less than a multimedia computer, which by virtue of its portability can be carried within a pocket.

Types of Backups

Backups are created to avoid situations of losing precious data. Backups can be created on daily basis, weekly basis, or monthly basis. Backups prove useful at the time of data loss, data inaccessibility, software malfunctions, drive corruptions etc. Before we know the types of backups an individual can perform, the basic backing up process should be clear. Windows offer built-in backup facility which proves easy for the backup creations.

The Windows Backup utility provides various types of backups. One should carefully choose the backup type according to his / her needs. There are different combinations of backups available; Normal, Copy, Incremental, Differential, and Daily.

Normal Backups

A normal backup is the first step to any backup plan. When the Normal backup option is selected; all the selected files and folders are backed up and the archive attribute of all files are cleared. Normal backups are the most time consuming process but prove more efficient at the time of restoration than other backup types.

Copy Backups

A copy backup option is not considered as a planned schedule backup, all the selected files and folders are backed up. Archive attributes of the files are not cleared while this option is selected.

Incremental Backups

Incremental backups are the fastest backup process. An incremental backup backs up the files and folders which were last created or modified or changed since last normal or incremental backup.An incremental backup backs up files that are created or changed since the last normal or incremental backup. After the backup is performed the archive attributes of the files are cleared. Restoration of data from an incremental backup requires the last normal backup and all the following incremental backups. These backups need to be restored in the same manner as they were created.

Note: If any media in the incremental backup set is damaged or data becomes corrupt, the data backed up after corruption cannot be restored.

Differential Backups

Differential backups backs up those files which were created or changed since the last normal backup. Archive attributes of the files does not get cleared after taking the backup with the differential backup method. The restoration process of files from differential backup is more efficient than an incremental backup.

Daily Backups

All the selected files and folders which have been changed during a day are backed up with Daily Backups option. The data is backed up by using the modified date of the files and the archive attributes are also does not get cleared with this option.

Normal backup is easy, fast and effective backup process which can be performed every night. But at times the created backup files can also get corrupt, damaged, deleted or become inaccessible. In this case, MS backup recovery software can help to recover the lost backup files. The bkf repair software offered by various data recovery companies proves effective and result-oriented bkf file repair software. The bkf repair software repairs and recovers the corrupt bkf archives and .bkf files which get corrupt, damaged, and inaccessible due to virus attacks, improper system shutdown, file deletion, accidental deletion media corruptions etc.

Essential Tips For Backups, Data Safety - Avoiding Data Recovery

Backup, backup, backups!

If there's one thing I've learned in 20 years and 12,000 data recoveries, it's that everybody doesn't back up their data sometimes. Computers may be dumb, but they know when you don't have your data backed up - because THAT's when they break. Don't let your computer fool you - back up new data daily.

It's important that you keep two alternating backups, and an additional spare piece of media. This means to have one disk (or tape, or thumb drive) labeled "EVEN" (for even-numbered days, one labeled "ODD" and one spare. Eventually, something will go wrong with a backup. For example, if an error occurs on an "EVEN" day, and you put in your "ODD" backup, you may ruin both. Instead, put in the spare. If there is a problem, you've saved your extra backup (from the day before yesterday) and have not wasted all your hard work. If there is no problem, and it was only a temporary glitch, then put your spare back on the shelf, reformat the "EVEN", and carry on with your backup.

What's the best thing to make a backup on?

There are a lot of ways to back up your data. Most new computers come with CD-R, or CD-RW drives. Most PCs still come with floppy disk drives (and you can get one for a Mac). There are Zip drives, tape drives, USB "thumb" drives, and more. My current favorites are External FireWire or USB 2 drives, and CD-R for full backups, and USB thumb drives for smaller amounts of data.

There are quite a few external drives on the market today and if you have a computer that's less than three years old, you probably have the ports for hooking these up. They usually come with backup software as well. As of this writing, the drives are mostly under $200. Once installed, it's a good idea to leave these drives off except when backing up. That way, a power spike or other environmental event that may destroy data on your hard disk will be unlikely to damage the external hard disk.

For CD-RW drives, I recommend using CD-R media only, as it's too easy to overwrite a previous backup using a CD-RW disk. This is a good form of backup for large amounts of data (they hold more than 650 MB), and each disk is inexpensive. But it leaves you with a lot of plastic disks sitting around. That's why I typically use them only for large backups. Heat, bending, and scratching are the enemies of CD disks. Incidentally, while it's hard to do CD-ROM recovery, it is possible to recover CDs that are damaged.

Zip drives come in sizes from 100 MB to 750 MB and cost from $60 to $200, while additional disks cost around $10 each. These are sensitive to dust, shock, too much heat, and big magnets. Remember to alternate backups with Zip disks as a damaged Zip drive can damage a Zip disk. Zip disk recovery is possible, but tends to be less successful than recovering other media.

Floppy diskettes don't hold very much (1.4 MB), but cost a few cents, and are easy to carry around. Almost all PCs have them, and quite a few Macs do. Floppies are sensitive to heat, magnetic fields, dust, bending and other rough handling.

Tape drives should only be used for very large amounts of data. They are relatively expensive and slow. They're great on large networks for after-hours backups, but they're easily damaged. Tape recovery is difficult and expensive.

I am an unabashed fan of USB thumb drives! These are actually memory sticks with a USB plug on the end that act like portable hard disks. They are sturdy - I accidentally let one go through the wash in my shirt pocket. After it dried out, it still had my data on it (don't try this at home)! While we've been successful performing USB data recovery, in this case, it wasn't even necessary! They come in sizes from 64 MB to more than 2 GB. They can be shared and used on PCs and Macs without reformatting. You can buy one at a local computer or electronics store for $35-$150.

What's the alternative to backing up your data? Well, as every drive eventually fails, it's pricey data recovery or data loss, which can be devastating

Be safe. Back up your data.

Still Backing Up Your Data To A Tape Drive?

When it was determined that computers needed a good place to store the information they created, the tape drive was invented. This is a very old piece of computer technology, and as a result, you can imagine that it is not usually used for any but the most necessary of applications.

First of all, tape drives operate in the same way as a video tape does – it consists of a magnetic tape that is spooled out, written to, and then re-spooled. If you remember trying to cue a VHS or BETA tape to the correct part of a movie, then you can probably guess one of the biggest problems with using tape to back up important data that you may need to access quickly.

If you need to get back to a particular piece of data, then you have to run the entire tape up until that point to get it back. This is due to the fact that information is saved sequentially onto tape media. One benefit of tape media is that if you make the tape long enough, you theoretically have an unlimited amount of storage space. Therefore, huge corporate computer networks that have terabytes or more of information sometimes still use tape drives but they're much faster than the old models some of your reading this may be accustomed to.

Tape drives also spool slowly in general, which is done to make sure that the tape is not damaged while it is being written to. If just one part of the tape is damaged, the entire backup is pointless and the tape often is simply disposed of.

As you can either imagine or guess, these types of data storage were not widely available for a very long period of time. While there were some old computers that used small tape drives to get programs or games into the computer, most personal computers did not have a lot of backup storage capacity until the floppy disk was invented and finally provided an alternative to the tape drive.

So what are the main problems with tape drives?

There are quite a few to be frank. Tape is a very fragile material and one of the main problems that tape drives have is the tape itself getting snagged, bent or even broken at any point on the tape itself. Once this happens you need to start the entire backup process again with a fresh tape or you'd have to splice the old tape together again (not recommended). The information stored on data tapes is in a magnetic format so exposing the type to any type of electro-magnet or x-ray device can wipe the entire tape clean.

For the home computer user there are lots of different backup options that are far superior to tape drives - not that any home user is still using a tape drive to backup information to surely? For example, you could get an external USB hard drive and put the data there. You can also save all of your information to CD-Rs or DVD-Rs instead and this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of data backup options for the modern computer user.

Samsung D900 - Hail the Slimmest Slider Device

Samsung has taken the credit for devising the thinnest slider phone of the recent times. It is Samsung D900 which when closed stands a mere 12.9 mm. Save for the standard Samsung design, this mobile phone is simply incredible in terms of its features and ultra slim looks.

Let us study this device more intricately. Overtly, it has nothing new to offer beside its slim looks. The TFT screen of this handset looks sufficiently good with 240x320 pixel display. Weighing just 85 g, Samsung D900 also feels light in terms of weight. It is a Quad-Band GSM phone that gets the support of techniques as GPRS, EDGE and Bluetooth for better connectivity. You can also enjoy the perfect Internet surfing experience with this gadget in your pocket while you are away or travelling. Along with this, Samsung D900 also enables you to check your e-mails while you are on the move.

This gadget is a powerful camera phone with a high resolution 3.15 Mega Pixels camera installed in it. The image quality delivered by this phone is simply superb. Samsung D900 also facilitates business usage with its document viewer, whereby you are able to open Microsoft office attachments and view them at your ease. With its TV output feature, you can directly view its camera photographs on your television.

Samsung D900 has an internal memory worth 60 MB. It also supports a room for more memory space with the help of its card slot. The music player of this device plays music in MP3/AAC/ACC+ file formats so that you can take your favourite music along with you wherever you go.

This phone thus is an all inclusive device that is fit to become your ideal companion, with its advanced features. Samsung deserves full marks for manufacturing an intelligent technology that is able to fit in all the high end features in the thinnest slider phone in the world.

Laptop Security Rules

Every time I purchase a new laptop with updated OS, more hard disk space, more RAM, nice-looking design I think about possible security problems I might face.

It's not a desk PC, which is placed at home or office where the access is limited, laptop is a portable device, which is easier to lost and it can be stolen. So, it's a good idea to think about proactive security measures that can be performed to prevent security accidents.

First, I prefer to keep important data on encrypted disks, there are a number of software programs that helps to do it. The most well-know tools are PGP and TrueCrypt. The last is open source product and can be used for free.

Second, if I delete some file I want it to be irrecoverable, that's why I'm running file shredder which stays in background and wipes all files that I delete. Also, as additional measure I managed to run wipe free space in the end of every week.

Third, password and login information. It is probably the most valuable one, so I prefer not to use auto fill option in browser and type the passwords every time I need to log in, it's a simple rule and I don't waste a lot of time doing this.

So here are my tree rules, there are some minor ones. For instance, the probability that someone will steal your laptop is much lower that probability of data lost due to system crash, so it's really important to do a backup every time you fill it's necessary. It's a good idea to do a backup every month or every two weeks.

There are some kind of software, that will monitor the health of your system. It's worth paying attention to SMART hard drive technology, it gathers the valuable information about your hard disk health and share it with you, giving you an estimates about how long you will be able to use your hard disk. I'm sure your laptop already have some software that will represent you this information, but there are also, some nice third-party tools.

Pay attention to your firewall and web-browser. Installing a good firewall software or just configuring firewall software suggested by latest version of Windows, will help you to protect laptop against spyware software. Don't forget to clear browser history and cache from time to time, as it also might contain a valuable information about your traces online.

Some other security measures, that might work. Flash drivers can be used now as a keys to your laptop. For instance, you will not be able to log into the Windows unless your flash drive is inserted. Well, this is for sure, a kind of protection, but there are a number of ways to get information without starting Windows, so you need a real protection, then USB flash drive key should contain not the password for a Windows login, but the key which is used to encrypted the whole data on your hard disk.

But again, before using strong protection consider checking the possibility of corruption of encrypted volume. It's much more harder to recover corrupted encrypted volume, than just a hard disk with non-encrypted FAT system. So, the main rule about security is to do enough to protect yourself and not to try to do more.

How To Find Some Cool PSP Downloads

One of the coolest downloads for your PSP, in my opinion, is music -- you can download music already formatted for use on your PSP. There are loads of sites on the internet that are designed to allow you to download music for the PSP.

Everything you can buy has different qualities. Normally, the cheaper the product then the lower the quality. The same can be said for music downloads as the quality of the music downloads will vary from one site to the next.

Once you've downloaded your cool PSP downloads from the internet you will need to transfer them to your PSP. To do this, you need two things: a USB cable and a memory stick. Make sure that any site that you use to get your cool PSP downloads from is legal. It is illegal to use copyrighted material without purchasing it. Some cool PSP downloads are copyrighted and are illegal if you obtain them for free.

Spyware and viruses are a huge problem with downloads from the internet. Cool PSP downloads are no exception. You want to get cool PSP downloads from a reputable company.

There is a fairly new virus which can "brick" your PSP -- this is quite dangerous and can actually render your PSP completely useless. If you are planning on looking for some cool PSP downloads then you will need an updated virus scanner and a spyware scanner as these will protect you from any malware in your cool PSP downloads.

In my opinion, the best sites to get cool PSP downloads from are those that charge a small membership fee. These cool PSP downloads are therefore less likely to contain viruses, plus you will have a company to complain to if anything goes wrong.

Do make sure that you're signing up to a site that supplies legal cool PSP downloads as there's nothing worse than paying for something that is illegal! Most of these services charge a one off fee of around $40, although there are numerous other services available on different pricing plans.

There are also various other cool PSP downloads sites -- to find these, you should do a search on the internet specifically for cool PSP downloads. You can find a variety of different homebrew applications and games, most of which are free. You can also download demos, which will give you a brief look at a game.

You could try searching for cool PSP downloads from a torrent rather than a website, however you must be very cautious that you don't download illegal files or files that contain viruses or other malicious forms of code.

Your PSP is a fantastic machine and you can make it even better if you can find some cool PSP downloads. Have some fun and get downloading today!

Video Conferencing

Video conferencing is the technique of conducting a conference between two or more participants at different sites irrespective of their demographic locations by using computer networks to transmit audio and video data. For example, a point-to-point video conferencing system works much like a video telephone, between two people only. Each participant has a video camera, microphone, and speakers mounted on his or her computer. As the two video participants speak to each other, their voices are carried over the network and delivered to the other's speakers, and whatever images the video camera captures appear in a window on the other participant's monitor. The other technique is multipoint videoconferencing. Multipoint video conferencing allows three or more participants to sit in a virtual conference room and communicate with the other participants of the video conference as if they were sitting right in front of you or next to each other. Technology that existed up to the mid 90s, made costs of video conferencing prohibitively expensive for most organizations, but that has changed drastically. Many experts and businessmen are of the belief that video conferencing will be one of the fastest-growing segments of the computer industry in coming years.

Companies such as Lifesize and Tandberg are leaders in the field of video conferencing systems and have installed tens of thousands of their systems in locations all over the world. Through innovative, generation next video conferencing technology, Tandberg can deliver greater video quality, brilliant audio coverage and flawless manageability. Tandberg customers enjoy better quality at any bandwidth and, with the very best cost factor available anywhere on the market. Anyone with dispersed colleagues and operations can now effectively share important information and valuable insights.

Tandberg video conferencing systems are fast becoming the indispensable communication tools of the globe. As more and more companies and business organizations are going global the need to stay in touch is becoming imperative. Business managers need to be in constant touch with their subordinates and customers all over the world. Offices being decentralized will need Tandberg's video conferencing system to ensure that anyone can meet anyone, anywhere, at the flick of a button and maybe a small message to come online. Tandberg offers a comprehensive array of video conferencing equipment to choose from. So if you are a small business house of a conglomerate Tandberg has just the video conferencing equipment for you. They even have something for the housewife and the student fraternity. The small desktop video conferencing equipment and software is the best you could get anywhere in the market at the best prices you could ever imagine.

Though there are many kinds online video conferencing software available on the Internet, for free, you might want to try some professional video conferencing software and equipment from the leaders in the industry. You will be surprised at the difference it will make for your business, the fact that you can establish actual eye contact with the people at the other end of the line makes all the difference with the professional video conferencing systems from the pros.

Photo Shop Tutorial for Beginners - 6 Tips for Getting Started

Photo Shop is one of the most amazing and yet complicated software programs out in the market right now, but don't worry…you'll only have to suffer its complicatedness at the start. After a while, you'll soon get the hang of Photo Shop and then you'll be editing your photos like mad!

Tip #1 Choosing the Type of Image File




Whenever you edit a photo in a major way, the default settings of Photo Shop would usually ask you to save the file in psd format; be that as it may, it's better for you to save your photos in jpeg as this is the most commonly accepted file and allows you to upload photos easily on just about any website.

Tip #2 Images without Background




Let's say you wish to create a particular shape or text or you've cut out a particular figure and you wish to use it on a website or even any design without white background. This is impossible to do with MS Paint, but certainly easy to achieve with Adobe Photo Shop.

First, set the background to transparent. Next, paste or create the desired text, shape, or photo. Once you're done, you have to click on Save for Web and not simply Save As because the latter would cause your photo to lose its transparent background.

Tip #3 Understanding Contrast




You see this term being used a lot when describing art or even when discussing about adjustment levels of a plasma TV. But do you really understand what contrast is? To put thing simply, contrast is the ability of a certain object, in this case that would be Photo Shop, to display the contrast or difference between dark and light colors or the difference between black and white. In a monochromatic photo, contrast is especially important because it makes distinguishing various objects in the photo easier. In colored photos, contrast is important when the photo has a particularly dark background.

Tip #4 Choosing the Quality Level




When you use Photo Shop to edit a photo, you might be asked in the end to choose the level of quality for your photo before saving it. The ideal level to choose is 60 because it allows you to enjoy superior quality while reducing the file size of your photo. Anything more can be particularly heavy and consume much disk space while the anything less can compromise the appearance of your photo.

Tip #5 Going Retro




To make your photos black and white, simply go to the Image Toolbar then click grayscale and your photos would immediately look decades older.

Tip #6 Layers




This feature of Adobe Photo Shop never fails to intimidate most beginners, but you shouldn't let it scare you. Once you understand how layers work, you'll be virtually addicted to using it frequently to enhance your photos.

Layers basically let you know the different layers that your photo consists of. Yes, your photo is indeed made up of multiple layers, and you can a new one or remove an old one with the Layers Toolbar. Using layers will allow you to edit one part of the photo without affecting the rest.

Tip #6 Marquee Tools




Lastly, these tools allow you to select a portion of the photo in the shape you prefer. The rectangular selection tool is the simplest and most commonly used. The elliptical marquee tool will allow you to make a circular selection while the single row or column marquee tools – as their names imply – allow you to make a straight line selection in your photo.

Ipod - Is It Worth The Money?

When people think of MP3 players most people think of the Ipod by Apple. But is it worth the money? My family began purchasing MP3 players about a year ago and the difference in price between one manufacturer and another can be substantial. The question you should ask yourself is: "How much am I willing to pay for the popularity of one MP3 player over another?" The answer of course is, you shouldn't pay a dime more than you need to. Most MP3 players regardless of price deliver outstanding sound quality and isn't that what you are looking for? Bells and whistles that you pay hundreds of dollars extra for are probably not necessary if you are just looking for a good quality MP3 player that won't break your budget. In fact, in our experience you can purchase an MP3 player which is superior to the Ipod in several areas for a fraction of the price.

My wife wanted an Ipod for her birthday and that's exactly what I bought her. She loved it at first... until I bought myself a Sony Walkman.

In this article we will compare the Ipod Nano ($200) with the Sony NW-E005 2 GB Flash Digital Music Player ($62)

The first glaring difference between the Ipod and the Sony is not only price but the software that operates the units. We took the exact same CD and downloaded it to the Ipod software called "Itunes" and it took 4 minutes and 40 seconds for the download to complete. The same CD downloaded to the Sony Walkman software called "Sonic Stage" took only 2 minutes and ten seconds. Less then half the time! If you are planning on downloading a large music library then it is going to take you more then twice the time to accomplish this with an Ipod.

Another difference my wife noticed with the Itunes software is that it is not as easy to use as the Sonic Stage software by Sony. Her comments were: "Every time I open the Itunes software to use it I have to re-teach myself what to do because nothing is obvious. The Sonic Stage software is very easy to use. When you open the software it has three big buttons at the top. Music Source, My Library and Transfer. From these three easy to understand buttons you can perform any task quickly."

One other disadvantage of the Ipod is that it has a special cable that has to be used in order for you to charge the battery and download music. My wife complains that if she is out of the house and her battery runs down she cannot recharge it without that darn cable. So be prepared to take that cable everywhere you take your Ipod or you will not be able to recharge the battery or download music.

This is not the case with a Sony Walkman MP3 player. The Sony MP3 player has a built in USB that plugs into any computer to charge the battery and download music. No extra cables to carry around like the Ipod.

Another difference between the Ipod Nano and a Sony Walkman is how many hours the MP3 player will work on one charge. You guessed it. My wife's Ipod runs down in less then 10 hours while the Sony Walkman's charge is good for over 20 hours!

You may think that this article is a long advertisement for Sony Walkmans but that was not our intention. We had the opportunity to compare the Apple Ipod MP3 player with the Sony Walkman MP3 player and we were shocked that not only was the Sony Walkman a fraction of the price of the Ipod Nano but it was easier to use, the software was faster and the charge lasted twice as long.

The one advantage we found with the Ipod was that it held more songs. BUT - I still have not filled the memory on my Sony Walkman so it's not a factor as far as we are concerned.

It's up to you to decide if the Ipod is worth the money. For my wife and I... we are hooked on the Sony series of MP3 players. Great price, great software and very easy to use.